The Lion of the Tribe of Judah has risen from the dead. He’s the last One standing. Always.
I’ve been writing much about the domestic terrorism charges that the DOJ and FBI is levelling against pious Catholics as a population. They actually have not rescinded, recanted, or apologized. They’re entrenching to try to source their accusations all the more. To do this, they will, of course, do what they always do, spy on Sacramental Confession.
For the FBI, to blaspheme God and utterly destroy the free exercise of religion by bugging confessionals, say, multiple times in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York already throughout the past decades, is the usual practice. They’re surely doing right now.
Don’t do it, my FBI friends. You do that, you take upon yourselves for your own judgment by God all sins confessed. And not only. You take on yourselves all the sins of those who would have confessed but didn’t because of your absolute hatred for God, for neighbor, for yourselves, what with all your threats of surveillance. All y’all will be burdened with all that sin at your own judgment. All of it. You, personally.
You mock the wounds of Christ by which the forgiveness comes about. God will not be mocked. You think you’re powerful now, but you will have your reckoning at the Last Judgment. Who’s going to save you then, those whose sacramental confessions you recorded. Unless you repent of all this what you have done will – all things being equal – bring you straight to hell. Is that worth it.
This goes for those in the field, those giving orders from on high, those who approving this kind of policy.
And if I catch you placing bugs, and I do have tomorrow’s technology today, well, that will not be a pleasant meeting for anyone involved. I will protect my flock. You are all trespassed from my parish campuses. I will press charges.
The other day, Jules Gomes of ChurchMilitant.com (January 13, 2023) recounted some not-first-hand off-script comments by Pope Francis to seminarians from Barcelona at an audience in Rome, included among them his apparent rant against…
≈ f***ing careerists who f*** up the lives of others […] those who climb to show their a** ≈
Well, I would agree with that – and with that language – if the definition of a careerist is Judas Iscariot. Yep. A little rough in the language, but it certainly gets the point across, you know, if it’s put in the context of what it means NOT to be a careerist, one who will bear witness to Jesus in season out of season, over against heretical priests, bishops and even popes, and be happy, in the spirit of the beatitudes, to suffer for it, even with, wait for it… with the end of one’s “career”.
But, let’s move on with apparent Francis “quotes” of sorts:
≈ priests should never deny absolution to penitents in the confessional under any circumstances ≈ // ≈ We can never deny absolution, because we become a vehicle for an evil, unjust, and moralistic judgment ≈ // ≈ Priests who deny penitents absolution are delinquents […] criminals ≈
So, let’s imagine a case where yours truly would tell an impenitent “penitent” that any absolution will not so much be denied as it is to be delayed until such time as there is contrition for sin and a firm purpose of amendment to amend one’s life to the end that the grace of absolution might be fruitful in the person’s soul, forgiving the sin and pointing the soul to heaven. Effectively, there’s a denial at the moment, but how you phrase things is important. We want people to be worthy members of the Body of Christ, worthy tabernacles of the Holy Spirit. So, for example… let’s see… I know! …
How about the case of a serial murderer who’s been terrorizing one’s little town with multiple murders of Catholics every day, and he shows up in the Confessional and says that he doesn’t want any absolution for his “ethnic cleansing” of Catholics because he says he is God’s hitman and he will continue to kill Catholics because, he says, all Catholics, young and old, just because they are Catholic, are the eternal enemies of God and need to be eliminated as soon as possible. BUT, he’s also been impatient, he says, with his own lack of efficiency and therefore he’s also used the “f***” word and “a**” word a number of times, and he does want absolution for that. He’s contrite, he says, with a firm purpose of amendment, he says.
Well, I would tell the guy that he needs to have a humble and contrite heart and have a firm purpose of amendment also for his murdering of Catholics and to return to receive the absolution fruitfully as soon as he can. And, of course, I would be shot on the spot right through the confessional screen (yes, we have only those logistics in the confessional) and be a martyr for Jesus Christ, Divine Son of the Immaculate Conception, who will Himself come to judge the living and the dead and world by fire.
Look, I wasn’t there at that meeting of Pope Francis with seminarians from Barcelona. I didn’t hear what Pope Francis said first hand. Did he mumble? Miss some words, like “not”? I don’t know. But what I will continue to strive to do in my own priesthood is to follow Jesus, believe in His Holy Name, continue to go Confession myself, and teach others to do the same, you know, in such manner that sanctifying grace provided by the Lamb of God will bear fruit in souls unto eternal life.
Is this just an example of the telephone game?
After Holy Mass people will come up to me and tell me what a great sermon I gave, and then proceed to recount points I never made. What they heard, clearly, was their guardian angels whispering in their ears. I wish I had said those good things. Really brilliant. But I didn’t say it.
I don’t lose my peace over this. As for me, I’ve already seen the wounds of Jesus, knowing that I put those wounds there, my autobiography, as someone put it. The Son of the Living God wants me in heaven. I have received absolution a zillion times. I want to give others absolution in Sacramental Confession. But I want to take them as deadly seriously as did Jesus – see the wounds! – and therefore insist that they also take Jesus deadly seriously, seeing those wounds of His.
Pope Francis knows the truth of it. He can deal with it one way or the other.
Repost (because now all sorts of states in these USA are pushing for making the fact of the Seal of Confession a felony offense). ///
John of Nepomuk (Nepomucene), not living even 50 years, (1345–1393) was thrown off a bridge and drowned in the Vltava river because he wouldn’t break the Seal of Confession. Knowing the trouble I have gotten into many times (though I haven’t yet been thrown off a bridge), a dear friend (RIP), finding a picture of a stained glass window of Saint John instructing us about the silence necessary, got this professionally matted, framed (complete with ultra-violet protection). This went up in the hermitage chapel and is now in the tiny chapel of the rectory. It’s good to have heavenly intercessors that we might emerge from this dark world of aggression into heaven, please God.
The pastor of the church we used for the diocesan retreat this past week has cameras and microphones all over the church. Not good for Confessions in church, as we did. Before Confessions started I banged on the door of the rectory and asked about such electronics and he said that they were all turned off. Great. One of the automatic excommunications in Canon Law concerns the breaking of the Seal of Confession and another regards the recording of Confessions.
Those law enforcement agencies which no longer care about the free exercise of religion are all into recording Sacramental Confessions. The FBI was caught out bugging the confessionals of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan. Even Padre Pio’s confessional was bugged. Such people who do such things risk going straight to hell, as do those who would attempt to coerce or trick a priest into revealing confessions.
It might tell you something about this priest that I’ve gotten and already used this nifty gadget:
That’s about as up-to-date with tomorrow’s tech as you can get. The spectrums are amazing, with all sorts of capabilities for detecting mics and transmitters. A bit 007 you say? Why so “scrupulous”, you ask?
Sins confessed are owned by the Blood of the Lamb. If any priest couldn’t care less about the Seal of Confession, that priest (we hope there are none), takes any sins he betrays unto his own soul. I don’t want to go to hell. I want to go to heaven. I want my penitents to go to heaven. It’s all about Jesus. If you want to know about my sins, check out His wounds. I did that.
Oh, and, by the way, a believing priest is not going to be burdened with carrying around the memory of any sins confessed. He’s instead rejoicing in Jesus’ mercy for His Little Flock and then is otherwise busy with the sheep at Holy Mass and the administration of the other sacraments. I love being a priest.
We had our canonical retreat this past week. This was the best attended retreat in all my years. The retreat director was a believer. He wasn’t afraid to speak of Jesus. Great priestly fraternity.
But the best part of the retreat was the rearranging of the schedule diversely from previous years. This time the Holy Hour was a bit more coerced, if you will. Previously it was on it’s own in the schedule. Maybe half or less of the priests showed up. Now there is also the Rosary and Vespers and a conference during the Holy Hour. Everyone came. Ha! There was less time for quiet adoration, but we were before the Most Blessed Sacrament nonetheless. All good.
This new schedule was especially helpful on Wednesday when, immediately after the Holy Hour, well, adoration instead continued while Confessions took place. My station for hearing confessions was right next to Jesus. He’s the One. He’s the only One. Non sum dignus.
Confession for priests? Here’s a blast from the past:
Thanks for that, Father.
Speaking of dearest Mary… surprise, surprise. Our Lady of Mount Carmel (discalced!), had been repainted and was without a title. However, she was presented during the retreat as Mary, Mother of God. I had a good few minutes in front of these two.
More in future posts, but here’s a gem from the retreat:
The less one prays, the less one wants to pray. The more one prays, the more one wants to pray.
Since way back in the 1970s I got to know a certain priest in my parish, Father Paul Marx. He’s the guy who founded The Human Life Center, which, elsewhere, became Human Life International. While I was doing some studies across the pond, he retired and made it known, without however, having any executive power, that he wanted me to be his successor. Meetings were set up at which I made it clear that I simply won’t compromise. That attitude was intolerable to the new weakness. That was decades ago. Things haven’t changed.
At that time I made an analysis of the appendix to the medical ethics policy of the US Bishops Conference at the time and sent it to a major conservative Catholic publication, trashing the Bishops presentation of cooperation in evil, which was to define sophistically what is forbidden formal cooperation as permissible remote cooperation. The famous editor wouldn’t publish it, however, saying that his friend, a Catholic priest, with whom he went to the same university was presently rationalizing abortion in Catholic hospitals, and my article would effectively contradict his friend’s policy for the Catholic hospital systems in his diocese. So, protecting friendship so as to promote murder.
I sent my own analysis of the Bishops’ policy permitting formal cooperation in murder to the Ratzinger’s CDF. It was passed on the moral theologian who then passed it up the ladder. The result was that the Holy See (it had to be Pope John Paul II) forced the USCCB to reverse their own ethical guidelines for the combination of state and church hospitals, forcing the USCCB, furthermore, to publish their recant, to the point of condemning bishops who followed previous guidelines and commanding those bishops to reverse everything they have done in view of the older guidelines.
That was all under John Paul II and, of course, Benedict XVI kept up the new status quo. The new more reasonable status quo continued up to the time of Bergoglio. Then all hell broke out. It was now all back to calling evil as good, formal cooperation with evil as permissible material remote cooperation.
The moral criterion that is used by the clever murderers is a lie. The bishops say that if only one tries to minimize the perception of anyone that they, the bishops, are doing evil, well, that minimization will make the actual murder into something permissible, indeed, laudable. “Did anyone notice our murder of babies in the womb? No? Great, we’re good to go!”
I was directed to speak to a certain moral theologian about all this, and he told me, Catholic priest that he was, about babies in the womb being murdered by chemical morning-after-pills. He cynically asked me: “It’s so small, so who’s going to notice anyway? So, whatever.”
At that point, I decided to speak to the icon of orthodoxy moral theologian in the USA at the time, Monsignor that he was, and he cynically asked me: “What do you want us to do, George, close the doors of all the Catholic hospitals? We need government money.”
Decades later, HLI is now rationalizing the mass murder of babies in the womb with all the clever sophistry that turns evil into good:
“Oooo! Let’s use multisyllabic words like formal and material, proximate and remote, and add some others like mediate and immediate, and, like, stuff, you know, and confuse people so that they go ahead and get the “vaccine”, because, like, that’s politically correct right now.”
Well, I’m not confused, not yesterday, not today. Murderers and liars from the beginning don’t fool me at all. I’ve written ad nauseam on this. Here’s just a couple of posts which attack some of HLI’s rubbish even when I wasn’t at all following anything HLI was doing whatsoever. When they went weak, I lost interest.
///[[Just thought I would re-post this. I wouldn’t want any readers in the Holy See and in other ecclesiastical provinces to have missed it. I’m not judging the souls of those mentioned herein. I am judging what any (Cardinal) (Arch)bishops and priests objectively vomit out against the least of the brethren in the womb.]]///
Here’s something from Christine Niles on a news report the other day, my summary: Victoria, Australia, is 95 percent “vaccinated” against Covid-19, one of most vaccinated places in the world, but also right now reporting their highest death rate in more than a decade. There were nearly 5,000 deaths in August alone, and so far this year 32,000 deaths total, which is 20 percent higher in the same time period since 2017, long before Wuhan’s Covid 19 the world. More than two thirds of Covid deaths have taken place this year.
This is proportional to what is happening in other super-“vaxed” locations.
In other words, the “vaccine”, which has zero effect on the Coronavirus, only making you weakened and more susceptible until you have no immune system – even worse with successive boosters – was and is calculated to cull “excess” humanity. That’s the science. And that’s the Green New Deal. “Kill ’em all!” the greenies command.
But people will cover their ears and shriek in denial and get their 5th “booster” as I bid them to go to instead go to Confession and prepare for death as the death rates hyperbolically sky-rocket right around the world because of immune systems weakened continuously by the “vaccine” and “boosters”.
“But Father George! Father George! That death isn’t from Covid! That’s just, like, multiple other viruses and stuff that people get all at once soon after their jab and boosters! So what! That’s just a zillion coincidences! But we’re all set! We can conquer anything! We got the ‘vaccine’ and, like, ‘boosters’ and stuff.”
Anyway. Go to Confession!
“But Father George! Father George! Experimenting, doing research, development and testing of ‘vaccines’ on embryos isn’t a sin! ‘It’s just an embryo!’ [That’s an actual direct quote from a ‘Catholic’ ‘health official’ to me].”
The purposed murdering of the least of the brethren in the womb so that big pharma might experiment on their organs is a sin. Jesus, the Son of the Living God, was “just an embryo”. Saint John the Baptist, the greatest prophet, sanctified in the womb was “just an embryo”. These purpose-murdered babies are the image of God, of Jesus, who identifies with the least of the brethren. Make no mistake, these youngsters, the tables having been turned,
What did Parolin say, that the babies self-donated themselves? Here’s a reprint of a post I wrote back on 14 January 2022, absolutely worth a re-read:
If you know the Jack Bauer 24 Hours series, you will remember this scene when Jack rips out a “chip” from the stomach of an adversary while the guy is alive, without anesthesia, hastening that guy’s death.
The analogy, of course, is that big-Pharma gets a pregnant woman whose baby has been tested for maturity and perfect health into an ultra-sterile pharmaceutical laboratory to extract that baby and then, immediately, alive and now breathing, extracting organs from that healthy fully developed baby to use for research, testing, development of “vaccines.”
In the article below I make some objectively stated commentary on the words of Cardinal Pietro Parolin. I do not subjectively judge his soul. I know nothing about that. That’s for the Lord to judge, but if someone presents something, communicates something it can be objectively judged. When I call him a liar and murderer from the beginning I’m referring to his words. Just so we’re clear:
Murderer and Liar in Chief, the Cardinal Secretary of State, Archbishop Pietro Parolin, says that the purposed murder of these babies for our own selfish “benefit”, is, well, you know, if it’s just murder for testing instead of also for research and development, then that murder merely for testing is all good, even though testing is intrinsic to any research and development, is one and the same with research and development.
“But Father George! Father George! You have to be wrong! Pope Francis says it’s a moral obligation to get the murder-the-baby-jab, and he’s, like, the Pope and everything! So, like, there! Take that! Both the Pope and the Cardinal Secretary of State! Two against one. And they’re, like, big, and you’re, like, not! You’re in big trouble, Father George! Be afraid! Be very afraid!”
Cardinal Parolin Appears to Deny Conscience Right Exemption [= he totally rejects religious exemptions] from Vatican’s Pfizer Vaccine
Responding to a query about his Dec. 23 ruling mandating vaccination for all Vatican employees and visitors who haven’t recently recovered from COVID-19, the Vatican secretary of state indicated religious exemptions are not ‘justified’ with respect to mRNA vaccines. [Because, the commandment not to murder the innocent has no place in religion?! Cardinal Parolin is a liar and murderer from the beginning.]
VATICAN CITY — Cardinal Pietro Parolin has said Vatican employees seeking to be exempt from the Vatican’s new vaccine mandate because they oppose the vaccine’s link to abortion “seems not to be justified” as it was only tested rather than produced using the cell lines of aborted fetuses. [Testing requires the same murder, Cardinal Parolin, you liar and murderer from the beginning.]
On Dec. 23, Cardinal Parolin, who is the most senior Vatican official after Pope Francis, ruled that entry to the Vatican now was only to be permitted to those who were vaccinated [a demonic irony] or had recently recovered from COVID-19.
In Jan. 9 written comments to the Register [obviously a cynical political timing to influence SCOTUS], the Vatican Secretary of State said that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine administered at the Vatican [“at the Vatican” – All of Vatican City needs an exorcism.] does not use such “cell cultures” in its composition or production but “only in the preliminary stages of vaccine testing in the laboratory.” [As if murdering a baby for testing is any less a murder. What a liar and murderer from the beginning.]
“On the other hand, other vaccines (Astra Zeneca, Johnson & Johnson) are actually produced from cell cultures that were donated [=purpose-murdered] about 40 years ago [time, for Parolin, is not morally relevant, and therefore original sin, Redemption, a murder of someone more than 40 years ago is not relevant in regard to judgment for heaven or hell, for Parolin. But Jesus holds all of time in His hands as a creation…] for scientific purposes” [as if “science” is a license to murder], he added. [This freak Cardinal Parolin says that the baby donates himself or herself to be murdered and therefore it’s all good. What a freak demon. There has been many evil things said by Pope Francis and others in recent years, but this cynical statement about “donation” has to go down as the most evil statement in the entire history of the world, truly. What a liar and murderer from the beginning.]
“Therefore, it seems that not wanting to undergo vaccination with this motivation [of objecting to the vaccine’s abortion link] cannot be justified, since the vaccine that is currently used is precisely the Pfizer one that uses the mRNA method,” he said. [What a liar and murderer from the beginning.]
The Dec. 23 decree mandated vaccines for most employees and visitors, stating that staff without a valid “Green Pass” attesting to vaccination or recovery from the virus would be unable to access the workplace. Those lacking this documentation would be “considered a case of unjustified absence” and effectively suspended without pay.
Cardinal Parolin also decreed that, from Jan. 31, all Vatican employees who serve in contact with the public would be obliged to provide official documentation proving they had received the full anti-COVID vaccine, including the third booster dose. [So, he’s aware it doesn’t work at all.]
Vatican City State was one of the first territories to offer the Pfizer vaccine to its employees, back in December 2020, and both Pope Francis and Benedict XVI reportedly received both shots and the booster jab. [That’s not morally relevant to us. That’s on them only.]
The cardinal, who was relaying information to the Register from “competent persons in these matters” whom he had consulted for his response, also briefly explained the messenger RNA (mRNA) technology that teaches cells how to make a protein that will trigger an immune response inside the body.
Cardinal Parolin said these “mRNA vaccines (the best known of which is Pfizer, the one we use) are produced with a technique that does not involve the use of cell cultures but are synthesized through a method that involves the insertion of fragments of genetic information into the bacteria belonging to the type of Escherichia Coli [bacteria that normally live in the intestines of healthy people and animals, but some strains cause illness].”
“These are subsequently left to multiply for several days in crops which are rich in nutrients,” the cardinal added. “In this way it is possible to extract numerous copies of the DNA sequence from which then the mRNA sequences used for vaccination are produced.” [Meanwhile, there are murdered babies in abundance. These guys are liars and murderers from the beginning.]
Vatican Document References
To buttress his position, the cardinal also made reference to a note “on the morality of using some anti-COVID-19 vaccines” published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on Dec. 21, 2020. The note declared it was “morally acceptable to receive COVID-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process. [I know the CDF well, so well, when I was in Rome, that I did my famous “Day Off” with them, once going to climb the Gran Sasso d’Italia with the whole crowd. None of these guys are infallible. None of them will speak for anyone at the judgement. They’re just weak human beings. Nothing more, nothing less. To cite them as an authority as if they were infallible is something that’s done by liars and murderers from the beginning.]
“The fundamental reason for considering the use of these vaccines morally licit is that the kind of cooperation in evil (passive material cooperation) in the procured abortion from which these cell lines originate is, on the part of those making use of the resulting vaccines, remote,” it added. [Oh, really? Remote by way of time? Time is irrelevant. You are accountable to God for any murder you commit, no matter how long ago. By way of place? Place is irrelevant. You are accountable to God for any murder you commit or willingly benefit from even if the murder was in a sterile big-pharma laboratory. By way of number of people involved? That’s also irrelevant. It’s purposed-murder of the least of the brethren, of Jesus, by big-pharma precisely for research, development and testing of “vaccines”. Is it truly better to murder one Innocent Man than that a whole nation perish? That murder is a sin. It’s all in one direct continuous line of complicit behavior, from the guy with the scalpel to the guy who receives the product of the purposed murder for his own selfish benefit. One Knight of Columbus told me that he was happy to have a baby be murdered for himself. Yep. This is risking the unforgivable sin.]
The CDF note stated that using such vaccines does not in itself legitimize, even indirectly, the practice of abortion [Of course it does. It is abortion. What liars and murderers from the beginning. This is the biggest promotion of abortion since Roe v Wade.], nor does it amount to a moral endorsement of the use of cell lines proceeding from aborted fetuses. [But that’s exactly, precisely and in great particularity what it does. Testing is essential to these procedures. These people have to ask themselves as to whether they themselves are malicious.] It also added that pharmaceutical companies and state health agencies are encouraged to produce alternatives “that do not create problems of conscience for either health care providers or the people to be vaccinated.” [So they admit there is a problem of conscience. So they just “encourage” alternatives as big pharma rakes in trillions of dollars. I wonder if and how much “encouragement” big pharma gave the Vatican.]
Furthermore, it stated that “vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary.” [So how is it that these liars and murderers from the beginning are forcing “vaccines”?]
Cardinal Parolin also referred to a 2017 document from the Pontifical Academy for Life [the most pro-abortion freakoids on the planet] that used similar arguments to the CDF note, namely that the cell lines used are “very distant from the original abortions and no longer imply that bond of moral cooperation indispensable for an ethically negative evaluation of their use.” [“Distant”… in what? Perception? You freakoid liars and murderers from the beginning. Again, time and place and numbers of people make no difference in a directly committed murder with which one is complicit, from which one benefits in a direct continuum from the guy with the scalpel to the guy or gal receiving a jab. The moral cooperation is as formal and proximate as that murdered individual glaring at you with Jesus, asking Jesus how long it will be before He takes vengeance on their murderers (see Rev. 6:9). Jesus doesn’t scold them; He just instructs them to wait a bit longer. And then He will take vengeance, even against those who protest with their misused words.]
Catholic leaders have taken varying positions on receiving the vaccine, with some such as Bishop Athanasius Schneider and other pro-life Catholics rejecting the use of a vaccine with any link to abortion, and other pro-life faithful, including Princeton Professor Robert George, asserting it is morally acceptable to receive any of the COVID-19 vaccines currently available [which means he’s not pro-life at all].
Cardinal Parolin’s differentiation between what he attests is the moral acceptability of using the Pfizer vaccine as opposed to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and the Astra Zeneca vaccine, is somewhat similar to guidance issued by the USCCB last March, which stated that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine raised “additional moral concerns” and that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines consequently should be preferred. However, the USCCB guidance did not indicate there were no moral problems at all associated with the mRNA vaccines, and it also stressed the importance of continuing to “insist that pharmaceutical companies stop using abortion-derived cell lines.” [There are problems, but – ah, the hell with it – go ahead and use them but just say you object. Go along to get along. $$$ All liars, all murderers from the beginning.]
The Register asked Cardinal Parolin about his new decree regarding anti-COVID restrictions: “Until now, personnel could self-exempt themselves from taking the vaccines against COVID by obtaining a negative test. Now those tests are no longer accepted, will exemptions be made for those personnel who cannot, in good conscience, take the vaccine on grounds of the vaccine having been derived (tested or produced) from aborted foetal stem cells?” [Great question, Edward.]
The full text of Cardinal Parolin’s Jan. 9 response to the Register follows:
mRNA vaccines (the best known of which is Pfizer, the one we use) are produced with a technique that does not involve the use of cell cultures but are synthesized through a method that involves the insertion of fragments of genetic information into the bacteria belonging to the type of Escherichia Coli. These are subsequently left to multiply for several days in crops which are rich in nutrients. In this way it is possible to extract numerous copies of the DNA sequence from which then the mRNA sequences used for vaccination are produced. In the case of mRNA vaccines, cell lines from aborted fetuses were used only in the preliminary stages of vaccine testing in the laboratory, but no cell lines from aborted fetuses are included in either the composition or production. On the other hand, other vaccines (Astra Zeneca, Johnson & Johnson) are actually produced from cell cultures that were donated about forty years ago for scientific purposes. Therefore, it seems that not wanting to undergo vaccination with this motivation cannot be justified, since the vaccine that is currently used is precisely the Pfizer that uses the mRNA method. Concluding, I would refer you to the Note on the morality of using some anti-Covid-19 vaccines issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith on 20 December 2020, as well as the document of the Pontifical Academy for Life issued on 31 July 2017. [In other words, a non-answer by which you know you’ve already been axed from your job. Such a liar and murderer from the beginning.]
“But Father George! Father George! You can’t say things like that! They won’t like you!”
My answer to that? Sigh. There’s no escape. These guys are not only unbelievers, they want to crush believers. What am I going to do? Be silent? They would still know that I’m a believer. I’m already dead. Thanks be to God and Immaculate Mary and my guardian angel. I’m already dead.
Elijah with the flaming fiery sword on Mount Carmel, Israel.
[[It’s 2022. This was written now thirteen years ago. It’s Padre Pio’s feast day. /// BTW, today marks 28 years in prison of Father Gordon MacRae. Hail Mary… Saint Michael the Archangel… ]
You can read things dozens of times over the years and just not “get it” at all. That’s me. But this year when I read the following letter of Padre Pio, I was mesmerized. I now know a bit more just how much I absolutely don’t know anything about the spiritual life. I have written academically about that of which he speaks, the flaming sword wielded by the angels at the end of Genesis 3. The suffering I went through to accomplish the academic feat on a level of historical philology, involving many, many years of library rat-ness, not REsearch but rather original hard work, agony, really, is nothing at all compared to what Padre Pio understood in an instant by experiencing personally this fiery sword which I have only come to know academically. I am, to date, the only one to have accomplished this academic feat through the centuries, through the millennia. I’m pretty proud of it – and that’s a sin – and I am trying to get over it. It helps to have come to know someone who was alive in my lifetime who experienced precisely, personally, exactly what I described on a merely academic level.
I am vindicated by Padre Pio’s experience. At the same time, on a spiritual level, well, I am thrust to the ground in deep humiliation, for I obviously know nothing of the spiritual life. But at least I know that I know nothing. These days, that’s something. And it’s way more than enough to ask for this great saint’s help. Apologies are given in advance for the inadequacy of [my comments] below. You can see from my Coat of Arms (thanks to Elizdelphi! No words on the banner yet) that I am grateful to have written about the sword of which Padre Pio speaks…
From the Letters of Saint Pius of Pietrelcina, priest (Epist. I, 1065; 1093-1095)
I will raise my voice and will not stop imploring him
“Out of obedience I am obliged to manifest to you [obviously, his religious superior] what happened to me on the evening of the 5th of this month of August 1918 [Vigil of the Feast of the Transfiguration of Jesus] and all day on the 6th [Feast of the Transfiguration].
“I am quite unable to convey to you what occurred during this period of utter torment. While I was hearing the boys’ confessions on the evening of the 5th [making them saints!], I was suddenly terrorized by the sight of a celestial person [an angel] who presented himself to my mind’s eye [So, not an apparition, but entirely spiritual. People think angels are all fluffy chiffon pastels and cute. Pio speaks of torment and terror, and this angel is from heaven!]. He had in his hand a sort of weapon[“weapon”] like a very long sharp-pointed steel blade which seemed to emit fire. [This is the sword mentioned in Genesis 3:24. My academic, pedantic translation of this three-fold double-reverse verb is this in context: it is the sword which “turns-into-its-contrary-by-way-of-the-fiery-grace-of-enmity-against-Satan-and-by-way-of-friendship-with-God-whatever-is-presented-to-it.” Thus, if we were to try to grasp at the fruit of the Tree of the Living Ones, the work of this sword, of this grace, wielded by the angels, would turn that, with our assent, into humbly receiving the Fruit of the Tree of the Living Ones, that is, the Eucharist. This is also the sword with which the Carmelites depict Elijah. See their fiery coat of arms below. This is also the sword mentioned by Teresa of Avila. This is pre-eminently the sword of Saint Michael…] At the very instant that I saw all this, I saw that person hurl the weapon into my soul with all his might. [Seeing that such an angel could crush the entire universe if given permission from the Most High, this is saying really a lot…] I cried out with difficulty and felt I was dying. I asked the boys to leave because I felt ill and no longer had the strength to continue. [What an understatement of all time. They must have been scared for him.] This agony lasted uninterruptedly until the morning of the 7th. I cannot tell you how much I suffered during this period of anguish. Even my entrails were torn and ruptured by the weapon,[“weapon”] and nothing was spared. [“nothing” – and here I try to hang on to this and that. And in doing that I am totally lacking in generosity. I’ve done nothing in my life. I’ve not laid down my life as so many have done. Pio is going through his purgatory all at once, 40 some hours for him, and much more than any purgatory: he is bringing souls to heaven by his life becoming an intercession for all of us. What would I do, I who surely have a purgatory lasting until the end of time?]
Elijah’s fiery sword on the Discalced Carmelite Coat of Arms
“From that day on I have been mortally wounded. [“mortally wounded…” And this is no longer his wound, but that of humanity, with Pio now being in solidarity with Jesus on the Cross even as Jesus is in solidarity with us, loving us while we are yet sinners, drawing all to Himself as He is lifted up on the Cross. And we watch with Him…] I feel in the depths of my soul a wound that is always open and which causes me continual agony. What can I tell you in answer to your questions regarding my crucifixion? My God! What embarrassment and humiliation I suffer by being obliged to explain what you have done to this wretched creature! [For we do nothing to save ourselves. Jesus is our Savior. We come to realize this. We are nothing. He is all. He shows us what He has saved us from, and not just us, me, but we see how He has saved all of us as we gain some heightened perspective on the cross.]
“On the morning of the 20th of last month [two weeks later], in the choir [making the traditional thanksgiving prayers after Mass], after I had celebrated Mass I yielded to a drowsiness similar to a sweet sleep. All the internal and external senses and even the very faculties of my soul were immersed in indescribable stillness. Absolute silence surrounded and invaded me. I was suddenly filled with great peace and abandonment which effaced everything else and caused a lull in the turmoil. All this happened in a flash. While this was taking place I saw before me a mysterious person similar to the one I had seen on the evening of August 5th. [We entertain angels and even the Son of Man and do not know it. How much the angels reflect the Son of Man! And the fiery love of God, issuing from the throne of the Most High, from the Heart of Him who loves us so much, is just that fierce on that sword which transforms us utterly in God’s love.] The only difference was that his hands and feet and side were dripping blood. This sight terrified me and what I felt at that moment is indescribable. I thought I should die and really should have died if the Lord had not intervened and strengthened my heart which was about to burst out of my chest. [We are utterly weak. It is all Jesus.] The vision disappeared and I became aware that my hands, feet and side were dripping blood. Imagine the agony I experienced and continue to experience almost every day. [He speaks also and especially of his embarrassment, for he, as all of us from Adam until the last man is conceived, caused those wounds in our Lord. How is it that he, Pio, or any of us could share such wounds of love for all those Jesus has redeemed and wills to save?] The heart wound bleeds continually, especially from Thursday evening until Saturday.
Padre Pio reprimanding the Bishop about the Seal of Confession.
“Dear Father, I am dying of pain because of the wounds and the resulting embarrassment I feel deep in my soul. I am afraid I shall bleed to death if the Lord does not hear my heartfelt supplication to relieve me of this condition. Will Jesus, who is so good, grant me this grace? Will he at least free me from the embarrassment caused by these outward signs? [The embarrassment, mind you, is more than enough to end his life on this earth.] I will raise my voice and will not stop imploring him until in his mercy he takes away, not the wound or the pain, which is impossible since I wish to be inebriated with pain, but these outward signs which cause me such embarrassment and unbearable humiliation. The person of whom I spoke in a previous letter is none other than the one I mentioned having seen on August 5th. He continues his work incessantly, causing me extreme spiritual agony. There is a continual rumbling within me like the gushing of blood. [This Hebrew description of this sword in Genesis 3:24 (which I think I am the very first to translate pedantically, as it really is just that difficult), the sword which the angel is mashing around inside Pio is variously and wrongly translated as the twirling sword, the sword which moves about this way and that, etc., is, instead, again, “the sword which causes that which is presented to it to be transformed into its contrary.” Again, we are not to grasp arrogantly for the Fruit from the Tree of the Living Ones, though we can humbly receive its Fruit (the Eucharist from the Cross).] My God! Your punishment is just and your judgment right, but grant me your mercy. Lord, with your Prophet I shall continue to repeat: O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger; do not punish me in your rage! Dear Father, now that my whole interior state is known to you, do not refuse to send me a word of comfort in the midst of such severe and harsh suffering.” [If it were I who had to respond to such a religious superior, knowing I know nothing, but despite that, I would say that in our very reception of mercy we must show mercy to the rest of the members of the Body of Christ, those whom Jesus has redeemed and wills to save. Our suffering is occasioned by the lack of others, lack of faith, etc., but it is not their cross we carry, but instead we come to know what we would be like if we ourselves were to be without the grace of our Lord and therefore our own lack of faith, etc…. and our remaining in friendship by the grace of God in such horrific circumstances acts as an intercession for those who are truly without faith, etc. This is drawing all to Christ on the cross in solidarity with Jesus, who does this by His grace. He, the Head of the Body does this, but we are members of that Body and we are with Him. Jesus said that He would draw all to Himself when He is lifted up (on the Cross). If we only knew! If we only knew! Now Pio had his eyes opened, his soul torn open, his hands and feet and heart torn open. But it’s all Jesus. Jesus’ love taking on our lack. Embarrassing to us? Yes. And we run away. Pio couldn’t run any more. The angel presented himself, and, fiercely raising his weapon of God’s love… I know nothing. Saint Pio: help this donkey-priest to come to know Jesus! Help all of us priests! Help all whom Jesus wants to transform in His love!]
Repost (because now all sorts of states in these USA are pushing for making the fact of the Seal of Confession a felony offense). ///
Here’s a not really fictional conversation between myself and a certain law enforcement officer:
What’s up with the Mafia, Father Byers?
I’m a priest, not a rat.
You’ve made it a point to get to know a guy helping head up GICO of GdiF.
That antimafia freakboy? I’m impressed. You’ve done your research. But you’re wasting my time. Am I free to leave?
You’re right. It was his initiative. He made it a point to get to know you. We put him on to you.
But for years, with bribes that would embarrass Church and State, with extortion that would have left me bereft of lifesaving medicine, even threats to bring my priesthood to an end in any number of ways, all witnessed, so annoying. Typical craft. What of it?
But life as a spy, full of adrenaline, the assignments he was giving you… You resisted…
I guess you’re having a problem with my answer at the start of this interrogation.
You misunderstand. This is just a conversation. We’re all friends.
So, I’m free to leave, friend?
There is the matter of that liaison between the Ministero della Difesa and the Holy See that we had living at your college in Rome.
You mean that idiot wanting to get me assigned to a certain parish with the end of having me break the Seal of Confession should any members of the mafia sing about what they’ve done? That weasel, that sorry excuse for a human being, pezzo di merda?
Um… the best attorney Italy has to offer, Father Byers. He was getting his doctoral degree in Church Law as well if I remember. But, yes, that’s why we’ve brought you in.
I cannot break the Seal of Confession. What’s said there stays there, buried deep in the wounds of Christ. I would die before breaking the Seal of Confession. I don’t want to be excommunicated. I don’t want to go to hell. I want to go to heaven. I cannot betray the blood of Christ Jesus in the Confessional. I have no right to anything said there. If I were to betray sins confessed in Sacramental Confession, I would take the guilt of all those sins on myself. I won’t do that. As for you… you betray your oath to uphold the Constitution, the First Amendment, the free exercise of religion. You should go to Confession. We’re done here.
But we thought you might be brave enough to go up against the mafia, it’s the only right thing to do; it’s integrity, honesty.
I want those in the mafia to go to heaven, repentant, with a firm purpose of amendment, with changed circumstances of life, with absolution.
We just want to listen in. We will not act on anything. It’s privileged information. You can do your duty as a priest and help to protect innocent people.
After all this time, you, the religious expert — one-time seminarian, is that right? — you still don’t get that I’m not against flesh and blood. I want people to go to heaven, including the mafia. I am against the fallen angels. And you’re siding with them, aren’t you? I believe in God, because I see His wounds.
I’ll tell you whose wounds I see, those of the sheep whose wounds are inflicted by those damned mafia wolves.
You only lust after promotion. You come to me only because you can’t do your own job. You just want to imprison the mafia. But I can do more to end the multiplication of victims by converting individual members of the mafia, relying only on integrity and honesty and honor and respect.
So, Pope Francis gave another long interview, this time to Reuters.
Below I include the bit about the Supreme Courts overturning of Roe v Wade and Nancy Pelosi receiving Holy Communion.
Pope Francis claims ignorance of the law and so can’t comment on that, but does say that abortion is like hiring a sicario, a hit man. But then, establishing that abortion is so very evil, he condemns anyone who would say that pro-abortion politicians like Nancy Pelosi should be denied Holy Communion, with that condemnation carrying the moniker of “non-pastoral”, which, by the way, is enough to have someone removed from ministry. That puts all priests and bishops on notice, and it’s a green light to all sinners to F*** sacramental Confession and just go to Holy Communion in mortal sin, eating and drinking their own condemnation, as Saint Paul warns, thus mocking themselves, mocking the least of the brethren in the womb, and mocking Christ Jesus.
“Asked about the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling establishing a woman’s right to have an abortion, Francis said he respected the decision but did not have enough information to speak about it from a juridical point of view. But he strongly condemned abortion, comparing it to “hiring a hit man”. The Catholic Church teaches that life begins at the moment of conception. “I ask: Is it legitimate, is it right, to eliminate a human life to resolve a problem?”
Francis was asked about a debate in the United States over whether a Catholic politician who is personally opposed to abortion but supports others’ right to choose should be allowed to receive the sacrament of communion. House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi, for example, has been barred by the conservative archbishop of her home diocese of San Francisco from receiving it there, but is regularly given communion at a parish in Washington, D.C. Last week, she received the sacrament at a papal Mass in the Vatican. “When the Church loses its pastoral nature, when a bishop loses his pastoral nature, it causes a political problem,” the pope said. “That’s all I can say.”
That’s all you can say, is it? I wonder how that’s going to work out before Him who will come to judge the living and the dead and the world by fire. We pray for conversion: Hail Mary…
Aurelio, friend of crime lord Viggo Tarasov’s former employee John Wick, himself works for The Continental. Aurelio hits Iosef, the idiot son of Viggo Tarasov. If you do that, you die. Period.
But Aurelio did do this, and easily owns up to it, not because he’s challenging Viggo, but because he’s confident that his smacking down of Viggo’s son was the right thing to do. Sometimes you just gotta do the right thing and be joyful in owning up to it even in absolutely forbidden circumstances.
Viggo, hearing of Aurelio’s smacking down of his son Ioseph, calls Aurelio on the phone, not knowing what his own son Ioseph had done to John Wick, the most efficient hitman in the world:
Aurelio: Aurelio speaking.
Viggo Tarasov: I heard you struck my son.
Aurelio: Yes, sir, I did.
Viggo Tarasov: And may I ask why?
Aurelio: Yeah, well, because he stole John Wick’s car, sir, and, uh, killed his dog.
Viggo Tarasov: [pause… pause… pause…] Oh.
Sorry. Just had to share that. This kind of thing has happened to me so very many times. It happens a lot if you just don’t compromise. That conversation would go something like this in my life, a fictional example:
Restorationist Priest: Father George speaking.
The Bishop of Rome: I heard you were faithful to Jesus.
Restorationist Priest: Yes, Holy Father, I was.
The Bishop of Rome: And may I ask why?
Restorationist priest: Yeah, well, because there’s a general apostasy, so I had to step up.
The Bishop of Rome: [pause… pause… pause…] Oh.
It’s not that I’m a man of focus, commitment, sheer will… something others know very little about, and it’s not that I’m so capable at slaying men at will with a pencil, that is, with words on a blog… No.
Any “no compromise” attitude is had simply because I know I’m a terrible sinner and that Confession has been my salvation. I know the forgiveness of the Lord Jesus and I want others to know that same goodness and kindness. That insistence on no political correctness gets one into trouble. No, that’s not quite right… it’s the joy of that insistence on no political correctness that gets one into trouble. One gets called up, called in, called out… but then it’s all good: “Oh.” Jesus is good. He’s the Shepherd. And He let’s the sheep know that He’s in charge, a great relief. Go to Confession.
You always wanna give people the benefit of the doubt inasmuch as you can, so that just possibly there’s a 0.000000001% chance of whomsoever being open to conversion. We gotta have the hope that we can maybe work with people in this world.
Take Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill) as an example. When asked about pro-aborts protesting outside of SCOTUS Justices’ and elected officials’ family homes he had this to say:
“I think it’s reprehensible. Stay away from homes and families of elected officials and members of the court. You can express yourself, exercise your First Amendment rights, but to go after them at their homes, to do anything of a threatening nature, certainly anything violent, is absolutely reprehensible.”
Wow. So very different from Nancy Pelosi on this point. With the glee of the DOJ and DHS, Nancy seems to encourage, you know, that which is “mostly peaceful.” So, with Durbin it seems there might be a conscience hiding in there somewhere. Yet he also is an ultra-pro-abort and way back in 2004 was himself reprimanded about reception of Holy Communion. So, in defending Pelosi over against her San Francisco Archbishop Cordileone, he’s kinda using her as a proxy to defend himself. Which means it’s bothering him, still.
“The decision of the Catholic bishops and the treatment of pro-choice Catholics is different in dioceses by dioceses.”
Great point. But I’d like to think that he’s smart enough to know that bishops can be total idiots just like all the rest of us, and that we shouldn’t look so much to them for any consistent teaching but rather to Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the authentic interventions of the Magisterium throughout the ages. That teaching is crystal clear: abortion murders innocent human beings, the least of the brethren, about whom Jesus said, What you’ve done to the least of these, you’ve done to me.
“As a policy, they [the bishops] were poised to act for the entire nation, but then withdrew that decision.”
Yep. Good point. That’s also true. The bishops as a group are total cowards and greedy as hell, not wanting to offend the powers that be to the end that the bishops conference continues to receive truly ungodly amounts of government money to redistribute to, say, abortionists and marxists and LGBTQI+ “ministries” world-wide, you know, so that they can legally skim mountains of money off the top to finance their USCCB operations. All legal, however terribly immoral. Durbin’s point is that the bishops don’t give a damn about whether or not someone is damning themselves by going to Holy Communion unworthily, so it must not be something to worry about. For Dubin, that’s the teaching of the bishops, and… that is the teaching of the bishops (though not the teaching of Jesus, not the teaching of the Church).
“I still believe that the authorities in the church believe we have issues that can only be decided by our own conscience, and not by some bishop’s conscience.”
Well, that’s stating it wrongly. Surely he does get the impression that the bishops hold that there is no such thing as consistent doctrine and consistent morality. We already know that so many of our bishops are out and out anti-Catholic, you know, like Judas. Nothing new there. But Durbin is wrong to say that the argument is on the level of some bishop’s conscience and that all bishops are different and therefore it’s all up in the air. It never was on the level of any individual bishop. Catholic doctrine and Catholic morality is never up to the conscience of some individual bishop. No.
Bishops are to serve the absolute Living Truth, the unmanipulatable Son of the Living God, who is Love, and who said, “If you love me, keep the commandments.” Bishops can’t dispense from Truth or Morality. Bishops cannot dispense people from loving Jesus. The bishop of Rome cannot legitimately proclaim that the commandments are not absolute. The bishop of Rome isn’t God and cannot change the truth. But neither can God change the truth. God is Living Truth. We prove we’re not God by claiming we can change doctrine and morality.
I’m guessing Durbin is making a thing of all this, assisting the bishops by showing them how idiotic they are, because deep down, perhaps unbeknownst to himself, he wants the bishops, for once in his life, for once in their lives, to take the sheep of the Lord’s Little Flock as deadly seriously as Jesus took us deadly seriously. Durbin just wants to be taken deadly seriously. And that means just what it says, deadly seriously:
“And I think that is fundamentally unfair. I don’t think anyone should be judged in that matter [of supporting abortion].”
But the Lord will come to judge the living and dead and world by fire. He was Himself in the womb of His blessed Mother for nine months. He doesn’t take kindly regarding the murder of the least of the brethren whom He Himself has redeemed.
To the point: while it is true that Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law has it that people “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion,” I believe that it is also true, a fortiori, that those bishops who scandalize people into continuing their manifest grave sin, even if Cardinals, are themselves to be removed from active ministry and dismissed from the clerical state. I think of Archbishop Cordileone on the one hand and, quite opposite, Cardinal Wilton Daniel Gregory on the other hand.
Dear Dick Durbin, I realize that you may well think that you or Nancy et alii cannot go to Confession even if you were fully repentant and want to go to heaven and not to hell because, first of all, you are having a difficult time in finding a priest who upholds the constant teaching of Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the authentic interventions of the Magisterium throughout the centuries.
But I’ll hear your Confessions. You know the drill. You have to make a public repudiation of manifest public obstinate grave sin. I’m in good standing in my diocese which grants very full faculties for the absolution of sin. Also, I’m a Missionary of Mercy of Pope Francis. I can lift many undeclared excommunications and absolve many “reserved” grave sins. I’ll give you a do-able penance. Don’t risk going to hell. Go to heaven. May such blessings come upon you.
Saint Peter of Verona aka Saint Peter Martyr because he’s a paradigm of giving witness unto death. That’s him, depicted in the upper left niche of what I call the Angelicum’s basilica aka the Church of Saints Dominic and Sixtus. Yes, that’s a heavy butcher style machete in his head, and a dagger in his heart.
At the time, the Dominicans, particularly Saint Peter, were preaching ferociously against the blood-thirsty heretics called the Cathars, “the clean ones”, aka Albigensians, “the ones born pure”, gnostics, “the ones in the know” about their own great perfection with no need of redemption, no need of salvation, thus being those who could not possibly do anything wrong, ever, which is a license to kill. The more you kill faithful Catholics, the more manifestly you were certainly one of the pure ones. With extreme lack of self-awareness they were on killing sprees, truly committing genocide against Catholics. Saint Peter was one of their victims.
200 years later, a blink of an eye in history, the great Signorelli depicted Saint Peter in this way, just below the feet of the anti-Christ and Satan:
The one who looks like Jesus is actually the anti-Christ. It that the anti-Christ pointing below himself to the now-dead Saint Peter, or is that Satan who is pointing while congratulating the anti-Christ?
Well, it’s both together, of course. That pedestal depicts the false-prophet beating up his good donkey, who saw the angel forbidding them to go further into the darkness.
The more things change the more they stay the same. Today, the heretics who deny the Sacrifice of the Mass, who say that they have no sin, and that there is no need for redemption, for salvation, are also violent in their persecution of those who simply point to the goodness and kindness and truth of Christ Jesus. These heretics, today’s Cathars, Albigensians, those “clean ones”, claim that those who the members of Jesus’ Little Flock, who listen to Jesus, have grave psychological problems going on inside of themselves and are in the dark, unclean, ideological because of being in reverence before Jesus, humbly thanking Jesus for redemption, forgiveness, salvation, praising Jesus.
These little ones, as Saint Peter, in thanksgiving for their own forgiveness, want even these violent heretics to convert and be saved. Depending on circumstances in society and with those where we are in this dark world, any of the little ones of Jesus’ Little Flock can be next up for what happened to Saint Peter.
Better: the little ones of Jesus’ Little Flock are already there with him and are being cut down at any and every moment right around the world to the greater honor and glory of God. They are being condemned as rigid and entrenched, but they are most light-hearted and, in their greatest love for the brethren, not their love but Christ’s in them, it is they who have been purified, sanctified by Jesus, and have been introduced to purity of heart and agility of soul and clarity of vision and profundity of understanding, not congratulating themselves like self-absorbed gnostic heretics of Cathar / Albigensian infamy, but just thankful for the forgiveness they themselves have received.
Meanwhile, just to be clear. We’re all of us a work in progress. We go to Confession one moment and may lay down our lives for the brethren in the next.
It’s not that we are perfect. No. Having just gone to Confession myself, because I’m a sinner, my penance was telling, that I pray two decades of the Divine Mercy chaplet, one so that my priesthood may be more dedicated to Jesus’ Little Flock in my parish, the other for the parishioners, that they may benefit from Jesus’ priesthood with me having gotten myself out of Jesus’ way.
It’s that Jesus is very good and very kind to us, very patient with us, wanting that we pray always, be always in humble reverence and thanksgiving before Him, praising Him. They only way I know how to even begin to start to do this is to go to Confession regularly. I love Confession. Go to Confession.
Over the years I’ve mentioned spring cleaning, which I’ve failed completing every time. I’ve been doing lots of burning, lots of storage shifting, lots of putting things in order. It’s just that the more I do, the more that needs to be done. The more I do, the more that it seems I haven’t even made a dent. But I’ve done so much. Daunting. It’s how I also feel about writing projects: so many, so complex, so many files, so many printouts, so many locations.
I imagine that’s what my guardian angel thinks about working with yours truly. People frequently mention that they think my guardian angel has had to enlist lots angels and saints to help. But I defend him even if in my inept way.
I’m distracting myself with the spring cleaning. Let’s see. There were two rather humongous pottery bowls that I “threw” as a kid. After some 50 years of their being in storage with a number of people, they came my way. I’m fairly good at “throwing” – once having thrown enough to cover fully half of the parish’s budget in one country I was in – but these two pots were failures, not because of the ceramics, but because of the glazing. I’m the worst at that. And they were in the way. My rectory is super tiny, the “hut” as one parishioner calls it. So, I broke them up and, having already been “thrown” a lifetime ago, they now got tossed.
I’m nostalgic about my parents, but not about my pottery. Anyway, that’s a picture of the “foot” of one those pots with a multiple-initials-logo (including a nickname given to me by my mom) before its demise.
What I’m hoping for is that my guardian angel will take good care of the treasure in the soul of the earthen vessel that is myself and, in the end, lead me to heaven. I’m failed and broken in how many ways? At least five, those wounds in hands and feet and in the Sacred Heart of our Lord Jesus. I’ve broken Him up. I’ve made His visage, glazed over with blood, unrecognizable. But then He has forgiven me from the Cross.
Saint Paul encourages us, 2 Corinthians 4:7-11 –
“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency may be of the power of God, and not of us. In all things we suffer tribulation, but are not distressed; we are straitened, but are not destitute; We suffer persecution, but are not forsaken; we are cast down, but we perish not: Always bearing about in our body the mortification of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our bodies. For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake; that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh.”
Wait… What? Did I just say that the way for my guardian angel to take care of the Treasure in this earthen vessel is for me to be drenched in that “glazing” of the dirt and blood and spittle on Christ’s face? While this lowly body will be tossed in the clay of this earth, I have trust that it will be raised up on the last day, and “thrown” up to heaven. Thank you, Jesus.
So, Cardinal Mario Grech, Secretary-General of the Synod of Bishops, yelled at the US bishops: “Let the pastors not be afraid to listen to the flock.” That’s fraudulent gas-lighting.
I’m not afraid to listen. Let me tell you just how much I’m not afraid. I’m so unafraid that I show people the wounds of Jesus, I show them their biographies written out in the wounds on Jesus’ body, perfectly clear depictions of their self-entitlement to be idiots identities, must more clear then they could ever express themselves. I show them their damned and sinful selves so that they can find their true identities in Christ Jesus, He the Head of the Body, and we, who are to be the members of His Body, as Saint Paul says. As people open their mouths to defend their self-entitlement to sin against doctrine, sin against morality, sin against liturgy, to sin by way of idol-worship, to sin by way of sacrificing children… I have their jaws drop right to the floor so they can enunciate clearly their sins in Sacramental Confession. Other than that, their jaws can just drop so that they now listen, stunned into silence, by the Word of God spoken to them, surely for the first time in their lives. They speak loudly in that manner of stunned silence, with their hearts and minds and souls captured by the Word of our Heavenly Father, now Incarnate, Christ Jesus. Let me be clear:
You can Blah Blah Synod™ all the hell you want, but in doing so you will obscure those wounds of Christ Jesus, you will silence the voice of those wounds, you will muffle the voice of our Heavenly Father speaking that eternal Word of God who is Love, you will never be able to hear the true needs and misery of those who had chosen sin and darkness but now want to come back to the fullness of life and light, but cannot, because of ecclesiastics who hotly desire to forever listen to the dainty desires of sin instead of listening to the confession of, repentance from sins in Sacramental Confession, instead of listening to the ripping to shreds of Jesus with the scourging, instead of listening to the smashing of the crown of thorns into His skull, instead of listening to the nails thudding through His hands and feet into the wood of the Cross, instead of listening to the gurgling of the blood and water gushing from the Heart of Love Himself when the sword is rammed into His side, instead of listening to the command given now to the Father to obey the Son: “Father! Forgive them!”
If we don’t hear that repentant confession of sin, and that’s all we need to hear, we will never be able to see sin as sin, for we ourselves will be so immersed in sin that we will deny sin is sin. We won’t give witness to those who want to listen to a word about the Sacrifice of the Word Incarnate. We won’t give witness by our deeds to those who want to see how it’s done, that is, with ourselves going to Confession.
People are screaming to be heard from the midst of the darkness they don’t know how to escape except in a downward spiral, even suicide. “Listen to me!” they cry. “Listen to me begging to have witness to Jesus shown to me!” But no. The last thing The Blah Blah Synod™ is about is Jesus. Jesus doesn’t count. Jesus is just a symbol to be shoved to the side in thematic liturgies given over to demon-idols. These ecclesiastics don’t hear the pleas for Jesus, the pleas for good doctrine, good morality, good liturgy, for Sacraments and sacramentals. Jesus, the Word, is stifled with all the Blah Blah.
But I’ll tell you what, people have a right before the throne of God, sinful as they are, lost as they are, to have witness from the pastors of the Lord’s Little Flock. And, yes, they are entitled to that witness by the Blood of the Lamb, He who stood in our place, Innocent for the guilty, so that He has the right in His own justice to have mercy on us. He came into this world baiting the ecclesiastics of the day, getting the job done, baiting them into to killing Him. They think they won, but in having founded His mercy on His justice, taking on the death we deserve for sin, Jesus, Innocent, usurps Satan’s right over us (we having given Satan that right over us with original sin and then whatever of our own rubbish sin). Jesus takes us back with such violence! He gets the job done, literally come hell or high water.
When people are not given that witness to Jesus, to which they have a right because of the enormity of what Jesus in His love did for us hanging over the heads of all mankind, when people are not given that witness to Jesus they have a right to take that witness, to make it happen. People aren’t going to bother with the wimpish cowardly Styrofoam ecclesiastics who are inverted, self-absorbed and dainty, those who are men of consensus. No. People are going to go after those who are already witnessing to Jesus, to His doctrine, to His morality, to His Sacrifice of the Mass, and they are going to push that witness of those who are faithful to be even clearer than it ever has been by way of martyrdom. And this martyrdom will be the most exquisite listening of those true pastors to the needs of the many for whom Jesus died, the new members of Jesus’ Little Flock.
That’s how to listen. Can you hear the flesh being ripped off, now? the thorns being smashed into craniums, now? the thud of nails piercing hands and feet and into the wood of uncountable crosses, now? the cries of “Father! Forgive them!”, now?
But that glorious witness will not be given unless we are listening to our Heavenly Father eternally speak that one Word now Incarnate, Christ Jesus.
Give a listen to the biographies of people. It’s all so very clear for all to hear:
Let’s do a little thought experiment and see whether the passage of time is morally significant, shall we? I challenge the laity, my fellow priests and bishops, the Pope himself to point out any errors.
The scene is a 62 year old reminiscing just to do it with his new priest:
“I mean, I was only twelve years old, and my on-the-spot-pointed-out target looked like he was my age too but my friend who was going to let me shoot his new .50 BMG said that that kid was like different because he wasn’t born here and told me that like this was a test of my loyalty to the country and I thought I was only going to shoot a tree or something but he pointed out this kid and told me to just aim above his left ear for that distance as he hadn’t straightened the sights out yet but that’s was a good place to aim and so I did what I had to do and yes I know the kid died because like his whole head exploded above his shoulders, like a little cloud of red vapor, and no I didn’t go to Confession about it then and I haven’t since because at first I was afraid and then it was like I was a hero like my reputation preceded me and so I just never confessed it even though I did mention to a priest once like ten years later but he said that I shouldn’t worry about it ’cause it was like a long time ago, like ten years after it happened and I’m only telling you now like 50 years later because I remember it all every hour of every day and every night and I can’t sleep and I’m like crazy my whole life carrying this around and I don’t know where to turn or what to do because it just feels like I should like confess it like to God but no priest will listen to me because it was so long ago and so it’s like irrelevant today and that kid would be my age right now and have a family and… and… sob… sob… sob…“
So, what should the priest say? I would simply make the sign of the cross and help him with just a few words to speak to the moral irrelevance of the mere passage of time as God will hold us responsible for that which we’ve done no matter how long a time intervenes. I would say that if we should sincerely ask for God’s forgiveness He will forgive us. I would make quick examples of how we are all still subject to the consequences of original sin from so long ago despite that sin being wrought so long ago, and how the redemption wrought for us with Christ Jesus is still relevant to us today despite being wrought some 2000 years ago. So what he did merely in 1972 is still relevant to his life and eternal life today. And even if a zillion years should pass before the final judgment, God will hold our moral choices to be relevant to that judgment when He will judge the living and the dead and the world by fire. I would say ask a few more questions to make the confession integral, going through the commandments, help him make an act of contrition, and give him an absolution and a penance.
“So, like, I can actually have hope of going to heaven some day, like, I’m actually forgiven by Jesus?”
“Yes.”
“Sob… sob… sob” but this time with tears of joy.
But what would the liberal-idiot priest say? He would simply say “Fugetabatit, it happened a long time ago, so what-eh-vur.” And the now 62 year old kills himself…
Analogy: Pretty much all bishops say that the purposed live abortions back in the early 1970s to get living organs from those then very dead because murdered babies so as to research and develop and test “vaccines”, direct murders, not some double-effect crap, but directly doing an evil to achieve a “good”, all in a direct line of consequence through time, is all good because it happened a long time ago. Bull shit. Bishops and priests who say that do no favors to the Lord’s Little Flock and do no favor to themselves.
Jesus said that what you’ve done to the least of these you’ve done to me. Do we disbelieve him? How about it, Pope Francis? Are you going to tell me to shut up like you’ve told others to shut up about this?
The fire destroying the roof and spires of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris didn’t hurt the side chapels with their windows and paintings and Altars and Confessionals:
But those are now set to be destroyed for light shows and murals and the glorification of man, so that Liberté means the freedom of being rid of God, Egalité means all become gods, Fraternité means being the mirror image of the ones who wield raw power, who manipulate – in all their self-congratulation – the “dialogue” of Hegelian-Rahnerian dialectic synodality favoring environmentalism.
Murals depicting various cultures will be displayed along with light shows mocking not only God, but the very ones who are to be thereby sealed into cynical boredom with “religion”, an estimated 12,000,000 souls per year. Remember this light show on the front of the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome depicting a demonic destruction of the Church?
Or how about this one on the Basilica of Saint Peter, you know, so as to have hope in the new religion of environmentalism? Cute! But what about Jesus and Him crucified?
Just makes you want to go to Confession in repentance of one’s sins and then attend the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in thanksgiving, doesn’t it? It’s all about Jesus, isn’t it? No, nothing about Jesus. Not at all.
The destruction of the altars in Notre-Dame for the sake of this crapola is an attack on the Sacrifice of Jesus, He, the Son of the Living God, who came into this world to stand in our place, the innocent for the guilty, taking on the punishment we deserve for original sin and whatever other rubbish sin, so that He might have the right in His own justice to have mercy on us, granting us the wherewithal in His grace to do what is right, being united with Him, and so be on our way to heaven. But, no…
“Away with the Altars! Away with the Son of God! No more Holy Sacrifice of the Mass! No more forgiveness of sin! No more Confessionals! It’s not about Jesus! It’s about us! Me!”
Side “chapels” in Notre-Dame de Paris will be dedicated to cultures. I bet Pachamama will figure prominently, as will Xi’s genocidal Communism, as well as Germany’s same-sex marriage “culture”. Not just a few fallen cultures, not just some idol worship, not just some idolatrous lust, but – Hey! – with light shows you can depict as much diverse hell as desired a hundred different ways every hour of every day!
The real crime was not any arson of Notre-Dame de Paris in 2019, but the purposed mockery of God and Jesus’ Little Flock with the post-arson hatred of all that is good and holy.
When you see the Abomination of Desolation being caused to be established on the Holy of Holies where it must not be by divine mandate, then know that…
When the Daily Sacrifice comes to an end, then know that…
Any rich person out there reading this? How about transporting those Altars with their relics and those Confessionals to someone who can preserve them, use them? There are plenty of cancelled priests right now also in Paris who would rejoice to be set up with an Altar and Confessional from Notre Dame.
I’m guessing, though, that the Altars will pave the sewers of Paris, and the Confessionals will be saved as kindling to burn the saints at the stake, you know, while the light shows continue, while no one goes to Holy Mass, while no one goes to Confession, while no one gets to know Jesus, while no one is on their way to heaven…
What am I upset about the most? The destruction of the Altars and the Confessionals teaches people the lie that Jesus doesn’t count any more, that He is gone, to be forgotten, that we’re the ones now, we’re gods, we’re our own saviors. So sad all of this.
Go to Confession while you can. Go to Holy Mass while you can. Say the Rosary while you can.
UPDATE: Since Notre Dame is owned by the State, the Church should give up anything to do with that building. How can one tolerate sacrilege by continuing to use the same space? How can it be consecrated when sacrilege continues non-stop?
I don’t know anything about bulldogcatholic. I only glanced at this examination. Couple of things:
About the abstinence from meat on certain days such as Fridays, there is no mention of the possibility of doing another penance or charitable act instead, according to the promulgated law of whatever country’s Bishops Conference.
There is talk only of male self-abuse. Um… I think women can do that grievous sin as well.
While sins of simple contraception belong to the sixth commandment, chemical contraception belongs to the fifth commandment – Do not murder – as the chemicals murder an already conceived child. Meanwhile, in vitro fertilization also belongs to the fifth commandment, since, to get one conception (which involves its own mortal sins) you have to get very many other conceptions which are then discarded like trash. Meanwhile, artificial insemination is a sin against the sixth commandment as unity is also to be part of the marriage act, which is always to be open to life.
If you see any other adjustments, leave them in the comments section. But the rest looks quite good. I like how the fifth commandment gives a proper translation of the Hebrew, which has “Do not murder.” Not all killing is murder. I think of the just stopping of a threat of already being delivered mortal violence. Should that end with the perp dying, that’s on him, not on the one stopping the threat.
Perhaps you know of other good examinations of conscience…
I very much appreciate the painting of the angel during the proclamation of the vocation of Isaiah as being the background image for this video. Great choice Father Mark.
I have spoken and written many times about my own little illumination of conscience after I asked my Guardian Angel to help with my examination of conscience. Unlike the Patron Saint of Priests featured in the video above, Saint John Vianney, who had no fear, I was fearful enough to ask my guardian angel to be gentle in this illumination. And still it was like being hit with clarity so hard as to throw me into a kind of PTSD event, repeatedly.
It wasn’t all at once. But it was like my guardian angel was saying: “Remember this?” (wham!) and then after a minute, “Remember that? (wham!), and then after a minute, “Remember this other thing? (wham!)” And so on. Yikes! I have a great confessor. Jesus is good and kind. The angels rejoice.
Should you do this, just be sure to ask your guardian angel to be gentle with you, lest you get a heart attack and die unconfessed. Even having done this, mind you, I’m still way too afraid to do as Saint John Vianney did. And even he repented right away and asked our dear Lord to take the piercing illumination away. And you still wonder why it is that Saint John Vianney did such great penances? I feel like a little ant next to him.
God the Father in heaven, have mercy on us. God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy on us. God the Holy Spirit, have mercy on us. Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us.
Holy Mary, pray for us. Saint Joseph, pray for us. Illustrious son of David, pray for us. Light of Patriarchs, pray for us. Spouse of the Mother of God, pray for us. Guardian of the Redeemer, pray for us. Pure Guardian of the Virgin, pray for us. Provider for the Son of God, pray for us. Zealous defender of Christ, pray for us. Servant of Christ, pray for us. Minister of salvation, pray for us. Head of the Holy Family, pray for us. Joseph, most just, pray for us. Joseph, most chaste, pray for us. Joseph, most prudent, pray for us. Joseph, most brave, pray for us. Joseph, most obedient, pray for us. Joseph, most loyal, pray for us. Mirror of patience, pray for us. Lover of poverty, pray for us. Model for workers, pray for us. Glory of family life, pray for us. Guardian of virgins, pray for us. Cornerstone of families, pray for us. Support in difficulties, pray for us. Comfort of the sorrowing, pray for us. Hope of the sick, pray for us. Patron of exiles, pray for us. Patron of the afflicted, pray for us. Patron of the poor, pray for us. Patron of the dying, pray for us. Terror of demons, pray for us. Protector of the Holy Church, pray for us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, spare us, O Lord. Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, hear us, O Lord. Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
He made him master of his house, and ruler of all his possessions.
Let us pray. O God, who in your inexpressible providence were pleased to choose Saint Joseph as spouse of your most holy Mother, grant, we pray that we who revere him as our protector on earth, may be worthy of his heavenly intercession. Who live and reign for ever and ever. Amen.
My Confessor gives me great penances. This time, it was to pray thricely the Ave Maris Stella, and to offer that for a special intention, namely, that the Pope together with the bishops consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary (regardless of whether that was ever done or not, for once done, it can be repeated ad libitum, right?). So… Great!
Ave, maris stella, Dei mater alma, atque semper virgo, felix coeli porta.
Hail, star of the sea, Nurturing Mother of God, And ever Virgin Happy gate of Heaven.
Sumens illud “Ave” Gabrielis ore, funda nos in pace, mutans Evae nomen.
Receiving that “Ave” From the mouth of Gabriel, Establish us in peace, Transforming the name of “Eva”
Solve vincla reis, profer lumen caecis, mala nostra pelle, bona cuncta posce.
Loosen the chains of the guilty, Send forth light to the blind, Our evil do thou dispel, Entreat for us all good things.
Monstra te esse matrem, sumat per te precem qui pro nobis natus tulit esse tuus.
Show thyself to be a Mother: Through thee may he receive prayer Who, being born for us, Undertook to be thine own.
Virgo singularis, inter omnes mitis, nos culpis solutos mites fac et castos.
O unique Virgin, Meek above all others, Make us free from our sins, Meek and chaste.
Vitam praesta puram, iter para tutum, ut videntes Jesum semper collaetemur.
Bestow a pure life, Prepare a safe way: That seeing Jesus, We may ever rejoice.
Sit laus Deo Patri, summo Christo decus, Spiritui Sancto tribus honor unus. Amen.
Praise be to God the Father, To the Most High Christ glory, To the Holy Ghost Be honor, to the Three equally. Amen.
ARISE! LET US BE GOING! 