Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, June 24, 2018):
We often use the expression "hanging on by a thread" to indicate insecurity or uncertainty. I'd like to invoke it for another cause, namely, to indicate how a fragile link can become a mighty powerful means of constriction. I mean this in reference to the subtle means the devil employs to take control of someone's life and either enslave him in sin or else inhibit him from doing good or making spiritual progress. It merely takes such a "thread."
We often acknowledge the devil's activity and power in relation to evils that are widespread. Even though they be ever so common, mortal sins bring on the loss of grace and -- lfet unforgiven -- eternal damnation. The evil one and his accomplices can rightly be blamed a good deal for the commission of such sins. And then there are those great evils such as war, abortion, torture, sacrilege and the like which are more readily attributed to devils. My topic here has to do not with these notorious sins but rather with the minuscule, featherweight, insidious "threads" by which demons entangle and ensnare their victims. Although I claim no special discernment of demonic arts, I, as everybody else, have my own experiences with sin and my own tendencies to sin to reflect upon. It doesn't take much of a thought, attraction, word, or object to become not only an occasion of sin but a very powerful tool of enslavement to evil.
Threads. I recall the Canons of the Holy Cross telling me about people in a poor mission country that wanted to build a cathedral church for which there was insufficient money. The Masons of that place, hearing about the intention to build a church, offered the bishop to finance the entire cost of construction on one sole condition: they had to agree to affix to one of its walls a small Masonic emblem, barely noticeable. The offer, howsoever tempting, was wisely and firmly rejected by the Church. All the devil wanted, you see, was his small cut.
From long back in my priesthood I remember hearing about a wife whose husband was kept from converting to Catholicism because of a little fetish he carried about with him and which he cherished. The man, a rather affable sort and a Catholic-inclined man, never succeeded in making the jump. He died a non-Catholic, unable to part with his little "relic."
You may find these stories interesting but perhaps not relevant until you reflect a little on your own sins. How often it is that people fall into the same sins they so recently confessed because some tiny "thread" of an evil, so small as to be dismissed as a thing of little significance, wasn't severed. (An example of self-deception!) In such a case, the snare was set and one fell into it, predictably. The sinner is guilty not only for the sin committed but for refusing to acknowledge and cut that connecting evil strand, be it ever so fragile a cobweb -- the instrument employed by the evil one. Consider the possibilities: the use of a computer, or a cell phone; the company of a certain person or visiting a certain place; that one alcoholic drink which inevitably leads to too much; wearing immodest clothes which entice others to sin. Eating, exercising, reading, music listening ... the list of possibilities need not be long. There is a specific "thread" which is the deathline of this person linking him to hell. I invite the reader to consider whether there may be some such thing to which he is attached and can't seem to let go of. It is such a thing that is the subject of this writing.
It takes a great deal of self-honesty, that is, integrity, to admit these subtle affections to evil, to confess them, and to be resolutely firm to disallow them to ensnare thenceforth. What a shame it would be for you to lose your soul eternally because of a tiny little fiber that bound you to eternal damnation.
Fr. Perrone
P.S. Today is Saint John the Baptist's feast day. (He was certainly not one to flirt with evil.) Friday is the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, two great giants of the Church. Next Sunday is -- already -- July 1st!
Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" [temporary link] (Assumption Grotto News, March 18, 2018):
My subject today concerns whether Christ might be suffering from mercy abuse -- surely an eyebrow-raising topic. We have been fortunate to have had in recent years a much trumpeted exposition of the Divine Mercy.
Both in the liturgy and in devotional life, in the canonization of two saints (John Paul II and Sister Faustina), in sermons, literature, and film, the theme of Christ's inviting welcome to sinners has assumed a significant place in the Catholic Church. There must be providential reason for this. It's due, I believe, to the fact that Christians have been much adrift in an environment increasingly hostile to their faith. They have needed to know that there is a safe haven whither they can turn, confident of being able to find God securely amidst the maddening clamours of secularism. Also, Christians themselves have too often wandered off like the proverbial erring sheep into sordid byways. Affected by the moral pollution surrounding them, they have themselves succumbed to the powerful downflow of a putrid culture. Guilt resulting from having sinned grievously and committed various serious crimes (think of abortion, sodomy, divorce, cohabitation, contraception, drug addiction -- just for starters) will inevitably lead sinners, should the devil only succeed, to total despair -- sin being a real torture to the Christian when he awakens conscious of his former wickedness. Since such grave sins would spell certain spiritual death (viz. hell) for so many, Christ in His great compassion and love for souls has wished the message of His mercy to be emphatically publicized as an encouragement for them to have hope. Such, anyway, is my analysis for the urgency of the message of Divine Mercy in our time.
... with a firm purpose of amendment!
If the need for divine mercy is truly great, how is it that I question here there be such a thing as mercy "abuse"? A long time back, when attending public high school, I first heart the criticism leveled against Catholics that forgiveness for them is cheap because they have ready access to Confession -- the implication being that for other transgressors forgiveness has to be earned by heart wrenching pleading in a near desperate hope that mercy will be accorded them. At the time, it was a shock to my innocent Catholic ears to hear that Confession was considered by some to be an easy thing. I had always been taught that Confession called for serious preparation, integrity, and determination to make amendment of life.
I fear that some may be using Confession as a catharsis (mental relief), that is as a natural remedy for their guiltiness as opposed to supernatural act which remits sins and confers grace. Do some people use Confession merely to shake off guilt but don't have the firm intent never to commit sin again? The fear of a positive reply to this question is the reason for my writing. Is our Lord perhaps being abused by those appealing to His ready forgiveness while lacking a determined will never again to sin? The question is meant to be probative. Mercy abusers confess the same sins every Confession on account of the guilt feelings they have but they lack the steely intention to refuse the next opportunity temptation makes its round. Fod for thought -- thought for change.
On a different subject. Today is Passion Sunday in the traditional liturgical calendar for it inaugurates a shift in the prayers and chants, focusing them more nearly on the approaching days when our Lord will undergo His sufferings and death for our salvation. Today would be the feast of Saint Joseph but this must be deferred until tomorrow on account of the precedence of the Lenten Sunday. Don't however neglect to honor the good Saint on Monday. There is prepared a fine St. Patrick's Day Lunch after the 9:30 & noon Mass today: $8/adults, $3/children.
Next Sunday is Palm Sunday -- already! -- the gateway to Holy Week. Altar boys who wish to serve the principal Palm Sunday Mass at 9:30 with the procession of palms must come to a practice in church this Saturday, March 25 at 1:00 p.m. The rehearsal should last only about an hour. Our altar boys will also have their annual retreat, beginning on Wednesday evening of Holy Week. For this they need to submit the registration forms provided for them today.
Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, November 26, 2017)
Today I am constrained to compose in one week another pastor's column -- along with last week's -- to satisfy an early deadline for the church paper on account of Thanksgiving week, wherein the printers take their vacation time. Lacking another idea to write about, I offer the following, something that I have always been curious about.
Catholic theology recognizes that we can offer to God, over and against the sins we have committed, the merits of Christ and the saints. The Mass itself is the offering of Christ to God the Father, a renewal of the sacrifice Christ once made on the cross. But how is it that this can be done by us? My puzzlement has been to try to undersand how we can satisfy, or pay off, the debt our sins had incurred by drawing from the merits, or the credit, of someone else. Imagine, if you will, that you who are in debt of a sum of money to another person pay for it by drawing from the credit account of some other person! This would not be deemed lawful according to the terms of human justice. And yet, we assert that we can do a like thing with God by taking from the merits of Christ and the saints and applying them in compensation for the debt our sins had incurred. As an example of this, think of the prayer in the Divine Mercy Chaplet, "Eternal Father, I offer You the body, blood, soul, and divinity of our Lord Jesus, in atonement for our sins...." There we have that idea expressed. We offer God what is in truth Christ's.
In trying to understand how this can be so, I realize that whenever I pray I am doing a "good work." That expression in quotation marks indicates the Catholic theological truth about the supernatural value that my prayers, willed desires, and deeds can have. Thus at Mass when you co-offer with the priest the sacrifice of Christ which He once made on Calvary, you and the priest are performing a new act of sacrificing that one-time sacrifice of Christ on Good Friday. We renew it. At Mas we are not, as a perceptive inquirer brought up the matter in my class last week, "going back in time" as if in a kind of sci-fi time-machine and thus somehow made 'present' the moment Christ died for us. Rather, we are making a new offering of that same and singular sacrificial act of Christ, but here at the altar in an "unbloody" manner, as the Church says.
In searching to understand this I thought of a possible analogy in marriage. As I remind my couples preparing for matrimony, the precise moment when the marriage "happens" is when the couple has exchanged their mutual consent. This is the "I do" formula they recite before the priest. What is said in the words is then consummated in the physical act of marital love which is to follow. Each subsequent act of the marital embrace of that couple is in a manner a renewal in act of the verbal marital consent that they expressed in their marriage vows. Thus there is each time a new instance of what was commenced in that initial "I do." I see a possible analogy in this for understanding how each Mass can be a new offering of the one and only sacrifice Christ offered on the cross. It is not an imaginary 'going back in time' but a real and present act of Christ made through the willed offering of the priest. (And the people join with him in this corporate willed act because they have been incorporated into Christ, in His body.) And so it is that you and I can claim as our own, something which is not ours -- namely, Christ's merits -- and offer them in compensation for our sins. His offering becomes ours because we have been enabled to lay claim to it by being baptized (members of Christ) and by being ordained (in the case of the priest).
I'm positively elated when I think that I am able to say to God: "I offer You, O God, all the merits of Christ, and those of the Blessed Mother and the saints, for all the sins I have committed." I want to say this often, frequently drawing out of Christ's (and Mary's and the saints') storehouse of spiritual treasure (merits) and apply it, in whatever measure I can claim it, against my own sins and those of all humanity.
Your pastor is not a theologian but merely a parish priest who is trying to grasp something that has always been perplexing to him about our faith. Perhaps these musings can easily be shot down by a theologian as wrong. In such case I would readily surrender to his just judgment and critique. But at least, for the moment, I think I have a glimpse of what I am able to do to make up for sin [...?] my being a member of the Church. It makes me glad to think that I can collaborate with Christ to help heal the wounds He suffers on account of our ongoing sins.
Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, March 12, 2017):
Lent is a time for self-reflection on our sins: how we got into committing them, how we rid ourselves of them, and -- this is important -- how we can compensate for them. Perhaps we think little of that latter thing. We have more often in mind our sins as transgressions of reason and God's laws and we feel the need to be freed of them through Confession. Yet we should also recognize that our sins have disrupted the objective moral order, causing external damage, so to say, as well as the interior harm done to ourselves. This needs to be redressed. The scales of justice have to be balanced after the objective order has been disturbed.
The Church and sacred scripture borrow the language of commerce to explain sin and its redress as a kind of spiritual transaction. (God's side is another matter. His it is to pardon, to forgive as He pleases, usually through absolution of the priest.) On our part, sin has contracted a debt owed to the offended majesty of God. This is the objective 'damage' done to Him by our sins. Such debts incurred through our misdeeds demand repayment, satisfaction. We must have some means of paying this debt; hence the necessity to do good works: prayer,d enial of the use of some good things, giving alms to the needy, etc. Of ourselves we are unable to make full repayment for sin to the all-holy God. While He may have written off the debt of sin without requiring any satisfaction, He did not do this. He asks, demands compensation from us, even though He substantially paid the whole debt Himself by becoming man and by suffering and dying for our justification and salvation. That redemptive act of Christ more than compensated for all the offenses contracted against God. Yet, out of justice, He expects satisfaction to be made also by the offenders, each one contributing some part. Through belonging to the great society oand union of the Church we are able to offer God Christ's acquired sum of good works He did for us as payment for the debts of our own sins. (An aside: This seems unfair. How is it that we can borrow from another's accumulated 'treasure,' appropriate it to ourselves and use it in payment for our sins? A mystery!) We know that we can indeed offer from the pool of wealth that is the merit of our Lord's Passion and death, and the added sum of merits of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints, against our indebtedness to God for our sins. One draws from this 'bank account' when gaining indulgences (grants given through the Church) and when one offers Christ's sacrifice of Himself in the Mass, in union with the priest; or when one says, in the chaplet of Divine Mercy, "Eternal Father, I offer You the body, blood ... of Jesus." We offer God a sum not our own. This is possible through our incorporation into the Church by which we have, so to speak, a joint bank account of the merits of christ, Our Lady, and the saints.
We should all want to leave this life, when we die, debt free. Otherwise, we shall remain in purgatory until we will have "paid the last penny" in payment of the whole amount of our debt to God (cf. the servant in the parable threatened with being sold in payment of a debt). Only when it will be fully paid will the scale of justice in our regard be rightly balanced and we will become justly fit for heaven where "nothing defiled" can enter.
Lent is now here. We ought to do two things: 1) pay off the debt of our sins by works of penance; 2) draw upon the merits of Christ and the saints by our prayers, the co-offerings of Mass, and gaining the Church's indulgences for ourselves and for the souls in purgatory -- helping them pay their debts out of our love for them.
Do as much good as you can while you have time for yourselves and for others. "Now is the acceptable time." This is the reason we have Lent.
P.S. James Likoudis will be here today after the 9:30 Mass for a book-signing. Jim is an outstanding layman -- he would no doubt blush to hear his praises -- author and lecturer, defender of the faith. Onetime national president of Catholics United for the Faith (CUF) which in a time of terrible confusion and revolution in the Church fought to preserve our Catholic patrimony in doctrine, worship, and catechesis. (Believe it or not, there was a time in recent history when things were worse than they now are. CUF is one of the reasons for the betterment of the present state of the Church in this country. I welcome Mr. Likoudis, who has written compellingly about the rapprochement of the Orthodox Churches with the Catholic church. We wish him much added grace and rich blessings.
Some sobering thoughts and dark humor from Amateur Brain Surgeon:
Sins crying to Heaven for Vengeance: murder (Gn 4:10), sodomy (Gn 17:20-21), oppression of the poor (Ex 2:23), and defrauding workers of their just wages (Jas 5:4).
The Four Sins crying to Heaven for vengeance have all been approved of by either positive law or popular majoritarian moral sanction:
MURDER of the unborn in the womb is legal.
SODOMY is legally codified and morally praised by most.
OPPRESSION of the poor is being accomplished by mass immigration (which is an assault on the wages of the working class) and treaties which have destroyed manufacturing (manufacturing, mining, farming are the three aspects of a healthy economy).
DEFRAUDING workers of their just wages via mass immigration and usury which is legally sanctioned (but morally illegal) loans (Vix pervenit)
These serious sins are reflective of America’s war on Jesus Christ and His Commandments and it is a war that was embedded deeply in our foundational attitudes and documents (if only by omission).
Jesus Christ is King of Heaven and Earth and any nation that is at war with Him by legislating that which He condemns is doomed to defeat and destruction.
What is most amazing about our plight is His patience.
Long ago, these United States deserved to be utterly destroyed
Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, September 11, 2016):
Our Lady's birthday was observed this past week with fitting liturgical ceremonial here while I was in far away Ohio offering Mass for a bus load or two of pilgrims visiting a Marian Shrine. In the Archdiocese of Detroit our parish is the equivalent of a local Marian shrine, having a long history of Marian devotion, especially at our outdoor Grotto.
My thoughts today turn to the consideration of a topic I treated once before, but with a slightly different twist. I had written then about acedia, a spiritual malignancy that afflicts many people who have a spiritual bent alright, but who lack the motivation to carry-through on any lasting course of spiritual resolve.
The condition I write about today is the want of spiritual get-up-and-go, an indifference to things of faith, not in theory or doctrinal acquiescence, but in carry-through in effective action. It's a listlessness which can't get one going to be zealous in religious observances. For those thus afflicted, everything suffers: the moral life (commandments are not kept), prayer (just can't get motivated to do it), spiritual reading and engagement in spiritual conversation, retreat making, holy hours with the Blessed Sacrament, the daily rosary, Mass attentiveness ... the list could be extended. I want to say from the outset that this is a condition that results from sensuality. The readiness to jump in eagerly to sensual delights -- eating, drinking, socializing, recreational activities, movies, music, sports, etc., let alone outright sinful and perverse pleasures -- these things paralyze the spiritual faculties, rendering them incapable of deriving satisfaction of a non-sensual kind from religious things. One does not get into such a state of lethargy innocently. Rather it's the product of sensual indulgence. As such, it is utterly distinct from that form of aridity experienced by those who have achieved a certain level of spiritual proficiency, the so-called "dark night." No, this is a much more basic level of torpidity which turns away from religious activities because they don't give the 'buzz' of excitement that sensual things do -- I might add: "of necessity!"
As a result of this unfortunate state, sufferers of this malady get into moral ruts and never make spiritual progress. The devil keeps them firmly held in a position where their half-hearted attempts of freedom from this misery become impossible. Such a one, held in a deadlock, becomes sad, depressed, grumpy and ashamed of himself ... until something sensually exciting comes along to distract him from feeling the sting of his spiritual wretchedness. The pleasure having passed, the cycle repeats, over and over again. The end of the line for such a person is despair and final impenitence -- the assured prelude to hell.
If what I have written about here applies to you, it's not because I have been spying on you particularly. This affliction is rampant, in varying degrees, for people of this time in western countries. We have lost our "early love" (as the Book of Revelation calls our love and loyalty for Christ) and are left to our own devices, living joylessly apart from God who is the final end of the spiritual life.
We have come to expect in our day easy fixes for our pains: a tablet, a therapy, a quick exit from spiritual tensions and physical pains. For this disorder, however, I know of only one effective remedy. It will shock you. Violence to oneself. (How utterly impolitic and incorrect!) Christianity's strength has always been its asceticism, its strictness, the austerity which is part and parcel of the Gospel of Christ. Our Lord said quite plainly that we must hate ourselves. This is a recognizition that the most formidable enemy we have to eternal life is dear Self. I know of no other way to subdue the intemperate demands of self-love than the aforementioned 'violence' to oneself. I know this must sound to modern ears schooled in the tenets of modern psychology which justifies all self-indulgence, as an exhortation to masochism. But that's because we've grown overly much fond of self-esteem and entirely intolerant and indignant of anything smacking of self-discipline and self-restraint. Read the lives of the saints and search -- in vain -- for any one of them who has not inflicted on himself this said violence against himself. Such a saint has never existed.
Wonder no longer about backsliding, inertia, repeated sins, and unhappiness. Unless the cause be manifestly otherwise (and there surely are other reasons possible for emotional disorders) you are likely victim of your own doing. How supremely ironic it is that to be happy one must practice penances. Our Lord's manner of speaking the same: "he who loves his life will lose it, whereas he who hates his life in this world preserves it for life eternal."
Fr. Perrone
Pre-announcement. The celebrated author Joseph Pearce will be here Sunday, September 25 from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. to speak on The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. The noon Mass that day will be the Latin Tridentine Mass. (Another reminder of this will follow next week.)
Joseph Selling of the Catholic University of Louvain composed and edited a document, entitled "Catholic Scholars' Statement on Marriage and the Family," in preparation for the Synods of 2014 and 2015. It offers a premier example of the now regnant conceits of self-styled 'progressive' dissenters in the Catholic Church.
Several ideas Prof. Selling is trying his hand at selling his audience are extracted for examination and analysed by David Mills in "While We're At It - Pt. XVIII" (First Things, February 2014):
• “The vast majority of official teaching of the church on marriage
and the family has been prepared and promulgated by men who have no
direct, personal experience of married life in the contemporary world.
They have made promises of celibacy which exclude any form of sexual
relationship. As a result, relatively little of the teaching in this
area clearly speaks to persons who are attempting to come to terms with
their sexuality, to find and enter into meaningful relationships, and to
prepare for a life of committed, mutual love that may involve the
challenges of parenthood.”
So claims the Catholic Scholars’ Statement on Marriage and the Family
issued by a professor at the Catholic University of Louvain and signed
by a variety of dissenting Catholic theologians, though apparently none
of the writer’s colleagues at Louvain, and good for them. About a third
were listed as emeritus or retired. Sr. Jeannine Grammick and
Georgetown’s Peter Phan appear.
Some priests and bishops may not
convey the teaching very well, but the Church has the laity for that. If
all old Fr. Tortellini can do is recite the rules, Mr. and Mrs.
Antonelli can explain how those rules work out for good in practice.
Of
all people capable of rational analysis of sex and human sexuality,
celibates are the most likely to examine the matter dispassionately and
disinterestedly. The fact that they don’t have a dog in the fight (other
than their concern for the lives and eternal destinies of their people)
helps them see more clearly what’s what. But of course what the
statement means by “clearly speaks” is not “explains the teaching in a
way people can understand and live” but “says what we think it should
say.”
• It’s a contentious claim, that celibates are the most
likely to examine the matter dispassionately and disinterestedly, writes
Anna Sutherland, until last May one of our junior fellows. “The fact
that it’s so contentious exposes what seems to be a common but false
assumption: that you can’t really understand a sin if you haven’t
committed it yourself, when in fact sin has a blinding, not an
enlightening, effect.”
We may be better able to relate to someone
like St. Augustine who sinned and repented, she continues, “but Jesus
and the saints were more insightful, not less so,
because of their holiness.” This we find hard to believe, so deeply have
most of us absorbed the idea that experience brings knowledge.
This recalls, as one reader writes, some Frank Sheed:
"Serving God does not give us the same kind of here-and-now pleasure that sin gives. To eyes as little trained to reality as ours, there is a color and energy in sin, by comparison with which virtues look pallid and half-alive."
Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, June 26, 2016):
This past week the Church celebrated the feast of Saint Aloysius, that paragon of virtue and high sanctity. He was known to have so trained his will and so disciplined his mind that, after his death, his priest confessor could testify that the saint had probably never committed a mortal sin all his (rather brief) life.
Reading his biography in the breviary each year I feel a holy envy for this most remarkable young man who managed to preserve his innocence -- not in a social vacuum but surrounded by the many enticing evils proposed to him by the noble class into which he was born. With his eyes ever downcast (he never looked into a woman's eyes), with long hours of prayer and many bodily penances, Aloysius always carefully guarded and conserved the treasure of sanctifying grace in his soul. Yet these impressive means, assiduously practiced, could not of themselves account entirely for his unsullied life. There's no possible way for anyone to merit (in the literal sense) the grace of sinlessness. As a grace properly so called, it is a God-given gift which our Lord freely (and rarely, it seems) grants. That said, however, one may surmise that God grants this special preservative grace only to certain souls in view of the fact that they pursue with unrelenting persistence the path of sanctity. I mention this being both a sinner myself and a confessor who knows the great desire to cease committing sin and to be perpetually pleasing to God in every aspect of life. And yet, sin appears to have a kind of inevitability about it. Try as one may, sin happens as sure as metal tarnishes, weeds sprout, and dust settles. Yet this dim view of the inevitability of moral failings -- a form of determinism -- is false. Man always retains internal moral freedom such that no one ever must succumb to sin. This is the point of doctrine. And yet, there is the near universally experienced feeling that sin cannot be entirely avoided, which is true only in the cas of venial sin unless God were to confer that special preventive grace mentioned above.
No one then can "buy" the grace of perseverance. There is no "insurance policy" such that one can pray hard or pledge many good deeds so as to ward off the possibility of succumbing to future sin. All one can do is to pray regularly and undertake appropriate penitential disciplines in the hope that by these means one would have the strength always to resist sin -- with the help of divine grace. If there is a relapse into sin, the sincere Christian understandably become distraught. Recidivism is a cause of anguish for many penitents. How, one asks himself, is it possible to have failed God yet once again? Despondancy, despair, however is never the right response to the feeling of helplessness that can grip the sinner who relapses into sin. As an attempt at offering consolation to the recurring sinner, I offer a few thoughts.
The first is that God has a reason for permitting all things that happen, sin included. That may sound slightly blasphemous since God abhors sin, yet there's a distinction between His willing sin (an impossibility) and His permitting it to happen. In this latter sense God may allow acquiescence to sin as a means of humbling the proud sinner, of making him pray more fervently, of moving him to admit his sins to the priest, of leading him to acquire a deep contrition, of learning compassion for the failings of others, or of demonstrating and proving His mercy and compassion. Another thing to consider is that sin easily becomes accustomed, ingrained behavior, embedded into the emotional system as a kind of reflexive response. Hence sincere attempts to eradicate sin must contend with a powerful, compelling force.
These attempted rationales for the ongoing commission of sin should not be taken as dismissive of its true malice and its consequences, nor should they slight the requirement for the repentant sinner to make a decisive, firm intention to sin no more. Sin truly is evil, and the result of unpardoned mortal sin is eternal hell after death. The reform of one's life must be the unrelenting duty of everyone, and no one may excuse himself from frequenting the confessional. God who permits sin has also provided its remedy in the sacrament of Confession.
My purpose in writing you on this subject is to give you encouragement. You are not alone in being a sinner. Sin is one of the (unfortunate) unifying things about the human reace for nearly everybody (Our Lady and John the Baptist for sure, Saints Aloysius and Therese probably). Come then to confess your sins with childlike simplicity and with a straightforward honesty which recognizes that God's compassionating goodness and forgiveness is far greater than the regrettably wretched commission of your sins.
Someone was talking about how diabolical influences have infiltrated the music industry, mentioning a few singers' names. I checked out some of their music videos and, whether the symbolism was subtle or overt, I would have to concur. The same is apparently true of large swaths of the movie and entertainment industry. This 'Black Child Production' video [see blow] starts off with some creative use of film clips to enact some of the points made by the narrator. The narrator switches from male to female about a quarter of the way through. But the real kicker comes when she begins referring to specific individuals, groups, and events in the last half of the video [advisory: some explicit sexual language]:
On the one hand, I'm not inclined to believe that the influence of the diabolical is so overt or prevalent as to involve satanic blood sacrifice rituals throughout the mainstream of the entertainment industry. On the other hand, I rather suspect that there are some quarters where well-known individuals are involved in some pretty nasty and evil business.
Actor George Clooney is talking about the night he went to Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi’s home - infamous for lavish sex parties – and was invited to the leader’s bedroom. Berlusconi’s bashes have come to be known as “bunga bunga” parties, and Clooney says he got an invite.
I don't make a practice of spending much time in this iniquitous netherworld and its steaming cauldrons of infernal vices and luciferian plots. But I have read enough to know that it has probably infiltrated the circles in which many of our political leaders move. You have surely read about the first President Bush's induction into the Skull and Bones secret society at Yale University. Perhaps you have also read about the Clintons and their trail of dead bodies and unaccountable disappearances in the course of their political rise to power from dubious beginnings in Arkansas.
You may or may not have heard Larry Sinclair's statement before the National Press Club about his cocaine and sex trysts with Barack Obama when he was senator in Chicago, Rev. James Manning's testimony to the same, or the Washington, DC-based investigative journalist Wayne Madsen's report on Obama's involvement in a Chicago gay club called "Man's World," and the convenient deaths of three Chicago gay friends of Obama, one of whom (Donald Young, who was the openly gay choir director at Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ) is claimed by his mother, Norma Jean Young (who worked for Chicago's Police Dept.), to have been murdered to protect secrets of his bisexual lover who became president.
How anyone could be puzzled over Obama's policies while in office is beyond me -- his 'Iran deal', which opens the door to nuclear weapons in the hands of the most notorious promotors of anti-western terrorism in the mideast; his 'evolution' on the issue of gay rights and abandonment of DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act) in favor of same-sex 'marriage'; his plunging our nation into debt to the point of nearly doubling the debt on the national credit card, now rocketing upwards of $20 trillion; his refusal to acknowledge Islamic terrorism while easily referring to the threat of Christian funamentalist 'terrorism'; ... the list goes on. Whatever one thinks of Dinesh D'Souza, I, for one, consider some of his claims in this short video about Obama pretty compelling, even if he doesn't plumb the spiritual dimension adequately. Americans who re-elected this man to yet a second term are fools, or ignorant, or evil.
So when I listen to NPR and hear polished pundits playing sound bites from Obama and solemnly treating them as 'politics as usual', I get the surreal feeling that I have just stepped into a scene from Last Year at Marienbad. From my point of view, what NPR considers serious reality, I consider facile fiction; and what NPR considers the fetid fever swamps of medieval fantasies about an unseen world of angels and demons, I consider seriously to be the underlying reality of our world. Even on a bad day, J.R.R. Tolkien could tell us more about what's happening in our world than NPR ever could on its best day. He, at least, understood that there are such things as the preternatural diabolical forces represented by Mordor, the corruption of Sarumen, the temptations and delusions of Boromir, and the possibility that rides on them of winning or losing everything.
"Hypocrites!" says Jesus: "You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don't know how to interpret this present time?" (Luke 12:56)
Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" [temporary link] (Assumption Grotto News, April 17, 2016):
Once I heard it said, by a Catholic psychiatrist, I believe, that the root cause of all mental illness is the lack of love. It's an idea I'm well-disposed to accept. I observe the suffering of many people of the world at large, and at much closer range of people I know and care a great deal about -- you are among these -- and I'm much troubled over the spiritual want that causes such suffering and agonizing distress. God made the world for love -- for love of Him. When we have the love of God in us, poured into us, as St. Paul would say, by the Holy Spirit, we are then 'right' and consequently are fulfilled. The beauty of love, the poetry of life, the harmony of nature, the ecstasy and serenity of contemplative prayer, the silence and the intoxicating power of music which enraptures the heart, moving it to want to repose in God -- all these spiritually human and properly-speaking divine things are being cut off from our experience in this unloving, ugly, pragmatic, techno world. What can result other than suffering from a stifling of the soul? La tristesse du monde (the French language seems best to convey this: "the sadness of the world"). God's holy word had warned us that all the desires of the world are vanity, a "chasing after the wind." Yet we seem not to be able to escape the entrapment of modern life created by our concupiscences. "Do not love the world, or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love for the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world -- the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and teh pride of life -- is not of the Father but is of the world (1 Jn 2:15-16). St. James remarks similarly: "whosever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God" (4.4).
The one place of refuge in this unhappy world for us Catholics ought to be in church, at Mass and before the most Blessed Sacrament. As we know so well, even this has often been taken from us, where the Mass is secularized and the tranquility which ought to attend the Blessed Sacrament in our churches and chapels is often ruffled by active busyness and discourteous impudent talking.
I write and speak about these problems of the 'difficulty of being' Catholic in the modern world because I too have to fight off the allurements of the world and of the flesh, and the blandishments of the devil and must run for asylum in the solitary quiet of the Lord's presence where I discover all that my aching heart desires. Those few stabilizing moments of daily prayer are surrounded by the worries, duties, noises and problems of banal existence. I want to fly away like a bird to the mountain (Ps. 10:2) to be at peace with God. This is, I would say, a veiled expression of the desire for heaven itself, a yearning for the plentitude of eternal life for which cause we were created. "Our hearts are restless until they repose in Thee," wrote St. Augustine.
Often when newcomers visit our parish church, or come for Mass here, they note a difference from other churches in finding a certain restfulness (for lack of a better word). I would not say that I am satisfied in having attained to the perfection of this, but I have tried mightily to avoid the most rudely invasive agitators that cause the disquiet in many churches and its liturgies. You yourselves, upon coming into our church, bring in with you, unwittingly, much of the commotion and disturbances you acquired from the world during the past week. It takes time for the sanctifying, calming power of the Lord's words and Presence to do their work to restore the spiritual equilibrium you need to face yet another week of temptation, trial, burden of mundane deportment, and harsh realities of everyday life.
We need so much less of much that we have in order to possess much more of God, of love, of beauty, of serenity -- even of sanity itself. Are we willing to sever those attachments to things we can do without in order to have the greater things and the greatest of all things? It's a question to be pondered and to be acted upon in light of the graces received. God wants us to be at peace, in His holy grace, with our minds and our loves riveted upon Him and upon our eternal goal.
We injure ourselves and cause much unhappiness for ourselves and for others by evading the eternal truths.
Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" [temporary link] (Assumption Grotto News, February 21, 2016):
Frequently during Lent I ask myself, What’s the point of this? If you are indeed doing anything significant this holy season, that question must come to you as well sometime. If you are not doing some good works which cost you, that is, which constitute a personal sacrifice, you are to be pitied because you’re missing out on an immense benefit to yourself. I read that Saint Teresa of Avila wrote that once in heaven she knew she would no longer be able to merit anything for a greater share in the riches of heaven (this is a certainty: namely, that the time of merit ends at our death). She added, however, an important thought. There, in heaven, in the state of shared glory with God, she will wish that she could return to earth once again if only by doing so she might say one more Hail Mary for an increase of heavenly riches.
That “one Hail Mary” captivated my mind. How many innumerable moments are lost in this life to idleness, futile industry, frivolities–if not outright sin–when we could make profitable use of our time for a spiritual gain whose possession would be everlasting. To think that way is to have a supernatural perspective on life. To act according to that way would be to live the life of a saint. But then, we are so busy with everything else–much of it being necessary–that we have not a thought about God throughout our very active day. God knows this. There is, however, a way so to live as to get everything done that needs be done and yet make it all count for eternity. This is the way of offering up even our most ordinary acts of the day as a sacrifice to God. This means that even our eating, sleeping and daily working can be done for the glory of God, which is not so say that we may set aside doing particular spiritual works of the day, ‘praying as we go,’ would be all sufficient. No. The sacred time of Lent ought to weigh on our minds the obliging duty to do spiritual good works.
To get back to my initial question–What’s the point?–not only does our determined course of leading the devout life have as its goal the increase of merit, but even more importantly is its final end the greater possession of Christ, even here and now. I think of Saint Paul’s “I want to know Christ.” Imagine that he who had seen the Lord in the glory of heaven, yet could say that there was more to know of Christ.
A priest must carry about within him not only the burden of his own weaknesses and sins but also those of his people whose spiritual condition and needs are known to him. My fear is not only that you have sins which impede entirely, or else retard, your spiritual life, but that you may be doing little or nothing to help yourselves. For the love of your own souls, you need to do something for Lent! You simply must cut away at those things that are holding you back from the possession of Jesus. Yes, it’s really all that urgent and that simple. I can ask, exhort, suggest, and urge you to quit your sinful attachments, to begin again to live for God, and to make acts of penance. All such petitioning from me, or anyone else interceding for you, can go only so far. The rest must come from your own wills. As the saying goes, God redeemed you without your help but He will not save you without it.
It seems to me at times as if the enterprise of leading the devout life is in a way a selfish pursuit. It is, after all, for the salvation of my own soul. That only grasps the matter partially, however. The final reason of why we should be doing Lent, denying ourselves not only of sins but even of some good things and by doing penances, is for the glory of God. For His sake should we want to be saints. This is God’s will: our sanctification. “Now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life” (Romans 6:22).
Please keep doing, or begin seriously to do, something truly beneficial for Lent, even at this late hour. Do it for God, if not for the love of your own souls. It is surely a grief to the Sacred Heart of Jesus that there are many–may you not be among them!–who have no regard for the salvation of their own souls.
Fr. Eduard Peronne, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, September 6, 2015)
Recently, I think, an ex-satanist told the sordid, frightening, and even gruesome story of his former life as high priest of iniquity. The once reprobate man is, marvelous to tell, now a believing, practicing Catholic. His is a tale so horrible I can’t countenance telling it, nor even think about it. One revealing aspect about his confession, however, was making known the activity of satanists inside abortion clinics. This was a confirmation of what many had suspected: there’s even more evil inside abortion chambers than we dared to admit.
Leaving aside the rest of the man’s story – it’s gory details are unnecessary to know–I was surprised to find myself a bit annoyed at the disclosure of his former perversities, not so much because of the shocking specifics told but rather because of the overall public manner of his recital, a forum that has now become popular. This practice of being outspoken, telling-it-all about one’s evil past, is not always inappropriate, nor always without benefit. The lives of the saints, for example, often edify and inspire, when after a great conversion, a sinful life turns into a holy one. With that kind of story everyone can identify to some degree and profit by it in a more resolute pursuit of righteousness and holiness. But the modern manner of public disclosure is different. It panders to sensational and lurid tastes, satisfying morbid curiosity rather than the thirst for goodness and wisdom. This practice is prevalent in a lot of modern writing, TV talk shows, radio interviews and films. There the objective is not honorable, aiming to satisfy sinful appetites by hearing about the odd, macabre, bizarre and, most often, lecherous and prurient. Tellers of these misdeeds typically have no or little remorse, either before God or before humanity, but evince instead a braggart spirit that masks guilt in an supposedly honest admission.
There’s irony in this modern openness, this “transparency” (now a favorite jargon in some quarters), and it is this: while many today are bold and brash in telling their shameful deeds publicly, there’s so little humble and honest divulgence of sins in our confessionals which remain–in most parishes at least – grossly neglected. The reason for both the loud-mouthed exposés and for the concealing of sins is the same: guilt. The arrogant boaster and the cowardly evader of truth suffer alike from guilt and try to alleviate their accusing consciences by inappropriate and utterly ineffective means. The only way to be free from the sting of guilt for sin is the way invented by God in a three-fold act: contrition, confession and absolution. The happy result of this is relief for the throbbing soul. It requires, on the part of the offender, humility and integrity and–on the Other side–divine forgiveness. Because sincere openness and use of the confessional are little in evidence, we’re becoming an ever sicker people, unavailing of the proffered divine mercy that maintains good spiritual and mental health. The Church in Confession holds the remedy for wounded souls in her priests’ hands in such a way that the dignity and privacy of the disclosing penitent is respected. But many would rather deny their guilt and keep it locked inside them where it corrodes, rots and torments their consciences; or else they would rather boast about their sins and ridicule moral norms. A psalm expresses well the mind of a truly repentant sinner: “Blessed is he whose sins are forgiven...in whose spirit there is no deceit. For when I was silent about my sin, my body wasted away through groaning all day long. But then I acknowledged my sin to You and I did not hide my iniquity. I said: ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’ and then You forgave the guilt of my sin” (Ps. 31).
People who do not admit their guilt with humility and complete honesty in Confession (and with sincere amendment) must suffer the burden of guilt throughout their lives and afterward must face the dread judgment of God. Confession, however, is the removal of guilt such that a sinner emerges from a good Confession free of blame before God (though before mankind he may yet have to face other consequences for his misdeeds), his conscience now being at peace. For the repentant and restored man, his confessed and absolved sins will not be charged against him at the Judgment.
With such a marvel of divine clemency as is found in the Sacrament of Confession dare anyone deny himself access to this unspeakably great benefit? The aforementioned Psalm ends this way: “Rejoice in the Lord and exult, O you just ones, and be glorified, all you upright in heart.”
Boast, then, O Christian, not of your shameful sins, but of the goodness of Christ whose mercies are without end.
Father Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, June 28, 2015):
I wonder how cognizant people are about the
true state of things at this time. My guess is that they are not much
aware, or at least not all that much troubled by them. I’ve avoided
apocalyptic warnings to you for the good reason that they would be
false. Only God knows for sure when the travail of the final days will
be upon us. This does not mean, however, that there cannot be a time
great turmoil in the world–a time of disturbances which afflict the
entire societal body in the political, moral, and religious areas of
life–which is to say, in every aspect.
The near collapse of order in beneficent
government, national and worldwide, in societal structures, in
education, the military, in law and judiciary, in education and arts, in
economy and–hard to admit it–even in the Church, does not seem overmuch
to worry many people, because they’ve been lulled into reverie by an
enveloping, all-pervading
sensuality. The palliative effect of pleasures which distract our minds
and cloud our judgment tends to make us oblivious to the disorder all
around us: the effect being much like an anaesthetic on a body suffering
some pathological condition. Pain is a warning that something’s amiss
that needs remedying. Covering over problems with blithe distractions
from sensual comforts allows decay unattended to advance, to worsen.
Men’s ambition and pride lead to resentment of
authority; their inclination towards evil, and especially towards sexual
indulgence, leads them to want to give way to outpourings of their
lawless passions (anger, lust and disregard for law and discipline); and
these in turn make men turn away from God and prepare them to become
practical atheists, which is to say, agnostics. It is only at this last
phase that we begin to see clearly that there’s more than human ambition
and weakness behind the ensuing general disorder–that it is demonically
inspired. In any case, whether we are willing to believe in the Enemy’s
hand in this or not, we are all feeling the effects of the advancing
chaos in the disharmony in our marriages and families, in our
ineffective educational attempts in our schools, in the squeeze that
holds our money and property, in the ever-wider
encroachment of big government over more and more aspects of our lives,
in the disturbances and discomfort we are feeling by being in a Godless
public, in the uncertainty and fears we experience as ominous, impending
calamity, in the division in the Church, etc.
Much more needs to be said about these things
that can’t be aired here. But my reasons for bringing them up are 1) to
assure that all this is not right, is not normal, and is
decidedly deadly for continuance in an ordered world; 2) to speculate
about what the right response should be in the face of this distorted
scene. Responses are basically of two kinds: a) offensive action which
seeks to rectify the troubles by opposing the many seducing errors and
the moral decay; b) prayer and sacrifice, both for restoration of order
and for making reparation for damages already done. These two forms are
often posed as being in tension with each other: the ‘direct
confrontation approach’ or the more ‘indirect’ and (seemingly)
‘passive.’ In truth, I can’t say that there is an alternative: both are
needed. We need front-line fighters
and we need prayer-warriors (pardon
that gooey expression). What we cannot do is to become idle and numb,
indifferent and unconcerned, allowing evil to go unopposed, and thus to
advance.
If I am undecided about which of these to
recommend to you the more, I would, as your pastor, say at least this
much with utter confidence: you must stop your own slinking into
the myriad forms of evil that are rotting souls. You simply cannot give
way to your passions–which are the internal originators of all the
disorder and chaos in society and in the Church. You, in simple terms,
have got to oppose the sinful inclinations that induce you to commit
your sins. Never mind the terrible things other people are doing, how
bad the world is getting, how dizzying the turmoil in the Church. Be
saintly, and do not budge from the way of righteousness. Be tough on
yourselves and be holy people. The reform of the world begins with you,
in your own soul. Then, and only then, should you proceed with your plan
of righting the wrongs of others. This program is a version of what our
Lord Himself said: remove the plank in your own eye before removing the
splinter in the eyes of others.
Don’t mistake my meaning. I am not suggesting
that we should not oppose the tremendous evils that are upsetting the
God-willed harmony and order of the
world and the Church. We must oppose these. Nor am I saying that we
should not be making the much-needed
Eucharistic holy hours to appease divine justice and petition divine
intervention. We, however, must not be hypocrites, outwardly valiant and
righteous but inwardly unconverted. What is inexcusable is indolence and
apathy and, of course, complicity in the great movement to overthrow the
God-given order of truth, goodness,
beauty, and holiness, a movement which is not fundamentally a thing but
a destructive and malevolent person who rails against God and seeks to
frustrate His plans for the salvation of the human race.
Fr. Perrone
P.S. This will be my last Descant for a
while as I take my summertime lease for mental and physical refreshment.
Fr. John, to whom I confidently entrust your pastoral care, will no
doubt graciously supply in my absence.
This is only Part I of a two part series on St. Peter Damian (1007-1072), a Doctor of the Church [click here for Part II]. In our climate where sodomy has now become the "new normal" and yet another "sacrament" of our Culture of Death (like baby-killing, since Roe v Wade in 1973), I think we do well to remind ourselves of how the Church has regarded homosexual practice in her past, defining it as one of the sins that cries out to heaven for vengeance. Engel writes:
It appears that whenever Holy Mother Church has had a great need for a special kind of saint for a particular age, God, in His infinite mercy, has never failed to fill that need....
Among St. Peter Damian's most famous writings is his lengthy treatise, Letter 31, the Book of Gomorrah (Liber Gomorrhianus), containing the most extensive treatment and condemnation by any Church Father of clerical pederasty and homosexual practices. His manly discourse on the vice of sodomy in general and clerical homosexuality and pederasty in particular, is written in a plain and forthright style that makes it quite readable and easy to understand.
In keeping with traditional Church teachings handed down from the time of the Apostles, he holds that all homosexual acts are crimes against Nature and therefore crimes against God who is the author of Nature.
It is also refreshing to find an ecclesiastic whose first and primary concern in the matter of clerical sexual immorality is for God's interests, not man's, especially with regard to homosexuality in clerical ranks. Also, his special condemnation of pederastic crimes by clergy against young boys and men (including those preparing for holy orders) made over nine hundred years ago, certainly tends to undermine the excuse of many American bishops and Cardinals who claim that they initially lacked specific knowledge and psychological insights by which to assess the seriousness of clerical pederastic crimes.
Upon a first reading of the Book of Gomorrah I think the average Catholic would find himself in a state of shock at the severity of Damian's condemnation of clerical sodomical practices as well as the severe penalties that he asks Pope Leo IX to attach to such practices.
One of the main points of the Book of Gomorrah, is the author's insistence on the responsibility of the bishop or superior of a religious order to curb and eradicate the vice from their ranks. He minces no words in his condemnation of those prelates who refuse or fail to take a strong hand in dealing with clerical sodomical practices either because of moral indifferentism or the inability to face up to a distasteful and potentially scandalous situation.
... Damian decries the audacity of men who are "habituated to the filth of this festering disease," and yet dare to present themselves for holy orders, or if already ordained, remain in office. Was it not for such crimes that Almighty God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, and slew Onan for deliberately spilling his seed on the ground? he asks. Quoting St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians (Eph 5:5) he continues, "... if an unclean man has no inheritance at all in Heaven, how can he be so arrogant as to presume a position of honor in the Church, which is surely the kingdom of God?" [15]
... According to Damian, the vice of sodomy "surpasses the enormity of all others," because:
"Without fail, it brings death to the body and destruction to the soul. It pollutes the flesh, extinguishes the light of the mind, expels the Holy Spirit from the temple of the human heart, and gives entrance to the devil, the stimulator of lust. It leads to error, totally removes truth from the deluded mind ... It opens up hell and closes the gates of paradise ... It is this vice that violates temperance, slays modesty, strangles chastity, and slaughters virginity ... It defiles all things, sullies all things, pollutes all things ...
"This vice excludes a man from the assembled choir of the Church ... it separates the soul from God to associate it with demons.... Unmindful of God, he also forgets his own identity. This disease erodes the foundation of faith, saps the vitality of hope, dissolves the bond of love. It makes way with justice, demolishes fortitude, removes temperance, and blunts the edge of prudence.
(emphasis added)
... Hear, dear reader, the words of St. Peter Damian that come thundering down to us through the centuries at a time in the Church when many shepherds are silent while clerical wolves, some disguised in miters and brocade robes, devour its lambs and commit sacrilege against their own spiritual sons;
"... I would surely prefer to be thrown into the well like Joseph who informed his father of his brothers' foul crime, than to suffer the penalty of God's fury, like Eli, who saw the wickedness of his sons and remained silent. (Sam 2:4) ... Who am I, when I see this pestilential practice flourishing in the priesthood to become the murderer of another's soul by daring to repress my criticism in expectation of the reckoning of God's judgement? ... How, indeed, am I to love my neighbor as myself if I negligently allow the wound, of which I am sure he will brutally die, to fester in his heart? ... "So let no man condemn me as I argue against this deadly vice, for I seek not to dishonor, but rather to promote the advantage of my brother's well-being. "Take care not to appear partial to the delinquent while you persecute him who sets him straight. If I may be pardoned in using Moses' words, 'Whoever is for the Lord, let him stand with me.' (Ezek 32:26)"
[Footnotes omitted in this post are present in the original]
Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" [temporary link] (Assumption Grotto News, March 1, 2015):
Life is not a continuous movement either in progress or regress. There are the ups and downs of living which, in the spiritual life, can be sorely disheartening. Once having set one’s feet on the way of Christ, determined to be a loyal and observant Christian, one soon discovers that there is no security, nor lasting guarantee of one’s new-found fidelity. There’s always the possibility of reversion to old bad ways and to wicked habits. “The dog returns to its vomit” (2 Peter 2:22); an expelled demon says, “I will return to my house from which I came” (Mt 12:44). Sanctifying grace is given to the soul as a “habit” (to use the traditional theological term), that is, as a permanent possession. Of itself it’s stable and meant to remain in the soul (in-habiting there) with the potential for increase through the exercise of the virtues, prayer, and the reception of the sacraments. Somehow–and it is enough of a common experience–a new situation arises in which evil begins to work its magical, seductive influence and–alas!–a moral fall is immanent. Anyone who has ever made a good confession with the sincere intention of sinning never again and who, nevertheless, falls back into the hated sin knows this unfortunate instability and delicacy of his spiritual state. According to the wishful thinking manifest in some Protestant circles, all one needs do to be saved is to make a once-and-for-all confession of belief in Christ as the Savior and then all will inevitably be well, right up unto entry into heaven. Would that it were so! The obvious fact is, however, that a person who can make such a declaration of faith in Christ by a free act of the will can also, by another act of will, make a counter decision to be disloyal and disobedient to Christ. With this reality of the changeableness, the inconstancy of the will our Lord instituted the sacrament of Confession for sins committed after baptism. The pledge is therein renewed, sins absolved, and one sets out from theconfessional determined to avoid sin and be henceforth invariably pleasing to God.
“Nothing is forever in this life.” I think about this every time I use some manufactured thing with its built-in, planned obsolescence which fails to work right. Too bad this saying applies as well to the inconstancy of decision to be faithful to God’s commandments and decrees. To train the mind and will to be unvarying in goodness is part of the reason why we need to be rather hard on ourselves in Lent. (Certainly, it must not be for morbid pleasure of the hardship. Lent is not to feed a pathological human condition but to remedy one.) Like an athlete who does repetitive movements to perfect his skills, the Christian needs the determined and constant exercise of moral disciplines to achieve regularity, consistency, fidelity. I doubt that anybody can ever ease up on self vigilance, no matter how advanced he may be along the way to spiritual perfection. The chances of slipping back, of regression, are always a possibility, though they should become more remote as one moves forward.
In a morning meditation from the writings of St. Gertrude, I read that Christ told her that every little act done in union with Him was as a pleasure to Him. That thought inspired the whole time of my prayer, thinking that our Lord might be so pleased with so little if only I would have a good intention and a clean soul. Making our beloved Lord pleased is that other motivation that should bestir us to be diligent in our Lenten promises. Not only we, but Christ Himself, would be the beneficiary of them, though for Him that can be so only in an analogous sense since He can’t become any greater, better or happier than infinite perfection already accords Him. Christ can only be ‘increased’ in the sense of a greater extension of His presence and influence in our souls, that is, exteriorly. And so, if this is case, we should wish Him to abound more and more in us. Lenten self-imposed practices attempt to make it so that obstacles to this are put down or at least weakened. How odd to think that I can get in Christ’s way of taking over myself!
A closing reminder that Fridays we have the Lenten fish fry (from fresh, not frozen, fish–I am told). While there, you would do well to hear the talk given on the Last Things–a good way to keep going forward this Lent.
Father Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" [temporary URL] (Assumption Grotto News, December 7, 2014):
As if the addiction itself were not bad enough, there are,
according to a bonafide exorcist, some pornography sites that have had a
curse put on them, to the effect that those who view them become
inextricably addicted to them. This is somewhat reminiscent of the
alleged practice of some of the more perverse rock-and-roll
groups whose musical albums have had Satanic message encoded onto them.
While all this may lay claim to conspiracy phobia, it is incontestably
true that there are a lot of weird people in the media business who
shamelessly boast of their deviant behaviors of various kinds and lead
their devotees to imitate them.
This information on the curse came to me via Father John
over a midday meal (some of our dinner conversation is, as you see, ill-conducive
to good digestion). I relate this to you because of my ongoing concern
about that trajectory of evil I wrote about a few weeks back by which
people become more and more helplessly (so it seems) entangled in evil
habits in a downward spiral of perverse inclinations. The end of this
line of corruption is, of course, the eternal damnation of a soul–the
devil getting the just reward for his diligence. A pastor then must be
worried about things of this kind and want to do what he can to restrain
the onslaught of wickedness from corrupting his flock. It’s perhaps a
good idea to let young people know that pornography is a multi-layered
vice whose end is the capture of one’s immortal soul. Once young people
come upon this filth they may desperately want to be freed from its
entanglements but find themselves held in a compulsive bondage to vice.
The demonic element here should not be overlooked since it helps explain
the ever widening web that ensnares our youth, extinguishing the light
of reason from their minds and tormenting their imaginations.
While on this unsavory topic...I read an article during the
week (this time over breakfast, a fact which may make one wonder whether
our priests may be suffering from gastronomic disorders) on the topic of
the freakishness of our youth. We know that not a few young people like
to dress up and act in weird, grotesque ways. This has often baffled me,
as it surely has many others. The article in question gives the reason.
Many adolescents and young adults have come to feel alienated from the
society of people of accepted mores. By joining offbeat groups, by
blasting their auditory faculties unto near deafness, by dressing up (or
down) in outlandish ways they can find a place where they, hiding their
real selves all the while, are accepted, “in,” on account of the
anonymity provided by the weird behaviors and–shall I call it–their
camouflage. The real tragic element here is not the bizarre aspect of it
but the fact of the loneliness that they feel on account of having been
left without a seriously engaging religious way of life, without moral
training, and without much personal self-discipline.
They are thus consigned to meander in a world that is, in many ways,
incomprehensible to them. They seek understanding, love, “values”
and–beyond all else–God in their lives. Since our world generally is
losing all this, it can’t pass on these most needed realities to the
young. The result is their isolation–the emptiness which their
eccentricity temporarily remedies.
This then is another pastoral pitch for you to be exemplary
Catholic Christians, for your own sakes first of all, and then for the
sake of the young who may see your example and be confused if what you
say you believe and you do are contraries.
Now on to something else. Monday is a holyday of
obligation, the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.This is not one of those sometime holydays where the bishops have
dropped the obligation to attend Mass when the day in question should
fall on a Monday. This one, December 8, is always obligatory. The reason
is that this is the title for the Virgin Mary as the Patroness of our
USA. How we need Her patronage! Do not neglect, under pain of mortal
sin, to come to Mass tomorrow and, while there, to beseech the holy
Mother of God to act powerfully on behalf of our country which is fast
becoming godless and pagan.
Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, November 23, 2014):
Hard to believe it. I drove
past a Catholic Church last week and Behold! there on the front lawn
were life-size plastic nativity figures set in place. While I annually
rail against preempting Christmas in the commercial world, this act, by
a church no less, arouses wonderment that can’t be matched by the
secularists. Has the whole world gone mad? Our thoughts at this time of
the end of the Church Year ought to be on the Four Last Things:
death, judgment, heaven and hell. Advent opens next Sunday, but it is
not the Christmas season.
I find myself becoming ever
more upset over the loss of souls in the deluge of impurity that’s
squeezing the spiritual life out of more and more people. I’m beginning
to wonder whether chastity even has a chance in our world. The media,
the entertainments, the internet abuse, the conversations of people,
their immodest manner of dress and filthy speech–these are becoming
suffused with sex to the point that its normal and only permissible
expression, in valid marriage, is almost not even referenced. The
relentless push of the gay agenda (as it’s been called) makes me believe
that perversion is becoming the accepted norm in the USA. I wonder how
this could possibly be so since human nature itself is so obstinate in
asserting normality and since conscience is an inescapable reality for
everybody. The idea then hit me that there must be a line, a trajectory
of sexual expression which begins with normalcy but which moves
downward, from lesser sins of impurity (though all of them are mortal
sins) to the stranger ones, and then on to the perverse, and finally to
violence and even murder, perhaps with demonic worship (and possession)
being the end of the line. All along the way there would be as a result,
a progressive madness–literally speaking, that would begin to take over
the person. This hunch–too primitive to call a theory–is that anyone is
potentially capable of moving along this line of sin, from normalcy to
beastly brutality and to ultimate irrationality. According to this view,
it would not then be a question of whatever tendencies one claims to
have gotten from birth which determine his life’s direction, but rather
of the degree of willful daring that one has to venture down this ‘road’
away from uprightness. In other words, I challenge the claims that are
often made about abnormal tendencies as inherited from birth. I’m
proposing rather that everyone’s nature can incline him to venture away
from the norms of goodness towards sin, more and more, depending on his
boldness to transgress the just limits imposed by nature. This is
another way of asserting the condition of fallen human nature due to
original sin. Anyone could be a potential pervert if he would only let
himself go far down enough, that is, to abandon right reason to be bold
and wicked enough to experiment with evils’ fascination. If I am right
about this, there would be no such thing as a sexual compulsion or a
proclivity to sinful activity but only the absence of the moderating and
restricting regulation of one’s will to develop virtue. This hypothesis
takes away the call for us to pity those whose proclivities are wayward
and the demand for us to be accepting of any forms of deviancy as
permissible, and even legally protected. No one has the right to
transgress the laws of nature that God implanted in our souls, and
therefore no one should cultivate a false compassion for those who
choose to sin. The only right attitude towards sinners is regret over
their deliberate sinfulness and the hope that God may give them the
actual grace to see the error of their ways and to reform their thinking
and their conduct.
Without the development of the
virtues from our youthful years which curb sinful tendencies of all
kinds, we are all prone to be sinners–prone, I say, not
destined by an irresistible force. But because family life is fast
eroding and because Catholic teaching and practice is dwindling away,
and because education in morals is not well imparted, the result is that
more and more people will be traveling down this ‘line’ from normality
to depravity, coming to a stop at whatever place he would dare not
venture further. Surely, I hope this will not happen to everybody, but I
see that it’s happening more and more–the ever increasing usage of
pornography propelling the movement along.
We must make up our minds to
be very good Catholic people–with the help of God.
Perhaps our obsession with sex is not really an obsession with sex at all. Perhaps it is really an obsession with death, to be avoided by remaining perpetually young or by tricking ourselves by sexual athletics into thinking that we do so. Yet whatever the aesthetics, sexual activity as a means for preserving the myth of eternal youth is always going to involve the law of diminishing returns and thus ironically prove a powerful witness to its own falsehood. It really does not matter how many orgasms you have, or how intense they are, you are still going to die.
By the time he published the Book of Gomorrah around A.D. 1049, St. Peter Damian had been preaching for some time against homosexuality. He told Pope St. Leo IX, to whom he directed this work, that he needed his support against those who despised him for this preaching. While others in authority remained silent, he lamented, homosexuality kept spreading: “Vice against nature creeps in like a cancer and even touches the order of consecrated men.”
That homosexuality was indeed a problem at that time may be inferred from the fact that the vice was addressed at the Council of Rheims (A.D. 1049) in the canon de sodomitico vitio. Also, Damian received, in reply to his treatise, what he had requested from Leo IX, “a decretal writing as to which of those guilty of these vices ought to be deposed irrevocably from ecclesiastical orders; and to whom, truly taking the view of discretion, this office can be mercifully granted.”
In the Book of Gomorrah Damian says he has preached against this sin “with a whole fountain of tears” because the sinner he addresses sheds none at all: “O miserable soul, I weep for you with so many lamentations because I do not see you weeping. I prostrate myself on the ground for you because I see you maliciously standing up after such a grave fall, even to the point of trying for the pinnacle of an ecclesiastical order.” Damian weeps from “fraternal compassion” because he sees a “noble soul made in the image and likeness of God and joined with the most precious blood of Christ” cast down from a great height of dignity and glory. Any Christian who commits sodomy, he explains, surpasses in sin the men of Sodom, for he “defies the very commands of evangelical grace.”
Joseph Selling of the Catholic University of Louvain composed and edited a document, entitled "
This recalls, as one reader writes, some Frank Sheed:
Frequently during Lent I ask myself, What’s the point of this? If you are indeed doing anything significant this holy season, that question must come to you as well sometime. If you are not doing some good works which cost you, that is, which constitute a personal sacrifice, you are to be pitied because you’re missing out on an immense benefit to yourself. I read that Saint Teresa of Avila wrote that once in heaven she knew she would no longer be able to merit anything for a greater share in the riches of heaven (this is a certainty: namely, that the time of merit ends at our death). She added, however, an important thought. There, in heaven, in the state of shared glory with God, she will wish that she could return to earth once again if only by doing so she might say one more Hail Mary for an increase of heavenly riches.
Recently, I think, an ex-satanist told the sordid, frightening, and even gruesome story of his former life as high priest of iniquity. The once reprobate man is, marvelous to tell, now a believing, practicing Catholic. His is a tale so horrible I can’t countenance telling it, nor even think about it. One revealing aspect about his confession, however, was making known the activity of satanists inside abortion clinics. This was a confirmation of what many had suspected: there’s even more evil inside abortion chambers than we dared to admit.
Life is not a continuous movement either in progress or regress. There are the ups and downs of living which, in the spiritual life, can be sorely disheartening. Once having set one’s feet on the way of Christ, determined to be a loyal and observant Christian, one soon discovers that there is no security, nor lasting guarantee of one’s new-found fidelity. There’s always the possibility of reversion to old bad ways and to wicked habits. “The dog returns to its vomit” (2 Peter 2:22); an expelled demon says, “I will return to my house from which I came” (Mt 12:44). Sanctifying grace is given to the soul as a “habit” (to use the traditional theological term), that is, as a permanent possession. Of itself it’s stable and meant to remain in the soul (in-habiting there) with the potential for increase through the exercise of the virtues, prayer, and the reception of the sacraments. Somehow–and it is enough of a common experience–a new situation arises in which evil begins to work its magical, seductive influence and–alas!–a moral fall is immanent. Anyone who has ever made a good confession with the sincere intention of sinning never again and who, nevertheless, falls back into the hated sin knows this unfortunate instability and delicacy of his spiritual state. According to the wishful thinking manifest in some Protestant circles, all one needs do to be saved is to make a once-and-for-all confession of belief in Christ as the Savior and then all will inevitably be well, right up unto entry into heaven. Would that it were so! The obvious fact is, however, that a person who can make such a declaration of faith in Christ by a free act of the will can also, by another act of will, make a counter decision to be disloyal and disobedient to Christ. With this reality of the changeableness, the inconstancy of the will our Lord instituted the sacrament of Confession for sins committed after baptism. The pledge is therein renewed, sins absolved, and one sets out from theconfessional determined to avoid sin and be henceforth invariably pleasing to God.
