Saturday, November 26, 2011

THE DIVINE INTERVENTION - Part III


1. We have seen Divine Providence providing man everything he needs for the salvation of his soul. That has been in place from the beginning of the world and will be up to the end. We have seen the damage God had allowed in His Church from the 8th century, through the 10th century and up to the present. We see today the state of the Church as if she is nowhere to be found. Let us now see how God intervened in these our days.

2. For the last 600 years most Catholic priests had both erroneous and true Catholic doctrines in their minds. This cannot foster a true act of Faith that will enable them to enter the Church and live a life of Faith, Hope and Charity. Priests should recognize error and separate it from the truth. After 600 years we just cannot imagine how this admixture of error and truth had affected the spiritual state of the Church. As Pope Benedict suspects the Church had been reduced to a 'creative minority,' words he himself use.

3. This erroneous state of mind was first isolated, analyzed and recognized by an international theological commission made up of expert theologians to advice the Fathers of Vatican II. This commission analyzed many truths being taught in the Catholic Church and had begun announcing some of their findings. The first was a clarification on the Limbo of unbaptized children. But a most significant announcement was made by then Cardinal Ratzinger in 1985 in a book entitled "Ratzinger Report" that the Church was undergoing a crisis of Faith. The implication of the statement is that few were entering the Catholic Church due to a problem in making an act of Faith. Then he described the problem of the priests (and bishops, I suppose) is that they were restless. The statement implies that most priest had the vice of restlessness.

There are eight vices and restlessness is the seventh. St. John Cassian states that if one has restlessness that means he has all the vices. He would be without the Theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity and, therefore, would be outside the Church. Tormented by this heresy for the last 600 years, most priests would, probably be outside the Church!

4. In 1993, Pope John Paul II with the obvious cooperation of Cardinal Ratzinger issued "Veritatis Splendor" where they laid down what could have happened from the year 1000 up to the present showing how the heresy corrupted the curriculum in seminaries and stated that the doctrines taught in seminaries and passed on to the lay faithful had been compromised. When an error enters a curriculum, the error gets worst as time goes. He who does not progress deteriorates, St. Thomas reminds us. It is unimaginable how bad an error can corrupt a church for 600 years.

5. 'Veritatis Splendor' explains how the Church had been invaded by Satan and how the Church today is trying to expel this evil spirit by the actions of the Church, herself.

6. After showing what had happened for the last 600 years in the Church in the 'Ratzinger Report', in 2000, Cardinal Ratzinger addressed a conference of Catechist and showed the defect in teaching Catechism in his 'New Evangelization.' He said, the defect was in the contents and in the method of teaching. That is like saying everything taught was wrong.

7. When Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope, like all Popes, he gave a review of the teachings of the Catholic Church in his first three encyclical on Faith, Hope and Charity. This should have given all priests the hint that they should check on their personal Faith, Hope and Charity. But this did not happen. So the Pope called for the Year of St. Paul, which was a further reminder to all to check on their Faith. The response was weak. So the Pope called on the Year of the Priest mildly suggesting to all priest to return to the seminary and review their theology, which no one seems to have done. Then from 2005 - 2011 the Holy Father issued the 'Instrumentum Laboris' where he advised all Bishops to sit down with their priest and give some pastoral suggestions based on 'Veritatis Splendor.' How many bishops responded is unknown but among my friend bishops no one responded to the 'instrumentum.' This was the Pope's way of trying to find evidences on the spiritual state of the Church. And almost as a last resort the Holy Father announced next year,2012 as the Year of Faith.

8. The Church seems to be exerting great efforts for man to make an act of Faith. Repentance comes before Faith. And we have seen in Fatima that the world seems unable even to repent.

Faith is what brings us into the Catholic Church. It is what saves us. It is the gift that enable us to know and understand the teachings of the Catholic Church. It is the gift that enables us to know the way to God and our everlasting home. Is the Church saying nobody is inside the Church? That would be the blunt insinuation.

9. And now, the words 'the New Evangelization' is in everyone's lips. But obviously nobody seems to know what is this. All we hear in conventions is the old defective evangelization already noted by the Pope.

10. To strengthen his effort in confirming his flock's faith, Pope Benedict wrote his 'compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church' because the just finished Catechism of the Catholic Church is filled with the stench of this hydra that had corrupted the Church for the last 600 years. Yes why would the Pope write his own catechism when the New Catechism of the Catholic Church had just been distributed. And now we have the YOUCAT. Does this still have the defective content and method of teaching already mentioned by the Pope? Only those who have mastered 'Veritatis Splendor' can answer that because that document contains truths in its purity and errors that had plaqued Holy Mother the Church.

11. The Holy Father had already mentioned what went wrong with the Church for the last 600 years and what are the right teachings of Christ in both 'Veritatis Splendor' and 'Instrumentum Laboris.' The Holy Father had many times reminded us that the 'New Evangelization' is a call for priest and for all of us to be perfect as the heavenly Father is perfect because that is the image of the Catholic Church as the boat of the apostles in the Sea of Tiberias approached the shore where Christ was waiting that contained only seven disciples with their catch of 153 large fishes. Reading St. Thomas' commentary on this last chapter of John' Gospel.......this is the goal of the 'New Evangelization.'

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

THE FAITHFUL GOD - Part I


1. Everything in Catholic History can only be understood if we see things in the back drop of the great battle between good and evil within the soul of men; with God encouraging the good while the devil encouraging the evil. Man with his freedom is the factor who decides who will win. God, of course is unbeatable but having given man total freedom God had leveled the playing field.

2. The more man decides on God's favor, the more powerful he becomes in his fight against the devil until such times when he is able to enter the fort of safety, the Catholic Church, where, unless he becomes extremely careless he is very safe.

3. On the other side, the more he decides in favor of the devil, he deteriorates. But God in His goodness gave man an enormous advantage over the the wiles of the devil. He gave man faculties designed to know and love Him. He has given man Divine Revelation and Tradition; and also the protection of a fort, he Church, wherewith he becomes safe because of the graces, virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit given him. And these advantages accompany man all his life and all through his history.

4. God gave all these advantages gradually at certain times in the history of man. He gave the natural law before the Old Testament; He gave the Ten Commandments during the Old Testament and gave graces, the virtues, the Beatitudes and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament.

5. After the New Testament, when the Master of the House went away for a journey, Satan entered the vineyard and corrupted the servants. Christ Himself, prophesied that He will certainly find many servants wicked.

6. Aside from the above helps, God gave mankind, after Pentecost, the guiding light of the office of the Holy Father and the saints He had raised to aid the Popes in leading mankind to the safe port of His kingdom.

7. All these helps had been present for mankind from the beginning of the world, now and up to the end of the world. God is faithful and these helps will always be there available and no effort on the part of the evil spirits can deny man of these helps. This is the safe way God had given man. The way is surrounded by countless danger but as long as man stays within the way he is safe.

8. But the evil spirits, true to their intelligent nature had devised an0ther parallel road, very similar to the True Way in all natural and physical aspects a perfect duplication. As St. John Chrysostom said, the devil waits for Christ to be born and then devised a false christ, he waits for the 12 apostles and devised 12 fake apostles, he waits for the Christian Church and devised a fake Christian community, he waits for the Pope and devised a fake pope, he waits for the Dogmatic and Moral theology of the Catholic Church and devised his own Dogmatic and Moral theology. The difference is so slight it takes supernatural light of the Theological Virtues to detect it.

9. The devil's parallel road is an exact replica of the True Way ...but it leads to hell.

10. The beginning of Christianity was like daylight for a trip. The way is clear even without sign posts. As Prophesied in Scriptures, and right on schedule, the devil only had to darken the sky with clouds and suddenly the two parallel roads are indistinguishable. How did the devil do that?
He understood the workings of human nature. He knew that man cannot think of two things at the same time specially if one thought is in the worldly level and the other is in the supernatural level. Man cannot think of worldly things and Godly things at the same time. If he thinks of worldly things he cannot think of divine things. And as he thinks of worldly things he becomes more and more incapable of Divine thoughts.

11. So if I were the devil all I have to do is to fill the minds of man with the things of the world. In no time he cannot see the road that leads to God, the parallel road that leads to hell becomes very clear, it even clearly appears as a road that leads to heaven. And the 'Viator' will confidently drive straight to hell believing he is going to heaven. What greater tragedy can happen to a soul? But God is faithful. All the aids He had given mankind is still there and will always be there. Man just have to find these helps. In part II we shall see how the devil darkened the sky. Then we shall see how God acted to save mankind in part III.

THE ACCOMPANYING EVIL - Part II

1. The devil had been destroying the human race since the time of Adam and Eve. In paradise, the devil started with a heresy. It was there that the head of the hydra was first created. It consisted in the heresy of freedom wherein man thought he was free to choose between good and evil, the symbol of the tree that was forbidden. And God reminded them; 'you may not touch it.' Man was not free to choose good from evil. He was in fact forbidden to choose between good and evil and this was the spirituality of the Old Testament. The Old Testament states that we must choose good and avoid evil, it is not that we may choose whatever we want from good and evil and freely choose evil. The New Testament will perfect the spirituality of the Old Testament. We are not free to chose between good and evil. We are obliged to choose good and avoid evil. The New testament tells us it is not enough to chose good and avoid evil, our choice is between what is good and what is best. We must chose not only what is good but what is better and best.

As the history of man proceeded, the devil tried to use other heresies to see to what sin man is attracted to. The devil must have tried thousands of heresies but because he lacks imagination in devising heresies all these errors can really be grouped into 5 to 10 major heresies. Alone, these heresies were easy to overcome but joined together they become a formidable spiritual foe.

2. We are all acquainted with some of these: Arianism, Pelagianism, Nominalism,....to mention a few. Put together they become a hydra with no visible recognizable shape, neither Arianism nor Pelagianism. It becomes a little of everything, a poisonous concoction of a hundred different poison. We cannot know what particular poison it is and so we couldn't know the remedy. We cannot use the medicine used by St. Athanasius against Arianism because it also show signs of Nominalism.

3. This concoction of many heresies attacked the Church between the year 100 to 800. But it was effectively blocked by the Church. It returned around the 1000, Pope Urban with the help of St. Anselm did battle against it but like the hydra, every time a portion of the heresy was cut off, it grew new limbs. It was impossible to kill it completely. And so it continued to torment the Church after Pope Urban and St. Anselm at this era since this 10th century saw a decrease of great Catholic thinkers.

4. This hydra of a monster was so deceitful only Lucifer, himself, could have devised it. Instead of attacking the Church directly, the devil went on guerrilla warfare using germ warfare against the seminaries. These were heretical germs that had mutated into resistant Catholic medications. Essentially this heresy bogged down the Catholic Church into the Old Testament preventing her from crossing from the Old Testament into the realm of the New Testament. It camouflaged the Old Testament spirituality with beautiful New Testament words making it sound like New Testament. It encouraged the New Testament spirituality but stated that this spirituality is only for a few select chosen souls. Note that all the doctrines are right except for the statement that the New Testament, by now described as impossible for most Catholics and is only for a few chosen elite souls. The germ contaminated the whole Church, specially at the level of seminaries. The statement is more than enough to discourage souls from crossing from the Old Testament to the New Testament. This is in effect preventing souls from entering the Catholic Church, preventing souls from having the theological virtues...in short preventing souls from going to heaven. Those bitten by this bug will never know the way to heaven. Martin Luther, Zwingli and Calvin were a few among the terminal cases. The rest of the Catholic priesthood were in different stages of illness. Philosophies like Nazism, democracy, communism would come from this heresy through the philosophy of the enlightenment in France. Every evil today came from this hydra.

At this period it was impossible to find where the Catholic Church was. Seminaries were producing bishops and priest of doubtful orthodoxy. There were so few seminaries that were producing orthodox priest that you could count them, like the seminary of St. Sulpice. The rest were no where in the map of orthodoxy. The few holy priest and thinkers were directly raised by God. They were not products of seminaries.

5. From the 1000 to the 1500 and up to the present, the Church had been undergoing internal spiritual hemorrhage, she was bleeding to death. She looked healthy outside but she was dying inside. The visible Church knew there was something wrong inside so she calls the Council of Trent where all the right doctrinal medicines were prescribed. But the doctors lack the skill to heal. So the post Tridentine resolutions were not wisely implemented. The Moral theology of Trent had this hydra in its womb. So the disease continued. God, as usual raised Popes with the help of God-raised saints like Vincent de Paul and Francis de Sales immediately after Trent, precisely to cure the priesthood of this disease. It only caused a dent. The struggle of the Popes from the 15th century was Herculean. To my memory Pius IX, Pius X indefatigably condemned this heresy. It depleted the strength of Pope Pius the XII that he even thought of retiring as Pope, it disturbed the sleep of John 23 seeing the Church bleeding to death through her five wounds he hurriedly saummoned Vatican II, it opened the eyes of Paul VI that made him warn "Satan had entered the Church." It was a challenged for the present Pope, Benedict XVI who, up to the present , had very visibly combated this hydra but he sadly knows that the medicine is being administered to a dying patient. The response is not encouraging because the disease is in its terminal stage. The Church could only apply cobalt to slow down the deterioration as shown in the dwindling list of saints and great thinkers of the Church, and the dwindling number of priests and nuns. The stench of the disease has begun enveloping the world in the form of the greatest sin, scandal by priests.

6. The virtue of Faith demands that a soul must know the complete doctrine of the Catholic Church in its purity. The doctrines cannot exist with errors. If the soul knows both the error and truths, he should know that the errors are errors and that the truth is the truth. But if the soul knows both the truth and the errors but cannot distinguish the errors from the truth that soul cannot make a true act of Faith and thus suffer its consequence. This is what happened to the souls from the 1000 up to the present year 2011. Most priests and most lay person do not know the spirituality of the New Testament and therefore, cannot enter the Catholic Church, do not have the virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity, thus cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. And the Church is filled with the signs of this sad state of affairs, signs enumerated in both the Dogmatic and Moral theology of the Catholic Church.
God comes back to the rescue. Part III.

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

REGENSBURG


1. The one and only true Church and the one and only true God.
Gilbert Chesterton once wrote that the whole world hates the Catholic Church because she claims that she is the only true Church and her God is the only true God. Yes, that's enough to make the whole world hate her. The trouble is that she can prove it. That will all the more make the whole world rage at her which in fact is now happening. But she has not done anything wrong. Pope Benedict XVI explains this with that old-time classical response: her mere existence is more than ample proof that she is the only true Church and her God is the only true God and all the rest are false. This is why Catholics had been killed just for being Catholics. The proof for this truth is within each man.

2. When God created man He wanted to made sure this man can know Him and love Him. So God implanted into his soul a dormant seed that contains a desire to know and to love Him. The seed is dormant because God wants him to know and love Him with complete freedom. Man's mind and free will must arouse this seed to life and to maturity. Man must have total freedom to make it grow. How can this happen when a man is alone in a dense forest amidst impassable mountains. Can he know that the Catholic Church is the true Church and the Blessed Trinity the true God? Yes!

3. Man has to be a little philosopher. He must use his highest faculty, the intellect, to study that seed to see what it contains. Seeing that it contains the desire to know and love God, the intellect will move and exert effort to, first, know God and afterwards to love God. He cannot love God unless he first knows Him. So he looks around for proofs on the existence of God to be able to know Him. His senses behold nature, the trees in the forest with the surrounding mountains, and his mind concludes that there must be someone who created all this. He continues to use his intellect to find out who could this be. Of course, the first conclusion his mind would make would be that this someone must be wise and good. Judging from what He had created God cannot be a killer. Man's first knowledge would be simple from the first simple proofs he gets from nature. But as he continuous to view nature from the stars to the tiniest human cell these proofs further exhibit the wisdom and goodness of this Someone. While his knowledge grows, his attraction or love for this Someone likewise increases. The free will grows according to the growth of the intellect.

4. A point comes when he begins to think that this Someone who exhibits wisdom must have written something that is easier for man to study to know Him. He tries a few books and sees that most books do not confirm what the little seed tells him. Until one day he finds Scriptures wherein God reveals Himself to man and finds that Scriptures confirms what the little seed in his soul tells him. But his intellect believes not because Scriptures said so but because the little seed of innate desire said so. And this knowledge of who God is will continue to grow as long as the intellect thinks like a man. His knowledge will begin with a knowledge of the god of nature. And if he continues to think he will attain to the knowledge of a supernatural God and even a knowledge of the Blessed Trinity.

5. Even at the beginning of his quest on who is God, hid mind will suspect that this god had instituted a church which he could enter and further learn more about Him. And he will begin to wonder what is His Church. It must be a Church that should correspond to His nature as a wise and good God. It will slowly begin to be clear that only one church reflect the wisdom and goodness of God...the Catholic Church where reason and good works reign supreme.

6. This man alone in a forest in the middle of the many mountains has not attended a seminary, never read a book and never heard a homily. This man would know the true God and the true Church because he just acted according to God's image and likeness, according to the human nature that his creator had given him. And even before he realizes it he has entered God's Church without any human aid. Isn't this what happened to Blessed John Newman. And he was not even alone in a forest amidst mountains. He was in the middle of an environment hostile to the Catholic Church. Yet he discovered the true God and the true Church.

7. Just by acting according to his created human nature using his intellect anyone can reach the knowledge of the true God and the true Church all by himself. God has enabled man to do this by creating him into His image and likeness. Man must only go inside himself to see the image and likeness and he will be beholding the god who created him. So all men can know the true Church, the Catholic Church and the true God, the God of the Catholics even if he were alone in a dense forest in the middle of mountain ranges. And this was the message of Pope Benedict at Regensburg :'If only we use our reason we would all be Catholics. And there will be peace in this world.' Reason was made by God to think of spiritual realities. It becomes dull when used to think of natural realities. Dulled by the countless worldly concerns man had ceased to think.

8. We live in a world where thinking is nearly impossible because of TV, computers, radios, iPods,computer games...........etc...etc stimuli that bombard our senses glutting our minds with useless and forbidden knowledge. Faith is an act of the intellect. Is it any wonder why many do not believe in God? Even if man does not think, his ability to know the true God and the true religion remains within him. And he will suspect that it is always there. No matter how loud he blasphemes the Catholic Church and her God, deep down he knows He is yelling at the true Church and the true God. And this tiny seeds speaks loudest when a soul beholds a monastic community. Pope Benedict reminds us that when we behold a monastic community we see in concrete form the true religion and the true God in their midst. Sadly, however, most monasteries are too lax to project the image of God and of the Church. The ancients, like the Chinese, always looked for a king philosopher. Because this is the man who thinks and whose mind governs his whole personality. Hilaire Belloc however quipped, today we live in a society of beasts in coat and tie.

9. God had given man a mind that made him an image of God. The Holy Father is calling on all of us to use that mind so that we can all remain calm and sane. But nobody is listening because man have ceased to be man.

Without the mind man had ceased to be rational, unable to make an act of faith, unable to love God and neighbor, unable to save his soul.