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Divine Mercy Sunday. If you Need Confession Today is the Day for it

Posted: April 16, 2023 by datechguy in catholic, catholic devotions
Tags: , , ,

Cardinal Lamberto: Would you like, to make your confession?

Michael Corleone: Your Eminence, I’m uh – I’m uh — it’s been so long, I wouldn’t – wouldn’t – wouldn’t know where to uh, it’s been thirty years, I’d – I’d – I’d use up too much of your time, I think.

Cardinal Lamberto: I always have time to save souls.

Michael Corleone: Well, I’m — I’m beyond redemption.

Cardinal Lamberto: [in italian to an approaching priest] Give us a couple of minutes alone please – thanks… [To Michael when the other priest leaves] I hear the confessions of my young priests here. Sometimes the desire to confess is overwhelming. And we must seize the moment.

Michael Corleone: What is the point of confessing if I don’t repent?

Cardinal Lamberto: I hear you are a practical man. What have you got to lose?

In my opinion if you had to name both the most and the least popular sacrament of the Catholic Church the answer would be the same.

Confession.

The Godfather Part 3 1990

There are people who rush to the confessional and go there regularly sometimes multiple times a week. There are others who avoid it like the plague itself. The source of both of these impulses are the same.

Seeing oneself in the light of truth.

To the person who sees himself in the light of truth and accepts that reality. The confessional is a place of cleansing. Like a shower after heavy work. Such a person understands the state of their soul and wishes to be made clean. The irony among such people is it’s my experience that the holier a person is the greater the tendency for confession because like a skilled carpenter who can tell the difference between a beam off 1/32 of an inch and one that is not, a person of deep faith and devotion sees the small imperfections in themselves that others might miss and confess to get themselves completely right with God.

Ironically to those who avoid confession it is many times the same but are in denial. It’s one thing to know in the back of your head who and what you are, but it’s quite another to have that reality brought before God to be acknowledged even in the privacy of the confessional becuase at that moment you have to bear the sight of yourself in the light of truth.

That more than anything else I suspect is what hell is all about, the denial and self loathing of what a person is in the light of truth which is God. It’s why so many choose hell, and believe me it’s a choice because to them the acknowledgement of what they are is beyond what they can bear. I recall a priest telling me a story of a saint who had been allowed to visit heaven asking about a friend who had died. When told the friend was in hell, the saint pleaded with God to the point where God allowed the soul in his presence. Rather than sharing the joy of the saint at deliverance the soul was angry and said to God “Tell this fool that all this brings me is pain.” To the damned the sufferings of hell, horrible as they are, are more bearable than the presence of God and the truth of themselves.

Maybe that is you. Maybe your sins are so great that the very idea of confessing them is abborant, or maybe like Michael Corleone you believe the sins are so great they can’t be forgiven. You have given into despair.

But that need not be for as Christ told St. Faustina:

I desire that the Feast of Mercy be a refuge and shelter for all souls, and especially for poor sinners. On that day the very depths of My tender mercy are open. I pour out a whole ocean of graces upon those souls who approach the fount of My mercy. The soul that will go to Confession and receive Holy Communion shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment. On that day all the divine floodgates through which grace flow are opened. Let no soul fear to draw near to Me, even though its sins be as scarlet.”

St. Faustina Diary 699

All over the world in parishes near and far priests are gathering for extra confession, extra masses and extra adoration to help the faithful and the lost take advantages of these mercies offered by Christ so that they may be wiped clear and get on that narrow path that leads to life. Again in the Lord’s words related to St. Faustina:

[Let] the greatest sinners place their trust in My mercy. They have the right before others to trust in the abyss of My mercy. My daughter, write about My mercy towards tormented souls. Souls that make an appeal to My mercy delight Me. To such souls I grant even more graces than they ask. I cannot punish even the greatest sinner if he makes an appeal to My compassion, but on the contrary, I justify him in My unfathomable and inscrutable mercy.

Diary 1146

Those who take advantage of this feast to obtain the mercy of God not only get that mercy, but discover something that so many people don’t realize. That Christ offers this mercy every single day of their lives thorough the sacrament of confession. It’s they’re for the taking if people will only grab it.

Take advantage of this mercy while you can, seize the moment because as Christ warns…

He who refuses to pass through the door of My mercy must pass through the door of My justice 

Diary 1146

Your call.

Maybe The Leaker Had Access to Joe Biden’s Garage?

Posted: April 15, 2023 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Sir Humphrey Appleby: The question in a nutshell is ‘What is the difference between a breech of the Official Secrets Act on the one hand and an unattributable off the record briefing by a senior official?. The former a breech, is a criminal offense, the latter, a briefing, is essential to keep the wheels turning. Now is there a real objective difference or is it a matter of convenience and interpretation? and is it a breach of the Act , if there is an unofficial bib attributable briefing by an official who has been unofficially authorized by the Prime Minister?

PM James Hacker: If it’s authorized by the Prime Minister then no.

Bernard Wooley That’s what I said

PM James Hacker: Surely it’s ub to me wheatear it’s in the national interest for something to be disclosed or not. The point is it’s not up to officials and last week’s leak must have come from an official.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: But what if the official was officially authorized? Or even unofficially authorized? What if the Prime Minister officially disapproves of a breach of the act but unofficially approves? Now that would mean that a leak would be unofficially official, but officially unofficial.

Apparently the Pentagon is having an issue finding how how the alleged leaker of info on Ukraine that contradicts the narrative of this administration.

Yes Prime Minister Official Secrets 1987

None of the rest of us could explain how an enlistee in the Air National Guard got his hands on highly classified military and diplomatic intelligence leaked over the past few months. Now it turns out that the Pentagon doesn’t have a good answer for that question, either. 

Back in the days when I worked for Raytheon, had secret clearance and had to sign a document saying there were several things that, if I did them, carried the death penalty, you didn’t get access to stuff unless you actually needed them for your job. Ed Morrissey continues to ask the relevant question:

Jack Teixeira served in the 102nd Intelligence Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, based on Cape Cod. What would the MANG “need to know” about Mossad communications, Russian and Ukrainian military operations, and diplomat communications? The former chief of Massachusetts Homeland Security, Juliette Kayyem, doesn’t have an explanation for it either:

At least one former CIA officer has an explaination:

Former CIA officer Larry Johnson, who did presidential daily briefings during the George H.W. Bush administration, told “Judging Freedom” host Andrew Napolitano that he thinks the latest leak of Ukraine War documents is an inside job.

About the source, he said: “I’d put it above the CIA. This is elements connected to the Director of National Intelligence… There’s no way that some National Guardsman doing [temporary duty] at Fort Bragg would have access to that.”

“The information was leaked for [a purpose], to prepare the U.S. public for the crash landing that’s going to take place with respect to U.S. foreign policy,” he said.

“The documents are real. I’m not saying the documents are fabrications, they are not. But this cover story that’s been manufactured to explain how these documents came to be produced, it just falls apart… This thing is too tidy a package, this has been wrapped up nice and neatly, this is like an episode of ‘Law And Order.'”

This sounds a lot more credible then the last explanation that an Ex intelligence man gave for a huge mistake this week.

Glenn Greenwald notes that there is a big difference between how this leak and this whistleblower is being treated by the press than others;

On a virtually daily basis, one can find authorized leaks in The New York Times, The Washington Post, on CNN and NBC News: meaning stories dressed up as leaks from anonymous sources that are, in fact, nothing more than messaging assertions that the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security and the Pentagon have instructed these subservient media corporations to disseminate. When that happens, the leaker is never found or punished: even when the leaks are designated as the most serious crimes under the U.S. criminal code, such as when The Washington Post‘s long-time CIA spokesman David Ignatius in early 2017 published the contents of the intercepted phone calls between Trump’s incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Most of Russiagate was constructed based on authorized leaks, a generous way of describing official propaganda from the U.S. Security State laundered in the American corporate press.

But when it comes to unauthorized leaks — which result in the disclosure of secret evidence showing that the U.S. Security State lied, acted corruptly, or broke laws — that is when the full weight of establishment power comes crashing down on the head of the leaker. They are found and arrested. Their character is destroyed. And now — in a new and genuinely shocking escalation — it is the largest media corporations themselves, such as the Times and the Post, that actually do the FBI’s work by hunting down the leaker, exposing him, and ensuring his arrest.

All this via Insty and Town hall notes that some of the media narratives are already failing by the wayside.

But it’s the Babylon Bee that really nails it:

Military police have arrested Jack Teixeira for allegedly leaking classified documents that contained information on the war in Ukraine. Teixeira, an Air National Guardsman, is currently kicking himself for not just leaving documents strewn around an unlocked garage as the President did.

“Ugh! I’m so stupid! Why didn’t I just print them out and leave them in a garage, or a vacation home, or the trunk of a Corvette?” said the distraught Teixeira while being hauled away. “What on earth was I thinking?”

Mr. Johnson might be right about this being deliberate, but if that’s the case the government has one big advantage in selling their narrative. I’m not aware of anyone who would have trouble believing this administration and woke military was incompetent.

Some Praise for Rebekah Jones (Yes you read that right) UPDATE CORRECTION or not

Posted: April 13, 2023 by datechguy in oddities
Tags: , ,

Always look at the Bright Side of Life

Eric Idle

For some reason last night at work Rebekah Jones popped into my head.

You might remember he as the false whistleblower who tried to target the DeSantis administration during COVID and lately for trying to blame DeSantis for the arrest of her son who had been showing indications that he might like to shoot up a school.

But let’s ignore the false blame game and consider something for a sec. For all her mendacity  Rebekah Jones did a very hard thing that like most hard things turned out to be the right thing.

She saw what her child was doing and recognized it for what it was.

How many parents might have remained in denial? How many parents might have convinced themselves it was no big deal. Howe many parents, particularly ones who have a, shall we say, less than flattering public persona both in social media and beyond and might have decided they didn’t want to go there.

She didn’t do those things, she took the initiative and had her child placed in custody. It was likely a very painful action but by doing so she showed responsibility both as a mother to protect her child and as a citizen by acting to protect the community as a whole.

Now granted as I’ve already noted she tried to spin this all falsely for political gain which in fairness in completely in character for her so she deserves all the grief she gets over that.

But as we do so lets not ignore the fact that before she reverted to form she made a hard choice for the sake of all. Let’s give her a small tip of the fedora for that and pray not only that her child gets the help needed to return to normalcy .but that other parents given a similar situation make the right call for both their community and their child.

Update: Well I guess I had the wrong info there:

Police documents and warrant service reports, however, suggest that multiple students at her son’s former middle school reported him to teachers because they were worried he would shoot up the school. (Jones’ son is now homeschooled.) Snapchat messages obtained by the police as part of a search warrant do indeed return memes that joke about school shootings sent by her son. But they also show legitimately concerning messages he allegedly sent that appear to be specific threats against a specific middle school. The police report also shows in detail how the investigation was carried out, and the timeline of the investigation. The Snapchat messages in question were sent roughly six weeks ago, but police only became aware of them after students reported them to teachers on March 20. The documents show that police began questioning students immediately and attempted to question Jones’s son within a day of being alerted.

This is from Vice which is not known as a conservative powerhouse

I Don’t get the Confusion here

Posted: April 13, 2023 by datechguy in Blame Biden Administration, catholic, official oppression
Tags: ,

If you work under the assumption they’re all Marxists it all makes sense

Steve Nott

At Hotair David Strom notes the war against the Catholic Church by this administration :

But even with these caveats, I have to conclude that Biden is, in fact, anti-Catholic in the simplest sense: he is at war with Catholics and the Catholic Church.

The evidence is irrefutable and copious. In just the past 4 days I found 4 stories about Biden Administration attacks on Catholics, and if you go back further than that you can find innumerable more. The FBI has categorized Catholic traditionalists as potential domestic terrorists, placed informants in Catholic organizations, kicked Catholic priests out of Walter Reed, and let a domestic terrorist who attacked a Catholic Church off with a slap on the wrist.

The latest example of course being the slap on the wrist for vandalizing churches:

He closes thus:

The Biden Administration has clearly targeted Catholics and the Catholic Church for what amounts to state suppression. The Catholic faith is being treated as a font of dangerous ideological ideas and a potential breeding ground for domestic terrorists. Further, the Biden Administration has basically declared open season on Catholic institutions, looking the other way as Catholic institutions have been vandalized.

Is it the pro-life doctrines of the Church that so offend?

Is it the hostility to gender ideology that stems from the Catholic Natural Law tradition?

Or is it just that the Church as an institution provides a cultural counterweight to the ideological power of the state?

I really don’t understand, to be honest. But the evidence is clear.

As a Catholic I really don’t see the confusion here because Christ was really explicit about this kind of thing during the Last Supper discourses to his disciples:

“If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. Remember the word I spoke to you, No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. And they will do all these things to you on account of my name,  because they do not know the one who sent me.

John 15:17-21

So when I see this:

And Christ’s word to those opposing him:

“If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and am here; I did not come on my own, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I am saying? Because you cannot bear to hear my word. You belong to your father the devil and you willingly carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks in character, because he is a liar and the father of lies.

John 8:42-44

I remember that there are two sides in the eternal battle and that like the Satanists who hold the black mass because they KNOW the Eucharist is the actual body of Christ, this administration knows, the mediocre Francis not withstanding, that the Catholic Church is not on theirs because they willingly carry out their father’s desires.

Mr. Storm might not understand it but I understand all too well.

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