Posted on 01/08/2011 4:15:03 PM PST by Natural Law
What are we to make of the anti-Catholics?
What are we to make of the anti-Catholics? How can we explain the assault on the Church by those who profess in their words the same mission of the Church, the Salvation of mankind, but through their deeds deny it? Are the fabrications, falsehoods, and lies about the supporting beliefs of the Church, about the lives of its saints and clergy, about the verifiable facts of history justified because of doctrinal disagreements? Does any of this matter in the face of the greater assault on Christ and his flock? It defies rational thinking.
In the face of a Muslim onslaught that is bombing Christmas Masses, executing Christians for a nonexistent heresy and apostasy, and a jihad against Christians of all stripes on a massive scale we get shrill unwarranted criticism of how Catholics peaceably worship the One true God. Is smells and bells really a greater sin than sawing off heads in the name of the prophet?
In the face of a secular socialist assault that is killing babies at a pace that outpaces the crimes of Hitler, Stalin and Mao combined there are degrading insults and accusations over the difference between worship and veneration. Corrections and explanations are ignored and the apologists are pilloried. For what purpose?
In the face of the threat of Communist China that suppresses worship of all kinds and enforces forced abortions we get feeble ad naseum criticism of the Real Presence in spite of the acceptance by Catholics, both Eastern and Latin Rite, Lutherans, Anglicans, and Methodists. All the while the anti-Catholics continue the charade of Christian unity, minus those damned Catholics of course.
So in the face of the advance of worldwide evil some would have us believe that it is the Catholic Church should be destroyed when the destruction of the Church would serve to provide aid and comfort to that evil. Why? Qui Bono, for whom the benefit?
That the Church is and has always been a target of evil cannot be denied. Neither can it be denied that the Church has never been harmed or compromised by that evil. Satan can only work in this world through the actions of his willing accomplices. Those accomplices have long ago recognized that the greatest harm can be done from within the Church and history has produced numerous examples of sinners wearing the collars of priests. Regardless of the contentions of the anti-Catholics that does not negate the good that the Church has done not diminish the saints who have served God through her. Nor does it excuse those who blame one of the victims of the evil doers, the Church itself.
Perhaps those who irrationally assault the Church daily, those who spend inordinate hours researching the internet looking for dirt, those who accept any lie or indiscretion on nothing more than its bias against the Church are consciously or unconsciously in league with evil. Lex Parsimoniae, the principle which generally recommends accepting the answer that requires the fewest assumptions, when the potential answers are equal in all other respects. Is there a simpler answer?
Enough of this folly. I am through with it.
Very well written. Thanks for expressing our views. And I will add some scripture from the First Letter of St. John from this last week. It quite forcefully categorizes those who deny the Lord and his Church.
**This Romish Mary-worshipping dogma-following mackerel snapping papist**
Do you realize how offensive these words are?
**This Romish Mary-worshipping dogma-following mackerel snapping papist**
What happened to the old phrase “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”
??
**Some hate the Church more than they love the Lord.**
Oh, how true that simple statement is.
We can make a hat or a broach or a pterodactyl
Well, they aren’t so offensive when one of us uses them as a joke. ;-D
January 3, 2011
Beloved:
We receive from him whatever we ask,
because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.
And his commandment is this:
we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ,
and love one another just as he commanded us.
Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them,
and the way we know that he remains in us
is from the Spirit whom he gave us.
Beloved, do not trust every spirit
but test the spirits to see whether they belong to God,
because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
This is how you can know the Spirit of God:
every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ come in the flesh
belongs to God,
and every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus
does not belong to God.
This is the spirit of the antichrist
who, as you heard, is to come,
but in fact is already in the world.
You belong to God, children, and you have conquered them,
for the one who is in you
is greater than the one who is in the world.
They belong to the world;
accordingly, their teaching belongs to the world,
and the world listens to them.
We belong to God, and anyone who knows God listens to us,
while anyone who does not belong to God refuses to hear us.
This is how we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of deceit.
Kind of like, Mad Dawg is a “feelthy papist.” I myself am Nurse Rachett of the White Hanky Brigade.
January 4, 2011
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.
In this way the love of God was revealed to us:
God sent his only-begotten Son into the world
so that we might have life through him.
In this is love:
not that we have loved God, but that he loved us
and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.
January 5, 2011
Beloved, if God so loved us,
we also must love one another.
No one has ever seen God.
Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us,
and his love is brought to perfection in us.
This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us,
that he has given us of his Spirit.
Moreover, we have seen and testify
that the Father sent his Son as savior of the world.
Whoever acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God,
God remains in him and he in God.
We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.
God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him.
In this is love brought to perfection among us,
that we have confidence on the day of judgment
because as he is, so are we in this world.
There is no fear in love,
but perfect love drives out fear
because fear has to do with punishment,
and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love.
January 6, 2011
Reading 1
Beloved, we love God because
he first loved us.
If anyone says, “I love God,”
but hates his brother, he is a liar;
for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen
cannot love God whom he has not seen.
This is the commandment we have from him:
Whoever loves God must also love his brother.
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is begotten by God,
and everyone who loves the Father
loves also the one begotten by him.
In this way we know that we love the children of God
when we love God and obey his commandments.
For the love of God is this,
that we keep his commandments.
And his commandments are not burdensome,
for whoever is begotten by God conquers the world.
And the victory that conquers the world is our faith.
January 7, 2011
Reading 1
Beloved:
Who indeed is the victor over the world
but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
This is the one who came through water and Blood, Jesus Christ,
not by water alone, but by water and Blood.
The Spirit is the one who testifies,
and the Spirit is truth.
So there are three who testify,
the Spirit, the water, and the Blood,
and the three are of one accord.
If we accept human testimony,
the testimony of God is surely greater.
Now the testimony of God is this,
that he has testified on behalf of his Son.
Whoever believes in the Son of God
has this testimony within himself.
Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar
by not believing the testimony God has given about his Son.
And this is the testimony:
God gave us eternal life,
and this life is in his Son.
Whoever possesses the Son has life;
whoever does not possess the Son of God does not have life.
I write these things to you so that you may know
that you have eternal life,
you who believe in the name of the Son of God.
January 8, 2011
Beloved:
We have this confidence in him
that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
And if we know that he hears us in regard to whatever we ask,
we know that what we have asked him for is ours.
If anyone sees his brother sinning, if the sin is not deadly,
he should pray to God and he will give him life.
This is only for those whose sin is not deadly.
There is such a thing as deadly sin,
about which I do not say that you should pray.
All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that is not deadly.
We know that anyone begotten by God does not sin;
but the one begotten by God he protects,
and the Evil One cannot touch him.
We know that we belong to God,
and the whole world is under the power of the Evil One.
We also know that the Son of God has come
and has given us discernment to know the one who is true.
And we are in the one who is true,
in his Son Jesus Christ.
He is the true God and eternal life.
Children, be on your guard against idols.
These Readings from St. John spoke to me all week about anti-Catholicism.
Amazing Scriptures! John is very blunt here....probably written later in his life!
1)"Creation," properly defined, has nothing to do with natural laws, natural processes, or how a theoretically tiny speck exploded to the size of the universe today. None of this is creation. Creation refers to ex-nihilation--the coming into being of reality (including scientific laws and processes) from absolute nothingness. As such, it is inherently inexplicable by scientific, natural means. Where did anyone ever get the idea that the explosion of a speck to an immense size had anything whatsoever to do with "creation???"
2)Everything recorded in the first eleven chapters of Genesis is just as plausible as any and all other events recorded in either the Hebrew Bible or the "new testament." To dismiss the creation of the first man as an adult directly by G-d by appealing to the birth process we observe today while insisting that J*sus' birth was unique and miraculous in contravention of those same observable laws is the height of hypocrisy, inconsistency, and irrationality. The only excuse for this war against the first eleven chapters of Genesis by people who profess to believe in every miracle or alleged miracle that has occurred since that time is sheer unadulterated sociological bigotry: "we don't believe that because that's what that white trash in the trailer parks believe."
Just as a general observation, I've always tried to avoid equating inconsistency and hypocrisy. it seems one can be inconsistent and neither intend nor even know it, while hypocrisy seems to me to involve more of a conscious act of will.
Thanks for a mild and thoughtful post.
“What are we to make of the anti-Catholics?”
A bonfire?
Thank you. I have always been drawn to the Gospels of John and Peter, and to a lesser degree the accounts of St. Thomas. They were bold enough to call out their peers and remind them that it was Jesus and not themselves that mattered.
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