15 Thursday Nov 2018
Posted in Faith
Let’s test your virtue of patience with this one. Can you set aside an hour and a half to find out why? You can either be Catholic or you can be a modern Democrat, socialist, pro-choice advocate or feminist but you can’t be both at the same time. You are either one or the other but not both. I hope you enjoy this video as much as I did. __ Scoop
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All Along the Watchtower 
Indeed they are contradictions: you cannot be signed up to an organisation that by its constitution immovably opposes abortion and at the same time signed up to an organisation that promotes it and claim full-hearted allegiance to both. Christ said you cannot serve two masters. The Master of the Church is Christ – you either serve Him, or you do not.
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Indeed so. I hope you watched the video. They bring up Aquinas, Augustine as well as the teachings of the Popes on socialism etc. as well. They destroy the idea of the Bernardin “seamless garment” theory about ‘life issues’ and show feminism for what it is. All go against Catholic and Christian or Biblical teachings. This phenomenon has to be digested by us so that we can talk to our fellow Christians about these incredible contradictions that people live out in their lives. If our church have failed to teach us such things then we need to find them and read them ourselves so that we can confront these foolish notions that people have. If you call yourself a Catholic and vote for a party that is pushing feminism, abortion, socialism et al you have admitted quite openly that you are a hypocrite; for you cannot possibly be a Catholic, and in my mind, you can’t even call yourself Christian.
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I think Tony and Cherie Blair would fall into the category of contradictory Catholics for all their audiences with the Pope. I’d also like to see him tried for ruining the UK despite what leftists and centrists say.
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Yes and we have a host of the same here in the US: from Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden etc. throughout politics, Hollywood, news agencies, leaders in the Church, the movers and shakers in advertising, education and more. We could write a book or long post about the infiltration and the gains that the Enemy has made in various aspects of our lives and it might be eye opening to the unknowing.
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Indeed. Today during a real estate class, I was asked about why I voted Leave and I explained briefly about classical liberalism, the value of liberty, and the Austrian school of economics, and most of the people had never heard of these things. There is a lot of explicit explaining to be done in churches and in the public square.
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Yes and the fact of the people’s ignorance seems to have been a tactic that was intentionally enacted over many years to dumb down the masses and to therefore make them more pliable and more easily controlled by false arguments, ideologies and maxims which are not maxims or ‘truths’ taken for granted. They are a lies or distortions of truths and they are readily accepted by the lazy intellectuals which have these things hammered into their heads by the elite; the teachers, the politicians, the movies, the advertising and our poorly formed Christian pastors. It is a crisis that can only be defeated by getting the truth told in its entirety without the corruption and the outright lies that are incessantly bombarding us every day of the week.
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Indeed. We are fighting for the truth itself, for clarity of vision and communication, for people taking responsibility and accepting the realities of life. But they will not have the King rule over them. The sin nature and the Devil are strong opponents, and they have the thought police and the opiates of the masses to keep judgments clouded in ignorance. No one has the time or inclination these days to walk patiently through an argument. Nor do people have the subtlety to make the distinction between our psychological motivations and the objective realities that our intellects try to grasp. Aquinas must be spinning in his grave.
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I’m sure he is. We have heard much about clericalism these days and the idea is not that different between how the people regard people with a Masters or Doctorate or some fancy letters behind their names. It is always better, of course, that your teachers are well versed and have studied the subjects at hand. However, not all professional titles are equal and there are many who wear their titles as a badge of reliability. It is not so. Not all S.T.B’s and S.T.L.’s say the same things . . . they often contradict one another and the same can be said of all the other Professional designations. Not all doctors are of the same caliber. Some argue for evil and are not even coherent in their understanding of their subject matter. We therefore have to educate ourselves to approach everyone with a bit of skepticism and to see if they are consistent with common sense, logical conclusions and are not picking and choosing their ‘truths’. Sadly, many give their trust away to a title and/or to a message that edifies themselves and their personal desires and bias. If that is your approach you will be lost in this world and you are actually guiding yourself without; truly the blind leading the blind.
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Indeed. Unfortunately it is often the case that people who are diligent and coherent are passed over and the wicked take positions of power and influence. John Bunyan was a great Christian but with little rank or prestige – the world should listen to his piety, but nobody cares. I rely on the tools of thinking gained by rigour over the years and employ philosophical scepticism a great deal. I do my best to suspend judgment in new territory, neither accepting nor denying, till new data helps me settle a question. But most people seem unwilling to do this in the controversial areas that require the most diligence and clearheadedness. That worries me.
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As it does me as well, Nicholas. We are a people who are betting our very souls on our personal desires for a ‘new’ truth that makes each of us think that we are OK even though there is ample evidence to disprove our private wishes. If that is how we live our lives we can likely face trouble at the moment of our personal judgement unless we truly are too stupid too closely evaluate the said ‘truth’ in conjunction with 2000 years of Christian thought. We are not the be all and end all of solving moral and ethical questions. Most of these have re-hashed and affirmed by great scholars over and over again. We need to surrender to truth whether it fits our personal wants or not.
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I was musing the other day as I was travelling on the bus about medical doctors and the latest craze about gender etc. There are doctors who will say that non-binary etc should be recognised legally because there are people who come into their surgeries self-identifying as such and who are in need of help. But this is a false inference: the fact that someone self-identifies as such does not make them such. Sex is a matter of empirical recording (with the rare exception of hermaphrodites). Doctors should not be entertaining subjective claims like that – they do not have the warrant to do so. This sort of thing is what we are fighting.
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They are totally out of their league to make such and assumption as it is not even in their prevue of expertise. Send them to a a ‘good’ psychologist or psychiatrist and they may get to the root cause of their confusion regarding gender or sex . . . and yet even that profession is swamped with disingenuous fakers who are pushing the immoral agenda that they want to see adopted by wider society. Usually at the basis of their con-men is their own psychosis which they want to protect and exonerate from public ridicule.
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We have very grave problems because, as you say, a variety of professions are under the influence of the zeitgeist, and there are professions that should never have gained traction. Psychology when stripped of empirical neurology is a very dubious field of expertise, methodologically suspect at best. If we do not reform we shall all be destroyed by intellectual rot and emotional incontinence. What I have noticed even among those who dimly recognise some virtues when they see them is that they will the ends but not the means. A lot of people praise Japan, but it is an ethno-state (as Black Pigeon calls it). If you want the social harmony that Japan has, you must promote a rigid monoculture and expel the foreigner, limiting the power and influence of those foreigners who remain. How many people will say that and how long will they be permitted to? Those whom the state does not catch will be censored by the social media platforms themselves.
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They will indeed. It is, once again, an outright push to commit cultural genocide on the Western European thought (a hated group in our new elitist culture). Every other minority culture is to be saved but the US culture and the Western European culture is not anything that anyone wants to save; thus the great push of migration of minority cultures into our midst against our wills. A culture is primarily made up of customs, traditions, ethics and language as that is what binds them together. We sing hallelujahs about multiculturalism whilst we help our own cultures die out ~ cultural suicide. This applies not only to Wester European culture (including the US culture) but to Christianity as well. I can speak from experience that what took place in the Episcopal branch of Anglicanism has now spread to many other churches and now infiltrates the Catholic Church as well. We no longer have a Roman Catholic Culture as we once did for we have jettisoned our ethics, our customs, our traditions and even our liturgical language; something that the much older Jewish Faith has held onto and binds them together in some fashion. It is an orchestrated movement of the Enemies of Christ that wants to destroy Christianity, the family and the freedom and liberty and laws that protect them in free societies . . . and thus the free democratic or republic is in their crosshairs as well. Sadly, this zombie-like society is helping satan in this effort. They have no idea that they are committing suicide and destroying their own progeny as well.
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Even the Jews have lost a lot of their culture through denominational splits and atheism; but overall you are right. The observance of Pesach in particular reminds them of their national identity. I find it a sad state of affairs that if you want an old-fashioned Catholic Mass, you have to drive a long distance to a church that may even be considered as schismatic by other Catholics or look for an Anglo-Catholic church. You should see the footage of a ceremony at one in England – it is a great shame that there are not more churches like that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIIeA1tW1rs . I know Catholics would not consider the Anglican orders valid, but you can at least recognise the beauty of the service and that this is what a properly conducted VII could have produced rather than the liberal corruption.
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Indeed so. Our culture resembles that of any other denomination. You could hardly tell what church you are in unless you read it on the sign in front of the church.
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Indeed – even such a sign as a statue of the Virgin Mary or a sanctuary lamp could be an Anglo-Catholic church. I doubt they will survive the onslaught of liberal rule in the CofE, however.
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That is probably a sad statement of fact my friend. I see it much the same.
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Or here is another example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKLu_ebVyms
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I do hope these were weekday Masses for the attendance is abysmal.
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I think it more likely it is a weekend – church attendance in the UK is poor. And I must admit I have not been since the summer myself for one reason or another.
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That is sad then. I doubt the church can survive long with such a downturn in attendance and belief.
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Indeed. I do believe God will bring revival – but I do not believe the CofE will necessarily be affected by it – there will be those who oppose it. Much of the grace I suspect will be among the house churches and Protestant conventicles – the groups which have independence or solid leadership teams.
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Probably so as the CofE has made some horrible decisions in the last few years to make a bad situation into an almost certain death certificate.
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Indeed. I do not see how it can survive. In my mind some of the signs I have seen the past 10 years or so are eerily reminiscent of things in 1 and 2 Maccabees – omens. We all know how that worked out for the Hellenists – the Maccabees smashed them. Either Judas the Maccabee or Nebuchadnezzar is coming – I don’t want to be in their shoes when that happens.
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Yes indeed.
Well the upheaval in the CofE did bring many of them into the Catholic Church here in the US; Fr. Longenecker probably being the most famous of them. But even then, they are being met with a predominantly generic Novus Ordo Mass that is off-putting to most High Church Anglicans. Some, I hope, have found their way into the traditional fraternities where they will find peace of soul and a way forward in their faith.
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My expectation is that we will see the traditionalists take a firm stance on the death of BXVI, and again if Pope Francis is succeeded by a second liberal.
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I pray that you are right. Fr. Z is finding a large influx of people into the TLM as a result of Francis so out of the popes hatred for such things, it may be having the exact opposite effect. God does bring good out of evil at times and lets hope that this is one of those occasions.
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I think so. If we truly believe that God can do all things, then we must follow the entailment that He can overcome our present problems. We must also remain firm in the belief that He desires to help us and that He sees true Christian efforts in all their forms, be they charity, truth, or piety. The corruption of seminaries and other training institutions remains to be exposed further. The problem is defrocking those at fault: even if it could be done, it will have the short term effect of scandal, but that must be taken on the chin. Better to clean house and trust that cleaning house will be appreciated by outsiders and trust built up again.
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Indeed so . . . and for us Catholics we’ve been there, done that before. We must remember that.
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While on this subject we might as well speak to the total confusion that grips our nations.
We have conflated licentiousness with freedom and liberty, tolerance with right vs. wrong and social justice with true justice. Without these distinctions we have no basis of law, no guidelines for living our lives and no possible understanding as to the value of life lived according to Gospel values.
Is there any wonder why suicide rates (especially amongst the youth) have skyrocketed? They have no earthly idea why they are living and how they are to live their lives to derive the most out of this incalculable gift that was given us by our Creator. Life is meaningless and is only a place to indulge our senses and to allow others to do the same. Hedonism doesn’t make a society stable . . . it destabilizes society and the human psyche. It is thoroughly depressing and probably why most people are being treated for both anxiety and depression throughout the Western world.
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Indeed – society is not Christ and therefore has no power to heal the soul, which is the sickest part of us. A soul in close communion with God can endure the frailty of our flesh; but a soul confused by nihilism and atomistic isolation is already in Hell, for even Purgatory has a glimpse of Paradise atop the peak of contrition and purgation. The darkness consumes us and in our folly we think we can escape it – but there is nowhere to escape it but the light of God.
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I do believe that the sense of sin among people has been almost entirely extinguished at least in the cognitive sense. In the heart the soul mourns in every Christian and therefore they are in misery for their external and internal lives are not in communion and are not even trying to become one. It is matter that the intellect is supposed to try to habituate the will to doing good and living virtuously. But today it seems to be trying to make excuses for not habituating the will to virtue and thereby living a divided life which is a miserable existence.
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* last sentence: ‘guiding yourself without the use of a reliable guide”: etc.
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