The pope seems to think it bad to be a "restorationist" when it comes to the Traditional Mass and fidelity to the teachings on faith and morality that the Church has always promulgated. While he bandies that term like an insult, I wear it proudly, as do many of my friends. I also wear with honor the "deplorable" distinction that Hillary Clinton gave to so many good people. Hence I am a "Deplorable Restorationist"!
Archbishop Vigano apparently is quite comfortable with it, as he details in an interview the masonic underpinnings and machinations behind so much of the chaos - spiritual, political, economical - that the world is experiencing. It is all quite by design; frankly, I think that is painfully obvious.
I suggest you read through that interview carefully and then listen to this clip from Raymond Arroyo as he interviews Peter Kwasniewski about some of the pope's questionable words and actions, including his slurs against ornate vestments (calling them "grandma's lace"). Notice how well the pope is following the directives of Klaus Schwab, George Soros and other puppet-masters as he works to undermine the Faith that stands almost like a lone bulwark against this new world order.
To truly be a "restorationist" means to be one who works to restore the world to Christ, to restore fidelity to Christ's teachings, to restore the Christian underpinnings that once graced western civilization. If the pope considers that an insult, that says more about him than us.
My friend and blogging colleague at Les Femmes posted an excellent talk by Dr. Peter Kwasniewski as he gives an overview of the Tridentine Mass and its immense value. We need to rediscover true worship of Jesus Christ. This Mass needs to be made more available. The attempts by the pope and progressive prelates to destroy it are nothing short of demonic. At any rate, this talk is well worth the time it takes to listen to it, and to be passed along.
When I attend Mass on weekdays, the Novus Ordo Masses are the only option available. Such was the case today. The first reading was from 2 Chronicles 24:17-25. I'll cut and paste it from the Douay-Rheims version.
And after the death of Joiada, the princes of Juda went in, and worshipped the king: and he was soothed by their services and hearkened to them. [18] And they forsook the temple of the Lord the God of their fathers, and served groves and idols, and wrath came upon Juda and Jerusalem for this sin. [19] And he sent prophets to them to bring them back to the Lord, and they would not give ear when they testified against them. [20] The spirit of God then came upon Zacharias the son of Joiada the priest, and he stood in the sight of the people, and said to them: Thus saith the Lord God: Why transgress you the commandment of the Lord which will not be for your good, and have forsaken the Lord, to make him forsake you?
[21] And they gathered themselves together against him, and stoned him at the king's commandment in the court of the house of the Lord. [22] And king Joas did not remember the kindness that Joiada his father had done to him, but killed his son. And when he died, he said: The Lord see, and require it. [23] And when a year was come about, the army of Syria came up against him: and they came to Juda and Jerusalem, and killed all the princes of the people, and they sent all the spoils to the king of Damascus. [24] And whereas there came a very small number of the Syrians, the Lord delivered into their hands an infinite multitude, because they had forsaken the Lord the God of their fathers: and on Joas they executed shameful judgments. [25] And departing they left him in diseases: and his servants rose up against him, for revenge of the blood of the son of Joiada the priest, and they slew him in his bed, and he died: and they buried him in the city of David, but not in the sepulchres of the kings.
I think the applicability of this passage to current events is obvious. Moreover, the Gospel was from Matthew 6, part of the Sermon on the Mount. The main thrust of this was Jesus exhorting the people to "seek first the kingdom of God". As a lead-up to that, Jesus remarked how the people worried about their material needs. So what did the priest emphasize today?
He emphasized the worry that many people have. He actually used the phrase "don't stress". I could almost hear Bobby McFerrin's trite little ditty "Don't Worry Be Happy". What an abysmal waste of a teaching moment. The world is literally going to hell in a handbasket, with plenty of souls cascading their way down there now, with so many progressive bishops indifferent to their plight.
To think that Father might have encouraged the congregation to more frequent confession, to the daily Rosary, requests of Our Lady of Fatima, etc. The readings provided the perfect setting for that. Instead, he settled for happy-clappy pap.
If the rampant corruption in Washington DC should have taught us anything, I should have taught us that no longer can we discount the importance of local-level elections. Many of those are occurring this autumn.
In Maryland, all statewide and at least most county-wide seats are open for election, from the governor down to the city council people. Of course all seats of Congress are being voted upon, and Chris Van Hollen is up for re-election, or hopefully a defeat this November. Moreover, all seats in the various boards of education are to be decided as well.
Maryland Right to Life PAC has just released its list of endorsements and I link to it now. At this time I concur with its list and had already planned on voting for its endorsed candidates. I now link to all the candidates as listed on the Maryland Board of Elections site. I had noticed that MRTL did not endorse a candidate for US Senator; judging from a first glance at their individual websites, I can see that none of them are any too impressive. Still, Van Hollen must be unseated.
As far as the Board of Education goes, here is my strategy. Every time, some helpful person will, as I approach the polling place, present to me an "apple ballot". These are candidates that have been endorsed by the local chapter of the National Education Association - an unabashedly progressive cabal if ever there was one. Therefore, I study it and make sure that I vote for all their opponents.
In south Texas, a conservative Republican lady won an upset victory in a district that had not elected a Republican in decades. There is hope. Of course, we must pray that God brings this country to repentance and to its senses and healing.
Word has it that Cardinal Gregory is set to clamp down severely on the few parishes that currently offer the Traditional Latin Mass. In a nutshell, no parish will be allowed to host the Mass of the Ages. Instead, attendees will be sent to one single Mass offered on the grounds of the Franciscan Monastery in the Brookland area of DC, not far from the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. There will be no exceptions. Remember - this same prelate didn't bat an eye when Nancy Pelosi received Holy Communion at Trinity church when her own bishop banned her from Holy Communion. This means that absolute dissidents can receive Holy Communion, but the Traditional Latin Mass will be banned from the Archdiocese of Washington.
Now please listen to this next podcast in which Taylor Marshall and Michael Matt discuss the obvious obsession displayed by the pope in his quest to stamp out the Traditional Latin Mass. We are in fact standing in his way of obliterating the Church as Jesus founded her and remaking it into a puppet of the New World Order.
Nellie Gray, founder and late president of March for Life, was very careful when it came to speakers for the rally on the Ellipse preceding the March. I never knew her to allow gay rights activists, feminists, atheists, etc to share that platform. At one time I questioned why she was reluctant to allow those organizations to be recognized, although she could not have prevented them from walking in our crowd. I now understand her wisdom.
My colleague Vic Biorseth penned a piece yesterday, to which I will now link. I won't address the entire post, but will copy and paste one section that is relevant to my discussion.
"If you are anywhere near our age, your parents and your pastors probably told you to be careful about the friends you make, with the warning that you will become your friends, so choose them wisely.
"Remember how many times we have said that, if you ever allow Satan to get on the cultural bus, he will wind up in the driver's seat? Remember? Go back through these pages and count them up. I hate to say I told you so, but - I told you so.
"Satan is now driving the American cultural bus, and he is beginning to throw us off. He's the driver, after all. He's in charge now.
"Do you begin to see the reason for keeping apart from evildoers? Do you see the evil intentions of 'multiculturalism', 'diversity' and 'inclusiveness'?"
I will now post to a link from LifeSiteNews, written last December, that develops these points in relation to the pro-life movement. He uses as a "case-in-point" a woman who was named Rosemary Geraghty, but who now calls herself Herb Geraghty. As you can see from the LifeSite article, she shills incessantly to normalize LGTBQ(your choice of additional letters) people - in other words, sexually perverted behavior.
What she, and too many others, refuse to acknowledge is that same-sex sexual activity is its own sin against God's teachings on life, family, sexuality. Now many of them are atheists, so that's its own can of worms.
Lately Geraghty and other like-minded individuals have been standing alongside pro-life people against abortion. Such associations, unless one is careful, are laden with booby-traps. The pro-lifers in these situations must be very careful not to affirm the mortally sinful behavior of these associates. They must not:
Use pronouns not in conformity with biological sex
Overlook sexual sins
Attend events in morally questionable venues (such as the Catholic Worker building)
Be reluctant to work against socialism, gay agenda, no matter the proclivities of other anti-abortion individuals
Be on the board of directors of these dubious allies or let them be on your boards
If any of these behaviors happen, they will give the appearance that pro-life people are throwing in their lots with those who violate God's commandments in other ways besides baby-murder. Moreover, the pro-lifer who risks such volatile alliances, unless he or she is firmly grounded in traditional philosophy and theology, risks being deceived into buying their sinful agendas. Again, pro-lifers must be very judicious regarding the folks whom they take into their confidence.
Now I will post a video of an excellent homily. The priest, from Bloomington IN, delves into the topic of transgenderism and gives a concise but comprehensive treatment of its harms.
On Monday, I shined the light on how the Maryland Catholic Conference absolutely stonewalled our efforts to petition a dangerous abortion bill to referendum in Maryland. A few days later I was examining their facebook page and noticed them suggesting that we contact our legislatures to reduce gun violence - in other words, they wanted to stir up a gun-grab.
As a comment to that post, I rebuked them for their duplicity and linked to that blog post. Well, lo and behold, I received this gem from Facebook (broken into three pieces).
If you compare my post with their "standards on spam", you'll see that there is no way an honest person could construe my post as "spam". Frankly, I don't think Facebook would have picked this up on their own. Whoever manages the social media pages at MCC probably had a snit (or maybe his/her boss had the snit) and reported my comment as "spam", knowing that they acted in rank dishonesty.
MCC, here's a suggestion - If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. Understand that your complete dereliction of duty in regards to the petition drive WILL have consequences. Now we're not like Chuck Schumer who gins up thugs to assassinate Supreme Court justices. We will simply do things like shame you for your indifference to the babies and urge area Catholics not to contribute to any statewide or nationwide collection efforts.
The Maryland Catholic Conference is just a state-level version of the larger USCCB. I suggest that both be dismantled immediately.
For the past few weeks, pro-life Maryland citizens have been conducting a petition drive to get HB937, the "Abortion Access Act" on the November ballot for general vote. We needed 25,000 valid signatures by May 31st. Sadly, we did not get that number, but failed by only a very thin margin.
Sadder and even infuriating is one key reason why we didn't make that threshold. When approached for their assistance, the Maryland Catholic Conference decided that the referendum couldn't be won, so they refused to contribute to the effort. The three area bishops likewise refused to cooperate. Consequently the bulk of the pastors would not allow petition signatures to be collected in their churches.
The organizers of the petition drive believe that had all the churches been available for signature collection, that we would have succeeded in meeting that threshold and would have been well on our way to obtaining the total of 75,000 signatures.
While the signatures were being collected, I checked the MCC website a few times. Sure enough, there was not one mention of the petition-collection drive. The MCC's dismal dereliction of duty was in fact a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Let's rehearse some of the provisions built within HB937. First, it will allow non-physicians to perform abortions. It will force insurance companies to fund abortions, without any co-pay or deductible limitations; that would impact health policies that the Church and MCC provide their employees, wouldn't it?
Now that HB937 cannot be challenged, it will pave the way for more butchery of babies and their mothers. For their inexcusable refusal to allow good people to combat this, the leaders of the Maryland Catholic Conference, the three bishops included, may well have blood on their hands in the coming months.
Several years ago I and some other sidewalk counselors gave a training seminar that was hosted by Capitol Hill Crisis Pregnancy Center in Washington DC. It was clear to me that this was a place truly dedicated to helping women who choose to let their babies live, as opposed to subjecting them to grisly deaths. The place abounded with all manners of baby care items, etc.
I therefore immediately recognized the place as I saw its picture on this LifeSiteNews piece. The overgrown brats who did this cannot deal with the fact that some areas of the country will once again be able to protect children. Ironically, Washington DC, where this happened, will remain a locale where babies will be in mortal danger. But think of it. If Roe does go down, the progressives will not be able to destroy as many babies as they have done, so they will look for any decent thing that they can destroy, be it pregnancy centers or churches.
Such destructive temper tantrums are coming in many forms. Resurrecting tactics that NARAL tried in 2009, the New York state legislature passed legislation that will allow them to "investigate" pro life pregnancy centers for not slaughtering babies. That's like investigating the American Cancer Society for not selling cigarettes. I trust this will go down in flames just as the other NARAL tactics did in 2009.
Again, in related news, the Department of Homeland Security warmed the nation's Catholic bishops that their churches could be targeted for vandalism if Roe is scuttled, and clergy could be targeted for personal violence. Please notice something. The threats seem to be centered on Catholic establishments. They aren't threatening Protestant churches or other houses of worship. Whether the progressives realize it or not, they areacknowledging that the Catholic Church is the one true bulwark for Godly moral truth. At any rate, we will have to be on the alert and be prepared to physically stop anyone from desecrating our churches and the Blessed Sacrament.
Last August I posted the first of a trilogy of movies known as the Mass of the Ages. Click here to review it. Below is the second that just became available. I will post the third when that is released.
