Though I believe in the importance of keeping in the know, and discerning whom we can call a fox (a term Jesus used), I find that prayer is the ultimate weapon, able to demolish the plans of the enemy and rescue those who have gone astray. Jer 51:44 And I will punish Bel in Babylon, and take out of his mouth what he has swallowed. Ps 149:5 Let the godly ones exult in glory; Let them sing for joy on their beds. 6 Let the high praises of God be in their mouth , And a two-edged sword in their hand, 7 To execute vengeance on the nations And punishment on the peoples, 8 To bind their kings with chains And their nobles with fetters of iron, 9 To execute on them the judgment written; This is an honor for all His godly ones. Praise the Lord! Compare your time spent analyzing, with your time spent demolishing through prayer and fasting, and see if any adjustments need to be made. I say this because I have to do that very thing myself!
They know well what they're doing. They went to a lot of trouble to do it. Their targets of mockery were very accurate. One might not agree with them, but one can understand why those Jews who condemned Christ did not know what was happening-it was the most extraordinary and unique series of events in history; even St. Thomas had difficulties later. I can see no such excuses here. That there are Catholics actually defending this sacrilege emphasises the depth of the scandal. The Catholics of New York should keep their hands out of their pockets and purses.
What gets most to me is that the vestments on display are from the Sistine Chapel sacristy “40 ecclesiastical masterworks from the Sistine Chapel sacristy, many of which have never been seen outside the Vatican,” according to the Met, “Encompassing more than 15 papacies from the 18th to the early 21st century …” The loan of the Sistine Chapel vestments came with authorization from senior Vatican officials. I agree with what one commentator, Akira88, said on lifesitenews: I haven't seen one article about this "event" that has captured the outrage of the event. The sacred has been profaned by it's sons. Dolan and Martin were rubbing elbows as they were entertained no doubt. Have Catholics been so dumbed down when it comes to righteous anger that they just pleasantly disagree. Christ overturned table, and at times, he was pretty darn harsh in his teachings. Vestments are used for the absolute Sacred. This event was anything but.
And one doesn't suddenly come to the point of accepting this garbage abuse....one is already primed for it, including apparently even enjoying it, by all previous mistakes in judgment while desiring acceptance by the material world. That's how the smoke eventually becomes the fire. And just who gets lectured, again, as with P. Francis? Those who struggle to keep the faith while the clerics are converted themselves by the AC spirit of the culture rather than bringing the sword to the culture and transforming it. Cowards and overly self indulgent examples! Don't know of any NDExperiencers who returned to say they saw truckloads of $$$ awaiting entrance through the pearly gates to pay off their debts!
Just saw the photo again, the woman is actually wearing a large gold heart on her chest with 7 large daggers piercing the heart. Ugh! The whole thing was so offensive!
Pretty sure that was the whole idea Monica. Of course they will back peddle and attempt to soften the message a bit but we all know what the intention was, is and always will be. Fortunately, we have the answer to these insults... View attachment 7834
We must never forget that the victory is God's already and we are simply to try and do God's will in our lives in the midst of the storm that "appears" to be sinking the ship: Ephesians 6:10-18: "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints. Don't forget that the devil and countless demons are constantly attacking all of these people to keep them from the love of God, trying to take them down into Hell for all eternity to be separated from the Love of God. None of us deserve God's mercy and love, so let us pray for these people and keep our focus on who the battle is truly against. There is no place for hopelessness or fear. It is so important right now that we don't waste any time (I am so guilty of this myself) focusing on the bad things that are happening (except to discern what the Holy Spirit wants of you in particular to do in regard to them). The real question is do we really have anywhere near the same love that God has for each of these wayward souls to the point that we make sure we are in constant pray and mortifying of self, and making sacrifices, and speaking out, or whatever else God wants of us - like the saints including Padre Pio who suffered so much for souls). We must pray, pray, and pray more Rosaries, and Divine Mercies, and go to daily mass as much as possible (where we are actually made present to Calvary and can lift up all of these people with love as Jesus did while on the Cross: " Forgive them Father for they know not what they do"). Let us not forget that we will each be judged for our lack of proper response to the Holy Spirit. We won't be able to hide behind self-righteous anger (which of these 2 do we want to be: Luke 18:10: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector..."?). In other words our time is better spent in prayer and sacrifice for these people.
I think that the following article is very well done, it's food for our souls. It could be posted on so many threads but I am posting it here because of the recent discussions here about Karl Marx. Statue of Mother Mary in the Cathedral of Aveiro, Centro region, Portugal. Shutterstock.com Karl Marx unleashed a blood-thirsty dragon upon the world that can be defeated by the Rosary by Michael Hichborn blessed virgin mary, catholic, devil, marxism, rosary https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinio...irsty-dragon-upon-the-world-that-can-be-defea May 9, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – This past weekend was the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx, who is widely recognized as the architect of the most brutal and bloodthirsty philosophy ever to scar the earth: Atheistic Communism. On the occasion of this infamous event, it was my intention to write an article about the horrors of Communism, the legacy of Karl Marx, the Marxist hatred of humanity, and even his connection with secret societies. After countless attempts to write this article, committing well over 5,000 words and three days of chasing rabbit holes and rhetorical dead ends, two things became painfully obvious to me. The first is that the bitter fruits of Marx’s ideologies are self-evident, and the second is that I am not as clever as I thought. On the verge of abandoning my article, my wife suggested that I take a walk and pray the Rosary, and since Our Lady has never failed to help me when I ask, I knew that this was inspired advice. It didn’t take long into my Rosary to realize that the answer to the problem of Marx was resting in the very beads I held in my hand; each of the Joyful Mysteries I had been praying was an answer provided long before Marx’s birth to his philosophy of revolution. The First Joyful Mystery: The Annunciation Marx’s entire philosophy is built upon the tension between two vices; greed and envy. He accuses, not entirely wrongly, the upper class of the greedy enslavement of the lower classes. But rather than address the upper class and remind them of their duties through filial love to care for those who struggle to feed their families, he appeals to the suffering of the laborers and fans the flames of envy into an all-out rage. His demagoguery is built upon vice, encouraging a class warfare that leads directly to revolution. In the first mystery of the Rosary, we meditate on the Annunciation of the Incarnate Word, given to Our Lady by the Angel Gabriel. St. Bernard of Clairvaux explained in his homily In Praise of the Virgin Mother: “You have heard, O Virgin, that you will conceive and bear a son; you have heard that it will not be by man but by the Holy Spirit. The angel awaits an answer; it is time for him to return to God who sent him. We too are waiting, O Lady, for your word of compassion; the sentence of condemnation weighs heavily upon us.” It was through Our Lady’s reply, “Thy will be done,” that she answers the war of vices proclaimed by Marx. Marx announced a revolution which he claimed would be the salvation of the working class, and it was a revolution predicated on grasping at power, wealth and control for the supremacy of the state. Yet, Gabriel announced the salvation of men’s souls through the shedding of Divine blood! All of Heaven awaited her answer because without her willful consent to God’s proposal, man was doomed to the material salvation offered by the likes of Karl Marx. Through meditation on this mystery, we give thanks to Almighty God for Our Lady’s consent to bring the Savior into the world. The Second Joyful Mystery: The Visitation As soon as Gabriel left Our Lady, Scripture tells us that she “made haste” to be with her cousin Elizabeth, who was then in her sixth month of pregnancy. Thus filled with the Holy Spirit, and carrying the Christ in her womb, Our Lady’s first desire was to help family and serve others. She is the very model of the corporal works of Mercy. Marx, on the other hand, proposes a system that abolishes and ridicules the service of charity and seeks to impose a heavy-handed system of a labor-fed society. In Marx’s system, there is no love of neighbor, but only the service of all under the imposing gaze of the state. The Third Joyful Mystery: The Birth of Christ As we contemplate the Birth of the Savior of mankind, we have in mind the image of Joseph, Mary and the infant Christ Child lying in a manger. This image alone could fill volumes of contemplative meditations. Here, we see the image of the Holy Family as an Earthly representation of the Holy Trinity; Joseph the Father, Our Lady filled with the Grace of the Holy Spirit, and Our Blessed Lord bridging the gap between Trinity and Family. But in all the various ways we could contemplate this Mystery, what remains is the image of the family. Marx’s revolutionary manifesto asked, “What will be the influence of communist society on the family?” His answer is to abolish it by destroying its very foundations: It will transform the relations between the sexes into a purely private matter which concerns only the persons involved and into which society has no occasion to intervene. It can do this since it does away with private property and educates children on a communal basis, and in this way removes the two bases of traditional marriage – the dependence rooted in private property, of the women on the man, and of the children on the parents. If the Holy Family is the model for all families, and the Holy Family is the reflection of the Holy Trinity, then Marx’s assault upon the family is no less an assault on God, which is why, at its very core, Communism is an atheist philosophy. continued...
continued from above... The Fourth Joyful Mystery: The Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple When the priest Simeon received Our Lord from Our Lady, he prophesied: “Behold this child is set for the fall, and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted.” At this very moment, he foretold of the crucifixion of Our Lord, and in so doing, he told Our Lady that “thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts, thoughts may be revealed.” Here we can see the willingness to suffer and die out of love. Our Lady knows that because she shares in the great joy contained in Our Lord, that she will also share in His suffering. There is no man who has ever lived who knows suffering like Our Lady does. At the Annunciation, she knew that if all mankind would fall and suffer because of Eve’s rebellion against her husband and God, that all mankind would be saved because the Christ Child would take the sin and pain of all mankind to Himself, and it could only be accomplished by her consent. At the Visitation, she knew the joy the Divine Savior growing within her womb would bring to others. After His birth, she laid Him upon the dead wood of a manger, which is a food trough for animals … a manger that would prefigure the wood of His Cross as He became the food for all mankind. And while Simeon was prophesying the suffering Our Lady would share in her Son’s Passion, she embraced it all with humility. In the second chapter of St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians, he said, “Jesus Christ, Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man. He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross.” But Marx preaches a rejection of suffering and servitude. Rather than accepting one’s state in life, Marx preaches an anti-Gospel of envy, where the collective of workers cast off their servitude and rise against the upper class and GRASP what is not theirs. The Fifth Joyful Mystery: The Finding of the Child Jesus Teaching in the Temple In the final Joyful Mystery of the Rosary, we read the conversation between Our Lady and Our Lord, wherein Our Lady asks him to explain why He left them frantic for three days. At the end of the conversation, St. Luke tells us, “And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them.” The lesson to be had here is Holy Obedience. Our Lord delights in those who are obedient. Beginning with Adam and Eve and running throughout all of Scripture, we see a theme of the curses associated with disobedience and the blessings associated with obedience. When we are obedient to God and subject to proper authority, we are pleasing to Him. When we are disobedient and rebel against rightful authority, we incite His wrath. The materialist philosophy of Marx’s Communist Manifesto is a blueprint for rebellion against God and rebellion against rightful authority. When one considers the state-sponsored executions, the state-generated famines, the wars, and the spread of abortion, its bitter fruits have resulted in the deaths of countless millions. Even now, the horrors of Marx’s philosophies are infecting nearly every facet of human civilization. It comes in the form of contraception, abortion, homosexuality, on-going rebellious movements, and every other man-centered -ism that takes our minds away from the Four Last Things; death, judgment, Heaven and Hell. As we can see, the Rosary provides the answer. The Mysteries we meditate upon provide for us an understanding that man is not made for this world, as Marx would have us believe … but that we are made for Love of God and Love of neighbor. But more than that, The Rosary is the remedy to Marx’s poison. The Golden Legend tells us that St. Martha went to the Southern part of France, and while she was there, a horrible dragon had taken up residence in the River of Rhone. The locals, try as they may to defeat it, could do nothing to slay this beast. According to the Legend, the locals asked Martha for help, who went with them to find the dragon. They found it devouring a man, but St. Martha approached with the sign of the cross and cast holy water on it, at which point the creature became as docile as a sheep. She bound it with her own girdle and led it to the villagers, who then killed it with spears. Through this image, we can see a foreshadowing of the prophesied Triumph of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart. Our Lady asked us to pray the Rosary every day. If the dragon scourging us now is the philosophy of Marx, can we not see how the symbol of the cross and the girdle of St. Martha, which bound her dragon, make the loop of beads and the cross of the Rosaries we have today? The beast facing St. Martha could not resist her, and neither will the Marxist Dragon of today resist our Lady. Oh, Holy Virgin of the Rosary, pray for us!
Our Lady & the Rosary are the antidote to the sin, pride and rebellion that we see all around us. Why does the present hierarchy of the Church not see this? This is a sign in itself.
Mark Mallett's take on the "gala"! I don't think though that the "skirts" were the only things there that were "mini"! MINI SKIRTS AND MITERS ........While Cardinal Dolan defended the evening, and Bishop Barron defended Cardinal Dolan, British commentator Piers Morgan spoke for many Catholics: There is a massive difference between seeing religious artefacts tastefully and respectfully laid out in a museum, and seeing them stuck on some flesh-flaunting celebrity’s head at a party… A lot of the imagery was highly sexualised, which you might think not just inappropriate for a religious theme but also incredibly offensive to the many victims of sex abuse in the Catholic Church. —May 8th, 2018; dailymail.co.uk ..... But Catholics don’t need Mr. Morgan to tell them this is inappropriate. St. Paul did that long ago: For what partnership do righteousness and lawlessness have? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness?… Therefore, come forth from them and be separate,” says the Lord, “and touch nothing unclean; then I will receive you and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.” 1 For 6:14-18 If this event was about “truth, beauty, and goodness,” the question must be asked: how many men there found the “truth,” or did they rather find tight dresses? How many men were captivated by “beauty” or, rather, bulging breasts? How many were led to a deeper “goodness,” or simply, to gawking? Pope Francis has indeed been encouraging Christians to “accompany” others, to be present to others, to take on the “smell of the sheep”, so to speak. We can’t evangelize behind a wall. But as Paul VI wrote: There is no true evangelization if the name, the teaching, the life, the promises, the kingdom and the mystery of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, are not proclaimed. —POPE PAUL VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, n. 22; vatican.va MORE: https://www.markmallett.com/blog/2018/05/10/mini-skirts-and-miters/
St. Paul did warn us of all this, but I am grateful to Piers Morgan for his utter honesty in calling this what it is. No weasel words to soften the message, for the sake of his career or to maintain bridges with people whom he may yet have to work. Mr Morgan fired the full broadside, God bless him. The more I read of this, the worse it gets. There were child choristers in the Sistine Chapel Choir. As someone astutely remarked, the millstone factories need to get busy.
I think the current so called gala horror and the lack of outrage from C. Dolan and other churchmen is a kind of yardstick to measure their lack of faith. Somewhere along the way they became people -centered and all their love and energy seems to go toward social justice. And Jesus their Lord Who called them to the priesthood has been long removed to an outlier position. As if He doesn't have feelings and as if He can't be wounded or insulted. He is perhaps an abstract to them now. They pay lip service but where are their hearts?
the fruits of ambiguity... http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edwa...-clearly-hinted-support-for-intercommunion-pr German Bishop: Pope Francis Has Clearly Hinted Support for Intercommunion Proposal The Archbishop of Hamburg claims the Pope backs the German bishops’ majority vote in favor of Holy Communion for some Protestant spouses. Edward Pentin A German bishop has said he believes Pope Francis has given a clear nod of approval to the German episcopal conference’s controversial proposal which would allow some Protestant spouses to receive Holy Communion. Archbishop Stefan Hesse of Hamburg told a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), the largest group of lay Catholics in Germany, that the Pope has given “a clear Richtungswink” on the issue. A Richtungswink is a German expression that means “hint about a direction.” Archbishop Hesse also said at the Tuesday meeting that, in his view, the Pope had made it clear that the bishops’ conference could decide on this question exactly as they had already done, and by the majority vote that was already achieved. The archbishop’s comments were reported in Katholisch.de, the news portal controlled by the German bishops’ conference. Three-quarters of German bishops voted in February in support of the draft proposal to allow Holy Communion for some Protestant spouses of mixed marriages. The bishops want the proposal published as a “pastoral handout,” but seven German bishops have opposed it, principally arguing that it touches on “the faith and unity of the Church” and so should not be “subject to a vote.” After representatives of both parties met in Rome last week with Vatican officials, including Archbishop Luis Ladaria, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Pope handed the matter back to the German bishops, asking them to find, “in a spirit of ecclesial communion, a unanimous result, if possible.” Cardinal Gerhard Müller, Archbishop Ladaria’s predecessor, called the statement “very poor” as it contained “no answer to the central, essential question.” It is not possible, he stressed, to be in “sacramental communion without ecclesial communion.” Cardinal Willem Eijk, the Archbishop of Utrecht, Holland, said the statement was “completely incomprehensible” as the Church’s doctrine and practice is “perfectly clear.” By failing to create clarity, “great confusion is created among the faithful and the unity of the Church is endangered,” he said, adding that he was reminded of Article 675 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which warns of a “religious deception” that offers man “an apparent solution” at the “price of apostasy from the truth.” Archbishop Hesse’s comments are being seen by many as an inevitable response from the heterodox wing of the German Church, after the Pope decided not to rule against the proposal.
