Posted on 07/04/2015 12:23:13 PM PDT by Morgana
This is a tough Vortex to speak. I’m as patriotic as the next guy. I remember being a young lad of 15 as my country celebrated its bicentennial back in 1976.
I watched TV that day from six in the morning until well past midnight as the non-stop, commercial-free, wall-to-wall coverage on the giant national birthday party was broadcast from sea to shining sea.
I watched the tall ships sail into New York harbor, saw the explosive fireworks show over D.C. I listened and sang my lungs out with a lump in my throat as Arthur Fielder conducted the Boston Pops on the Esplanade playing one stirring American hymn after another. I watched Walter Cronkite move effortlessly from one sprawling scene of Americana to another. There was no other place I would have rather been on that glorious Fourth of July all those years ago.
But that is all gone now.
What I did not know in my innocent youthful naïveté was the seeds for America’s self-destruction had been in place from the beginning. See, America at her core has always been at war with the Catholic Church.
Few know that it was illegal to be Catholic in 10 of the original 13 colonies. Even after the War of Independence, hostility to Catholicism remained intense. But more importantly, it is the philosophical underpinnings of America that are the very heart of the problem.
America was born from the philosophy of the Enlightenment. Those philosophers were driven by their hatred of scholastic philosophy — the mind of Aquinas, you might say. Aquinas expounded a philosophy as solid as rock: that God is the center of the Universe and man is bound to certain codes and creeds in face of that reality.
In order to break away from those codes and creeds, Enlightenment philosophers set out to change the perception of reality. What sprang up in place of Aquinas and the Catholic Church was a new system of thought: that MAN was the center of the universe — or at least the functional center.
Sure there may have been a God of Nature, but that God had little to do in reality with man’s day-to-day life. So man was free to set course to develop his own religions, moral codes, even separate truths, when the time was right to pull that trigger. All of this social philosophy came to a legal, formal construct in the birth of the American nation.
As an aside, a few years later, this same philosophy would be responsible for the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror where thousands and thousands of Catholics were beheaded.
Here in America, a new nation emerged from the Age of Enlightenment, and although it was decidedly divorced from the past politically, it still took a couple of centuries to shake off the morality it had learned from the Catholic Church. The PEOPLE were now the arbiters of truth. No longer crushed underfoot by kings and monarchs, power would be derived from the consent of the governed.
And THERE is the problem, the decidedly anti-Catholic proposition. What happens when the consent of the governed now agrees with contraception, abortion and sodomy? What happens when the majority of the governed accept no-fault divorce, cohabitation, pornography, single parenthood, explicit sex education in schools and a host of other evils?
In America, these are all allowed because the majority of the governed accept them — and that places faithful Catholics on the outside looking in. America says man gets to decide. The Church says God gets to decide. Those two principles cannot co-exist. Either America will be converted by the Church, or the Church will be converted by America. We know how that turned out.
Too many Americans who are also Catholic have twisted themselves into theological pretzels to insist a person can be a good Catholic while also being a good American. As long as America remained essentially Catholic in its morality, that tightrope could be walked, however gingerly.
But once Protestant-majority America — with all the diversity that description contains — realized it was living Catholic morality, without adhering to the underlying Catholic theology, it threw off the morality and turned secular. Catholic Americans took more pride in their country than they did their Church, always struggling for a place at the table, always ready to compromise or accommodate their Protestant neighbors.
Even John F. Kennedy in 1960 was willing to sell out his faith in front of an audience of protestant preachers to be accepted and win the White House. He learned that groveling act from a succession of bishops in the American hierarchy stretching back more than a couple hundred years, and who the present crop for the most part continues in that sad tradition.
The silly appeals to so-called religious liberty will fall flat. What Catholics in America have not understood is that the will of the governed could be turned on them at any point — and now has.
This is one of the topics Church Militant was able to discuss with Bp. Athanasius Schneider when we were in Rome recently when he sat down with us and granted us an exclusive far-reaching interview.
We’ll be presenting that to you soon, so look for it.
If the Lord had 'transubstantiated' the wine in the cup into His blood, then back to wine (He did call it wine after the ceremony was completed) it still would not have addressed the spiritual life only He can bring to us for our regeneration, because the life of the creature, creature life, is in the blood, so the cup would have been prefiguring the Spiritual Life anyway. Since the Lord would not violate one yot nor tittle of the Levitical Law, bread and wine would have been just as efficacious since they would only be prefiguring the Spiritual Life only Jesus can impart through His Spirit. Catholics are repeating the same heresy the Jews committed with the brass snake in the wastelands then making little snake idols to empower themselves only a few generations after entering the Promised Land.
Mine tastes like bread.
And the wine? Well, like wine.
(Did you miss the CCC part?)
It appears that...
1. You do NOT believe the clear text of the Bible.
2. You do NOT believe what Early Church Fathers taught about this (reply #69).
3. And you probably don't like the pope you've got now.
I think you need to check your credentials to see if you really ARE a Catholic!
Oh??
Pope Stephen VI (896–897), who had his predecessor Pope Formosus exhumed, tried, de-fingered, briefly reburied, and thrown in the Tiber.[1]
Pope John XII (955–964), who gave land to a mistress, murdered several people, and was killed by a man who caught him in bed with his wife.
Pope Benedict IX (1032–1044, 1045, 1047–1048), who "sold" the Papacy
Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303), who is lampooned in Dante's Divine Comedy
Pope Urban VI (1378–1389), who complained that he did not hear enough screaming when Cardinals who had conspired against him were tortured.[2]
Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503), a Borgia, who was guilty of nepotism and whose unattended corpse swelled until it could barely fit in a coffin.[3]
Pope Leo X (1513–1521), a spendthrift member of the Medici family who once spent 1/7 of his predecessors' reserves on a single ceremony[4]
Pope Clement VII (1523–1534), also a Medici, whose power-politicking with France, Spain, and Germany got Rome sacked.
And the wine? Well, like wine.
Sorry, I forgot to mention that. It was actually grape juice, it did not taste like blood or anything, so I guess it really WAS grape juice. You would been proud of me. I sang a duet with the song leader, Oh Glorious Love. It was a blessing. 😂 😇
Catholicism, teaching error before even the last book of the bible (which they so wondrously compiled) was finished being written!
encyclicals are a big waste of time!
ALWAYS?
I see an awful lot of quotes from CATHOLIC sources; therefore...
Oh?
The 'Last Supper' was a YEARLY meal of rememberance.
Have you NOT been shown this over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again?
Exodus 12:26-27 Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (DRA)
26 And when your children shall say to you: What is the meaning of this service?
27 You shall say to them: It is the victim of the passage of the Lord, when he passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, striking the Egyptians, and saving our houses. And the people bowing themselves, adored.
If the above is hard to understand...
Exodus 12:26-27 New International Version (NIV)
26 And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ 27 then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.’” Then the people bowed down and worshiped.
I am SO glad to hear this!!!
Bonaventure: …the gates of heaven will open to all who confide in the protection of Mary. Blessed are they who know thee, O Mother of God, for the knowledge of THEE is the high road to everlasting life, and the publication of thy virtues is the way of ETERNAL SALVATION . Give ear, O ye nations; and all you who desire heaven , serve, honor Mary, and certainly you will find ETERNAL LIFE.
Ephem: …devotion to the divine Mother…is the unlocking of the heavenly Jerusalem.
Blosius: To the, O Lady, are committed the KEYS and the treasures of the kingdom of Heaven.
Ambrose: …constantly pray ‘Open to us, O Mary, the gates of paradise, since thou hast its KEYS.
Fulgetius: …by Mary God descended from Heaven into the world, that by HER man might ascend from earth to Heaven.
Athanasius: …And, thou, O Lady, wast filled with grace, that thou mightiest be the way of our SALVATION and the means of ascent to the heavenly Kingdom.
Richard of Laurence: Mary, in fine, is the mistress of heaven; for there she commands as she wills, and ADMITS whom she wills.
Guerric: …he who serves Mary and for whom she intercedes, is as CERTAIN of heaven as if he were already there…and those who DO NOT serve Mary will NOT BE SAVED.
Anselm: It suffices, O Lady, that thou willest it, and our SALVATION is certain.
Antoninus: …souls protected by Mary, and on which she casts her eyes, are NECESSARILY JUSTIFIED AND SAVED.
You brood of vipers.
HUH?
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In Salt Lake City it tastes like WATER!
Matthew 4:6
Elsie, you are such a hater. 😂😃😆😀 Do you have to work at it, or does it come naturally? 🙊🙈🙉
Huh...I read all the way through this thread and didn’t see one RC complain about divisive threads “attacking” other Christians. I guess it only happens TO them???
Oh, a few things. One or two rifles I’ve built. A shotgun or two I’ve done ‘additions’ to. A pistol or three. Some ammo for each tool. A few days of food stored. A few milk jugs of sterile water in the upright freezer in the garage. A 2008 minivan with new tires on it and under 40K miles driven. A house I built myself 20+ years ago, before physical limitations hit me. My little black Tuxedo cat will need to be fed. And the Raccoon family will likely miss their evening feedings. Many of the houses in the neighborhood will be empty, too, so there should be a fair supply to rummage through. My upstairs has windows to the front and to the back, so lookouts in the upstairs windows should be able to scan the area for roving bands of feral yutes seeking to commit murder and mayhem for whatever they can steal. My rifles with scope mounted should give a good 200 yards targeting in a few directions. Leave the nice 9130 Mosin for younger goods eyes since it is without a scope, just iron sights ... it will hit consistently at 900 yards in a 15 inch target. I have a nice collection of Bibles and commentaries and such, and there are boxes full of books int he area between the garage bays, for those long boring days and nights off lookout patrol.
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