Dear Pope Francis

I am writing this seeking understanding and clarification on the “new evangelization.” Many things are being attributed to Pope Francis in the media – and many clergy, bishops, and faithful are acting on them. The most concerning of these outcomes has been the vilification of traditional Catholics in the media and by other Catholics, and the foreshadowing of the elimination of sacramental marriage by either allowing divorce and remarriage or changing the basis of annulments so that they become the equivalent of a Catholic Divorce.

As a traditional catholic, I would like to assure you that our faith is not dead, we are not uncompassionate or unforgiving. Though our loyal devotion to the catechism leaves us open to ridicule when we refuse artificial birth control and have large families in our openness to life. We are thought mentally simple when we profess a deep and abiding belief in the real presence in the Eucharist. We are ridiculed when our wives and daughters wear mantillas in the presence of the Lord in the Eucharist and at Mass. Many of our wives are looked down upon because they find fulfillment as stay-at-home wives and mothers.  We are seen as deluded for considering the sacramental marriage covenant as much a promise to God, as to each other. I have been scolded many times for kneeling when taking communion, because I was holding up the line. We are derided for preferring the awe and majesty of the Tridentine Mass because it fills our souls. It is a mystical and moving experience beyond words to be joined to the sacrifice of the holy Mass in quiet and stillness, and allow yourself to be filled with God’s presence.

Often, we are accused of being intolerant as a group, especially of sexually active homosexuals, the divorced and remarried without annulments, and other people who are in less than fortunate circumstances. I reject this as patently untrue. We love the person, but we find the sin objectionable. For those seeking participation in the sacraments, we will provide whatever help we can to help them resolve their impediments. For some, that is helping find an annulment workshop, for others it is healing broken marriages, and for others providing loving support as they work to make a break from their sinful activities or attractions. Those who come to us are broken and contrite – they are seeking His Love and forgiveness. They know that to receive Him they must be free of mortal sin. I have a brother who struggles with homosexuality whom I love very deeply, and even now he struggles to be worthy of the sacraments. It is his certain knowledge of God’s real presence in the Eucharist that both pains him for his sins, and motivates him to be worthy to receive Him.

My own return to the Church necessitated deep personal change before I could be admitted to the sacraments. This process included months of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament for me to fully accept and comply with the teachings of the church, even if I could not fully understand. This was a painful  journey, whose value to the faithful should not be diminished just because it is so difficult. True love and compassion are shown by the support of penitents through the process of reconciliation for admission to sacraments.

Here in America the new evangelization is giving many people the impression that the Church is advocating that being free of mortal sin is no longer necessary to receive the sacraments. It has encouraged a revolution by the sheep against their shepherds, demanding change in infallible doctrine. I believe that God is everlasting and unchanging. His Church has survived the rise and fall of states, empires, anthropological regression, and has endured according to to the promise of Christ for over 2000 years. I am convinced that it our loyal devotion to the beautiful teachings of our Church that has brought unparalleled grace and joy into our family.

The curtailment of the Tridentine Mass or the devaluing of sacramental marriage would be devastating to the faithful. After many years of poor catechesis, I often wonder if many see the Church for what she truly is. I wonder if many Catholics are left unsure or, worse yet, in obstinate disobedience to the faith. It seems that a growing number of people want us to resemble the world rather than Jesus Christ. Whether it is Gay Marriage, Ordaining Women, allowing artificial birth control, or allowing abortion, they want God to “get with times.”. In St. John’s Gospel, Jesus reminds us, “If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.” Please, Holy Father, help us to strive for a holiness that “sets us apart.” Lead us to our heavenly reward! I am praying for your strong leadership each and every day!

Pax Christi,

Colin

PS: I hope everyone who reads this takes a moment to pray for the Pope.

 

+Burke to be cashiered?

There has been a lot about this all over the internet of late – It directly concerns sacramental marriage and the coming synod, and therefore should be of interest to you.

A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

I tell you, Rorate had some very troubling posts in the past 18 hours or so.  The focus of this post, the possible (likely, certain?) removal of Cardinal Burke from a position of influence to one of so little value as to be a mighty slap in the face, is, while very newsworthy and immediate, perhaps the less significant of the two posts I am referring to.  I will get to the more significant matter later, God willing.  Hopefully NC and the other good posters at Rorate do not mind my “ripping off” so much of their material!  I do try to be good about attribution!

Anyway, Sandro Magister is reporting that Cardinal Burke will be removed from his role as Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the court of final appeal in the Church, and will be named not to a see, not to some other curial…

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Premarital Sex IS a mortal sin… And other Socially Unpopular Moral Truths

Now seeing as how me saying something is sin – well that is one thing. This however, is from the Archdiocese of Washington (Msgr. Pope).  All too often, I think we dismiss far too easily the gravity of our trespass against God and each other.

We live in times when many call good or “no big deal” what God calls sin. This is especially true in the area of sexuality where whole sectors of our society not only tolerate but even celebrate sexual practices that the Scriptures call gravely sinful and which will lead to hell if not repented of. Acts of fornication (pre-marital sex) and homosexual acts cannot be considered acceptable by any Catholic, or any person who sincerely accepts the Scripture as the Word of God. And even for those who do not share our faith, acts of fornication, and homosexual acts can be plainly seen to cause great harm in the manner in which they spread serious disease, harm marriage and family, lead to abortion, a for the children who do survive abortion subject them to single motherhood, absent fathers, and a lack of the best environment which they are due.

– via blog.adw.org

The Future-History of the “Church of Nice”

Below is a work of fiction – a “future history” of the “Church of Nice”, with a fictional supposition of where current events will logically lead us. Only God knows at this point. I hope that we do not travel this path. However, the world and the church has allowed “Love” to be redefined to include: acceptance of false religions, allowance of sinful behavior, acceptance of false doctrines, refusal to expose or rebuke evil, and ignoring the truth if it might offend anyone. Maybe we should stop for just a moment, and think carefully about the potential consequences of our actions.

Back in the year 2014 – at a synod on the family the Catholic Church decided to open the sacraments to those in irregular marriages previously considered mortally sinful. Those who were divorced and remarried without annulments, those who openly lived together and eschewed marriage, homosexual “families”, etc…

The world states demanded this change, the people demanded it too. There were marches and protests, rallies were held. laws were passed, and petitions were flooded to bishops. Many of those who dissented and believed that God was everlasting and unchanging were marginalized or publicly scourged in words and action. The rallying cry had gone up – Jesus came for the sick and the well have no need for a doctor, so cast the well out. The traditionalists were marginalized and vilified even though they were the fastest growing segment of the church at the time.

The result of this change has been years coming – as it is now 2030. The Catholic Church in changing doctrine had lost the faithful. Many became sedevacantists, others joined the now very small SSPX having been radicalized by their treatment at the hands of the “church of nice”, and others simply retreated from organized religion altogether and stuck to the Catechism as best they could. Some of these people formed communities and are assisted by former priests and bishops who also could not accept the changing of infallible doctrine. Many people just could not accept that the Church would cast off the faithful and replace them with the willfully disobedient – in their anguish and despair they cried out to the Church, but their pleas were met with insults like “homophobe”, “judgmental”, and “pharisee”.

Marriages are rare now, as one does not have to be married to live together and have children – much less to receive the Eucharist at the mass. Divorce is rampant since faithful Catholics no longer feel that they have an obligation to God and the Church to keep their vows. After all, the new ruling on admission to the sacraments meant that there was no penalty for divorce and remarriage anyway – and a law without teeth is no law at all.

The Eucharist was the biggest change though – before it was something of great reverence to the faithful who believed in the real presence. However, once people were encouraged to partake of the body of Christ in mortal sin – the belief in the real presence faded even further until like a flickering light it winked out and darkness enveloped. 

In 2018, led by progressives angry that the church served alcohol to underage children and alcoholics during mass in the distribution of Communion, the church bowed again to public pressure and replaced the sacramental wine with grape juice. They Church also relented on the real presence under public pressure and adjusted the doctrine to say it was a symbol of the real presence. This was perfectly allowable in the “Church of Nice”, after all “adjusting doctrine” was not really changing it.

The year of the first Gay Marriage and the first Female ordination was 2020. Bowing again to progressive public pressure the Church ordained its first female priest who performed the first Gay wedding in New York, NY. The whole city was a flood of rainbows and sparkle-ponies in celebration. The news media and state governments praised the Church and people cheered. But contributions and regular weekly attendance kept falling. With all the positive media attention they were sure that they were successfully bringing the church into the 21st century and that if they did so – the congregations would return en mass, bringing their checkbooks and vocations with them.

In 2019, the Church repudiated Humane Vitae – allowing Artificial Contraception and Genetic Manipulation of embryo’s in an supposed act of compassion. There was much talk about the suffering children bring to families, and about how these unwanted children would suffer. There was more talk about how not allowing birth control led to abortions. This was just what the people wanted, and the church was flush with her success after allowing gay marriage and enthusiastically changed doctrine yet again. Fewer and fewer faithful attended mass regularly and donations dropped off even more precipitously after a brief surge.

In 2022 the Church reversed it’s stand on Abortion – claiming that radical population control served a greater good than the sacrifice of children and allowed people to make a choice of moral conscience (just as they had with fetally sourced vaccinations) because the birth of their child might consume resources that meant others would die eventually, and could lead to grave damage to the earth because of supposed overpopulation.

Now as I write this as the Catholic Church is bankrupt – forced to sell off most all of it’s Churches. Seminaries are now closed for lack of vocations, and people have lost any semblance of the original church as more than a distant memory. There are a few monasteries here and there that have survived, and those few who cling to religion at all now cling to a from of progressive humanism in which we worship our own greatness instead of God’s. The Church was not the destination of the masses demanding change, just another immovable obstacle to change that was in their path.

A world where so many decided they surpassed God and that with the Church of Nice we had founded a new religion. A religion that did not need priests or churches, schools or seminaries, a pope or a curia. It was decided that there was no hell or purgatory because nothing was really a sin. The whole of the law was now do as thou wilst. Humanity reveled in their brilliance at supplanting God— for a time…

With the collapse of Doctrine, Dogma, and Sin came the collapse of ethics and morals because they were religiously based. If anything went, and nothing was a sin, and without the fear of just punishment — the world began to slide backwards into anthropological regression. Small communities like the one around me are bound now not by religion per say – but rather by a strict moral code for which major violations result in banishment. It was not just Catholics who could not accept the so called social progress – that resulted in a dystopian society where nobody even knows right from wrong anyone and horrific acts are committed in the name of the greater good. There are buddhists, christians, jews, muslims, and others all living here in harmony now, bound together by a moral and ethical code. Sometimes, in the dark of the night, I try to tell myself in dreams that this was what God intended. It brings a momentary smile, but I know in my heart that humanity failed him yet again. 

Remembering Jack – Essay

This is an essay on the loss of a child, it plumbs the depth of the sorrow and then soars to the clarity of living life in honor of that memory. Brutally honest, the authors strength and grace shine through her devastation. I think there is something we can all learn from her experience about how to approach life in general.
I hope you enjoy reading it ,
– Colin

Our Family's Updates and Photos

When I had friends over in late August, I noticed I was a little off.  Anxious and unsteady.  No appetite.  They came over for ice cream sundaes.  I had been spending a significant amount of time deep cleaning and this social gathering was supposed to be a nice break between scrubbing down the baseboard and steam cleaning the carpets.  After two cups of tension tamer tea, a bowl of ice cream, and no relief, it was very clear that I was not myself.  I figured the anxiety was a result of some difficulties we had faced as a family earlier this year and perhaps the stress was still lingering in the background somewhere and I hadn’t noticed.  Did I need to be on medication or something?  My husband had to remind me “that time” was coming up.  It was closing in on September and I had completely forgotten.  Losing your…

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An elderly South Carolina man dies giving his longtime wife CPR

This is an amazing story True Love and noble willing sacrifice. I Will be saying a prayer for this couple.

Nice Guys/Girls Don’t Always Finish Last

That title is a staement in itself. I hear continually from men/women who want to find the perfect husband/wife and they rattle off a list of attributes and such like good work ethic, wants children and family, kind, caring, supportive, morally strong, Catholic, etc…

Problem is that when they are presented with such an option the rejections are for things like : He’s too heavy, too ugly, has a beard, dosen’t have the right degree, isn’t rich, too shy, too awkward, etc… Sometimes they get lost in the “Friend Zone” from whence they become a close friend and you get along swimmingly but they never seem to be recognized as a potential spouse. When you have someone who you can already share your feelings and secrets openly, that’s a better start than rock hard abs or perfect hair is in a marriage.

Let me explain. People will change physically, and in 40 years you will likely both be pretty decrepit. If you have a deep friendship then you have one of the key items needed for a happy marriage long term. If you’re good friends, the warts have all be exposed by both of you and you still like each other for who you are, that is very important. 

As for the shy and awkward people, most of them will bloom with just a little interest on your part. Especially if you work on a friendship first. The other things are all superficial – if you’re that wrapped up in superficial things then you’re probably not ready for sacramental marriage anyway.

I lucked out – I married my best friend. It was through our friendship that we both realized we belonged together. Please don’t throw away a happily ever after because you think you tell tell everything about a man or woman at a glance, or even one meeting.

Think About It…
Colin