Still Running Off at the Keyboard

HLI E-NEWSLETTER

www.hli.org

Clerical Contraception

The beloved founder of Human Life International, Fr. Paul Marx, was not known to mince words when it came to what he called the "conspiracy of silence" from the pulpits of our Church on the issue of contraception, but his insights of twenty and thirty years ago were right on target and remain true to this day: "Future generations," he said, "will wonder why so many Catholic bishops and priests in the West didn't see contraception as a seminal evil and the chief cause of the Church's swift decline." There is the core issue. Priestly silence about contraception is deadly both to the Church and to our society.

To this day the vast majority of Catholic clergy refuse to talk about contraception despite their moral obligation to do so. I can tell you that it is not only in the United States that this is the case; it is true in every part of the world. The reasons for this negligence range from outright heresy to lack of moral courage to inexcusable ignorance of the subject matter. Whatever the reason, the effect is the same: something I call clerical contraception.

Contraception itself is a rejection of God's sovereignty over one's marriage and a refusal to obey the Lord's command to "be fruitful and multiply." The priest, though not married, analogously contracepts the life-giving seed of truth when he refuses to preach the Catholic Faith - all of it. Faith comes through hearing, says St. Paul, and it is through the priestly ministry that Christ transmits the Faith to His bride, the Church, so that she can be fruitful and multiply the souls who are brought to salvation.

This is probably the main reason why so many Catholics today contracept or sterilize themselves and see absolutely no contradiction in receiving the Eucharist every Sunday and believing themselves in perfect communion with the Church. They've never been admonished that it is a mortal sin to use contraception or get sterilized. They've never been told of the physical and spiritual danger of these practices, and they've never been made aware of the magnificent, life-giving alternatives that the Church offers to the Ideology of Infertility.

Priests who are silent about the teaching on contraception also forget two very important things: first, priestly vocations generally come from large families. Failure to preach openness to life and generosity with children has a direct effect on how many men will be standing in the trenches with us later on. Contracepting this teaching has the same effect as contracepting the marital act: sterility. The persistent sterility of priestly vocations in the West is caused by priests who are silent about the plague of contraception among the laity and forget that their own vocations are the result of their parents' generosity with life. Overworked priests will be reaping the fruits of their silence on contraception for a long time.

Secondly, priestly silence about contraception has eternal consequences. The price of that silence is the loss of souls.

Contracepting men and women who are not warned of their sin and who therefore do not repent of it risk the death of their immortal souls, and that is a scandal of immense proportions. To be warned is to be forewarned, especially about something so crucial. Perhaps the only danger of greater consequence is the danger to the priests themselves who don't do their job: they risk their own spiritual deaths because in the end they will be held accountable for preaching the Church's full message "in season and out of season."

All priests should read the Lord's message to the prophet Ezekiel to know the high stakes of failing to preach the fullness of Christ's teaching: "If I say to the wicked man, You shall surely die; and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his wicked conduct so that he may live: that wicked man shall die for his sin, but I will hold you responsible for his death" (Ez 3:18). May every priest take this warning to heart!

Sincerely Yours in Christ,

Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer
President, Human Life International

FRENCH MUSLIMS ATTACK POLICE

From the UK Telegraph:

Radical Muslims in France's housing estates are waging an undeclared "intifada" against the police, with violent clashes injuring an average of 14 officers each day.

Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy was warned of an 'intifada'

As the interior ministry said that nearly 2,500 officers had been wounded this year, a police union declared that its members were "in a state of civil war" with Muslims in the most depressed "banlieue" estates which are heavily populated by unemployed youths of north African origin.

It said the situation was so grave that it had asked the government to provide police with armoured cars to protect officers in the estates, which are becoming no-go zones.

Continue reading...

Blogger credit to New Oxford Review for the link.

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

Dr. Drolesky addresses this topic at Christ or Chaos in an article titled "Forgotten Popes, Redefined Doctrines".

In this article he reproduces the Encyclical Une Fois Encore promulgated by Pope St. Pius X on June 1, 1907, to make his case.

He opens his argument with what he considers to have been his wayward youth when, in the early days of the Pontificate of John Paul II, he believed that this Pope would restore Christianity. What he describes is what we have seen at World Youth Days whereby the youth applaud and cheer but are not actually aware of what they are applauding.

I said to myself "he has a plan." In other words...I was projecting into the mind of the Holy Father my fondest hopes and desires. I was, shall we say, delusional and caught up with the cult of the personality of the pope. I mean, I sang "Stolat, Stolat, may you live a hundred years" outside of what was then called the Apostolic Delegation...on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C., on the evening of October 6, 1979.

Drolesky goes on from there to condemn the Novus Ordo as the enshrinment of Modernity, and admittedly this separates him from the Roman Catholic Church.

Quoting Reuters on the occasion of the return of John Paul II from Gemelli Hospital on February 12, 2005, Drolesky writes:

Pope John Paul acknowledged the potentially positive role of secularism in France as a way to balance power, on the 100th anniversary of the separation of church and state in the once largely Roman Catholic country.

"The principle of secularism, to which your country is very attached, if it is correctly understood, also belongs to the church's social doctrine," the ailing pope wrote in a lengthy letter to France's Catholic bishops dated on Friday. "It is a reminder of the necessity of a just separation of powers."

France has strictly separated the church from the state for the last 100 years to prevent discrimination and the bloody religious wars of prior centuries."

Today we see that France has lost her patrimony of Catholicism, that Muslims are moving in and finding the religious climate at least somewhat congenial, and that churches are empty. That is the current state of once Catholic France.

Finally he quotes a Vatican Information Service article which quoted a passage from Pope John Paul II's February 12, 2005, letter to Archbishop Jean-Pierre Richard of Bordeaux, France, President of the Conference of the Bishops of France:

The Pope closes by expressing his "confidence in the future for a good understanding between all components of Franch society. ...May no one be afraid of the religious path of people and special groups! If it is lived in respect for a healthy secularity, it can only be the source of dynamism and the promotion of man.

"The promotion of man"?? Is the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church supposed to be in the business of the "promotion of man"? How does God and Jesus Christ fit into this picture? Contrast that with the words of Pope St. Pius X from the above-cited encyclical:

- War has been declared against everything supernatural, because behind the supernatural stands God, and because it is God that they want to tear out of the mind and heart of man. (from Item #4)

- It is easy to see, Venerable Brethren and beloved sons, from what We have just recalled to you, that this law is an aggravation of the Law of Separation, and we can not therefore do otherwise than condemn it. (Item #16)

- what we have demanded and now demand for the Church...is respect for its hierarchy and inviolability of its property and liberty... (from Item #19)

The encyclical goes on to lay out the strategy of those opposed to the Church in words that sound hauntingly familiar to us in the present crisis in America:

- The pledge of this victory is your union first of all amongst yourselves, and secondly with this Apostolic See. This twofold union will make you invincible, and against it all efforts will break. (Item #6)

Here in America the sexual abuse scandal has precipitated a break with the hierarchy and distrust of the Holy Father. (Admittedly Drolesky works to further that break.) Not only that but the unity of Roman Catholics was shattered by the Second Vatican Council. Was this shattering the work of God or the work of the enemies of God?

Today we find a great deal of talk about peace and the condemnation of religious war. We also see that it appears religious war is being fomented in certain countries, most recently culminating with a threat to the Pope himself. Pius X wrote:

The Church, they said, is seeking to arouse religious war in France, and is summoning to her aid the violent persecution which has been the object of her prayers. What a strange accusation!...if there is a struggle on the question of religion in your beloved country, it is not because the Church was the first to unfurl the flag, but because war was declared against her. (Item #8)

As we watch churches and chancery buildings being sold to pay for the sexual abuse consequences, we read from Pius X:

- Her property, then, has been wrested from her; it was not she that abandoned it. (Item #11)

- The vague and ambiguous-wording of some of its articles places the end pursued by our enemies in a new light. Their object is, as we have already pointed out, the destruction of the Church and the dechristianization of France, but without people's attending to it or even noticing it. (Item #17)

Lastly Drolesky quotes from Pope Leo XIII's "A Review of his Pontificate":

Hence in proportion as society separates itself from the Church, which is an important element of its strength, by so much does it decline, or its woes are multiplied for the reason that they are separated whom God wished to join together.

In other words, the farther a society moves away from Christian values, the more degraded it becomes. We can see that in our own country as the debates over homosexual marriage rage, and as we observe the skyrocketing statistics for divorce and childbirth outside of wedlock. That the abortion statistics lend further proof goes without saying.

Were we led down the secular path by John Paul II? Was it his dually held beliefs that we could be Christian and also be secular, as the passages Drolesky quotes would seem to indicate, that has facilitated our decline--a decline that Benedict alludes to in his rejection of a culture of relativism?

Is the Masonic ideal of separation of Church and state, and of religious pluralism, the cause of this culture of relativism as Pope St. Pius X seems to indicate:

Fair-minded men, even though not of our faith, recognize that if there is a struggle on the question of religion in your beloved country, it is not because the Church was the first to unfurl the flag, but because war was declared against her. During the last twenty-five years she has had to undergo this warfare. That is the truth and the proof of it is seen in the declarations made and repeated over and over again in the Press, at meetings, at Masonic congresses, and even in Parliament, as well as in the attacks which have been progressively and systematically directed against her. These facts are undeniable, and no argument can ever make away with them. The Church then does not wish for war, and religious war least of all. To affirm the contrary is an outrageous calumny. (Item #8 - emphasis mine)

What is being presented to us in our dioceses under the auspicies of the Peace and Justice Commissions does not sound so very different from what was apparently taking place in France 100 years ago. All we have to do is look at France today to learn where it leads. Perhaps Drolesky is correct and the choice is between Christ and chaos. It is at least a proposition worth considering.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!

MONARCHY OR DEMOCRACY ?

At Sacred Heart Church where I attended Mass recently and listened to a lecture by Dr. Thomas Drolesky, he laid out his claim that Catholicism was always intended to be a monarchy, starting historically with the Jews who had kings, and progressing through European monarchy and the confessional church. This hierarchy, he says, is reflected in the hierarchy in the Roman Catholic Church. He claims that the United States also establishes a form of monarchy in the presidency, and cited the Kennedy's as prime examples. Meanwhile Europe continues to fail to acknowledge the roots of Christendom at its foundation. Can civilization as we know it survive in a democracy?

This morning "New Oxford Review" has posted an article from the October issue on its website, titled "Contrasts in Christendom: Red Lights in Amsterdam, Neon In Malta". The article by Thomas Basil contrasts the state of civilization in Malta to that of Amsterdam. In one the Red Light district offers prostitutes hanging out of street windows beckoning trade. In the other the nightlife district features adoration chapels where young men take a break from the fun in order to kneel in prayer.

The author closes the article with a glint of hope for Amsterdam lying in a chapel remnant of Catholicism located on the upper floor of a home in what has become the Red Light district. There a teenager kneels in prayer as well, and the usher who guards the chapel insists that he remove his ball cap.

The contrast is striking, and the unasked question is obvious. Will a civilization survive without Christianity, or will it descend into barbarism? Can anything save Europe once the faith has been completely abandoned? Is Drolesky's claim of "Christ or Chaos" inescapable?

EMAIL FROM LEE PENN

[who views Dr. Thomas Drolesky's review of Randy Engel's book a bit differently than I do. Also, you will have to excuse the computer hieroglyphics that I haven't tried to correct. Apparently AOL is not compatible with SBC. - ct]

...................................

A few of my harder-line associates have highly praised Randy Engel's new book about the sex abuse scandal in the RCC.

FYI, the book's web site is this:

The Rite of Sodomy
http://www.riteofsodomy.com/

It seems that the book contains a great deal of documentation about the Lavender Mafia in the RCC. Hoever, there is also a lot of weird conspiracy and far-right stuff mixed in, if the following review is any indication:

UnderstandingaCesspoolofCorruption
http://www.rcf.org/docs/droleskeyriteofsodomy.htm

===============================

Some quotes from Droleskey's review, to illustrate the problem areas (bold added by me):
- Engel's direct quotes (as provided by the review) are in red
- Droleskey's comments are in black
- A few comments of my own (interspersed) are in blue

Droleskey begins:

"Mrs. Engel's section on Americanism must be read by every serious traditional Catholic. There are far too many traditional Catholics, priests and laity alike, who have convinced themselves that the false foundations of the United States of America are not harmful to the life of the Church and thus not injurious to the salvation of souls. Although my own Christ in the Voting Booth has a chapter that reviews briefly the history of opposition to authentic Catholicism on the part of many American bishops, Mrs. Engel's two chapters on the subject are detailed and riveting.
No one can read these chapters and contend thereafter that the framework of the American constitutional regime, to which Baltimore Archbishop John Carroll, the first bishop and archbishop of the United States of America, sought to accommodate the Catholic Church. No one can read these chapters and not be convinced of the fact that, as Pope Leo XIII noted clearly in Testem Benevolentiae, January 22, 1899, that the American ethos of religious indifferentism and cultural pluralism helped to teach Catholics to view the events of the world and of the Church naturalistically, coming to believe that the Faith had no relationship at all to the conduct of national life. In other words, Catholics were prepared in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries to accept the Protestant/Judeo-Masonic notion of the separation of Church and State as natural, normal, and virtuous, indeed, a necessity for the right ordering of the State and for the protection of the Church. No one can read these chapters and not see how the Americanist paradigm that is so praised by Benedict XVI is responsible in large measure for the latter's oxymoronic support of "healthy secularism."
Droleskey quotes the following, directly from Engel (bold added by me):
"Since the Roman Catholic Church is, for better or worse, a hierarchical church, its structure was well suited for John Carroll’s vision of a new American Church (AmChurch) of which he was to be a prime architect - a Church made in the likeness of the New Republic – unfettered by Roman chains. His first salvo against the Roman Church was launched at his consecration when he deleted the ritual oath to “extirpate heretics� so as not to offend Protestants. . . .
On March 12, 1788, the priests of the Baltimore area sent a request to the Holy Father asking for permission to elect their own bishop from their number so as to render “as free as possible from suspicion and odium, to their countrymen.�

On May 12, 1788, after implicitly rejecting the concept of a democratically elected bishop, Pope Pius VI gave the Baltimore group a one-time only dispensation to elect their ordinary. Father John Lewis was their first choice for Bishop of Baltimore, but he was too advanced in years, so the honor fell to Father Carroll. He was selected on May 1789 and his appointment was promptly approved by the Holy See.

According to Catholic historian Hugh J. Nolan, “Politically, he (Carroll) was most acceptable to the Founding Fathers.� He also had the imprimatur of Freemason occultist Benjamin Franklin who had connections to all the Masonic Lodges in England and Europe and with whom Carroll maintained a warm relationship,� confirms [Solange] Hertz [in her Star Spangled Heresy].

According to Hertz, Carroll never concealed his unbridled enthusiasm for the American principles of “the separation of Church and state, sovereignty of the people, freedom of conscience, universal equality…� and for the application of those same democratic principles to ecclesiastical administration including the popular election of bishops by diocesan priests rather than by the Holy See.

Archbishop Carroll envisioned the American Church as a “private corporation,� not as an “institution-in-law� which was the European view. “In a sense, the whole history of the Church in the United States has been the gracious accepting of that change, a constant adaptation to that life in a new and secular environment,� wrote Carroll.

“Adaptation� to the dominant Protestant secular culture meant the end of an unsightly and unwashed ghetto Catholicism in favor of a more refined gentile homogenized and secularized population despite the fact that non-assimilation was the Catholic immigrant’s strongest guarantee of the continuance of his strong faith.

Carroll held great stock in the virtue of religious tolerance. Unfortunately, religious tolerance is not a Catholic virtue. There are the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity and the cardinal virtues fortitude, justice, prudence, and temperance, but tolerance as a virtue is not to be found among them."

More quotes from Randy Engel, as provided by Droleskey:

"Unfortunately, wishful thinking never changes reality, and the unpalatable reality for the opponents of the Syllabus was that the papal bull was a universally promulgated document binding on all Catholics throughout the world, bishops included, and that the separation of Church from State and State from Church was explicitly condemned without exception by Pius IX in proposition 55 of the Syllabus. Indeed the Syllabus was exactly what the Church’s enemies said it was - a blanket condemnation and anathematization of religious liberty, civil supremacy, and modern culture."

and he comments:

"Mrs. Engel, therefore, does Catholics a great service by providing the factual evidence concerning Americanism's anticipation of the errors that have infected so many Catholics, including so many traditional Catholics, as a result of the ethos of conciliarism in the past forty years."

"Mrs. Engel rounds "third base," so to speak, when writing of the "Twentieth Century Harbingers" in Chapter 18. She pulls no punches as she assesses quite accurately the revolutionary nature of some of the changes that began to take hold--and the key players in the Revolution who were put in power--during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII and quickened during the reign of Angelo Roncalli and Giovanni Montini:
"Both advocates and critics of the Revolution of he Second Vatican Council agree that the role of Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Cardinal Pacelli, who ascended the Chair of Peter on March 12, 1939, as Pope Pius XII, was instrumental in securing the revolutionaries a foothold on the papacy. As [Mary Ball] Martinez solidly documents, and as inveterate collaborators of NewChurch like Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, C.M., reaffirm, Pius XII opened the Church to "Progressivism" both politically and theologically.
Under his 19-year pontificate, the foundation and stepping-stones for the futuristic NewChurch were laid. (pp. 1094-1095)"
Engel also accuses John XXIII of being a Freemason:
"After discussing Archbishop Angelo Roncalli's Modernist leanings, Mrs. Engel noted the following about the time Roncalli spend as the Papal Nuncio to France:
After his posting to Paris, members of the Presidential Garde Republicaine reported that Roncalli regularly attended the Thursday evening meetings of the Grand Orient Masonic Lodge.
Years after the death of Pope John XIII, favorable obituaries were issued by high level Freemasons who applauded Roncalli as a brother who imparted "his benediction, his understanding, and his protection" to the Craft. (p. 1132)"
and in this quote, she carries the accusation forward, adding the charge that he was a Communist dupe. In addition, Engel favorable cites the Pinay book, "The Plot Against the Church" - a horrible anti-Semitic screed:
"The Plot Against the Church by Maurice Pinay, printed originally in Italian, was distributed in the fall of 1962 during the opening days of the Council. The book was one indication that not everyone was clueless concerning the political and theological intrigue generated by the framers of the Council.
However, the early warning signs that grave mischief was afoot, were easily dismissed by the majority of the Church Fathers in the euphoric atmosphere and hyper media glitz that greeted the opening of the Second Vatican Council. Nevertheless, the fact that the enemies of the Church, including the Liberal Establishment, Communists, Freemasons and Zionists universally hailed the event as a monumental step forward for humanity, should have given the Church Fathers cause for concern.
Today, it is freely acknowledged by both opponents and advocates of the Revolution that swept through the Catholic Church, that Cardinal Montini controlled the direction and agenda of the early days of the Council from behind the scenes in Milan. After the Council opened, Montini moved the center of his operation to his suite of rooms at the Vatican, rooms traditionally reserved for resident cardinals.
On January 26, 1959, only one day after Pope John XXIII had publicly announced the convening of a General Council for the Universal Church, Archbishop Montini addressed a Messagio to the faithful of Milan. His musings on the upcoming Council suggests he either had a crystal ball or he was in on the ground floor of the elite shakers and movers of the Council.
According to Amerio [the author of Iota Unum], on the eve of the Council, L'Osservatore Romano carried portions of the text of a book written by Cardinal Montini on the future Council that was published by the University of Milan. Montini stated that the Council's mission was to rearrange the Faith so as to minimize its supernatural elements, in order to render it more acceptable to the modern world and modern man.
In a similar vein, Martinez reports that four days before Pope John's "flash of lightning" experience that allegedly inspired the Council, [Hans] Kung told an astonished lecture hall audience in the Hofkirche (Abbey Court Church) in Luzern, Switzerland, not only there would be a General Council, but he also outlined its direction and agenda.
With the publication of The Council, Reform and Reunion one year before the opening of the Council, Kung demonstrated that he knew more about the upcoming Council than did Pope John. (pp. 1134-1135)
Mrs. Engel notes that Montini, who was sympathetic to Marxism-Leninism, if not one himself, participated in a betrayal of Catholic truth prior to the beginning of the Second Vatican Council:
In preparation for the Council, Catholic bishops around the world were polled by mail by the Office of the Secretariat to learn their opinions on topics to be considered at the Council. Communism topped the list.
However, as documented in the previous chapter, at the instigation of Cardinal Montini, two months before the opening of the Council, Pope John XXIII approved the signing of the Metz Accord with Moscow officials, whereby the Soviets would permit two representatives from the Russian State Church to attend the Council in exchange for absolute and total silence at the Council on the subject of Communism/Marxism.
With the exceptions of Cardinal Montini, who instructed Pope John to enter into negotiations with the Soviets, Cardinal Eugene Tisserant, who signed the Accord, and Bishop Jan Willebrands, who made the final contacts with the representatives of the Russian State Church, the Church Fathers at the Council were ignorant of the existence and nature of the Metz Agreement and the horrendous betrayal that it represented. (pp. 1135-1136)"
"Pages 1151 to 1557 in The Rite of Sodomy deal with the subject of Paul VI's homosexuality. Mrs. Engel discusses first of all the claims made openly in 1976 by a French novelist by the name of Roger Peyrefitte, an "avowed homosexual:"
=========================
Such is Engel's book - a mix of investigative reporting and extreme-right ideology, it seems. It makes Likouodis' Amchurch Comes Out appear to be a model of restraint and understatement by comparison.
A few basic questions arise:
1. Without freedom of the press, could the American scandal have been uncovered?
2. If there were a confessional State in power, what would have happened to the journalists who dared to write about the Scandal? Or to clerical whistleblowers who publicized the misdeeds of their colleagues and superiors?
Engel's book is evidence that it is possible to be excessive in conservatism/traditionalism.
Lee

HAS THIS FIRE BEEN CONTAINED ?

One last visit, and then I'll leave the Holy Guardian Angel to relax. This one is an excerpt from the book, THE NEW LIVING QABALAH: A PRACTICAL & EXPERIENTIAL GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING THE TREE OF LIFE, by Will Parfitt:

"Conversation with the Guardian Angel is also sometimes called Knowledge and Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel or simply the Inner Dialogue. This 'inner dialogue' is not the incessant chatter of the thoughts (which indeed need to be turned off for true inner guidance to be heard), but rather the dialogue between the centred personality and the focus of the soul. This is represented by a symbol such as a dove, light, an angel, a radiant, wise, old person and so on. The 'Guardian Angel' is such a symbol. The angel may be described as a 'link with the spiritual realms' or ' the transmitter of the next step'. The Guardian Angel resides in Tiphareth and conversation with this angel is the primary work of this sphere. In the next section you will find more about the angel and a way of contacting him/her (the angel may be either - or both - sexes).

The Work of contacting and conversing with your Guardian Angel is vital to your progress. Aleister Crowley said it was a matter upmost and primary importance to the individual to have this conversation and that nothing else compares with it in importance. Gurdjieff described the same process as 'catching a soul' and also gave it primary importance. All religions, except those based primarily on faith, believe this contact to be vital. It is a way of forging a link between the temporal and the eternal.

Ok, enough said for contacting the Gnostic angel.

I'd like to move on to a slogan that is Gnostic and also seems to have caught on in the RCC..."Rekindle the Fire."

First, look at the angel on this Gnostic website. Seems to have feet of flames. Fire is very much a part of Gnostic belief systems. Alchemy and Gnosis have common ground.

The phrase "Rekindle the Fire" is used in the Catholic Charismatic Movement. You can see it used extensively at the website of a Fort Wayne, Indiana parish.

Flame Ministries uses it:

Rekindle the Fire organised by the State Service Committee of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal of WA attracted several hundred people to hear Jim Murphy's amazing journey of faith and evangelisation.

It appears on the website of the Diocese of Wilmington:

Renew your soul, refresh your spirit, rekindle the fire with in at upcoming Ministries Weekend.

The Phoenix "Catholic Sun" uses it:

Tricia Hoyt, director of the Office of Peace and Justice, said JustFaith formed out of a need for adults to rekindle the fire they once had for their faith. The founder put sole emphasis on creating a conversion of heart around social justice issues.

We are Church uses it:

We write to invite you and your student body to become part of an unprecedented campaign to rekindle the fire of the Spirit in our church.

The Diocese of St. Augustine uses it:

It is our goal to further strengthen the bond of faith for those who already maintain strong ties to the church and to rekindle the fire for those who have strayed from the practice of their faith.

The website of the Diocese of Los Angeles uses it:

In the providence of God the Father, the action of the Holy Spirit will rekindle the fire of love in the hearts of the faithful and renew the catechetical dynamism of the Church.

It turns up in Gay Spirituality:

Join us underneath the beautiful turning colors of Autumn and rekindle the fire of friendship an (sic) spirit!

The fire seems to be blazing in lots of progressive places. Including these:

The Gnostic House of the Sun website:

"We rekindled the fire and as Menathon fell into a long silence, we thought he had ended his account.

A book about human sacrifice uses the slogan:

The victim’s heart was fed back into the flames and once his entire body was consumed a faggot from this fire was taken and distributed throughout “all the regions of Mexica dominion” to rekindle the fire of civilization and to birth a new age (Read 126). The ritual ended with feasting and celebrating, and more human sacrifices, as the communal fires were rekindled from the sacrificial heart bathed in the starlight of the Pleiades.

Just a generic slogan? Perhaps.

Was it a pre-Vatican II slogan? If it was, I don't remember it. What's more I didn't find any Latin Mass websites using it. This flame is inordinately fond of liberalism. Did the Gnostics get the idea from us, or did we get it from the alchemists?

Simon uses the phrase in his "Release Your Brilliance Keynote Presentation":

Rekindle the fire of hope, happiness and belief in the future

Keith Varnum writes:

You rekindle the fire in your belly, the primal excitment that is life itself. ...Filled with practical, experiential exercises you can do at home to embrace and master Clehemy, Sovereignty, Universal Supply, Synchronicity, Unconditional Love, Grace, Equality and many other natural, miracle-producing states of being.

And Treasa tells us how to celebrate Beltane:

The Celts would gather on their sacred Beltane hill at sunrise to ritually rekindle the fire, which symbolized their regeneration of their own spiritual vitality.

The Theosophists are rekindlers:

Rather than vainly seeking what seem to be pleasing solutions to problems, one must make a strong effort to rekindle the fire of self-consciousness within oneself.

Vegas Vortex has more in comman with Roman Catholic Charismania than any Traditional Catholic would like to contemplate. Both are events of emotional abandon, happy-sappy celebration, and not much else. Yet Vegas Vortex is devoted to the Alchemical Fire Circle. The fire they are attempting to rekindle is the fire of the pantheistic movement "All is one":

The Alchemical Fire Circle empowers us to become our highest visions. We polish the mirrors of our hearts, listen to our inner wisdom, become one cell in a body of a unified group of musicians and dancers. We share the beauty of an ever evolving circle of friends, who come together to find their way to Spirit.

The expression "rekindle the fire" can be applied to a varied assortment of circumstances and ideas. Yet when the expression is used, it can be a cohesive concept if it is not clearly defined. What false sense of unity might be derived from Charismatics, gays, New Agers, and those advocating human sacrifice who all use this universal slogan? One would hope none, but I'm not optimistic.

Have the rekindlers in the Roman Catholic Church merely been sucked into the alchemical/heremetic process rebaptised in the name of Charismatic Renewal? Is the Charismatic Movement nothing more than Alchemy gone Roman?

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!

UNDRSTANDING A CESSPOOL OF CORRUPTION

Roman Catholic Faithful has Dr. Thomas A. Drolesky's publication "Understanding a Cesspool of Corruption" published on their website. In it Drolesky reviews Randy Engel's book THE RITE OF SODOMY. You can read it in its entirety there or purchase the publication from Drolesky at one of his talks.

I have just today finished reading it. It's a good synopsis of Engel's work, though of course much has been left out by necessity. If you don't have the time to read the book, at least go over there and read some of the high points of Engel's investigation. Just the high points are enough to leave you open-mouthed at the extent of our problem. Drolesky's review opens with the following:

The descent of the clergy into the abyss of moral perversion is, sadly, not a new phenomenon in the history of the Catholic Church. Our Lord has promised us that the jaws of Hell would never prevail against the Church. This does not mean, however, that the devil is not going to win a few battles in our own lives and in the lives of bishops and priests. Indeed, the devil attacks bishops and priests with particular fury, hoping that he can cause many to fall into his snares, thus scandalizing the faithful and causing some of those who are weak in their Faith to leave the true means of salvation, the Catholic Church.

Randy Engel's massive book, The Rite of Sodomy, is an exhaustive examination of the history of the devil's infiltration into the ranks of the Church's hierarchy and clergy. Saint Peter Damian was particularly unstinting in his condemnation of the vile crimes against the the Sixth and Ninth Commandments committed by bishops and priests in his own day. His prescriptions for dealing with the problem were very severe, causing a great deal of controversy. Pope Leo IX more or less confirmed the prescriptions, starting the process of weeding out the offenders and exhorting clerics to strive for the heights of personal sanctity. Clerical corruption remained, of course, for some time thereafter. The remnants of the pestilence were not fully eradicated, at least for a time, until the great saint of Assisi, Giovanni di Bernadone, otherwise known as Francis, helped to bring about a reform of the entire Church by his life of austere poverty, Eucharistic piety and deep devotion to the Mother of God, aided in no small measure by his learned contemporary, Father Dominic de Guzman.

We are living in a time very much different than that of Saint Peter Damian. How many priests are there in the conciliar structures calling for severe punishments of clergy steeped in the vice of unnatural perversion against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments? How many bishops in the conciliar structures are doing so. The recent popes? One, Paul VI, as Mrs. Engel documents in her concluding chapter, was a practicing homosexual who put his fellow perverts in positions of authority throughout the conciliar structures Another, John Paul II, enabled the perverts and their enablers at every turn, appointing them, promoting them, protecting them. Who is the Archpriest of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore? Bernard Cardinal Law, who enabled one sodomite priest after another. Who is the Bishop of Rockville Centre, New York? William F. Murphy, who did Law's bidding as an enabler of the perverts. Who is the recently appointed Bishop of Cleveland, Ohio? Richard Lennon, who participated in the sordid mess of the Boston priest perverts.

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DREHER ON FOLEY AND THE DEMS KEEPING UP WITH THE OPPOSITION

Over at Crunchy Con Rod Dreher comments on the Foley affair:

We just spent an hour here at the Dallas Morning News with Rep. Jeb Hensarling, who represents the 5th Congressional District (which includes parts of Dallas). He was in for his interview in advance of our editorial board endorsement in his race. The Foley thing came up, and he was visibly shaken by the scandal. He's got two small children. He said yesterday he was in his study at home, on a conference call with the GOP House leadership, who were giving their side of the story. He said his three year old son wandered in and started tossing a ball with him while he was on the phone.

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The clincher in the blog?

Foley's attorney just came out and said - shocker of shockers! - that Foley is gay. He added that Foley was molested between the age of 13 and 15 by a "clergyman." The attorney declined to say of what church or denomination. For what it's worth, Foley is Catholic.

Fantastic. Now all we need is someone to put them all together into one big seamless scandal.

Meanwhile at FrontPage we get treated to the Democrats version of messing with minors:

Democrats trying to make political hay out of the resignation of Florida Republican Congressman Mark Foley should take a good look at their own party. There was Bill Clinton’s last minute pardon of former Rep. Mel Reynolds, D-IL, who had been imprisoned for having sex with a 16-year-old staffer. (He was later hired by Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition; both Clinton and Jackson had also had sex with subordinates.) There is the case of Rep. Barney Frank, D-MA, whose office housed a prostitution ring. However, less known is one Hawaiian case, in which more than seven high ranking Democrat senators and representatives (and one Republican) worked to assist one Leon Rouse – a convicted child molester serving time on underage sex charges in the Philippines. Rouse, now released after 8 years in prison, was hired last session as an employee of a Democrat-controlled Hawaii state Legislative Committee. 2008 Democratic presidential hopeful Russ Feingold also came to his defense, along with a Clinton-era U.S. embassy and more than half-a-dozen Democrats.

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Just what we all want our bishops, our priests, and our politicians to have in common. Can I vote for Smurfs in November? Time to reinvent the chastity belt designed for male use with a lock and a key that can be thrown away at ordination and the swearing-in ceremony.

The only way to escape this rot is to become an atheist living on a desert island. Can you tell I'm thoroughly disgusted with our leaders, sacred and secular? Yeah, I knew you could.

KEEPING TRACK OF THE LADIES - CELESTE AND MONAGHAN

Once again Rev. Dagmar Celeste has participated in an Association for Consciousness Exploration (A.C.E.) event. She was among the speakers at the 2006 Starwood Festival, a Pagan event that takes place in Sherman, New York each summer, produced by the folks at A.C.E. and The Chameleon Club, based in Cleveland. I see from the website that she now has her own TYRIAN Oasis located in Cleveland's Ohio City. Helps to pay the bills, I guess, since Roman Catholic Priestessing doesn't pay very well. The website links romancatholicwomenpriests.org, so I guess they haven't disowned her yet.

It looks like Starwood moved closer to practicing magick last July, judging from the lineup. Workshops included "Magick in the Victorian Age", "Animal Magik", "Universal Magical & Ethical Laws", "Panic in Detroit: The Magician and the Motor City", "Half Baked Magic" and more. See the list for yourself here.

Meanwhile Patricia Managhan continues on her merry way corrupting Catholicism at Catholic DePaul University.

Check out DePaul's "Mission" webpage. What would you assume was meant by: "It treasures its deep roots in the wisdom nourished in Catholic universities from medieval times. The principal distinguishing marks of the university are its Catholic, Vincentian, and urban character." Maybe a history lesson on the wisdom of medieval Catholic universities is in order. More likely though an investigation into the meaning of "Catholic" at DePaul is what is called for. They seem to have something other than Catholicism in mind where Monaghan is concerned.

DePaul claims as its "Distinguishing Marks" that "The university derives its title and fundamental mission from St. Vincent de Paul, the founder of the Congregation of the Mission, a religious community whose members, Vincentians, established and continue to sponsor DePaul." Oh really? Are the Vincentians into Paganism?

Monaghan is.

Her website indicates that she "teaches ecology, writing, and interdisciplinary research skills at DePaul University's School for New Learning." It also notes her marriage to Robert Shea, calling him "the great science fiction writer." THE ILLUMINATUS TRILOGY wouldn't make my list for great science fiction, but then who am I? Certainly not a distinguished professor at the largest Catholic university in America. You can read about her tours to Ireland and Alaska, here, funded by Catholic parents' tuition dollars, one wonders?

Sure enough the DePaul School for New Learning lists Monaghan among its Committee Members. The School for New Learning claims the distinction of "mixing experiences and interpretations" which will "result in lasting knowledge." Let's be clear about what this "new learning" might possibly entail given Monaghan as a faculty member.

A.C.E.'s Winterstar 2007 lists Monaghan among the speakers. I guess she could introduce a whole new corpus of "new learning" and "lasting knowledge" to the students at Catholic DePaul.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!

LASALETTE CURIOSITIES

I have the booklet reprint of the Lecce 1879 edition. This copy is claimed to be a reprint of the one that was reprinted in Lyon, 1904. It claims an Imprimatur of Bishop Zola. That would seem to indicate that in 1879, the Bishop of Lecce was content to give this booklet his blessing.

Later this booklet was put on the Index according to this website, which offers the condemnations. (Note: this website would appear to be sedevacantist from their home page)

Could this controversy represent two opposing factions within the Church fighting over the legitimacy of the message of LaSalette? If that is what it represents, those opposed to the messages came into power prior to 1916, but after 1879 when the imprimatur was issued; and those in power in 1916 did not want the priesthood and the hierarchy to be discredited by Melanie Calvet's prophecy, while the bishop in 1879 was content to allow this discrediting of the hierarchy.

At this same time period and occurring in the same place was the visionary church of Eugene Vintras, an offshoot of the Roman Catholic Church which fell into sexual sin, and part of the history of the Martinist Orders that we still have represented today in Wandering Bishops, the Gnostic Church, the Liberal Catholic Church and the Old Catholics. A friend of Melanie Calvet was said to have been involved with Vintras.

Now in this month's NOR is a story about the Third Secret of Fatima which is very close to the supposed secret of LaSalette as it appears in the 1904 reprint. What's more, this Third Secret of Fatima in NOR is at variance with the Third Secret released by John Paul II.

And just to make it interesting, toss into this mix the claim of Cardinal Gagnon that the Church is in schism.

The icing on this curious cake comes from Randy Engel's RITE OF SODOMY. She is basing this claim on the book, THE UNDERMINING OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH by Mary Ball Martinez. Engel writes:

Martinez indicts seven 20th century Italian prelates who embraced a vision of a "Church of the Future." They are Cardinal Mariano Rampolla, Pope Leo XIII's Secretary of State for 16 years; Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, the powerful Secretary of State for Pope Benedict XV and Pope Pius XI; Giacomo della Chiesa who served as Rampolla's private secretary at the Nunciature in Madrid and who ascended the papacy as Pope Benedict XV; Eugenio Pacelli, another protege of Rampolla who served under Cardinal Gasparri and who rules as Pius XII; Angelo Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII; and Giovanni Battista Montini who became Pope Paul VI.

In the early 20th century, Pope Saint Pius X signaled "Danger Ahead" to the Catholic hierarchy, clergy and faithful in his encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis On the Doctrines of the Modernists, the decree Lamentabili, and the Oath Against Modernism. The oath was required of all religious superiors, seminary rectors and professors of theology as well as by every priest throughout the world at the time of his ordination.

After this direct hit from Pius X, the heresy of Modernism was temporarily forestalled and its spread among the majority of the faithful was prevented world wide. For their part, the enemies of the Church, from within and without, simply remained at their posts and/or went underground to emerge at a more precipitous time.

The homosexualization of the Catholic clergy and religious is part and parcel of the phenomena of NewChurch. ...

While Rampolla was in Madrid, Pope Leo XIII issued one of his most famous encyclicals Humanum Genus, a condemnation of Freemasonry on April 29, 1984 [sic]. After Rampolla became Secretary of State, all specific papal condemntions of Freemasonry ceased. (p. 1089-1090)

That passage from THE RITE OF SODOMY would also indicate a sea change at the top.

Martinism and the activities of Vintras were a form of Egyptian Rite Freemasonry. Upper degrees in Egyptian Rite are homosexual.

If Freemasons were able to enter the hierarchy at the turn of the century, they would not want the prophecy of Melanie Calvet to be spread about. They would not want the Fatima prophecy given out, if that prophecy included the kind of material contained in the prophecy from LaSalette. It would seem likely that they would want those prophecies to be buried in the secret archives at the Vatican. Placing the message on the Index would accomplish that.

In his video, "Exposing the Real Church Scandal", distributed by "Crisis Magazine", Fr. Benedict Groeschel claims that the Crisis in the Church started before Vatican II. What I am speculating on here would fit such a pattern.

COULD THIS BE THE TRUE STORY OF THE MURDER OF JPI ?

New Oxford Review links the following story:

THE sudden death of Pope John Paul I 28 years ago last Thursday quickly gave rise to suspicion and has continued to puzzle people ever since. The man known as “the smiling pope” reigned for just 33 days and died unexpectedly during the night, apparently of a heart attack. Last week, a young Portuguese novelist marked the anniversary by presenting a new book that claims to describe the circumstances of the pope’s murder in the words of his true assassin.

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LIFE IN THE PEWS IN CLEVELAND - ST. BERNARDS

As life would have it, a last minute family event decided for us where we would attend Mass today. St. Bernards is a catechism in paint and glass. It would be almost impossible for me to come away from this church without feeling uplifted. You can see a 360 deg. pan of the interior here, but it really doesn't do the church justice since the magnificent ceiling isn't visible. This is THE place to get married in Akron. This is also the church for Akron University students. The campus is across a bridge and within walking distance. The parking deck for St. Bernards is an Akron U. parking deck. One of the parish priests, from Africa I think, is a graduate student in chemistry at AU. Not even the twelve Extraordinary Ministers who distributed communion to probably two to three hundred were able to bother me in this place.

ANOTHER BISHOP NAMED IN MOLESTATION LAWSUIT

Threshing Grain links a news release detailing Bishop Foley, Birmingham, being named and served as a defendant in the civil child sex abuse lawsuit that names all 194 American Catholic bishops.