Archive for the ‘Church doctrine’ Category

100 Word Catholic Fan Fiction: An Unexpected Guest

Posted: August 20, 2020 by datechguy in catholic, Church doctrine, fan fiction, fun
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The monastic cell door creaked as the white gloved hand opened it. Yolanda saw a hooded figure kneeling in prayer before an image of the Divine Mercy, As they entered a voice ancient & weak seeped from his cowl.

“Has the angel of death finally remembered me? I am ready”

“I bring not death friend Anastasius” replied the stranger, “but a penitent seeking absolution.”

The priest turned smiling melting away years, his eyes alight: “It has been many decades since I’ve confessed a hero.” Yolanda watched awestruck as new life seemed to gush into the holy venerable face. “Come child.”

Previously, the answer. Next, a confusing price.

Here Come the #wokepharisees of NeverTrump

Posted: August 1, 2020 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, catholic, Church doctrine, culture, elections, politics

There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.

Bishop Fulton J Sheen

One of the things you notice when you read old histories and biographies is that until about the 70’s the United States was a deeply Christian country with a deeply Christian culture. Even if one was not a Christian an educated person knew Christian scripture as a basis of Western Civilization, understood what Christians believe and would recognize Christian cultural & scriptural reference with no problem.

Since the left in general and the Democrat party in particular has become largely secular or hostile to Christianity this memory and knowledge is pretty much gone. What’s replaced it is a parody of what the secular left believes Christianity to be based on certain Protestant sects (there are thousands of them) which are generally parodied in film and TV.

This has led to the rather comical (to an even fairly catechized Christian, particularly Catholics ) where members of the left denounce Christians for including people in our numbers who have “gasped” sinned!

This has gotten even worse in the Trump years as we have seen the rise of what I call the #wokepharisee on twitter, particularly among certain accounts which claim to be run by self proclaimed Catholics loudly listing Donald Trump’s past sins and stating that no faithful Catholic can support one who has committed such sins.

Forgetting the insanity of so called “Christians” rushing to support the party of abortion (a grave mortal sin) and apparently forgetting that the entire premise of Christianity is that Jesus Christ suffered and was Crucified to redeem man from our sins, there is a long scriptural history of God using the least likely people to advance his will.

Looking at this list

  • Moses: murderer
  • David adulterer AND murderer
  • Peter proclaimed himself “a sinful man” before Christ called him and denied him three times after.
  • Matthew was a money changer and considered a traitor to his race
  • Mary Magdalene so evil that she had seven demons in her before Christ cast them out
  • St. Paul not only persecuted the Church but held the coats of those murdering the 1st Christian martyr

It seems rather silly to say that Donald Trump isn’t worth the title “Christian” nor worth the support of any other Christian.

The real comedy however comes from the self righteous proclamations which instantly reminds any Christian remotely familiar with the new testament of this speech

The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, ‘O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity – greedy, dishonest, adulterous – or even like this tax collector.I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.’

Luke 18:11-12

Can’t you just see this rewritten for today?

The Woke NeverTrump Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, ‘O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity – racist, sexist, judgmental or even like that Donald Trump supporter. I denounce Trump’s sins daily, am completely tolerant of all non-Christians and watch my carbon footprint like a hawk

That they can not see this parallel proves that Screwtape hit the nail on this head with this piece of advice to his nephew wormwood:

All you then have to do is to keep out of his mind the question “If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?” You may ask whether it is possible to keep such an obvious thought from occurring even to a human mind. It is, Wormwood, it is! Handle him properly and it simply won’t come into his head.

C.S. Lewis the Screwtape Letters #2

It’s gotten so ridiculous that I’ve actually had a self proclaimed “Christian” publicly request that I take him off a twitter prayer list I have because he didn’t want the prayers of a Trump supporter. That a person supposedly of faith could make such a request is so comical that the one liners write themselves.

For any Christian it’s axiomatic that “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the LORD, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” (Proverbs 9:10) but for the NeverTrump Woke Pharisee Ignorance of Christianity in general & Scripture seems a requirement for membership.

Yup, they came for Jesus

Posted: June 27, 2020 by ng36b in catholic, Church doctrine, Uncomfortable Truths
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Pearl Monument torn down, from Wikipedia

Not that long ago, the military sent me to Bahrain to work a particular mission. While I was there, I learned about the political differences between the King of Bahrain (a Sunni) and the majority Shia population on the small island nation. Protests against the King were somewhat common, and I would get text notifications if one flared up. The protests weren’t aimed at America (a nice change), but we were always advised to stay away from them because the mob mentality might make us a target of convenience.

Mobs make people stupid by allowing people to offload their decision making, and thus responsibility, onto the mob. The danger is that someone with a strong personality will use the mob’s power towards their own end. What starts as a peaceful demonstration can end in violence. That’s what happened in Bahrain, climaxing in 2011 with the demonstration near the Pearl Monument and its subsequent destruction by the government.

The scary part about mobs is that the people pulling the strings typically don’t have a peaceful end state. President Trump understands this and pointed it out in 2017 that tearing down statues to appease the mob isn’t going to work. Plenty of people ridiculed him, including Slate:

“So Trump’s comparison there is dumb. It doesn’t really even make any sense. And the notion that there’s some slippery slope is dumb.”

-Slate article, 2017

Doesn’t look so dumb now. It’s one thing for a city government to remove a Confederate statue or the federal government to rename a base. I’d be happy renaming Fort Gordon to something else, since General John Gordon seemed more capable of getting shot than being an effective general, and was probably a KKK member. There’s a system for doing that, so we should use that. We don’t need a mob for these things.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CB0snigDnXI/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading

Worse, this mob mentality isn’t going to end anytime soon. We’re now seeing Catholic churches targeted in California. My wife alerted me to an FSSP parish in San Diego, where the address was being posted in order to mobilize a protest. The right to peacefully protest is a good thing. It allows things like praying outside a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic. But it should be fairly obvious from the above Instagram picture, which makes plenty of assumptions on the church members, that the point isn’t to be peaceful, but rather intimidate people from attending church. Think about it, would YOU walk through a throng of angry protestors to attend Mass?

Mob leaders want people to submit to mob control. Worse still, when mob leadership adheres to Antifa ideaology, it will violently attack any authority that opposes it. This includes Church authority, especially Catholic teachings.

Prediction: we’re going to see attempts by the mob to link Catholicism to slavery, Trump, COVID-19, and whatever else comes to mind in order to justify defacing and tearing buildings down. This, despite a decent Church history of opposing slavery, even having a Pope that was a former slave. Remember that actual history doesn’t matter to the mob.

The question we have to start asking Catholics now is: are you prepared to wade through a mob to attend Mass? Will you tolerate a mob defacing or tearing down your Church? Because the mob is coming for Jesus. Which side will you be on when it arrives?

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Public Mass is Back, Satan Hardest Hit

Posted: May 24, 2020 by datechguy in catholic, Church doctrine
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Yesterday at 3:45 I went to confession at St. Bernard’s Parish at St. Camillus Church in Fitchburg as I have for the last 8 weeks. What was different was that instead of a few people waiting for confession, the church was ope proper with people in pews preparing for the 4:15 Saturday vigil mass which hasn’t been celebrated publicly since the 3rd week of Lent.

It was very different in some ways, there was police tape taping off every other pew and in the long pews there was tape on them marking off three spots, each end and the middle, so people knew to space out. There was also tape on the center aisle marking off 6 foot distances for communion. There was no collection, simply baskets at the entrances to put envelopes in, no missiles in the pews and the “sign of peace” was skipped (although some folks noting this turned and waved).

And of course there were the masks, everyone had masks. It was like a bank robbers convention.

But when it comes down to it, the liturgy the homily , the consecration and the Eucharist was that of the Holy Mass.

It wasn’t anything near a full church. There are many who generally attend the three Sunday masses (2 morning one afternoon) that returned today. I’m sure those who were ill stayed away, I didn’t see some of the older members of the parish, who would most risk, I’m sure a few more didn’t want to take any risks and of course given that the lifting of the obligation for Catholics in our diocese to attend weekly mass is still lifted, I’m sure a more than a few decided to take advantage of a lovely day.

I suspect every week the numbers will grow and as I heard the congregation led by our pastor finish with the Prayer of St. Michael and felt the power of that prayer declared publicly by dozens of Christian throats eager to glorify God it’s clear that no matter what the numbers the Mass IS back and Hell will tremble because of it.

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