New Era World News

BULGARIA AND MOLDOVIA  (November 13) elected two new presidents; both men are overtly open to relations with Russia. Rumen Radev, the new Bulgarian president decisively defeated the pro-Western candidate, Tsetska Tsacheva. Radev not only called for the EU to cease sanctions against Russia, he also announced his willingness to accept the Crimean referendum that made Crimea part of the Russian Federation. During his victory speech, Radev not only iterated his opposition to sanctions against Russia, he also commended President-elect Trump for “seeking increased dialogue” with Russian President, Vladimir Putin.

Likewise, the new Moldovan presidential Igor Dodon, is also pro Moscow.  He defeated World Bank employee Maia Sandu, who campaigned under an EU banner, for the presidency of Moldova. Russia and the EU have hotly contested Moldova, which seems now to prefer the former.

Mr Dodon won the presidential election partly on a promise to scrap a trade deal signed with the EU in 2014. The promise “is supported by Moldovans who suffered after Russia, in response to EU sanctions, imposed trade restrictions on EU members and affiliates following the agreement.”

“Speaking to Russian television after the vote, President Dodan said Moldovans had voted for “friendship with Russia, for neutrality, for our orthodoxy, for the country’s union.”

Dodan is aware that “a very serious combat is ahead”, a combat between EU liberal globalists leaning westward and Moldovan patriots leaning to the east.  However, he said, “we are ready for this combat.”

Unlike Bulgaria, Moldova is not an EU member (but an affiliate by agreement), nor is it a member of NATO.  Despite affiliate status and a push by some for full EU membership, Dodon has indicated interest in joining the Russian sponsored Eurasia Economic Community and “eliminating the possibility of cooperation with NATO“, but he has also “promised to balance between Russian and the West, a feat that neighboring Ukraine has found impossible.”

Bogdan Bezpalko, Assistant Director of the Center for Ukrainian Studies at Moscow State University, stated that the presidential elections in Moldova and Bulgaria represent,

 “… undoubtedly, positive dynamics. But it (they) should not be regarded as a step toward an ‘alliance’ [with Russia]. . Still, it is clear that the population of the Eastern European states have become disenchanted with the ideology of ‘Euro-integration’; they want to resume normal and pragmatic relations with their neighbors.” 

Russian parliamentarian Franz Klintsevich, First Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Defense and Security explains that the rise of Euro-skeptic parties in the Balkan Peninsula was to be expected:

“I have come to a conclusion that Russia’s consistent, competent and honest position on the world arena, its aspiration not to seek dominance but to try to solve… the world’s problem of international terrorism transparently, honestly and effectively [have played a substantial role in the elections’ outcome],” 

According to the French Daily, La Croix:

“Already deeply shaken by the Brexit, the European Union has suffered a new warning this Sunday, November 13, this time from the eastern margins of the old continent. Voters in Bulgaria and Moldova have elected to the presidency of their respective countries openly Russophile candidates, the Moldovan Igor Dodon and the Bulgarian Rumen Radev, who both campaigned in favor of a rapprochement with Russia.”

Journalist Roland Oliphant suggests that the election of two pro-Russian presidents “adds to mounting concern about Western unity following Donald Trump’s victory in the US election last week.“

La Croix of France concludes:

“These elections will ring anyway as a prestigious victory for Vladimir Putin and thunder in the European skies”

ESTONIA

Within one weeks of the political changes in Bulgaria and Moldova, the pro-Western government in Estonia prematurely collapsed. On November 9, 2016 Prime Minister Taavi Roivas’ Estonian Reform Party received a vote of no-confidence from the Estonian parliament. Roivas was replaced by Juri Ratas head of the opposition Center Party founded a mere 25 years ago. Following the vote, the Center Party, a party that has a collaborative agreement with Putin’s United Russia Party, has emerged as a significant member of the new coalition government that will lead Estonia. The coalition consists of The centrist Center Party, leftist Social Democrat SDE, and conservative IRL. Together these three coalition partners control 56 out of 101 seats in the Estonian Parliament and have committed to ties with the EU and NATO and have vowed to keep Estonia within the Western EU ambit:

“We will adhere unconditionally to the current principles of security and foreign policy; our membership in NATO and the EU is the paramount guarantee for our security,” the parties said in the joint statement confirming their cooperation.

The document of collaboration was signed by Mailis Reps, current Deputy Chairman of the Center Party.

Bulgaria and Moldova are tilting away from the EU toward Russia, and Estonia is in the process of normalizing its relationship with the East. All three will endeavor to maintain a balance between Brussels and Moscow.  But it is clear, Russia is no longer an outsider but an alternative to Western Liberalism, a liberalism that is wearying the nations of Eastern Europe and even those of Western Europe such as France and Britain who are making their voices heard in a rising symphony reaching even Asia and Africa and America too.

 

New Era World News

PART ONE OF FALSE APOSTLES of Americanism ended with these these words of  Pope Saint Pius X applied to so-called “Christian Ministers” who distort Sacred Scripture to defame the Catholic Church. It should come as no surprise that anyone who can pervert the Scriptures is fully capable of distorting historical documents to present the country’s “Founders” as Christian men intent on building a Christian nation, when in fact, their program was to destroy the Catholic Church and Protestant denominations that did not join the Framers in their subterfuge and efforts to establish a secular commonwealth built on the economic, political and moral principles of “Liberalism”.  Pope St. Pius X saw through the charade:

“We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker – the City (any country) cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found (Novos Ordo Secolorum), nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization….It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants.” (St. Pope Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, April 15, 1910).

Because many of “Framer” were trying to establish a new Commonwealth without Christ (He is not mentioned once in the Constitution, religion and God’s Laws are excluded and relegated to the private sphere – see note 1 below), because many were at war with His Church, because the American Revolution was a phase of the French Revolution and the broader Liberal Revolution sweeping the globe, the Catholic Church, according to Framers like John Adams, was a “monster that had to be annihilated: 

“Cabalistic Christianity, which is catholic (sic) Christianity, and which has prevailed for 1,500 years, has received a mortal wound, of which the monster must finally die” (John Adams, (July 16, 1814) Letter to Thomas Jefferson).

It was not just Catholics, many Protestants were opposed to the liberal program of the “Framers”:

One of America’s unsung founders was Elias Boudinot.  Boudinot was a president of the Continental Congress, a United States Congressman and from 1795 to 1805 he was the Director of the U.S. Mint, an Evangelical and a Co-Founder of the American bible Society.  Boudinot was alarmed by the disregard for Christian principles by many leaders of the new American government;

“But has not America greatly departed from her original (17th century) principles, and left her first love? Has she not also many amongst her chief citizens, of every party, who have forsaken the God of their fathers, and to whom the spirit may justly be supposed to say, “ye hold doctrines which I hate, repent, or else I will come unto you quickly, and will fight against you with the sword of my mouth.”

By the time that Protestant divines woke up to what was happening, it was already too late. Pastor Timothy Wright, President of Yale Seminary was one of the first to take note (1812):

 “The nation has offended Providence. We formed our Constitution without any acknowledgment of God; without any recognition of His mercies to us, as a people, of His government, or even of His existence. The [Constitutional] Convention, by which it was formed, never asked even once, His direction, or His blessings, upon their labours. Thus we commenced our national existence under the present system, without God.”

Since Protestants such as these were opposed to the liberal charade of light being directed by the Framers, they too were belittled. John Adams referred to the Protestant ministers as “yahoos” the great enemies of “free inquiry” who should be endured no longer.

“And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY (Adams’ own emphasis)? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded.”

Jefferson concurred, the Christian clergy (Protestant and Catholic) are:

“… the greatest obstacles to the advancement of the real doctrines of Jesus, and do in fact constitute the real Anti-Christ.”

James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution”, also harbored hostility for the clergy (Catholic and Protestant), “spiritual tyrants” who “subvert the public liberty”; they had to go!

“What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not” (James Madison (1785) “A Memorial and Remonstrance“).

The Framers steeped in the Craft of esotericism might have fooled the people, but they did not fool Protestants such as Boudinot and Timothy Wright, not did they fool the sagacious Pius X:

“Society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization….It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants.” (St. Pope Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, April 15, 1910).

Since many of the Framers were in Pope Pius’ words “miscreants”, “rebels” and “insane dreamers”, it should come as no surprise that many so-called ministers, contemporary men and women who are supposed to be lovers of the truth and “ambassadors” of Jesus Christ, the way and the truth and the life”, seem to have no problem repeating the tale (about the Christian Founders) in order to improve their financial portfolios, or worse, in order to advance a nefarious hidden agenda that makes them guilty of that which they accuse others: being unchristian.

The truth is, many of the so-called conservative fundamentalists and dispensationalists ministers who claim that “liberals” are distorting the facts about the Christian roots of American government are the real ones that are doing the distorting. Perhaps you have seen their websites, or read their books and media tracts claiming that the Unites States Constitution was written by stalwart Christian men totally committed to Christ and the building of a Christian nation.

What sundry readers are unaware of is that many of the quotes they use to defend their claims are fabricated, misunderstood, or misrepresented.

David Barton “Christian” Spokesman for America’s Christian Founding: Guru of Americanism

 Among the most popular spokesmen is a Pentecostal minister by the name of David Barton, a Christian fundamentalist and founding president of a popular website called “Wall Builders”, a site devoted to defending America’s Christian foundations. Barton has been interviewed several times by Glenn Beck and is noted for tours of the capitol pointing out Christian heritage of the country to new congressmen and senators.

Barton wrote a book, “The Myth of Separation”, that was so full of errors and misquotes that it caused scholars across the country to leap into action; it was too outrageous to ignore, too opposed to expected standards of research and norms of scholarly writing, which are the hallmark of men and women who love truth, men and women who consider honest scholarship a mark of honor and dishonest a mark of reprobation. Consequently, numerous savants quickly engaged in research to verify the validity of Barton’s quotes. Unfortunately for Barton, many true scholars such as, Professor Robert S. Alley (University of Richmond) the man who authored “James Madison on Religious Liberty”, got involved. Prof. Alley received assistance from the editors of “The Papers of James Madison” at the University of Virginia who helped verify all of Barton’s quotes and misquotes.

Moreover,

“Firms devoted to Madison and Jefferson became involved, universities got involved and ultimately the Library of Congress was the final resting place for these quotes[viii].

Barton’s book does not contain an occasional error, the kind that are easily forgiven and which cause honest writer’s to etch deeply in their memory so as to avoid repeating them. Barton is either a dishonest minister playing scholar or an uneducated one making so many mistakes that no one should consider him a learned man and therefore avoid him as a teacher and historical spokesman. True scholarship is time consuming and very difficult, every piece of evidence is verified, every source double checked and cross referenced.  No one becomes learned or wise by simply reading; every time an in earnest student comes across information that he cannot verify or that he does not understand, he stops and does not continue again until he has mastered the content or idea.  Every specious or questionable piece of information is cross-referenced and double-triple checked for accuracy and veracity. Apparently, Barton did not know that such men and women exist; there really is no such thing as a “lazy scholar”, qua scolar. Like most charlatans, Barton, although himself not necessarily a charlatan, was eventually caught for poor scholarship. When presented with the evidence, he

“…admitted to fabricating the quotes. He was (then) ordered to create a pamphlet that listed all his bogus quotes. Unfortunately that pamphlet has had almost zero impact on those who use the quotes daily in newspapers around the United States.”[ix]

Below are some of his more egregious misquotes. Fortunately, many people have become involved and this kind of scam scholarship is being exposed.

1. “Whosoever shall introduce into the public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world.” – Benjamin Franklin
   ,
2. “It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ!” – Patrick Henry
   ,
   
3. “The only assurance of our nation’s safety is to lay our foundation in morality and religion.” – Abraham Lincoln
   ,
   
4. “Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise. In this sense and to this extent, our civilizations and our institutions are emphatically Christian.” – Holy Trinity v. U. S. (Barton claimed this was a United States Supreme Court landmark case—in fact, the actual author is not the United States Supreme Court, but the Illinois Supreme Court (Richmond v. Moore, 1883). We are not concerned about state constitutions, which in many cases were influenced by Christianity, but with the secular federal Constitution. Not only is the quote misrepresented, Barton distorts the meaning of the Illinois court by omitting other text from the same decision, text such as, “…a total severance of church and State is one of the great controlling foundation principles of our system of government.”
   ,
   
5. “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” – Abraham Lincoln
   ,
   
6. “A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or eternal invader.” – Samuel Adams
   ,
   
7. “I have always said and always will say that the studious perusal of the Sacred Volume will make us better citizens.” – Thomas Jefferson
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8. “There are two powers only which are sufficient to control men, and secure the rights of individuals and a peaceable administration; these are the combined force of religion and law, and the force or fear of the bayonet.” – Noah Webster
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9. “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.” – George Washington
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10. “The principles of all genuine liberty, and of wise laws and administrations are to be drawn from the Bible and sustained by its authority. The man therefore who weakens or destroys the divine authority of that book may be assessory [sic] to all the public disorders which society is doomed to suffer.” – Noah Webster
    ,
    
11. “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves … according to the Ten Commandments of God.”– James Madison[x]

The only problem with these quotes is that none of them have ever been found among any of Founder’s authentic writings. Barton tried to excuse himself by blaming it on “secondary sources”. Perhaps this is a good excuse; however, any cross referencing or simple attempt to confirm the quotes should have raised a flag in Barton’s mind; perhaps he was cherry picking quotes as Pentecostals cherry pick scriptures to fabricate tales about the Catholic Church.

Barton, has earned rebuke from “Church and State Magazine”, which ran an article by Robert Boston who insisted that Barton’s fabrications were so egregious that they warranted a “Consumer Alert”.[xi] Barton has also received criticism from the “right” for “shoddy workmanship”. The Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs (BJCPA) issued a critique of a Barton movie that highlighted most of the quotes. The BJCPA took Barton to task and hammered his video.[xii] They stated that his work is:

“… laced with exaggerations, half-truths and misstatements of fact.”[xiii]  The Texas Freedom Network calls him “a pseudo-intellectual fraud whose twisted interpretations of history are little more than propaganda.”[xiv]

According to “people for the American Way”[xv]

“Such dim views of Barton’s work are based on repeated instances in which Barton cites quotes attributed to Founding Fathers that appear to support the right-wing view that the current model of separation of church and state was not at all what the Framers intended, only to have those quotes turn out to be unverifiable, if not utterly false.”

..

“Barton claimed that the phrase “wall of separation between church and state” originated in a speech made by Thomas Jefferson in 1801. Barton also claimed that Jefferson went on to say that “That wall is a one directional wall. It keeps the government from running the church but it makes sure that Christian principles will always stay in government.” [xvi]

,o,

“Such a claim would be powerful, provided it was true. The only problem was that Barton was wrong on all accounts: the phrase regarding church and state came out of an 1802 letter Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association and the letter says absolutely nothing about keeping “Christian principles” in the government.”

The Jefferson Lies

Barton’s book, “The Jefferson Lies” was as objectionable as his book, “The Myth of Separation”. The former was hammered so hard that it had to be withdrawn from publication.  Hard as this might be to swallow, apparently, it is Barton and not the “liberals” who has been telling the lies about Jefferson (please do not say that this makes the author of this article a liberal):

“In 2012, Barton’s New York Times bestseller, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson, was voted “the least credible history book in print” by the users of the History News Network website.[xvii] A group of 10 conservative Christian professors reviewed the work and reported negatively on its claims, saying that Barton has misstated facts about Jefferson.”[xviii]

“In August 2012 Christian publisher Thomas Nelson withdrew the book from publication and stopped production, announcing that he had “lost confidence in the book’s details” and “learned that there were some historical details included in the book that were not adequately supported.”[xix]

According to Wikipedia

“In 1995, in response to criticism by historian Robert Alley, Barton conceded, in an online article titled “Unconfirmed Quotations“,[xx] that he had not located primary sources for 11 alleged quotes from James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and U.S. Supreme Court decisions (hence, the title of Alley’s article), but maintained that the quotes were “completely consistent” with the views of the Founders. (By 2007, the article listed 14 unconfirmed quotations.)[xxi]

According to Texas Monthly,

“Honesty has been a problem for Barton over the years and still is. After he issued his “unconfirmed quotes” retraction in 1995, for instance, a group of independent researchers went over The “Myth of Separation” with a fine-tooth comb and found more than one quote that Barton apparently fabricated through the flagrant misuse of ellipses.[xxii]

In the past, you could find Barton’s bio online (Endnote 2) where it says he’s an “author and historian.” The bio says he has a degree in Arts from Oral Roberts University and an honorary doctorate from the Pensacola Christian College. In his official bio at Ecclesia University, he refers to himself as Dr. Barton. A bachelor’s degree does not qualify a person as a “historian” (a bachelor is a certified apprentice of learning – certified to have the necessary qualifications to begin taking the next step leading to the tile of “master”), nor does an honorary degree make one a doctor. There is a reason why there are peer-reviewed journals, and why some men and women are authorized to place Dr. in front of their names.  The degree signifies the highest attainable level of scholarship and academic respectability, which Mr. Barton and those who support his ideological travesty – the Christian Founder Project – have not earned.

David Barton cannot help himself – First he says that he does NOT have a Ph.D and then he says that he does???

The fact is, Dispensationalists and Pentecostals, along with their allies in the not so secret “Secret Societies”, are losing the battle to men and women who love the Truth, the truth who is a Divine Person, the truth who is also the Way and the Life. Men and women around the world are waking up and beginning to rally around His Church, the Church He established as the Light of the World and the City Set on a Hilltop; there is no other.  

The Mother of God promised a victory, the “Triumph” of her “Immaculate Heart”.  Those who honor Her and follow Her Son (Catholic and Protestant) are getting in cadence because the “Truth is marching on.” Adept falsifiers so dread falling behind that they are forced to misquote and offer shoddy scholarship to hold on to their false dreams of freeing the world by global diffusion of anti-Christian principles in the guise of Enlightenment (because the devil and his agents, come as  “angels” and “ministers” of light -DRB-), principles that in fact are intended to make them masters of the world, which is now in the process of turning against them (Review news articles at newera.news for details). These were the type of men Pope Francis was speaking about when he recently (November 30, 2015) stated:

“Fundamentalism is a sickness that is in all religions (even Catholic fundamentalism). Such people “believe they possess the absolute truth and go ahead dirtying the other with calumny, with disinformation, and doing evil.” “We have to combat it,” he said. “Religious fundamentalism is not religious, because it lacks God. It is idolatry (in his case, the idolatry of nation or of Gnostic fraternity), like the idolatry of money.”[xxiii]

The following links are provided for more information about this topic:

David Barton Falsely Claims He’s Been Labeled A Hate Group By The FBI

Does David Barton Have A Ph.D.? Even He Doesn’t Seem To Know

David Barton Falsely Claims Justice Breyer Acknowledged That ‘The Bill Of Rights Came Out Of The Bible’

David Barton: The Declaration Of Independence And Bill Of Rights Came Directly Out Of The Bible

David Barton Falsely Claims He’s Been Labeled A Hate Group By The FBI

David Barton and Bogus Ph.D

Videos a Common Sense Rebuttal 

______________________________
END NOTES

1. The specious AD argument does not work.  Some Christian ideologues who prefer ignorance to truth have scoured the document looking for just one reference to God. Finding none, they resort to the signature date which contains the words “In the year of Our Lord”.  And then mockingly proclaim that the “secularists” are obviously wrong, as if this one miniscule thread redeems the entre document from being secular. This is a ridiculous argument, one worthy of only a footnote. By this logic, Hilary Clinton is a card carrying Christian because she heads or closes her correspondence with the Christian date.  Or, conversely, the Portuguese who live before 1700 are not Christians because they did not begin using the AD style until the 18th century. Using the in conventional date is nothing but standard practice; it is not evidence from which to draw conclusions about such deep seated beliefs as faith in Jesus Christ, and all that He taught. New Agers even claim that Jesus is Lord along with a host of other gods and lords. Thomas Jefferson called himself a “Christian” because he believed in the morals taught by Jesus.  But he denied His divinity, incarnation, and resurrection; most especially, he denied the Trinity, which disqualifies him from being a Christian no matter how much he might protest: “Who is a liar, but he who denieth that Jesus is the Christ? This is Antichrist, who denieth the Father, and the Son.” (1 John 2:22). AD, moreover, is one of several dating mechanisms used throughout Masonry and Masons are not Christians because they deny the divinity of Christ as Jefferson did. (http://grandlodgeofiowa.org/docs/Masonic_History/AnnoLucis.pdf)

[iii] All legitimate nations do derive authority and power from God through the natural law.  The Church, is the only society conferred power and authority be means of the divine law and also by means of the natural law.
[iv] John Adams, Letter to John Taylor
[v] Thomas Jefferson (1810) Letter to Samuel Kercheval
[vi] Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800
[vii] The Evangelical Founding Father: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2015/11/the-most-evangelical-founding-father/?ref_widget=related&ref_blog=anxiousbench&ref_post=what-can-we-learn-from-the-david-barton-controversy
[viii] The Barton Chronicles http://candst.tripod.com/bartchron.htm
[ix] Blair Scott Michigan Atheist http://michiganatheists.org/2015/04/27/david-barton-and-fake-quotes/
[x] ibid
[xi] http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/founding.htm
[xii] Scott
[xiii] J. Brent Walker, “A Critique of David Barton’s Views on Church and State,” Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, April 2005
[xiv] Texas Freedom Network Education Foundation, “The Anatomy of Power: Texas and the Religious Right in 2006,” p.19
[xv] http://www.pfaw.org/media-center/publications/david-barton-propaganda-masquerading-history#_edn21
[xvi] Rob Boston, “Sects, Lies and Videotape,” Church & State, Volume 46, No. 4, April 1993, pp 8-1
[xvii] Wikipedia, Schuessler, Jennifer (2012-07-16). “And the Worst Book of History Is “. New York Times. 2012-07-19.
[xviii] Wikipedia, Kidd, Thomas (August 7, 2012). “The David Barton controversy”. World (God’s World Publications, World News Group). Retrieved April 9, 2013.
[xix] Wikipedia, Kidd, Thomas (August 7, 2012).“The David Barton controversy”. World (God’s World Publications, World News Group). Retrieved April 9, 2013.
[xx] Blakeslee, Nate (September 2006). “King Of the Christocrats”. Texas Monthly 34 (9): 1. ISSN 0148-7736. Retrieved 2008-11-10.
[xxi] Barton, David. “Unconfirmed Quotations”. WallBuilders website. Archived from the original on September 28, 2007.
[xxii] (On page 248, for example, Barton pulled this quote from a Supreme Court of New York case called People v. Ruggles: “This [First Amendment] declaration … never meant to withdraw religion … and with it the best sanctions of moral and social obligation from all consideration and notice of the law.” In the unedited version, however, it is abundantly clear that the “declaration” referred to is not the First Amendment, as Barton indicated in brackets, but an article of the New York state constitution.) In the vault, I finally got to take a closer look at a piece of plastic-sheathed parchment Barton had been waving around on the pastors’ tour in D.C., which he claimed was an example of Jefferson signing a document “In the Year of Our Lord Christ.” It was already pretty flimsy evidence that Jefferson was a Christian, but on closer inspection it appeared that Jefferson himself had not even written the words; the document was the nineteenth-century equivalent of a form letter. (Texas Monthly: http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/king-of-the-christocrats/).[xxiii] http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2015/11/30/pope-francis-says-he-is-not-losing-any-sleep-over-vatican-leaks-trial/

New Era World News

Thomas Jefferson to John Adams upon the disestablishment of religion in Massachusetts (Works, Vol. iv., p. 301).

 

BEWARE OF THE SPECIOUS CLAIM that America was founded by Christian men on Christian principles. The claim has long been touted by ideologues men (and women) who are in the business of falsifying information to suit their “noble” agenda. Their agenda includes other similar unsubstantiated and false claims made about the Catholic church.

These men and women (primarily Christian ideologues who correlate Christianity with the United States, capitalism, and the constitution) seem to have no problem distorting, changing, and twisting the Church’s sacred documents just as they mangle and pervert American historic documents so that they can present an untrue picture, a picture that matches their distorted script about God, history, current events and even the end of the world and a supposed pre-tribulation rapture.

False prophets such as these have difficulty distinguishing their religion from their politics. Somewhere along the line they conceived the idea that America is the “light of the world”, a nation with a God-given destiny to establish a “New Order of the Ages” or as it says on the nation’s currency, “Novus ordo seclorum”. Men such as these place their political philosophy in front of their moral and spiritual theology. Then disguised as disciples of Christ, they attempt to foist their false political and messianic agenda on the world in the name of Christ. They are so convinced by the righteousness of their cause that they are willing to distort the truth in order to advance their highly cherished but fallacious world views.

Somehow, they seem to think that it is the will of God, the Supreme Law Maker and Omnipotent Ruler of the Universe, that Americans should draft laws without Him, that He endorses the separation of church and state whereby He is shut out of the political, economic and social arenas, effectively denied a voice in the public affairs of the nation leaving it to elected officials to promulgate their own secular-statutory laws in disregard of the divine law given by God to mankind in both the Old and New Testaments.  

Almost every American man, woman, and child has accepted this idea (the secularization of the state and promulgation of man-made laws rooted in the supposed sovereignty of the people rather than in the sovereignty of God). Popular sovereignty and the separation of church and state are liberal political slogans that have become sacred American dogma. Neoconservative politicians, who give requisite lip service to Christ, act like it is their sacrosanct duty to spread political, economic and social “Liberalism” aboard as if it were derived from God, when in fact, on many points,  “Americanism” is antithetical to the laws given by God to govern His people – antithetical and deadly.

The ultimate consequence of this American dogma practically speaking (that is not theoretically, but practically, what in fact has, and is taking place) is the denial that the Gospel and the Church’s social teaching, (drawn from it) have any applicability in the broader political, social, and economic realm. These broad public realms were declared off-limits to the Church. As a result of the Framers privatization of religion, these realms have slowly become secularized and ultimately dehumanized “structures of sin” that manifest a “culture of death“ (Pope John Paul II ” (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 36-37-38-39-40).

It is the exclusion of God from the public forum and the corollary rejection of Divine Law, inherent in the system established by the Framers, that are the root causes of the problems that the church has condemned as “Americanism”.

By portraying the Founding Fathers as Christian men who bequeathed the nation a Christian Constitution, and then further insisting that it be treated as a sacred document, Americans have mistakenly replaced Divine Authority with human authority and elevated a secular man-made law over and above God-given Divine Law. Knowingly or not, we have exiled the omniscient and omnipresent God from the America political playing field and in the process institutionalized secular rule. This mistake is perpetuated by insisting that Founding Fathers, the “wise” and “virtuous” men who gave us a sacred Constitution, be continually placed on sacerdotal pedestals – including, wherever possible, church pedestals – when in fact, all they left us with is a secular Constitution subject to the whim of the “people” and to be freely interpreted by any political ideology that might suit the Justices.  As long as the Founding Fathers are revered above the saints and the prophets or somehow judged to be equal in stature to them, we will continue to perpetuate the polysemous and ambiguous secular and philosophical ideas on which they founded this nation.

Love of country and patriotism are splendid assets; however, when people raise the Constitution with one hand and tout the bible in the other claiming they are both sacred documents from God, beware “Americanism”. Such people, in the guise of patriotism are often misguided and wayward “nationalists.”

Pope Leo XIII addressed these concerns in his encyclical Testem Benevolentiae Nostraeto in which he condemned several false ideas that Catholic prelates were introducing to the church in America; thereby slowly transforming her into an institution governed by, and therefore subject to, the same secular and democratic ideas that the United States government was founded upon, ideas such as majority rule, the cherishing of practical action and social work over prayer and contemplation, popular sovereignty, and the separation of church and state and a deficient idea of the “natural law”. Pope Leo was, in effect, attempting to protect the church from the false prophets of Americanism; these were the men (and women) who had blindly subordinated their faith to their politics, and were bringing the latter into the church rather than the former into the latter.

Due to the increased secularization of American education, virtue was increasingly understood as a civic character trait (something very different than that taught by Aristotle, Aquinas, and Doctors of the Church) manifest in utilitarian excellence and the ability to achieve practical results strengthened by a democratic character whereby tolerance is turned into false-liberty increasing characterized by nihilism, skepticism, and an ever increasing acceptance of moral relativity as logical outgrowths of Dewey’s utilitarian philosophy and disdain for Christian ideas. 

“There is (he said) no God and there is no soul. Hence, there is no need for the props of traditional (Christian) religion. With dogma and creed excluded, then immutable truth is dead and buried. There is no room for fixed law or permanent moral absolutes” (John Dewey – The Legacy).

John Dewey was made the President of the National Education Association, which facilitated the ideals and liberal values of the new secular government, which were slowly but inevitably incorporated into the curricula of newly created public schools until the privatized religious and moral sphere morphed with and became increasingly congruent with the secular version of morality introduced in the public sphere.

According to Dewey and his disciples who gained control of the public school system:

“The behavioral sciences are providing new natural explanations of phenomena so extraordinary that once their supernatural origin was, so to say, the natural explanation.”

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“Geological discoveries …have displaced Creation myths which once bulked large.” And

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“The social sciences have provided a “radically different version of the historic events and personages upon which Christian religions have built” (John Dewey, A Common Faith, Yale University Press, 1934, pg 84).

Making progress on all these fronts vis a vis Christianity Dewey, as early as 1908, was able to superciliously proclaim that the new civic religion of America was replacing the Christian religion:

“Our schools … are performing an infinitely significant religious work. They are promoting the social unity out of which in the end genuine religious unity must grow.  …dogmatic beliefs (articles of Christian faith)…we see disappearing…. It is the part of men to… work for the transformation of all practical instrumentalities of education till they are in harmony with these (above) ideas” (John Dewey (1908) The Hibbert Journal, Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D. Chronology of Education, pg. 11.).

The secular “experiment” undertaken by the Framers in 1787 bore its penultimate fruit in 1933, when John Dewey and a group of leading American intellectuals signed the “Humanist Manifesto”, which brought the slowly developing secular program into plain view; listed below are its more salient points:

• Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.

• Man is a part of nature and that has emerged as the result of a continuous process.

• The traditional dualism of mind and body must be rejected.

• The nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values.

• Man is at last becoming aware that he alone is responsible for the realization of the world of his dreams, that he has within himself the power of its achievement.

Educational leaders such as John Dewey set the nation’s schools on a secular path on which liberal ideas (and more developed dogmas) in the guise of civic virtue were to replace long held sacred beliefs.  After successful implementation throughout the nation, it was America’s God-given task to carry these dogmas throughout the world.

Students therefore imbibed large droughts of “Manifest Destiny”, a toxic brew served up in civics classes throughout the nation, a brew so intoxicating that it was preached from church pulpits thereby successfully giving birth to a new civic-religion containing doctrines that in many ways stood in opposition to the doctrines given them by Jesus Christ. Inebriated and pumped with missionary zeal and love of country, they welcomed ideas about exceptionalism and zealously manned the ramparts when their teachers told them that it was their sacred duty to spread Americanism abroad.  They were so pumped with love of country, with its “Manifest destiny” that they failed to see the blasphemy in their newly acquired views, views that presented America as the “Light of the World” and the “City set on a Hilltop” ordained by God to lead the nation of the world to freedom.

This is nothing but political hype repeated by zealous nationalists, men and women who place the Constitution on a pedestal along with the Holy Bible and then proceed to enthusiastically foist their erroneous political ideas on the rest of mankind; thereby zealously enslaving the world in the name of liberalism while claiming to set it free.

It was Jesus Christ, not the American government, that died to make men free; but the Framers had left Him out of the Constitution, had left any mention of God whatsoever out of the Constitution, and Dewey scornfully saw to it that He was excluded from the public schools, which became the vehicles for promoting new and false secular ideas about liberty. Nice as the pursuit of liberty might sound, no government can advance the cause of liberty without Him and especially without the Church that He commissioned for this purpose, viz., to set all men free (John 8:36). Jesus is the way and the truth and the life, there is no other name under heaven by which men are saved; yet the Constitution demands that He remain out of the state’s business. 

A secular government can achieve nothing (truly) good for man without God (John 15:5); yet they demand the constitutional right to do everything without Him. When Christians put the Framers on a Sacred Pedestal, equate the Constitution with the Bible, and then support foreign policy more than they do Christian missionaries, we have a problem.

“Unless the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. Unless the Lord keep the city, he watcheth in vain that keepeth it” (Psalm 127:1).

When Benjamin Franklin proposed that the delegates assembled to draft the Constitution pray before they continued to work, 51 of the 55 delegates voted against the proposal. On June 28, 1787, Franklin registered a plea to begin each day with prayer to the “Father of Lights”. A simple and sane request made to a group of supposedly Christian men ended up in an overwhelming rejection. According to Franklin himself, 51 of the supposed Christian delegates did not think prayer necessary. In his own words:

“With the exception of 3 or 4, most thought prayers unnecessary.” (Ferrand, Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, rev. ed., Vol. 1, p. 452.)

The Lord either builds the house or He doesn’t; we either cooperate with Him or we build a city without Him, the “city of man” rather than the “City of God.” Are the words of Psalm 127 just empty words or are they words of wisdom; if they are wisdom than we have acted like fools—it is clear that the Lord did not build the American house, nor was he, according to John Adams, even consulted.

“It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service (the writing of the constitution) had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven…it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived by the use of reason and the senses (not faith and the bible)…Thirteen governments founded on the natural (versus supernatural) authority of the people alone” (John Adams, “A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America” (1788).

The fact is that the “God of Nature”, the god known by “reason” was the god of the leading Founders (Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin et al). They preferred the god of nature to Jesus Christ and His Bride, the Church, whom He divinely established to “feed His sheep and to shepherd His lambs” and to “teach all nations” in the name of the Holy Trinity. No, they preferred reason and reason’s god, the “God of Nature.” Adams and Jefferson both boasted of this lamentable fact:

“The question before the human race is, Whether the God of nature (the Deist, Masonic, Epicurean and Gnostic god) Shall govern the World by his own laws, or Whether Priests and Kings Shall rule it by fictitious Miracles? Or, in other Words, whether Authority is originally in the People? or whether it has descended for 1800 Years in a Succession of Popes and Bishops, or brought down from Heaven by the holy Ghost in the form of a Dove, in a Phyal of holy Oil” (John Adams)?[i]

No, the Lord who gave the world His Divine Law (old and new) was not consulted when the “Founders” established their own laws without Him; He was purposefully and admittedly ignored. Despite the fact that America was a nation of Christians, Jesus Christ is not mentioned one time in our nation’s supreme document[ii]. Consistent with this American commitment to the “God of Nature” is the equally irreverent privatization of the Church under the guise of doing Her and all Americans a big favor.  In other words, Christ was “kicked out” and the deed was conducted with cunning arrogance.

Pope Pius XI recognized the absurdity of this kind of social and political arrogance in his encyclical, Quas Primas (1925) in which he quoted the Prophet Daniel who foretold the universal kingdom founded by Christ.  If His kingdom is universal and respected by Christian men, it is to be expected that such men would enshrine it as a beacon for the nation rather than relegate it to the private sphere unsupported by laws, tax dollars, public education, statue or ordinance. Christ established a kingdom to stand forever, and the Framers were intent on building their own without Him.

“The kingdom that the God of heaven shall found, ‘shall never be destroyed, and shall stand forever” (Daniel 2:44).

Pope Pius reminds us that after the resurrection, Jesus solemnly affirmed his omnipotence and conveyed His power and authority to His Church[iii].  He did not confer divine power on any secular nation, nor did He direct any nation to be a “City on a Hilltop” or a “Light to the World”.  Those are things He delegated exclusively to His Church (Matthew 5:14) to whom He also delegated His own authority and power, something the Founding Fathers had a real difficult time understanding and respecting.

“…when giving to his Apostles the mission of teaching and baptizing all nations he took the opportunity to call himself king, conforming the title publicly, and solemnly proclaiming that all power was given to him in heaven and on earth.”

If, as Daniel foresaw, Christ established a kingdom that will never be destroyed and that will stand forever, why did we exclude Him, why did Jefferson and Adams believe that the Church established by Christ was suffering from a “mortal wound” and would soon die?  

“Cabalistic Christianity, which is catholic (sic) Christianity, and which has prevailed for 1,500 years, has received a mortal wound, of which the monster must finally die. Yet so strong is his constitution, that he may endure for centuries before he expires” (John Adams, (July 16, 1814) Letter to Thomas Jefferson).

Obviously, many of these men were out of the spiritual loop.  They excluded Christ because they envisioned America as His new church, his new kingdom and empire and themselves as a new priesthood. The new nation was to be governed exclusively by them and not by Catholic priests and Protestant clergy, against whom they had vowed “eternal” hostility“.

“The clergy…believe that any portion of power confided to me [as President] will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man” (Letter of Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800)

John Adams referred to the Protestant ministers as “yahoos” the great enemies of “free inquiry” who should be endured no longer.

“And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY (Adams’ own emphasis)? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded.”[iv]

Jefferson concurred, the Christian clergy are:

“… the greatest obstacles to the advancement of the real doctrines of Jesus, and do in fact constitute the real Anti-Christ.”[v]

Catholic priests and Protestant clergy were the great deceivers, the tyrants over the minds of men whom Jefferson had sworn upon the altar of God to eradicate:

The Framers must have thought very highly of themselves. Likewise, Americans who believe the “Christian” myths about them probably believe themselves to be very special people, although more and more people around the world are having difficulty seeing it.

Christ’s kingdom is not of this world – that is, it is not founded on anyone’s political power; it is conveyed fully to His Church; the Church that our “Founders” excluded from public life and left to fend for itself without a dime for His cause and without any public show of support either from the schools from which He we also excluded or from the public dais from which He was forbidden. This was, and is, certainly a funny way for a “Christian nation” to treat its King, an odd way to reverence the one whom you claim to serve.

If the Framers in the name of reason and reason’s god (the “God of Nature”, on whom they built the new nation) removed Christ from the public arena and were at war with the Christian clergy (the so-called “Antichrist”)”, we can be quite sure who the “God of Nature” is and who the men that profess loyalty to him are. How can any authentic Christian clergyman claim that America is a holy nation founded by men who loved Jesus and therefore established a Christian foundation?  The fact is (beside clergy who are just ignorant “blind guides”), men who stridently profess such things in the name of Christ are themselves enemies of Christ, dispensational bigots who have no problem forging documents and distorting facts to push their agenda and catch people unawares in the idolatrous trap of “Americanism”.

One of America’s unsung founders was Elias Boudinot.  Boudinot was a president of the Continental Congress, a United States Congressman and from 1795 to 1805 he was the director of the U.S. Mint.

Boudinot was alarmed by the disregard for Christian principles by many leaders of the new American government;

“But has not America greatly departed from her original (17th century) principles, and left her first love? Has she not also many amongst her chief citizens, of every party, who have forsaken the God of their fathers, and to whom the spirit may justly be supposed to say, “ye hold doctrines which I hate, repent, or else I will come unto you quickly, and will fight against you with the sword of my mouth.”[vii]

The fact is, the foremost founders were not Christians.  The leading lights among them hated both the Trinity and the Church established by Jesus Christ. The current successors of these men who claim to be Christian ministers, ministers who tell us that the Founders were Christian, and that the Constitution is a Christian document, are wolves in sheep’s clothing (Matt 7:15). Many are deceiving ministers who dress in sheep’s clothing; that is, in lay garb rather than clerical garb (because they have like Jefferson and Adams rejected the clergy and set themselves up as guides). Priests do not wear sheep’s clothing, i.e, the clothing of the flock they shepherd.  They wear clerical garb.   Wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing are lay ministers who wear business attire rather than ecclesial or liturgical attire. The truth is that these so-called Christian-American zealots do not have Jesus Christ for their God or the Church for their Mother; they have no king but Caesar; that is, their allegiance is to the Republic before it is to the Church, even though they claim to be minsters of Christ.

Not all who claim allegiance to Christ have allegiance to Christ, but only those who do the will of his Father.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’ Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you.^* Depart from me, you evildoers (Matt 7: 21-23).

Pope Saint Pius X saw threw the charade,

“We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker – the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization….It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants.” (St. Pope Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, April 15, 1910).

Because many of these self-styled “pastors” are “miscreants”, “rebels” and “dreamers”, it should come as no surprise that many so-called ministers, men who are supposed to be lovers of the truth and “ambassadors” of Jesus Christ, the way and the truth and the life”, seem to have no problem telling a lie to gain fame or to make a buck, or worse, in order to advance an agenda that makes them guilty of that which they accuse others, viz.,being unchristian.

The truth is, many of the so-called conservative fundamentalists and dispensationalists ministers who claim that “liberals” are distorting the facts about the Christian roots of American government are the real ones that are doing the distorting; their scholarship is often so offensive that it makes an honest man blush and then (as will be shown in the follow-up article) so incensed that they move into action to expose its falsity). The output of Christian nationalists has become legion.  Perhaps you have seen their websites, or read their books and media tracts claiming that the Unites States Constitution was written by stalwart Christian men totally committed to Christ and the building of a Christian nation.

What many of their readers are unaware of is that many of the quotes they use to defend their claims are fabricated, misunderstood, or misrepresented.

End Part One:
Go to Part Two

New Era World News

Pope Francis and Trinitarian Theology

Continued from Part Two

POPE FRANCIS IS ADROITLY applying Trinitarian Theology in the modern context; he is demonstrating that wisdom (the truths of dogmatic theology) by itself though a good, among the highest and greatest goods, is a deficient good.  Wisdom reaches its perfection in love; wisdom is consummate in love.

Without love wisdom cannot reach its telos or end, which is communion with other human beings as the Body of Christ and union with God as sons in the Son.

God the Father in knowing Himself from eternity begot the Eternal Word born out of His infinite and eternal self-knowledge.  The Holy Trinity however is not consummate in the begetting of the Word, Divine Wisdom; the Holy Trinity is consummate in the union of Father and Son by the Love they have for each other, a love from which the Holy Spirit is spirated perfecting the Trinity and making them One. It is not wisdom ALONE, BUT WISDOM CONSUMMATE IN LOVE that is the bond of Trinitarian and therefore perfect Substantial Unity – The Holy Trinity.  The Father first knows the Son, the Son knows the Father and in reciprocal knowing, They are impelled to love each other with the fullness of Divine Love and Divine Life that we call the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Divine Love spirated from the infinite and eternal Love shared between Father and Son.

POINT: Wisdom is consummate in loving.  That is, wisdom without love is not and cannot be fecund, wisdom without love is incomplete-imperfect. Divine wisdom, the self-knowledge of God brings forth the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from, and is the “fruit” of, Divine Love the perfection of the Holy Trinity, who is Love.  All-Knowing Wisdom and Life-Giving love constitute one integral Divine being  – Wisdom and Love belong together; one without the other is deficient.  Wisdom is consummate in love; wisdom precedes love in the “order of operation”:

“For the procession of love occurs in due order as regards the procession of the Word (wisdom); since nothing can be loved by the will unless it is (first) conceived in the intellect” (Aquinas Q 27, A 3).

In human terms, this means that there must be a unity and profound cooperation between wisdom and love and among the sentient powers and operations of the human soul, passions, intellect and will. This is why the masters of mystical theology have articulated three stages on the road to spiritual perfection: the purgative (having to do with the sentient passions), the illuminative, (having to do with the acquisition of wisdom) and the unitive (having to do with growth in love by which a person is united to God.)  Notice the order of perfection: purgative-illuminative-unitive. The unitive, which depends on love, is last, the final end, the consummation of discipline of body and enlightening of intellect that ascends to union with God by way of love.

Wisdom is not the telos. Love of God that brings about union with God, the divinization of man as the Body of Christ is the telos, the end of human powers and operations assisted by Divine Grace.

Love, not wisdom, is the highest attainment of the human mind. It is an attainment of the human mind because love proceeds from the will, which as Aquinas tells us is an “INTELLECTUAL appetite.”  This is the key to understanding Pope Francis’ insistence on pastoral theology. Wisdom, one might say, represents an attainment of dogmatic theology; it is an intellectual virtue that remains incomplete unless consummated in unitive love, the love of God AND neighbor – the love that is the work of “pastoral theology.”

Those who do not like to hear that God is Love must answer to the sacred scriptures wherein Saint John clearly and explicitly informs the universal body, that “God is Love.” Moreover those who do not know love, those who do not live love, those who over-emphasize wisdom and dogma to the detriment of love, do not know God because “God is love.”

“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.” (1 John 4: 7-8).

Why does Francis want his pastors to “get dirty” to mix with their sheep so they can “smell” like their flock? Why, because he wants them to discern openings for possible fuller admission into the ministries of the laity and eventual invitation to the sacraments, why because pastoral theology is the work of love:

“Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8).

Love moreover, unlike justice, love is not interested in claiming its rights, in counting wrongs done. Love seeks to pardon and excuse, while the devil looks to condemn and accuse (Rev. 12:10). Unfortunately, he is sometimes imitated by some members of the Body of Christ whom the pope is addressing when he often times belittles condemnation and judgmentalism.

“Love (however) never fails.” (1  Cor 13:8).

Is is by love, not dogma, that priests leave the comfort of their studys, of their offices and rectories, to encounter the world and become “fishers of men.”

“‘This is what I am asking you’,” Pope Francis emphasized while looking up from his prepared text, “be shepherds with the smell of sheep,” so that people can sense the priest is not just concerned with his own congregation, but is also a fisher of men.’

This is rudimentary; it is therefore also surprising that so many miss this primordial dictum of the faith, so many in the Church who cry for justice, demand condemnation of sinners, look forward to and predict global cataclysms and chastisements, while Jesus Christ, is Himself calling for Mercy and asking His Church to proclaim mercy – mercy before justice.  However there are those in the Church (those whom Francis is prodding to become pastors) who are content with expressing the faith by straining at the gnat of dogmatic truths and swallowing the camel of mercy and therefore erroneously cry for justice – justice – justice.

“Many publicans and sinners came, and sat down with Jesus and his disciples. And the Pharisees seeing it, said to his disciples: Why doth your master eat with publicans and sinners? But Jesus hearing it, said: They that are in health need not a physician, but they that are ill. Go then and learn what this meaneth, I will have MERCY and not sacrifice. For I am not come to call the just, but sinners.”

HAVE WE FORGOTTEN THIS?  THE STUDY OF DOGMA AND REFLECTION ON DIVINE LAW LEAD TO
WISDOM THAT MUST BE ACTUALIZED IN LOVE AND MERCY BECAUSE THE DIVINE LAW IS LOVE – AGAPE

As was said in a previous column, those calling for justice and predicting calamities should watch what they are pleading for, they might receive it themselves.  Was it justice or mercy that characterized the attitudes of Moses, of Peter, of Paul or of Christ Himself, when He and they interceded for members of their flock? What did the Lord say to James and John when the bellowed for the thunder of justice to be rained down upon sinners?

“And he sent messengers before his face; and going, they entered into a city of the Samaritans, to prepare for him. And they received him not, because his face was of one going to Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John had seen this, they said: Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them? And turning, he rebuked them, saying: You know not of what spirit you are. The Son of man came not to destroy souls, but to save” (Luke 9: 52-56).

No, until the “Parousia” it belongs to the state, not the Church, to administer justice and punish sinners:

“Let every soul be subject to higher powers: for there is no power but from God: and those that are, are ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God. And they that resist, purchase to themselves damnation. For princes are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good: and thou shalt have praise from the same. For he is God’s minister to thee, for good. But if thou do that which is evil, fear: for he beareth not the sword in vain. For he is God’s minister: an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil”(Romans 13:1-4).

It belongs to the Church to tame severity, to put away the sword of vindictive justice and to suffer for the unjust as Christ did (Matt 26:52). This is what Our Lady at Fatima asked for: reparation prayer, prayer fructified by suffering for the sins of others borne out of charity and love for lost souls.

“I Paul am made a minister. Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the church.”

God did not come to condemn the world, but to save the world (John 3:17).

A priest intercedes for his people; he implores mercy and like Christ the High Priest whom he images (persona Christi), he offers himself as a victim in their place.  This is a far cry from judgmentalism, from what Pope Francis refers to as Phariseeism, a Phariseeism that has infected some of his pastors and turned them into dogmatic theologians. A leader intercedes for his people:

“But Moses besought the Lord his God, saying: Why, O Lord, is thy indignation kindled against thy people, whom thou hast brought out of the land of Egypt, with great power, and with a mighty hand? Let not the Egyptians say, I beseech thee: He craftily brought them out, that he might kill them in the mountains, and destroy them from the earth: let thy anger cease, and be appeased upon the wickedness of thy people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou sworest by thy own self, saying: I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven: and this whole land that I have spoken of, I will give to you seed, and you shall possess it for ever. And the Lord was appeased from doing the evil which he had spoken against his people” (Exodus 32: 11-14).

God was “appeased” due to the intercession of Moses who chose to plead for, rather than condemn, the sinners in his flock. In this, he prefigured  the ultimate and infinite intercession of Jesus Christ the High Priest who offered Himself on the cross for sinners. Applying this lesson and example of intercessory and reparative love to modern-day lay leaders, it might be stressed that Jesus did not come to introduce a fashion show and to have medallions hung on His chest as Francis has pointed out to the Knights of Malta when reminding them of their charism of service to the poor.  They and all members of the Body of Christ are to serve in humility and simplicity, to save souls by offering themselves in Christ for them. This is love and reparation.   Reparation is not something intended solely for the priests.  Is not this what Our Lady requested at Fatima – “Communions of Reparation”. Did we somehow forget about reparation, of sacrificial self-giving for love of poor sinners who have no one to pray for them???.

Traditionalists who are big on Fatima should be stressing mercy for poor sinners and laying down their lives to win the grace of conversion for them. But, what we constantly here is an unending refrain about supposed dogmatic abuses and supposed erring formulas of papal consecration for the conversion of Russia, which is essentially none of the laity’s business anyway.  Our Lady asked the pope to conduct the consecration; it is up to the pope to decide how it should be carried out.  If Fatima connotes a battle over the consecration of Russia in your mind, you can be sure that you missed the Message of Fatima: Penance-Penance-Penance in an attitude of reparative love offered to God in union with His Passion in the Sacrifice of the Mass for the conversion of poor sinners and the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary!

What does penance and reparation mean but mercy and love – the mercy and love from which they flow manifest in pastoral care for straying and lost sheep?

Yet,  often instead of pastoral care, instead of mercy, love and compassion bringing life to those in blighted outcast ghettos, on roaring sensual highways, and forgotten lonesome byways, etc, instead of love and mercy manifest in the daily toil of evangelization by means of pastoral care binding up the wounds of the lost and  forgotten, instead of this we often find bloated men and women who want to wear military regalia, don titles of nobility and desirous of preferred seats, men and women who spend great swathes of time talking about trying to make things like they used to be in some romantic and unrealistic nostalgic past, while the wolves pulverize the sheep economically, morally and spiritually and the best bloated nobles can do is offer “philanthropy”.  Pope Francis might be stinging a few consciences, but he is not wrong!

Philanthropy is NOT charity.  Philanthropy condescends, philanthropy is a show; it gives far too little while holding the bulk for itself. Charity, on the other hand, gets out of its royal seat on a daily basis; it embraces both poverty and the poor – it is empathetic and compassionate, not condescending and stooping; charity is humble, it gives in secret (Matt 6:6) and it gives fully of its assets saddened that it cannot give more; charity expects nothing not even an acknowledgement from men:

“A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents. Calling his disciples to himself, he said to them, “Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood” (Mark 12: 42-44).

Charity embraces those who are being served, it lives among them, eats with them, sleeps with them – charity, in short, begins to look and “smell” like the sheep it serves.

This is exactly what Francis is trying to promote. To bring it about, easy-living, worldliness, grandiosity, and vain-glory must be purged. But the enemy of Christ and of His Church is the King of Pride and Vain-glory. He surrounds himself, his followers and numerous others whom he lulls to spiritual sleep, he surrounds them with luxuries and the trappings that come with material abundance, an abundance that feeds pride and kills the soul.

“And calling the multitude together with his disciples, he said to them: If any man will follow me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life, shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel, shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul? (Mark 8: 34-36).

The “Way of the Cross” is antithetical to the “Way of Perdition” most manifest in the spirit of materialism that has deeply infected the Church.

“For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many (Matt 7:13).

Interestingly, in the following line of Matthew’s Gospel, immediately following the one just quoted, Jesus warns His Church that those who are on the Road to Perdition are often deceivers who hide behind a veil of good deeds:

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves.”

Then He further reveals that their spirit can be discerned by their conduct:

“By their fruits you shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, and the evil tree bringeth forth evil fruit.”

That is, the spirit is not discerned by the works they do, but by how they go about doing their works. Fruits are not works per-se, but how works are done, for the fruits are:

“Charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, Mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity. Against such there is no law. And they that are Christ’s, have crucified their flesh, with the vices and concupiscences. (Galatians 5: 22-24).

All the fruits grow out of Charity, which makes souls joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, long-suffering, chaste etc. That is why even small gifts, such as a few coins from a poor woman, can surpass large donations given by a rich man. One is given in love, the other out of necessity, justice, vanity or some associated reason.  God regards the heart more than the gift. Francis, like Christ, is not impressed by regalia, by insignia, or material abundance and worldliness, which are often a cover for corrupt spirits. The Holy Spirit is manifest in love, joy and mercy, in those who have “crucified their flesh”.

But there are those in the Church who identify holiness with “Titles of Nobility”, with medallions and regalia that, although not bad in themselves, easily infect the soul, easily corrupt virtue by the allurement of riches leading to vain-glory and the pride of life that result in dullness and ease that flatten virility and make men useless (Matt 5:13). Francis wants humble and virile men, men full of mercy, compassion love, which is the life of the soul and the light of the world.  He therefore wants worldliness and materialism out of Malta, out of the Vatican, out of diocesan chanceries, institutes of religions life, out of deaneries and parishes; in short, he wants worldliness out of the Church.

He has asked the Knights of Malta to focus less on the outer regalia, less on worldly traditions associated with royalty; he wants them to become truly chivalrous by noble deeds of service out of love for Christ’s wounded Body on earth.  To be militant, spiritually militant, requires much more than the donning of beau monde regalia and sword followed by salutes, hand shakes, and mondaine banquets. To be militant, truly militant, requires disinterested love of neighbor, to be ready to die to self out of love for the salvation of souls and the temporal needs of others esp. those of poor sinners.  This is radical, the radical stuff of authentic Christian militancy.

Apparently the Island of Malta has been under severe material attack and has subcomb in many ways to the materialism that is infecting its prelates and noble men. The fact that it is not just lay leaders but also the Maltese bishops who are also having a bout with the Vatican is further indication of the serious problems festering on the stalwart island.

The Maltese bishops’ “Criteria for the Application of Chapter of Amoris Laetitia” has been referred to as “disastrous“.  They indicate, against the express critique of Cardinal Mueller (who will now have to work on correcting the egregious error promulgated by the Maltese Bishops), that it might prove to be “humanly impossible” for some civilly remarried couples to live chastely; nonetheless, a Catholic couple living in an objectively sinful situation may receive Holy Communion if they “are at peace with God.”

It appears that some of the English Knights of Malta are bordering on elitist traditionalism and judgmentalism, what Francis refers to a Pharisee-ism, while the bishops have seemingly abdicated their prophetic responsibility and are not judging at all – bedlam on both ends of the theological spectrum. This is the problem, a problem that foments subjectivism in the name of a false pastoral theology that leads to excessive tolerance and false charity on one hand (liberalism on the part of the episcopate) and rigorous objectivsm in the name of dogmatic theology and traditionalism leading to judgmentalism (ultra-conservatism on the part of some knights) on the other. There is an apparent and egregious struggle raging on the Island of Malta, a struggle between liberal and conservative knights and between conservative knights and liberal bishops of the State – the perfect dialectical recipe long used by secret societies to hatch discontent, division, and then subversion of both Church and State thereby compromising the works of love carried out by the authentic sons of the Church.

Focusing on the Knights, Francis is concerned that they engage in charitable work, charity the gives up its comforts to assist the uncomfortable, charity that “comforts the afflicted but afflicts the comforted“.

Thus according to Austen Ivereigh wring for CRUX

“The president of the order’s German Association, Erich Lobkowicz, has described the struggle as “a battle between all that Pope Francis stands for and a tiny clique of ultraconservative frilly old diehards in the Church – diehards that have missed the train in every conceivable respect.”

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“The reformers want to focus on the Order’s humanitarian work among the poor, downplay the ceremonial pomp, and align the order more with Francis’s vision of an evangelizing, missionary Church.”

This is how we are to understand the stance Pope Francis has taken with the Knights of Malta. The Church is not a Puritan society of the elect; the Church is the suffering Body of Christ full of sinners until the eschatological harvest (Matt 13:36-43).

Without love no one can enter the Kingdom of God, yet there are a whole host of Catholics who continue to insist that it is wisdom that is the summa bonum (the greatest good). This is an error innocently advanced by Aristotle, the pagan philosopher who with the unaided-intellect examined the human soul and concluded that wisdom is the greatest human good. Near the end of his “Ethics” he moved close to the mystery of unitive love that he called “friendship”. Nonetheless, not having the benefit of sanctifying grace and the mystery of the Cross to contemplate, he  referred to wisdom as the summum bonum, the highest intellectual attainment possible for mortal men. As we know, in the light of the Cross, Aristotle was partially correct (an astounding accomplishment for  a pagan philosopher): Wisdom participates in the greatest good, but by itself is is not the summum bonum, Wisdom consummate in love that unites mankind to God and to each other is the summum bonum, the highest attainment of the rational  spiritual soul aided by supernatural grace- it is love that unites man to God as one body, the Body of Christ – a body composed of sinners whom Christ came to save.

“The two, intellect and will, work together as an integral unity. It is the nature of the mind to know and will to love or to unite that which is known to that by which it is known. The more the known is like the knower, the more the known can be loved because “likeness is the  principle of loving” (Aquinas, Q 27, A 4). Like attracts like (Father and Son – Christ and members of His Body – man and wife) and their union is consummated by way of love, which is the “impulse“ and “movement“ that unites the one who loves to the one who is loved” (Trinitarian Humanism, p 292).

In the end there are faith (theological virtue of wisdom), hope and love, but the greatest of these is love:

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:34–39).

New Era World News

Renewal of the Church

Continued from Part One

Pope Francis has been, and continues to be, adamant about renewal in the Catholic Church. Like his namesake, St Francis of Assisi, the Holy Father is leading a movement for restoration of holiness, of Gospel simplicity, an outpouring of love, mercy, compassion and simplicity. Realizing that the world is afloat in a sea of materialsim, ensconced under a veil of darkness, imprisoned behind a nearly impregnable wall of cunning artifice, realizing that generations have been psychologically and culturally conditioned against logic (Logos) toward aversion for the good, true and beautiful, realizing these things, the Vicar of Christ, moved by the Holy Spirit, is fully aware that this generation cannot be reached by sophisticated and lengthy appeals to reason – the “old evangelization.”

Consequently, there is another Francis that Pope Francis could just as well emphasize, the Counter Reformation Bishop, and Dr. of the Church, St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622). The walls of Geneva, the capitol of Reform Protestantism, the Protestantism that spread to the United Kingdom and to America, these walls were thought to be impregnable, but the saint persisted – not with reasoned arguments, denuciations and calls for divine justice, but with love..

“Francis became bishop of Geneva, where his patience and mildness became proverbial. He often dared to walk the streets of the city where Calvin had his headquarters 50 years earlier. In fact he dialogued with the reformed leader and scholar Theodore Beza. Though …plagued by doubts, his philosophy was “Love will shake the walls of Geneva; by love we must invade it.”

In his own words,

“It is our fault if the name of the Lord is blasphemed among the nations, and of this, God through his prophets bitterly complains. Such are the waters of contradiction, which in my opinion, renews the ardor of heretics. … I beg of you, fellow combatants, to check the flow of this water; let each one of us watch his own source and prevent it reaching the enemy; let the flow of our sinful actions surge back to their origin, and there evaporate in the heat of our Eternal Sun to deprive our enemy, as well as our people, of the spectacle of our scandals. … Breach the walls of Geneva with our ardent prayers and storm the city with mutual charity. Our front lines must wield the weapons of Love” (Oeuvres VII:100,107- 110).

Elsewhere in a similar vein he uttered the simple but profound proverbial wisdom:

“More bees attracted by a (small) teaspoon of honey than by an (entire) barrel of vinegar.”

Saint Francis One venture Francis de Sales joined Saint Jane Frances de Chantal, to found the Visitation Sisters of Holy Mary.

The Visitation Sisters sole aim was:

“…the life of charity exemplified in the Virgin Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth. This new order was uniquely conceived. It was established not on the traditional vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, but always and everywhere on charity: “We have no bond but the bond of love,” Francis wrote in the first Book of Profession. And, rather than focusing on stringent practices of mortification behind the walls of the monastery, as was common in religious orders of the time, these sisters would actually go out into the city, to visit and care for the sick.”

Like Francis de Sales, St. Jane de Chantal and St. Paul, Pope Francis keenly realizes that to be successful ambassadors of Christ modern evangelists must often take one, two, three even many steps backward with the view of winning souls to Christ, they must encounter the world with the “weapon of love” becoming all things to all men and women to win them to Christ.

“For whereas I was free as to all, I made myself the servant of all, that I might gain the more. And I became to the Jews, a Jew, that I might gain the Jews: To them that are under the law, as if I were under the law, (whereas myself was not under the law,) that I might gain them that were under the law. To them that were without the law, as if I were without the law, (whereas I was not without the law of God, but was in the law of Christ,) that I might gain them that were without the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might gain the weak. I became all things to all men, that I might save all. And I do all things for the gospel’s sake: that I may be made partaker thereof” (1 Corinthians 9: 19-22).

In today’s context Paul might have stated to the gay oriented I became as if gay oriented, to the liberal, as if liberal, to the oppressed as if oppressed. I became all things to all men, that I might save all. And I do all things for the gospel’s sake: that I may be made partaker thereof”

This is not condescension but love, not an attitude of judgement, but one of mercy and compassion, the type of thing needed for successful evangelization in a very difficult situation,a situation unlike any ever seen before, a situation where the intellect has been progressively dimmed until banished and replaced by systematic conditioning via an intrusive and unprecedented communications media in conjunction with psychological manipulation hinted at by Vladimir Lenin when he told Ivan Pavlov, the Father of Classical Conditioning, that he had “saved the revolution.” What Pavlov discovered about the conditioning of animals could be applied to human beings and to entire societies in the name of the “Revolution” – this is one of the primary reasons Lenin was so interested in the “Rural Electrification Campaign” – to bring mass media into the homes of Christian peasants.

Thus, according to Lenin:

“Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country….Electrification which will provide a link between town and country, will put an end to the division between town and country, will make it possible to raise the level of culture in the countryside and to overcome, even in the most remote corners of land, backwardness, ignorance, poverty, disease, and barbarism” (Lenin “Collected Works”, vol. 30, page 335).

If the human intellect could be reduced to mere memory and imagination, sentient not rational powers of the human soul, and if freedom and toleration could open the doors to what was once forbidden until it became common place, if knowledge of alpha and beta brain tempos, of sleep states, dream patterns and hypnotic rhythms induced with light and sound waves, if images and ideas could be subtly conveyed with motion pictures paired with the proper light and sound patterns, associations could placed in the recesses of the human mind, it could by turned away from truth and toward error until light is seen as darkness and darkness as light. If all this could be done, the mind and emotions could be manipulated, reason dimmed and intellectual appeals made virtually meaningless in a culture turned against man, something John Paul II identified as the fundamental problem of the modern world:

“The evil of our times consists in the first place in a kind of degradation, indeed in a pulverization, of the fundamental uniqueness of each human person…. To this disintegration planned at times by atheistic ideologies we must oppose, rather than sterile polemics, a kind of “recapitulation” of the inviolable mystery of the person.”

The attack on the inviolable mystery on he human person is an attack on the Trinitarian mystery of man made in the image of God. Man has a mind capable of acquiring wisdom by rational acts on the intellect followed by a unique ability to love – to know and to love.  Wisdom and love the mystery of the Trintarian dimensions of human existence rooted in the rational soul is being decimated, “pulverized” not only by false ideologies but a systematic attack on the human mind. There has been nothing like this in the annals of recorded history, not even Rome in all its decadence was home to anything like this.

Understanding the unique cultural mileau in which the Church must do its work of evangelization in the modern world helps make sense of the pastoral approach conveyed by Vatican Council II. It helps to recall how the Church handled evangelization in the dark days of the Roman Empire.  In those days, it was quiet witness, the living of good lives characterized by moral and theological virtue, mercy, long-suffering, obedience to lawful authority and patience with sin which was enculturated and widely accepted as normal. For evidence, of the Church’s modis operandi in this environment it is a simple matter of turning to the Epistles and the Books of Acts.

In Acts we find the the Apostles gathered in Jerusalem discussing how best to deal with evangelization in the context of pagan culture vis a vis the more advanced Judaic culture in which the Apostles had been raised.  Though raised in  strictly religious environment, they had the percipience to recognize what the were dealing with, and the prudence to relax their rigor in order to win souls to Christ:

“So that the rest of humanity may seek out the Lord, even all the Gentiles on whom my name is invoked.Thus says the Lord who accomplishes these things, known from of old.’ It is my judgment, therefore, that we ought to stop troubling the Gentiles who turn to God, but tell them by letter to avoid pollution from idols, unlawful marriage, the meat of strangled animals, and blood (Acts 15: 17-20).

Of all the 613 Mitzvah of the Traditional Jewish Law only four were applied. Only four were applied because of the effete nature of Roman culture at this time.  Saint John Bosco understood the concept well:

“The perfect is often times enemy of the good.”

To much too soon, too heavy of a load on weak shoulders can easily break them down and then they will loose heart, rebel and perhaps walk away.  As Pope Francis states, in such a situation small steps, what he refers to as “gradualism” must be taken.  In a society infected with tolerance and excessive false ideas about freedom it takes time to desensitize, time to earn trust and to build a relationship on which truths of the faith can be built one by one slowly. The idea is so far diffused that it is found even in proverbial folk wisdom:

“It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

What some traditionalists are crying for, the rigor they want to impose upon themselves to attain spiritual perfection is one thing, a very good thing, but to impose it on others who are no where ready is another thing,  a very foolish and dangerous thing. That is why Church discipline has become “minimalist” in the modern context.  It is not minimalist for everyone, anyone can walk the road of perfection and embrace the evangelical councils of poverty, chastity and obedience.  These are NOT COMMANDS or MITZVAHS, necessary for everyone, like the precepts or MITZVAHS imposed upon the pagan converts to Christianity, poverty, chastity and obedience are COUNCILS, which means they are voluntary. We are not living in a Christian culture; we are living in a pagan culture acerbated by advanced technology that is being used, willy nilly, to condition people – it is a very difficult state, one that requires patience and mercy.  Too much rigor will break the camel’s back; we must learn to be satisfied with the good before we can expect the perfect – gradualism!

Again, this idea surfaces in the Rule of Saint Augustine, it surfaces among men who had decided to seek perfection – even there the idea is still valid:  some are not ready to embrace the rigors of the human ascent to Golgatha. In Augustine’s memoirs we find an account of some monks complaining that others were eating and sleeping too much, lax at work, etc.  The august saint handled this challenge by counseling these brothers to thank God for their strength and ability to embrace a more prayerful and rigorous lifestyle; he counseled them to be merciful toward the others who were still weak,to pray for them and encourage them along the way rather than condemn and scorn them – a very timely lesson indeed! This is a lesson brought to Fatima by the Mother of God who conveyed Her desire for reparation prayer and sacrifice, that is prayer and sacrifice made out of love for others who are too weak or lost to do it for themselves. Denying oneself out of love for others is antithetical to condemnation and justice.

No, reparation is born out of love and mercy, which is the very message Pope Francis is trying to get through our hardened hearts and obdurate cerebra.

Pope Francis knows very well what a sin is. In a flight press conference from Azerbaijan to Rome he stated response to questions about Amoris Laetitia he stated:

“Sin is sin.”

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“Tendencies or hormonal imbalances create many problems and we have to take care not to say: “It doesn’t make any difference, let’s live it up” No, not at all.”

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“But for every case welcome it, accompany it, look into it, discern and integrate it. This is what Jesus would do today.”g

In other words, sin must be encountered with discernment, of how best to handle the situation each unique context.

The Pope Continues:

“Please, do NOT say: “The Pope blesses transsexuals!” Please! Because I can already see the newspaper headlines… No, no. Are there any doubts about what I said? I WANT TO BE CLEAR. IT IS A MORAL PROBLEM. It is a problem.”

What Pope Francis wants is not the excusing of sin but encounter with sinners, openness, dialogue, in short a merciful relationship that opens a person to receive “prevenient grace” that step by step leads to healing and eventually, if possible, to the sacraments. A too quick judgment, a simple yes or no is not relational and will not do much for healing. Pastors have to go out of their way to encounter their sheep, esp the wayward ones:

“If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them should go astray: doth he not leave the ninety-nine in the mountains, and go to seek that which is gone astray? And if it so be that he find it: Amen I say to you, he rejoiceth more for that, than for the ninety-nine that went not astray” (Matt 18:12).

Pope Francis, like Francis de Sales, John Bosco and St. Paul understood the context in which they were preaching the good news, understood the people they were shepherding because they took time to know them rather than simply condemning them.  In a cultural context in which a propaganda campaign has become institutionalized, it is clear, people acculturated to this reality cannot be encountered by mere intellect alone – more is needed. Much more is needed in the 21st century than the 16th.  In the 21st the propaganda campaign is in the very air that has become a global pestilence daily disseminated by the global media, the  near-monopoly of public schools and universities where the infection has become so great as to constitute an unprecedented cultural, moral and spiritual epidemic.  Professors who preach tolerance, acceptance, and anti-bigotry are excused by unthinking students who are unable to see past the hypocrisy coming forth from the mouth and manifest in the actions of a new generation of sociology and liberal arts professors who teach tolerance but do not practice it. They are like the Pharisees excoriated by Jesus

“All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do ye not; for they say, and do not….Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you go round about the sea and the land to make one proselyte; and when he is made, you make him the child of hell twofold more than yourselves….Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you are like to whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men’s bones, and of all filthiness. So you also outwardly indeed appear to men just; but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.” (Matt 23:3-28).

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https://youtu.be/fbOx_aSgjg0

“I am a Professor: “Fuck YOU”  “Fuck that shit”  “You should kick the ass of  Neonazis.”

End of Part Two – Go to Part Three (available 2/8/2017)