In the film, Luther, starring Joseph Fiennes, Martin Luther discusses the incipient Reformation with his Father Confessor, Johann von Staupitz, as they prepare for the Diet of Worms. Von Staupitz laments the chaos that seems to have been unleashed. He expresses the fear that Luther is destroying the Church, rather than reforming her. Luther responds to this that reform comes at a cost.
This scene has always made an impact on me. Although this particular film has a number of historical inaccuracies, I find parts of it edifying in the lessons they teach. The cost of reform is one of them.
This is a period in time that is crying out for reform, reform of the Church and reform of the states. Heresy and deceit abound. Rebellion against ancient custom, which once could safeguard a nation without the support of law, has made it dangerous to speak one’s thoughts aloud. History, the wellspring of conservatism, has been forgotten and – worse still – rewritten. Death stalks the lands, and the powers of darkness tighten their grip on the nations.
God knows these things. They are not too great for Him to overcome. His grace and power are breaking through and the Devil suspects that his time is short. The return of Christ approaches, and when He comes, He will pour out the wrath of God on the unrepentant.
In the meantime, reform is necessary. The Church must be prepared for the “final push”, the completion of her great commission. This reform is costly. It will mean repentance, humility, and a careful use of Scripture, in order to avoid falling for deception.
As the Church is reformed, though the world continues in a dark direction, the light of the Church will grow brighter and the Gospel will go out in power. May the Lord’s will be accomplished.
All Along the Watchtower 
Luther failed to reform the Filioque heresy. And where there is heresy, there is no Church. The Reformation is just a Schism within a Schism, and they both together are united in Filioque schism and heresy against the Holy Eastern Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Chalcedonian Orthodox Church.
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Wow, if you say so.
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I never saw the film, Nick but I am concerned about those who either no longer teach our children their history (their roots) and have loss the sense of who they are and where they are going. Whether it is their family, their local, their country or their faith, one might say that they have become self-loathing. They despise their heritage and as I was getting to yesterday, their reverence and sense of pietas. Patrimony is for them out of date and novelty (though it lacks any direction) is their arrogant response to their present state.
These people have, in a sense, lost their capacity for love and therefore they have no peace. Life is a constant battle with truths, hard one, centuries before them. Yet they either know nothing about that or if they do the rewritten history or propaganda is all that they know. Thus, as you mentioned yesterday, children no longer respect their parents, grandparents their countries or their God.
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Indeed, and well said. The abandonment of various rituals has hastened this process. This includes both secular kinds (community gatherings) and religious kinds (Mass, baptisms, marriages, etc). These were frequent reminders of the past and pierced through our hard hearts to the sanctum of conscience underneath. There was a time when people bowed their heads at the slightest crook-eye from the “preacherman”.
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It reminds one of Karl Marx, a self=loathing Jew, who gave us the scourge of the world. And it seems we will keep whipping ourselves with his ideas until we bleed once again.
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Alas, yes. It is a terrible perversion of Christian ideas of repentance and self-reflection: this self-hatred is toxic; it kills the soul. If they do not repent, they will be consumed, like Faust.
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One may call it the perverse grooming of narcissism of the masses. It leaves the heart and the soul incapable of love and reverence. Blood is their sacrament; and it is often the blood of their own family, friends, countrymen and congregation that is required.
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One wonders how it will end. It just goes to show how wise the Founders were in creating the Constitution in that particular form: its relative permanence has protected the USA from the innovations of these rebels. In the UK our laws have been turned against us. To protect the right, we would have to reform our own constitution.
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Well its not as if we can take our Constitution as a guarantee anymore; they are trying to change its meaning in court and others push to banish it altogether. We stand at the precipice of setting off our own version of the French Revolution. And the same is playing out in many churches; most predominantly in the Catholic Church since Vatican II.
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The UK also seems at the verge of another English Civil War / Glorious Revolution. The Church of England is ruled by heretics and apostates. The BBC tries to influence people into the darkness.
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Yes to both and we, like a twin, are experiencing much the same although in a different way.
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It was interesting to see that Christian songs were sung during the recent blackout in New York. It seems like there are glimmers here and there, candles in the darkness.
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True. There is always a few bright spots in every age: a just leader, a prophet, a martyr, or a saint. Will we recognize them? That is another question as their are a myriad of folks who will portray themselves as such and yet they are liars.
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Indeed – the prosperity gospel and all of that stuff is something I have complained of recently.
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If you look down to number 5. in the following poll, a real Catholic (having vowed their belief at First Holy Communion to all that the Catholic Church teaches) might validly wonder how many in the Church today who self-identify as Catholics are actually Catholic. It is to me one of the reasons why the polls do not tell the whole story . . . though they certainly show that something has gone terribly wrong.
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Sorry. I forgot to give the link: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/10/7-facts-about-american-catholics/
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Scary stuff.
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It is.
And this could equally apply to those who claim to be American Citizens although they do not accept the Constitution or want to abide by the laws of the land.
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Indeed – traitors everywhere.
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A vow isn’t a vow and your word isn’t worth the breath to even utter it. A total lack of integrity is what we are witnessing.
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You’re quite right there: people do not seem to grasp the binding nature of the Constitution or that it is an heirloom to be treasured, bought with the blood of many an Englishman (and Dutchman, French, and German). This new generation seems bent on destroying anything Anglo in America. And here in the Mother Country, a lot of people are ashamed to be English.
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Yup a bunch of snowflakes embarrassed of their own roots and ashamed of their forefathers. What they should feel ashamed for is their own arrogance to think that they are far smarter and far more moral than their patronage. But they have no true shame.
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It sickens me – nor do I approve of the ingratitude. It seems we are coming apart at the seams. Heaven help us.
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I’ll add my amen to that, gladly.
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What really upsets me is that they have turned vulnerable people into far right lunatics and neo-Nazis. A number of those people have drifted further right because they felt that no one was listening to them when they raised these issues during their moderate period. The more the Left tries to put a lid on these concerns, the worse the results will be if the moderate right cannot reform the system and culture in time.
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Yes, you can only push people, bully them, ignore them for so long and then the whirlwind. It is a lesson of history if we still taught it in school.
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I fear as well that society views these people as brute beasts, and thus cannot empathise with them. They are only interested in converting them back to the leftist zeitgeist.
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Yes with their claims of being holier than thou whilst the victims whom that victimize continuously are always far from their concern.
It reminds me of the Pope and many others today calling for an end to the death penalty.
Never mind that Aquinas had it right in his teachings (what about justice?) and from the obvious common sense point of view that the victims become victims again having to pay for the perpetrators of these horrendous crimes for the rest of their lives. I think the average prisoner costs us around $50,000 per year to keep them in prison and we are running out of room. So now we will be saddled in our taxes to build new prisons. I would rather invest my $50,000 a year to a poor young man who needs to gain a valuable skill and contribute to the growth and wealth of the community without resorting to crime.
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I agree – which is one of the reasons I dislike modernist Catholicism. If the state does not fulfil the task that Scripture accords to it, that is a dereliction of duty.
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Indeed. The older we get the more appreciation we should be able to find in the wisdom of generations far in our past. But we wring our hands and think that we are holier than God and more merciful that He. That is always a bad mistake to make.
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Truly – and antichristian in fact. The Son of Perdition echoes Satan’s cry in Isaiah 14: he wants to put himself in God’s place.
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. . . and it has become the way of our times. Its as though God and Satan don’t exist and men are now much smarter in setting up some man-made utopia where we are at peace, having abandoned our principles and our fantasy. Man is the arbiter of man and we do it so much better than rules written in our hearts and souls by God and even delivered unto Moses in the decalogue. Its so old fashioned now and not nearly as humane as those men could write in our modern age.
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Disaster awaits: they will be confronted with objective reality when Christ appears on the clouds.
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There narcissistic hubris will be their ultimate downfall.
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Governments are too secular. Traditional Catholicism operated within Feudalism; not even Poland operates like those kingdoms.
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That being said, I am inclined to believe that feudalism was no monolithic in Europe: I have seen research suggesting that the form it took in Britain was different from other places.
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What is equally dangerous though is that many get labeled Nazis who are not even close to them or Fascism.
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Indeed – just normal conservative folks, Christian and otherwise, are getting called fascist these days.
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Most Catholics, who claim it, by these numbers, do not follow Catholicism. I’ve always asked, Why do they stay? They can easily become ELCA or Episcopalian. If the Church makes those changes, I’d have to leave but I’d venture that other Catholic religious orders would leave too. Fraternity of St. Peter wouldn’t stay, neither would the Canons of St. John Cantius. Of course, what would go with me too is my pocketbook, which I suspect is most important to many of clergy.
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I withdrew my pocketbook earlier this year.
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You may find this interesting: it appears to be a talk by a Catholic priest, possibly a homily (not sure of context in which given)
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Not sure what it is: the link is not working.
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A talk comparing Pride parades and the Procession of Corpus Christi. It’s from the Sensus Fidelium YouTube channel/ministry.
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I looked at Sensus Fidelium YouTube channel and added words: Corpus Christi and LGBT and get a bunch of things but nothing that speaks of a comparison. Are you sure that the first link is correct?
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The title is “Humble Procession versus Pride Parade” uploaded a week ago.
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Got it. Thanks.
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Funny. I saw this last week. A young friend of mine sent it to me on my phone. It was very good . . . and rather sad of course.
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The speaker, whoever he is, cuts right to the heart of the matter – rather woeful indeed. I liked that he wasn’t ashamed to preach from Genesis or eschatological passages. He is fulfilling his duty of warning people – if they won’t listen, that’s their problem.
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Indeed so. Well preached. In the anti-Church which is emerging one must wonder if he will be removed from his parish by his bishop.
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I rather fear that could happen – the thing about public work, whether in physical places or by the internet, is that others get wind of it. So the Bishop may well become aware. He may be lucky enough to have a sympathetic bishop; I gather there are some left.
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There are, praise be to God. Phillip has one of the better ones in our country.
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Was it the same bishop who officiated at his confirmation?
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I’m not sure when he was confirmed so I don’t know. His bishop is Paprocki and he’s been there since 2010.
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If were confirmed in the Church from 1984-1999 then he was confirmed by one of the worst sex offenders in the history of the US Church. I hope Paprocki had the entire diocese of Springfield, IL exorcised from the evil that man wrought.
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That sounds awful. What I have noticed is that evil is not content to build itself an enclave. It is like the boy on the beach who goes round kicking down other children’s sand castles. It tries to snuff out what remnant of good is left. Look at the demands coming for the Westminster Parliament to impose SSM and abortion on Northern Ireland. Disgraceful.
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It is and indeed when evil is established it is hard to get rid of it all. Like cockroaches they hide awaiting the next moment of darkness to go again on the prowl. Evil bullies are the human equivalent of the cockroach infestations that we now see.
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This is the make or break moment now as far as secular protection goes: if Mr Trump does not win in 2020 and if we do not get a Boris Johnson / Nigel Farage government – that is it. We’ll all have to march out and leave it to burn – and there’ll have to be distancing from these bishops too for apostolic churches.
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We are definitely heading towards bad times ahead. Even if the good guys win, the bad one’s are lurking in the alley’s and are not likely to run away. And people have short memories; so a return to the vomit is likely at some point in the future.
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Agreed. We will be purged by tribulation – oppression from within and without. It will be like “The Power and the Glory” for Catholics, I expect.
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Yes, it will be a time for many great saints and martyrs to be made for the Glory of Christ the King. And a time for cowards to be left to either convert or rot I fear.
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May the holy martyrs pray for the Church as it enters the Great Tribulation; and may the Blessed Virgin intercede on the Church’s behalf.
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Amen. And may we be given the virtue of fortitude to withstand the onslaught. Let us emerge victorious and may the enemy of our souls be vanquished forever.
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Amen.
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BTW: even some of the folks in my childhood faith (Presbyterianism) get what is happening in the Catholic Church under Bergoglio. Note especially the biting critique of the upcoming Amazonian Synod. I guess Bergoglio calls this ecumenism.
https://www.theaquilareport.com/papal-paganisms-kiss-of-death/
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Now that is interesting. I personally don’t favour presbyterianism’s reformed aspect (predestination, etc), but it has produced some really good scholars.
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So far, I’m in agreement with the article.
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Amazing that there protestants out there that agree more with the pre-Vatican II Church than many of our pew-sitters. Some of us see that the result of Vatican II is the sexual crisis and a so-called Bergoglio papacy and a complicit clergy et al. And it is interesting that other Christian denominations are seeing the same thing. Our VII push for ecumenism came with a warning in the documents: not to succumb to a false irenicism. And that is all we seem to do these days. Well denial always comes first. Then we face our misguided path and do penance with sorrow for our errors. Always darkest before the dawn I suppose.
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Something has gone very badly wrong. Christ will judge these false shepherds harshly: indeed, I rather think a number of them must be classed as apostates and heretics.
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I’m sure of it.
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I wish there were a Book of Common Prayer version of Catholicism in every parish…
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No need. The Traditional Latin Mass would be superior to it. Along with all the traditional music, of course. I do miss Gregorian Chant in the context of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
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If only it were the only Mass, and there were more churches. This current confusion is awful.
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Yes, I have been going to Theology on Tap every month and run into it each and every time. The people and often the priest doesn’t have a clue. The last one was about the VII Council. I wrote about what I thought it would be like before I went to it here: https://catholicnewsreport.com/2019/07/04/theology-on-tap-minus-the-theology-and-the-tap/
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Was it:
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The separation between the urban elites and the people is another bad sign. The disrespect with which some people utter the phrase “Flyover Country” is horrifying – these are your countrymen.
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And it goes the other way as well. The hatred of the rich by the poor almost smells of envy: although it is the political class that likes to whip them into a frenzy. But in socialist countries it usually ends in the death of their ‘supposed’ oppressors.
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Agreed. This is not good for harmony, but nor can we all just compromise: we are drawn into battle because, if the liberals win, they will suppress Christianity, which they are already doing now. We need to make a distinction between the capitalist process and the corruption of corporations through their employees, directors, and shareholders following the spirit of the age. The two are not the same thing. The fact that a company may make bad choices does not entail that all companies do or that a company has to. Alas, Christian advice seems seldom heeded these days.
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Once upon a time, the rich were admired; for they hired people and allowed them to make a living and raise their families. Few kept their money in a mattress but they had it invested in new companies or other companies to help them develop new technologies and or increase production which also created jobs. If somebody won big in the lottery of life, we all won. It was like the idea of the Mystical Body of Christ: if one member suffers we all suffer and if one member finds joy, the whole body rejoices. That is lost of this age.
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Truly. For which reason, I do not like to see dividends and capital gains taxed. The government, for all its talk of responsibility, is not prepared to live within its means: demagoguery has corrupted our politics, the people corrupted by Marxist and postmodernist narratives. The education inculcates these attitudes, and thus people have to be “red pilled” out of it. Destruction abounds – and grace must abound more. The Church these days seems to be in the ministry of Elijah and Jeremiah. Destruction is coming; the Assyrians are coming; the Babylonians are coming. But who’s listening?
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As usual, few will hear until it is too late to do anything about it but spill blood.
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One of the Disney girls just took the CEO to task about the company’s lack of original focus of creating jobs where people could work there for the rest of their lives. Although, Walt was never that great to animators historically.
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No, in fact he was a perfectionist – much like Fred Astair – and wanted things done his way.
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Good point. It’s cultural though and I’m with John Paul II in thinking that Culture is what drives history. My sister lives in a large urban area and frankly, her worldview is completely different from the rest of our family.
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It’s sort of hagiographical of Luther, but it’s an entertaining movie and well done.
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A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing;
Our helper He, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing:
For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe;
His craft and pow’r are great, and, armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not his equal.
Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing,
Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing:
Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;
Lord Sabbath, His Name, from age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.
And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us;
The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure,
One little word shall fell him.
My favorite song. I even play it on my synthesizer pipe organ. no truer words were ever spoken. Luther got sick of catholicism and told the world all about it. To this very day mary worshipers around the world still hate Luther for exposing the seedy underbelly of that snake pit. Did you good people know that the word Vatican means…divining serpent or snake. A fortune telling serpent. Inside the popes conference room, if you stand in the back, it looks like a snake. You can go see the pictures in my fortune telling site…cherrybombcoutour.blogspot.com……see it for yourself.
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