World Youth Day - Progressive Indoctrination?

World Youth Day 2023 is slated to be held in Lisbon Portugal from Aug 1 to Aug 6.  I have written a bit about them in the past.  It seems that when the first ones happened, they were relatively decent, but then started degrading into something decidedly less holy and wholesome with the:

• Rock-concert groupie atmosphere
• Holy Communion being distributed in manners that can only be called sacrilegious (use of plastic cups, passing the Hosts around like they were snacks, etc)
• Over-emphasis on feelings and emotions rather than reverence and worship

Some of the façade started to wear off when we saw some rather strange logos for these events and heard of "themes" being "environment", "immigration" and other progressive themes.  Check out this anthology of my previous posts for more detail.

LifeSite News brings us news of more pronounced concerns regarding the 2023 affair.  See here and here.  Right off the bat, I highly commend these parents in Poland for being vigilant about the influences to which their teen-aged children could be exposed.  

The parents learned that the UN's "Sustainable Development Goals" were considered to be "guiding elements" by the WYD organizers.  Moreover, those organizers touted the Global Tree Initiative.  Right on their web page we see the shout-out to the Dalai Lama.  This is nothing more than religious pluralism.

These parents are correct in their less-than-favorable assessment of World Youth Day.  I'd suggest that all parents keep their youngsters away from that progressive indoctrination camp.  May I suggest a more spiritually uplifting alternative that holds true appeal to young people?  The Traditional Latin Mass!  There they can be fed and formed in the Faith of Saints and truly worship and encounter Jesus Christ.

A Monstrous Agenda Comes Into Focus

Today Michael Hichborn of Lepanto Institute outlined how Pope Francis is promoting goals espoused by communists.  Hichborn focuses much on the so-called "sustainable development goals".  I have published similar things on my blog, noting how the pope, in various documents, actually calls for one-world government and population control; the latter is code-talk for contraception and abortion.

Well, in order to advance a socialistic one-world government where the government is seen as the master that meets all needs, one must try to usurp the One True God and His Church.  That is done effectively by undermining her teachings and traditions.  We see today that the pope is taking pot-shots at priestly celibacy and tinkering with the order of Mass.  We've seen how Amoris Laetitia  insinuates the idea that adulterers can receive Holy Communion. 

Of course, at the beginning of his papacy we saw his disregard for ceremonial traditions such as the papal slippers, the apartments, etc.  Ladies and gentlemen, while these things seem minor, they are traditions that link the current occupant of Peter's chair to a legacy and responsibility that far transcends what might be his own preferences.  Pope Francis thumbed his nose at these.  Now we see that these so-called minor snubs were only precursors to much more dangerous problems.

I hope that by now, most thinking people have their eyes wide open.  Let us pray and be prepared to speak out.

Taking The Mantle Of Church Militant

Faithful Catholics are the Church Militant.  That sounds like a rather simplistic, trite statement, doesn't it?  Well, perhaps that term "church militant" may take on more significance for us.  For several years now, we've been watching this papacy unfold into something that threatens the integrity of Holy Mother Church.  So far much of the mischief has been confined to the Vatican, but the spiritual poison is working its way into the souls of the Catholics in the pews.  Many of us have been offering prayers and intercessions for the Church, but we are also called to act.  The phrase in Latin is "ora et labora".  Most of us are down with the "ora" part, but some of us get downright squeamish when it comes to the "labora" part.  We're comfortable praying within the confines of our churches, homes and small gatherings of like-minded Catholics, but balk at the thought of stepping out of our comfort zones into the public arena where we might well face forces hostile to us.  But that is precisely what we must be prepared to do.

Two days ago, Lianne Lawrence of LifeSiteNews reported on Pope Francis' growing alliance with pro-death elements of the United Nations.  The latest sign of this alliance is the Vatican's support of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.  I'm not going to rehash all the horrors behind this alliance as the LSN piece does an admirable job of that.  It links to an analysis done by Voice of the Family.  Therein we see the role that Amoris Laetitia plays in facilitating the SDGs.  The analysis ends by saying that "Catholics must resist in the manner most appropriate for their position with the Church, this alliance".  Most people reading this blog are lay, as am I.  Our "position" is much more far-reaching than the "pray, pay and obey" motto that informally defined the role of the laity in the Church.

Phil Lawler of Catholic Culture said something similar.  In the early days of this papacy, Lawler had done his level best to put the performance of Pope Francis in the most favorable light possible.  However he seems to realize that despite all the lipstick one might put on a pig, the pig is a pig.  While acknowledging that Pope Francis is indeed the pontiff, he then asks, "In a large family, how should a son behave when he realizes that his father’s pathological behavior threatens the welfare of the whole household? He should certainly continue to show respect for his father, but he cannot indefinitely deny the danger. Eventually, a dysfunctional family needs an intervention."

We the Church Militant are being confronted with the same question.  How will we, the laity, answer it?  I for one do not think that our default stance should be to sit on our hands and suffer the insults in silence.  The insults fall not on us alone, but on our children and those for whom we care and who may well be scandalized by all the progressive skulduggery in the Vatican to the point of losing their souls.

Yesterday I posted on Catholic street activism.  That's part of the answer.  However, what are we going to do when:

• we see flaming gays strutting up the Communion line (as happened at my parish five years ago).  The Rainbow Coalition pulls this stunt quite frequently.
• pro-abortion people (politicians and even abortionists) receiving Holy Communion
• we are confronted with liturgical dancers strutting their stuff, as in the video below
• vile heresies spew forth from the homily pulpit
• we see the nave turn into a social hall before or after Mass
• women get their feet washed during Holy Thursday Mass

The above list is by no means exhaustive.  We must start thinking about these matters and contemplate what we are willing to do.  Several years ago, a group of Catholic gentlemen, distraught by pro-aborts brazenly taking Holy Communion, banded together to take action.  Calling themselves "Ushers of the Eucharist", they would walk up to a candidate for Canon 915 treatment in the communion line and entreat him not to receive.  This caused quite a stir.  For some reason, this effort was short-lived.  As I said, it caused quite a stir, but the Ushers didn't cause scandal.  The scandal laid with those who were complicit in the sin of sacrilege.  Perhaps Catholics in the pew might want to revisit such actions and consider them for their own situations.  As you watch the video below, you might opine that this parish (Sts Simon and Jude in Huntington Beach CA) might benefit from some intervention.  Comments welcome.

Vatican's Flirtation With Climate Change Leads To More Squalid Associations

Almost two months ago, I wrote of "the smoke of Satan" infiltrating the Catholic Church.  As you read the first post in that anthology, you'll notice that there are a number of avenues by which progressivism and by extension, Satan, is insinuating his anti-God agenda into the minds of Catholic leaders; I regret to say that evidence indicates that some of his nefarious ideas are seemingly being entertained by the pope.  Obviously with the Obergefell v Hodges ruling, our attention has been focused on the second bullet point.  However much has been happening with regards to the first and fourth points.

Again we owe much gratitude to the Lepanto Institute for smoking out some "smoke of Satan".  They discovered that within days of the issuance of Laudato Si, Archbishop Bernardito Auza, Aposotoic Nuncio to the UN, gave formal approval to the "Sustainable Development" goals of the United Nations.  The official Vatican statement, made on behalf of Pope Francis, stated, "We support the verbatim inclusion of the sustainable development goals and targets as in the Report of the OWG (Open Working Group)."  We all know what that term "verbatim" means in this context; the Vatican has put its stamp of approval to all the sustainable development goals; that includes "sexual and reproductive rights".  Of course that means contraception, sterilization and abortion.

Read the Lepanto article for more detail.  I do have one minor disagreement with Lepanto.  Towards the end, they opine that the archbishop and the pope don't understand the ramifications of the sustainable development goals.  I believe the only way that could possibly be true if both the pope and this archbishop were absolutely clueless dunderheads.  Can we believe that without being simpletons ourselves?  Of course not: not when "sustainable development" and various synonyms are splattered all throughout Laudato Si itself.

But there is evidence to make clear that the Vatican, all the way to the pope, understand very well what is entailed by the phrase "sustainable development".  A key component of that evidence is the plethora of progressives and anti-life personalities who, at the behest of the Vatican, are providing input to the "climate change" initiatives of the Vatican: Ban Ki-Moon, Jeffrey Sachs, Hans Schnellnhuber.  It seems that this evidence is growing before our very eyes.

Word now comes to us via Catholic News Agency that yet another such individual will be working with Cardinal Turkson.  She is Naomi Klein and she describes herself as a "secular Jewish feminist".  She states that she was "surprised" to be invited to speak at a Vatican environmental summit.  Well, many of us share her surprise, albeit for different reasons.  She clearly has Marxist leanings (like so many in the Vatican these days) and has gone so far as to support the Occupy movement.

We clearly are getting an unambiguous picture of the attitudes of many in the Vatican when it comes to population control.  Whether they intend it or not, they are lending credibility to baby murder.

Pontifical Academy of Sciences Shills For Satanic Population Control

Two days ago I commented on how the Vatican - right up to the top! - made utter fools of themselves by hosting the progressive gab-fest entitled "Protect the Earth, Dignify Humanity: The Moral Dimensions of Climate Change and Sustainable Development".  Now that it's over (for the time being) we can read its report here.  It is entitled "Climate Change and The Common Good: A Statement Of The Problem And The Demand For Transformative Solutions".   I'll note a few things below:

• William Briggs offers commentary at Crisis Magazine.  It's well worth a read.
• This report was penned before the meeting on Tuesday.  Yes, before!  Does that have a familiar ring to it?  Think back about 5-6 months!  Yes!  The uber-heretical interim report of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family was likewise written beforehand, with only limited input.
• One of the select few who had input into this pig-slop of a report was none other than Jeffrey Sachs; see the post from two days ago.
• The whole thing reads like a "doom and gloom if we don't bow before the idol of global warming" tome.  I'm surprised Al Gore didn't have a hand in writing this nonsense!

I'll now pull a quote from page 8 of the report (page 9 of the pdf) so you can understand just how inimical this thing is.  It isn't just harmless nonsense; it's really quite dangerous.  To wit:

"Over the 10,000 years that humans have depended on agriculture, it has been spread over a third of the earth’s land surface, doubtless causing the extinction of at least hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of species of organisms in the process. During the last two centuries, however, our numbers have grown at an unprecedented rate from one billion to more than seven billion people, with expectations for ever-increasing consumption rising even faster than the populations themselves. Although we are an inseparable part of the living world, entirely dependent on it for every aspect of our lives, we are destroying it with blinding speed through habitat destruction, global climate change, moving invasive species (including pests and parasites) rapidly throughout the world, and harvesting many kinds of wild plants and animals unsustainably. Considering the fact that we have found and named only a small proportion of the species of organisms that occur on earth, we will never even be directly aware of most of those that we drive and have driven to extinction. Our activities constitute a direct rejection of the Biblical injunction to care for the world by good stewardship: they not only deny benefits that we enjoy now to future generations but also seriously threaten global sustainability. The destruction of so many of what are, as far as we know, our only living companions in the universe, is clearly, as Harvard Professor E.O. Wilson has put it, the sin for which our descendants will be least likely to forgive us, as it is completely irreversible. To save as much of the sustainable fabric of the world as possible, we need to take many steps, among them reaching a level and sustainable population; just consumption rates throughout the world..."

Did you catch that?  They (probably Sachs) were quite sly in insinuating the concept of population control in there.  That's the whole satanic idea!  And yes, I do intend that adjective to be taken literally!  Think of it!  Just who/what do they think is qualified to decide what constitutes a "level and sustainable population"?  A one-world government?  How do they intend to achieve this arbitrary level?  Contraception and abortion, of course!  And what, pray tell, will they do with those unruly types who will not swallow the progressive schtick?  Just where is this leading us?  If you haven't already, please go to my post two days ago and review the Voris clip; we need to have our eyes wide open.

On the bottom of that page and going onto the next page, we see an outright endorsement of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.  The Voice of the Family yesterday issued a statement detailing why these SDG's - and this statement by the PAS - are a direct threat to unborn children.  This is no surprise coming from the UN (also known as Useless Nincompoops) but now we have thrust in our faces the horrible spectacle of the Vatican striking hands with the UN in this murderous venture.

As we await, with understandable concern, the pope's statement on the environment, we must recall that he can pronounce infallibly only on matters of faith and morals - and even then under the most specific of circumstances.  If there are errors therein, we are not only free to respectfully object to them but we are duty-bound to so so.