Fr. Perrone on God's greatest weapon - one of very humble means

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, October 1, 2017):

October is the Month of the Holy Rosary.

Have you ever noticed that ever since the Incarnation, God has scaled down His ways? Unlike the days of old Israel when God manifested Himself in grandiose manner and by impressive miracles, since the time of Christ He's generally preferred to work more subtly -- though the cures and signs our Lord performed did amaze people in order to lead them to belief. But the thundering God of the Old Testament did seem to give way to a more gentle countenance in the New Testament. Our Lord presented Himself as one meek and humble of heart. He lived in poverty and showed favor to the underclass, the sick, and to foreigners. His law was the twofold commandment of charity, indicating an interiority not fully known in the laws of the old religion. The most notable instance of Christ's modest self-presentation in the New Testament era was the Holy Eucharist by which He would abide among men in the meanest form of ordinary-looking bread and wine. A certain reserve has thus been characteristic of the Christian religion, despite notable exceptions which have proved the fallibility of many of its adherents. The accent on humility, charity, chastity, kindness and many other related virtues is characteristically Christian and finds its source in the life of Christ Himself and His teaching. But it is also dominant in the person and influential moral presence of the Virgin Mary in the Church. If in the presence of a lady base tendencies are readily restrained and good manners showed, that most Blessed Lady's presence in the Church inspires a vast culture of goodness, virtue, and loveliness to flourish in the lives of men and in the literature, art and architecture of the Church.

The means by which Holy Mary has made Her far-reaching and blest impact upon the church is, like Christ's, modest and unassuming. I'm thinking here in particular about Her rosary, that simplest and most popular prayer which has been the prayer of preference of Christian people in the western part of the Church for many, many centuries, with devotees among clergy, religious, and laity. The illiterate pray it equally well as the learned. Human reason can't adequately account for the universal appeal of the rosary. Its power fascinates and attracts Catholics (and many non-Catholics as well) to it. The rosary has proved to be a mighty spiritual force that converts sinners, obtains miraculous favors, and steadies the moral lives of its devotees. This prayer specifically has been repeatedly requested by the Mother of God Herself as an effective remedy for sin, war, and infidelity. It has calmed turbulent souls, inspired genuine devotion, restrained evil, and obtained particular graces and favors which, one may assume, would not otherwise have been obtained. The efforts that were put forth after the revolutionary "reforms" that followed the Second Vatican Council to discourage Marian devotion generally and the rosary particularly were largely unsuccessful. The rosary has persisted in the devotional life of many Catholics and for some time it has been their enduring lifeline to the Church when impiety and scandal have beset her in modern times. The rosary is a steadying counter force to the ecclesiastical turbulence that has done so much harm to the spiritual sensitivities of people.

This month will be the windup the centenary celebrations of the Fatima apparitions. October 13, 1917 was the time when the spectacular miracle of the sun took place in Portugal, just as Our Lady had predicted that a sign would be forthcoming. The sun appeared to the onlookers to be spinning out of control and heading towards the earth in a destructive descent. Initial wonder gave way to a panicking fear which served to reawaken faith in the witnesses. Thus God at times has reverted to His Old Testament methods of imposing display to reanimate the spiritual life when the more gentle persuasive admonitions are ineffective. Perhaps the recent natural disasters, the threat of international war, and the civil unrest of our times may have a similar effect to bring us to our moral senses. The rosary was offered as a way to avoid the harsh measures of divine governance. In its modest way, the rosary offers an easier way to awaken us from our slothfulness and to cultivate the interior life of grace and holiness. This is that New Testament kind of power by which God makes saints.

Take up the daily rosary and join with your fellow parishioners in saying it after holy Mass.

Fr. Perrone

"All words have lost their meanings now."

For a man whose favorite mode of communication seems to be carrier pigeons, our underground correspondent somewhere in an Atlantic seaboard state, Guy Noir - Private Eye, seems surprisingly savvy about contemporary electronic technology. He used some sort of messenger app on his smart phone (didn't know he even had one) to contact me today as I was sitting at my computer. All of a sudden, there he was, bushy beard and all. One might have mistaken him for one of them mountain men up in the hollers of the Appalachian mountains.

Anyway, he blurts out: "Peter Kreeft has a new book out on world religions. [This is the one I think he had in mind.] At Amazon, one reviewer calls him an 'exclusivist.'"

At which point Noir, without letting me get a word in edgewise, contorts his bearded face and simply yells into his phone: "TO WHICH I REPLY, ALL WORDS HAVE LOST THEIR MEANINGS NOW!"

"Well, what do you mean?" says I.

And he replies: "I esteem Kreeft and his writing, but he engates in wishful thinking and his solutions are compromises of the Wojtyla-Ratzinger-Bergoglio sort."

"Whaaaa???" says I.

"They do not solve problems but amplify them," says he. "Ratzinger has a book called Faith and the Future, which is like a political pamphlet in its effort to please."



"This is more on point ..." says he, "old but useful." And he sends me while still on messenger (don't ask how, I wouldn't know), sending me a link to this article by Stan Guthrie, "Whose Submission? A Muslim-Christian dialogue," a critical review of Kreeft's Between Allah and Jesus: What Christians Can Learn from Muslims from some years back.

Guthrie begins his review by quoting the first line of Kreeft's earlier classic, Between Heaven and Hell, about three luminaries -- John F. Kennedy, Aldous Huxley, and C. S. Lewis -- who each died on November 22, 1963. In the first line from that book, JFK asks, "Where the hell are we?"

Guthrie observes that he had a similar reaction after reading Kreeft's later work, Between Allah and Jesuss, noting that it seems to stand the earlier one on its head, making a Muslim protagonist "a stand-in for the Lord," even having him claim to be "a better Christian than his Christian foils." Of course, given the state of Christian catechesis these days, this may not be too far from the truth in some cases.

In any case, Kreeft, Guthrie, and Noir all raise an important question to think about: Have our words lost all their meanings now, or, at least, are we in danger of our words losing their meaning? If we accept von Balthasar or Fr. Barron's hypothesis that hell could be empty, or nearly empty, for example, has our use of the word 'salvation' or 'redemption' lost all meaning? It's a fair question. And the same could be asked of our 'pastoral' use of words like 'love,' 'mercy,' and 'forgiveness,' in venues where there is almost no reference to 'repentance' or 'contrition.' If all religions present genuine paths to God and all non-Christians, Protestants, and members of sectarian religious cults have a reasonable expectation of finding themselves in heaven in the world to come, then what's the point of converting to the Catholic Faith? For that matter, what's the point of the New Evangelization? Sweet, merciful Jesus could be so severe at times:

Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. (Matthew 7:13-14)

Fr. Perrone on Advent: Killjoy or comfort?

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, December 4, 2016):

Advent proposes to us multiple senses of Christ's coming: in the historical past, the present, and the yet to come. One aspect of this most of us would rather not ponder is His coming as the Judge of every man's conscience. I have been meditating on this in my early morning orisons of the past week only to rediscover its poignancy to affect the deep interior of my soul.

Meditating on the Last Judgment is about self confrontation as much as about being judged. I wonder whether my life's evaluation then will set me among the sheep sequestered from the goats (the hymn Dies Irae). A standard of self-measure is whether I will have been found a friend or an enemy of christ's cross. The feast of Saint Andrew last Wednesday brought this to my mind. When he beheld the cross that had been prepared for his own death, he exclaimed, "O desired cross, receive a disciple of Christ: by means of you may He receive me." Applied to myself, I wonder whether I will have been so converted from my selfness as to have become worthy of the cross of Christ -- or in St. Paul's words, whether I had been crucified with Christ so as to have taken on His life. Like a simple home self-administered medical-test, I can guage somewhat where I will stand before God.

This sober reflection takes some of the saccharine coating off of our pre-holiday frivolities -- sorry to be the killjoy. But what use is the pretense of yet another Christmas season if we have not assumed a Christian identity, that of a son of God with an inheritance of Christ's eternal riches?

You owe it to yourself to picture the arrival of the Judge, and yourself beneathHis judgment seat when all your life's story will be an open book. Every thought, desire and deed ... made public. I can't bear now to anticipate the terrible sound of anger in the voice of the Just Judge in pronouncing His verdict for the damned, "Depart from Me." I need rather to imagine His encouraging word that gives me the hope that my repentance now will have been sincere enough, that my amendment of life sufficient so as to hear His voice of comfort (the word literally means strength) mediated through the Church: "speak tenderly to Jerusalem for her guilt is expiated" (Isaiah). Living now, in the time before the final judgment, I must ever be somewhat uneasy, unsure. Whether I will be set on the right or the left I cannot know with certainty. With neither presumption nor despair, I have hope to see my God face to face -- His of a radiant, rapturous look of divine love. This is the advent I long for. That I'm unworthy of it goes without saying; but I have no other goal in life but this. For the present time, this advent, I pray for deliverance from the evils I can yet commit, the only obstacles to the attainment of my desire. I could never have this hope without the invasion of divine grace into my miserable soul and the steadying patronage of the holy Virgin Mary. This for me is advent. Speaking of Her reminds me that Thursday coming is a holy day of obligation, in Her honor: the Immaculate Conception. Under this title She is patroness of our country for which we have been praying daily. Masses on Thursday will be as on a Sunday (6:30, 9:30, noon) plus an evening Mass at 7:00 p.m. (To anticipate your question: 'No. The evening Mass on Wednesday will not be of the holy day.')

Fr. Perrone

It's a wonder God has withheld his just judgment this long

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

How can you pray for your nation's cause if you no longer believe it has a cause?

"Get focused!" Maureen Mullarkey seems to say in "The End Time Is Ever With Us" (Studio Matters, October 17, 2016):

Here on my desk is a prayer from Archbishop Timothy Broglio, Archdiocese of the Military Services, USA. It begins:

Almighty God and Father, look with love upon our men and women in uniform and protect them in their time of need. Give them health and stability and allow them to return to their loved ones whole and unshaken. Be with their families and sustain them in these uncertain times.

The prayer is somehow off key, peaceable and tender to a fault. In their time of need. We could say the same thing about anyone at any time, and in the grip of any of life’s difficulties or sorrows. Health and stability. How does that translate on the battlefield? It is a nebulous pairing that veils the agonies, terrors, and deformations of war. Unshaken. In regard to what?


There is not a word here about victory, about defeating an enemy, or gaining dominion over the forces that threaten soldiers’ lives and ours. The prayer displays no gratitude for the heroic generosity and idealism that prompts young men and women to gamble their lives and the future of their families on the missions assigned to them.

What does it mean to be sustained in uncertain times? Uncertainty bedevils all times. There can be no sustenance without confidence that there exists something worth sustaining, worth the dreaded risk of death or disfigurement. Worth confronting the unspeakable. That fragile and perishable something is not hard to name: our Constitutional freedoms, the concept of human rights, the rule of law. The tragedy of our volunteer military is that their own leaders—and pastors—exhibit uncertainty themselves. They exhibit a kind of morose embarrassment at the reality that Western democracies have to be vigorously and effectively armed against the forces of tyranny.

There's much more to the article, provocative as always. Read more >>

[Hat tip to JM]

The beauty, glory, majesty, authority and power of the Holy Catholic Church

I'm sure it was hard for any Jewish contemporary of Jesus, under the ruthless Roman occupation of Palestine, to imagine the "Kingdom of Israel" as something great. Where was their king? Where was their kingdom? Where was the evidence of those ancient traditional prophecies of a Davidic kingdom that would endure forever? (2 Sam. 7; 1 Chron. 17:11-14, 1 Chron. 6:16)

In a similar way, it is becoming increasingly difficult for many Catholics in our day to imagine the Catholic Church as something great, as wielding power, possessing authority, manifesting glory, majesty, and anything like beauty. Think how much more difficult it would be if Rome itself were overrun by foreign enemies, St. Peter's Basilica destroyed, turned into a mosque or a museum, with the papacy dismantled. Of course Christ promised to be with His Church until the end of days, though all that would be needed for that promise to be fulfilled is for a single shepherd and a remnant flock (of even one or two!) to endure.

Not that I have any inkling that such an outcome lies in store for the Church. I don't. But one would think our Lord might expect us to be able, at least, to interpret the general signs of the times: "When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once, ‘A shower is coming’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens.... You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky; but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?" (Lk 12:54-56)

Remember our Lord's haunting question: "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" (Lk 18:8) Again, His brief discourses on the end of days are grim: "[M]any will fall away, and betray one another, and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because wickedness is multiplied, most men’s love will grow cold." (Mt 24:10-12)

Yet all I need do to remind me of the Sun shining above the clouds of our present darkness is to read a short prayer composed by Pope Leo XIII, a prayer I clearly remember reading not long after I was received into the Church back in the early 1990's. It was sent to me by a nun in California who has been a constant correspondent of mine for nearly three decades now. The prayer is The Exorcism Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel.

The prayer is nothing short of awe-inspiring. (See my earlier post on this prayer: "Giving the Devil his due - Part II," Musings, February 3, 2009.) When I read this prayer, I can't help but (1) wonder at the awesome power and authority that the Church and her ordained priesthood was once understood to possess, and (2) ask myself why this sense of power and authority seems almost to have evaporated in the contemporary incarnation of the Church.

All-too-often, unfortunately, one finds on the Internet the caveat that this prayer is "To be said by a priest only," which is a little misleading. The point is that only a priest with appropriate faculties from his Ordinary can licitly and safely say the prayer formally as an exorcism, not that the prayer cannot be read privately as a personal petition to ward off diabolical influence. (In Pope Leo's own words: "The faithful also may say it in their own name, for the same purpose, as any approved prayer.")

Providentially, a new book by Kevin J. Symonds, with a Foreword by Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Pope Leo XIII and the Prayer to St. Michael(2015), a comprehensive examination of the complex puzzle of the prayer's historical origins. The book (upwards of 200 pages), carries multiple imprimaturs, multiple appendices, and an interesting and balanced discussion sorting out legend from what can be known of Pope Leo's reputed horrific vision of the diabolical attack on the Church throughout the world in the generations after him.

John Paul II: "We are facing the final confrontation .... it is no longer possible to avert the coming tribulation"

I picked up a flyer on the way out of Mass this morning. Apparently a group called "A Call to Mary" (along with "Men of the Sacred Hearts" and "The International Marian Catechist Apostolate") is presenting an "Urgent Conference" in commemoration oft he forthcoming 100th anniversary of the apparitions at Fatima in 1917. The title reads: "Fatima: Hope for the World ~ A Warning and Final Plea from Heaven to return to the Mercy of God."

The conference is scheduled for Saturday, October 24, 2015 at the St. Louise Chapel, 3477 S. Lapeer Rd, Metamora, MI 48455 (248-808-8954), and speakers include Fr. Ben Luedtke, Msgr Arthur B. Calkins, Fr. Ladis Cizik, Prof. Robert Fastiggi, Dr. William Thomas and Matthew Hill.

But what interested me were two quotes on the flyer from John Paul II, which struck me as clearly prophetic:

• "We are now standing int he face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel, between Christ and Antichrist." (Pope St. John Paul II, Philadelphia, 1976)
  
  
• "We must prepare ourselves to suffer great trials before long such as will demand of us a disposition to give up even life, with a total dedication to Christ and for Christ. With your and my prayers it is possible to mitigate the coming tribulation, but it is no longer possible to avert it, because only thus can the Church be effectually renewed." (Pope St. John Paul II, Germany, 1980)

"Abp Luigi Negri: Western Civilization is at an end"

He puts the end of Western Civilization in the Museum of Mosul, where ISIS thugs destroyed timeless treasures, blowing up places of worship, and burning libraries.

I would have put it in the 2008 election of Barack Hussein Obama as President of the United States; but that's a detail. Western Civilization has been in decline since the Endarkenment, better known as the so-called "Enlightenment."

There were many milestones along the way, as there will doubtless be others. But we have for some time now been well into a new Dark Ages far more bleak that those following the "Fall of Rome" in AD 476. We just haven't quite realized it yet.

And, yes, like Mark Shea, I LOVE being Catholic!

Occasionally, I am asked by some of my Protestant friends and erstwhile colleagues whether I have ever had any second thoughts or suffered a twinge of "buyer's remorse" after converting to the Catholic Faith two decades ago. My truthful response is: not for a moment!

One must understand, of course, how the contemporary situation sometimes looks to a Protestant bystander of an Evangelical or Reformed stripe. They look at what has happened in the Catholic Church since the sixties -- which one of their own scholars, David F. Wells, describes as Revolution in Rome in his book by that title -- and they have questions: "Didn't you just jump out of the frying pan into the fire?" "Didn't you find that the Church you thought you were joining exists only in the history books and not in the real world today?" "If you saw yourself as climbing aboard the Barque of St. Peter to save yourself from drowning, don't you find yourself in a pretty leaky boat these days?"

I suppose there may seem to be a little truth in all of these questions, depending on how one interprets them; but the Church is not something that can be destroyed by human hands. It can be severely compromised, surely, but never quite destroyed. How do I know this? In the same way that I know the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ: by faith in His promises.

So, yes, there is a sense in which I do find myself somewhat "out of the frying pan and into the fire," inside a Church that looks strangely different from the Church of Catholic history, in a leaky Barque of St. Peter that seems to be listing alarmingly to the starboard side as it takes on water. Some would say of the Church that her days are numbered.

In a temporal sense, I cannot quarrel with the data. They do not look good. But like J.R.R. Tolkien, I continue to hold fast the the Eucatastrophe, the dramatic narrative climax that delivers victory from the jaws of certain defeat. In the end, I should find it surprising if the Church were NOT under withering attack by the world, the flesh, and the Devil. It is exactly what one should expect.

To be Catholic is to part of the most beautiful adventure in the world. It is to be recruited into an army to fight exhilarating battles with no hope of success -- battles that are nonetheless exhilarating because they are battles in a war whose outcome is already known: in the end we will win. Our liege Lord has already assured us of that.

Remember the words of Gandalf: "Look to my coming on the first light of the fifth day -- at dawn look to the east!" Our King will INVADE, and nothing will stop Him!

Benedict XVI's frightening vision of the Church's future

In May of 2010, the Holy Father went to Portugal and visited Fatima. As John L. Allen, Jr. then reported in the liberal National Catholic Reporter (May 11, 2010), the Pope en route to Portugal "called the reality of the sexual abuse crisis “terrifying” and said that the greatest persecution of the church comes not from external attacks but from sin within the church."

When asked what meaning the apparitions of Fatima have for us today, Benedict XVI replied [here I cite a different translation of the Pope's words than Allen's]:

Beyond this great vision of the suffering of the Pope ... are indicated future realities of the Church which are little by little developing and revealing themselves.... Thus it is true beyond the moment indicated in the vision, it is spoken, it is seen, the necessity of a passion of the Church that naturally is reflected in the person of the Pope; but the Pope is in the Church, and therefore the sufferings of the Church are what is announced...

As for the novelty that we can discover today in this message, it is that attacks on the Pope and the Church do not come only from outside, but the sufferings of the Church come precisely from within the Church, from sins that exist in the Church. This has always been known, but today we see it in a really terrifying way: that the greatest persecution of the Church does not come from enemies outside, but arises from sin in the Church. (emphasis added in original quote)

Michael Matt on the abdication, the council & Fatima

This is a bit of a reach from my usual fare, but my attention was drawn to this video by some comments I encountered on the Internet today. I don't know much about the Third Secret of Fatima, and I don't know what I think about some of the things Mr. Matt says here, but I do think many of you will agree that parts of his talk offer a striking and provocative departure from the mainstream.

The indifference of diabolical distraction

"The fact that there exist men who are indifferent to the loss of their being and the peril of an eternity of wretchedness is against nature. With everything else they are quite different: they fear the most trifling things, foresee and feel them.... He knows he is going to lose everything through death but feels neither anxiety nor emotion. It is a monstrous thing to see one and the same heart at once so sensitive to minor things and so strangely insensitive to the greatest. It is an incomprehensible spell, a supernatural torpor that points to a supernatural power as its cause."

-- Blaise Pascal

Russian Orthodox Bishop: Hell only temporary

Dan Valenti, "World Mercy Congress 'Catches Fire'. Is hell the weigh station to heaven?" (Examiner.com, April 5, 2008):

ROME, April 5, 2008 /PRNewswire/.

In a stunning ecumenical moment at the Catholic Church's first-ever World Congress on Divine Mercy, Russian Orthodox Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, bishop of Vienna and Austria, told a rapt audience of 8,000 that God's love places no limit on his mercy toward humanity, even to the point of imposing a temporal limit on hell.

[Hat tip to S.F.]

Protestant vs. Catholic Heaven

"Simpsons are irreverent but they get the joyousness of the faith right."

Pope: Hell 'really exists'

Pope: Hell 'really exists' VATICAN CITY, March 28 (UPI) -- - Pope Benedict XVI says Hell -- despite being typically overlooked in today's society -- "really exists and is eternal."

Church historian Agostino Paravicini Bagliani said the warning comes at a time when the world's concept of Hell has changed dramatically.

[Hat tip to M.F.]