March For Life Gives Cover for Charlatans

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

It’s been a signal week watching the intersection of religion and politics taking place. I’m referring specifically to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on so-called “gay” so-called “marriage” as well as Pope Francis’ encyclical “Laudato Si.” These two landmark events have left many traditional minded Christians feeling hopeless and apprehensive about the future.

Whether we recognize it or not the actions or inactions of the Successors of Christ’s Apostles have a predominant effect on the direction of world affairs and the human attainment of abundant living.

Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven. Matthew 18:18

In May past I attended the March For Life in Ottawa. For me it bordered on surreal. On the one hand a crowd of 25,000 protestors is immensely impressive. I’m normally used to only one protestor when I go out with my signage, so it was quite overwhelming to be swallowed up by an ocean of like-minded pro-lifers. On the other hand it’s an event which takes place only once a year in a nation comprised of about 35 million souls. About 23 million of these are Christians, comprising about 13 million self-identified Catholics and the remainder Protestants.

Even if we leave the Protestants (as well as an equal number of non-Christians) altogether out of the equation, a shocking picture begins to emerge. Catholic teaching affirms abortion to be nothing less than the premeditated murder of the most vulnerable and innocent members of Canadian society and that makes it to be an altogether heinous crime, all the more inconceivable when we reflect on the scale of its everyday practice in Canada. It seems a very poor annual showing indeed for a group representing 13 million people who are convinced that defenceless human beings are slaughtered daily in cities across Canada with the sanction of government. If you’ve got only one day per year to let your voice be heard by government, this year’s March For Life represents a pitiful yelp rather than a roaring stampede, statistically at least.

What explains this depressing and altogether inadequate display of indifference? What must the little victims of this Canada wide holocaust think of this insufferable national response?

Unquestionably, the answer lies with the moral character of our national leaders and the spiritual formation of their flocks. I focus on the Catholic leadership, specifically the Bishops, because they are ordained the salt (according to Christ Himself) of their society to accomplish the works of God, the prime directive being the salvation of souls and adherence to the laws and commands of Christ.

"You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men. Matthew 5:13

During more than forty years of state sanctioned murder they have utterly failed to salt the consciences of their people with the commands of Christ and the teachings of His Church. They have thereby failed to salt society in righteousness and as a consequence failed also to protect the lives of the least of their brethren.

Then He will answer them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.' Matthew 25:45

And yet, prolife organizers and marchers celebrate the few Bishops who show up at the March each year, showering them with respect and admiration for their bold stand for life. Do they deserve such praise?

I say, emphatically, “No” if they have proved themselves to be charlatans. And charlatans they are, quite possibly down to the last man. These are the men who have overseen the rise of a false religion these last fifty years, replacing the one true Faith with a counterfeit and schismatic version, one based upon their “magical” version of the Eucharist, rather than upon the mystery of the Eucharist as defined by Mother Church.

Thanks to the negligence, or perhaps simply the spiritual darkness, of too many Canadian Bishops, regardless of the moral conduct or spiritual disposition of vast numbers of renegade "Catholics", attendance at Mass and mere reception of Holy Communion is assumed to magically confer absolution for even the gravest sins and satisfy all of God's significant imperatives for the Catholic. [Open Letter to the Catholic Bishops of Canada]

This is a shocking statement indeed, but let me be clear: In saying this I make no attack upon the Eucharist. It is the Bishops whose actions bring not only disgrace but violence as well to the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. If indeed the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life—which it is—then any perversion or corruption of it constitutes the most egregious and contemptible of offences.

Bishops have failed to warn or teach sinners to be circumspect in regard to their spiritual disposition before reception of Holy Communion. As a natural consequence, or at least simultaneously, the sacrament of Confession has “conveniently” fallen into disuse.

Along these same lines, the Catechism of the Catholic Church rightly stipulates that “anyone conscious of a grave sin must receive the sacrament of Reconciliation before coming to communion”. I therefore desire to reaffirm that in the Church there remains in force, now and in the future, the rule by which the Council of Trent gave concrete expression to the Apostle Paul's stern warning when it affirmed that, in order to receive the Eucharist in a worthy manner, “one must first confess one's sins, when one is aware of mortal sin”. ECCLESIA DE EUCHARISTIA

Yes, in Canada, with few exceptions, any and all may join the Communion line and receive the King of Kings regardless of the objective condition of their souls. No counsel is provided to protect those in grave sin from God’s judgment or our Lord Jesus Christ from sacrilege and profanation. Nor is any effort made by clergy to curb this outrage; no timely mention or definition of grave (mortal) sin is provided at the correct moment during the Mass, either by oral or written word. In too many cases no mention of grave sin occurs in any Church setting whatever. Conveniently, no conscience can be pricked by sin in a vacuum.

It seems an unbelievable failure but simple observation confirms the truth. In practice, being baptized and showing up at Mass appear to be the all-sufficient criteria for reception of the Eucharist. Clearly, the Bishops do not believe in warning the sinner of danger, perhaps because they themselves believe there is no danger. Whatever the reason, this is a dangerous denial of the truth of Sacred Scripture and Tradition. Because the Bishops make no distinction in sin it means no one has to judge what is serious sin and what is not. And since all moral judgments, and especially judgments respecting sin, are suspended, Bishops and Priests are freed entirely from having to deal with the messy subject of personal sins, contraception particularly.

What are some of the consequences for such thinking? If sin is ultimately not an obstacle to Holy Communion wouldn’t everybody get to go to heaven? If the right to Communion ultimately depends on my good intentions or my claim to be Catholic or my "clear" conscience then it does not depend on my obedience to Christ: “If ye love me keep my commandments.” Ultimately then it must not depend on any objective criteria (e.g. the Magisterium) outside of myself. Such dangerous thinking is a heresy and equivalent to the Protestant practice of “private judgment.” Imagine the consequences to a local community when a parish contributes a regular diet of such pseudo-catholic leaven.

On rare occasions when Bishops do highlight and provide guidelines for Confession, only a short form examination of conscience is provided and such guidelines conveniently ignore some of the most profound and pervasive sins of the day, most especially the practice of contraception, but also divorce, cohabitation, premarital sex, masturbation, adultery, sodomy, pornography, etc. Once again, Catholics are left to assume the best about the condition of their souls because their shepherds raise no red flags at all. This is spiritual formation by omission and neglect and it is downright evil.

These charlatans are content to remain silent while they watch Catholics rise from their seats in wave after wave, knowing full well that according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a great many of them who are living in an objective state of mortal sin due to regular participation in intrinsically evil behaviour and perversions are about to partake of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. It is impossible to consider these men anything but wolves and hirelings. It is impossible to believe that any priest in union with the Holy Trinity and witnessing such an imminent sacrilege could be anything other than horrified and compelled immediately to shout out a warning to all present, even if so doing put his life at risk. Yet Mass after Mass, day after day, year after year, Bishops and their Priests remain silent while “he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself…” A few wise words at the right moment could save the souls of countless Catholics yet traitorous tongues remain silent. The only explanation for such behaviour is that unbelief and the lies of demons have overtaken the hearts of these unworthy leaders.

Certainly Catholic Bishops have no right whatsoever, by design or default, to engineer such repeated abuse and desecration of the Eucharist. But they certainly do have a duty to protect the Eucharist at every opportunity. May we defend their actions with the argument for prudential judgment? Not unless we can also justify contempt for Jesus Christ and hatred towards fellow human beings. Such an argument would be an obfuscation and entirely disingenuous.  Indeed, God calls upon all men to practice prudence particularly in the weightier decisions they are called upon to make. I think most all Catholics are willing to, and in fact do, give their clergy the benefit of the doubt in this regard. However in the name of prudential judgment Bishops simply do not have the freedom to deny or distort Catholic teaching or Canon law.

Shockingly these pseudo-catholic leaders persist in an adversarial relationship with the Catechism of the Catholic Church (and with much of Catholic tradition) and it suits their pick-and-choose fashion to allow the covers of that priceless book to gather as much dust as possible. In the name of “conscience” and “kindness” they prefer to embrace “alternate views” and “more nuanced” teachings on many matters treated by the Catechism. This may explain why you’ve probably never heard the Catechism referenced in a homily by a priest or Bishop or never actually seen a copy of the Catechism lying about your Church building. If, perchance, any of our current hierarchy in Canada are innocent of the charges of heresy they will surely find hell to be only very slightly cooler than their slightly more evil brethren because not one of them to my knowledge has summoned the courage to break ranks and warn sinners accordingly or defend the Eucharist from regular desecration. On the other hand, when an orthodox voice is raised the Bishops act quickly to silence the truth when they have the power to do so.   

Strictly on the basis of such criminal activity as described, the Bishops of Canada are guilty of a gross perversion of the true Catholic faith and have corrupted their heavenly calling as Successors of the Apostles.

This grave misrepresentation of the Catholic faith not only dishonors faithful Catholics but scandalizes the entire Christian community in Canada, many of whom are forced to conclude that Catholicism is but another cultish enemy of the true Christian faith.

Faithful Catholics—and by that term I mean those Catholics whose aim is to live fully in the light of the Magisterium, i.e. the teachings of Christ—may not fully appreciate the scandalous effects that the lifestyles of renegade Catholics have upon other serious minded Christians. When I refer to “serious minded” I mean those that believe in a conversion experience with Christ and who treat sin as the very serious issue their tradition demands. Generally speaking these Christians would self describe as Evangelicals.

Why then would such Christians see the Catholic faith as a cultish enemy? Because they immediately recognize that the pseudo-catholic cult sustained by the Bishops is a misrepresentation of the Christian concepts of sin and grace. Sin has been turned on its head since the nature and consequences of sin are made to be of little significance. God’s judgment for sin was the death of His sinless Son yet Catholics may approach and commune with Christ regardless of sin’s mark upon the soul. Grace is cheapened and personal accountability washes away in this antinomian perversion. Instead of a Christian’s maturing hatred for sin there is an increased tolerance for sin. Ungodly, even devilish behaviour, is rewarded with the blessing of God through affirmation of the Bishops. The Christian’s call to constant conversion and to perfection is short circuited. The line between good and evil, heaven and hell is hopelessly blurred.

In fact, the Bishops have unleashed upon Canada a formidable army of pseudo-catholic renegades, missionaries of a parallel church, sending them into every corner and level of society, leavening Canada with a worldview antithetical to the Gospel and to the common good. Tragically these misguided and confused souls, including politicians, lawyers, professors, educators, etc. do tremendous damage to society while being confirmed in their actions by a lifetime of "faithfully" receiving the Holy Eucharist. In concert with the dissenting, heretical Bishops of our day, these renegade “catholics” have been on the front lines for decades foisting legal recognition of divorce, contraception, abortion, homosexuality and same sex “marriage” upon the rest of society.

Thus have the Bishops shown a callous disregard for the souls under their care and an entire nation has been led astray by the example of renegade Catholics who, though largely ignorant of the Moral Law of God, have advanced to prominent roles and led the charge to secularize Canadian society. The salt has become tasteless. “It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men.” Our Bishops have entirely disqualified themselves from ministry and ought to resign immediately.

Granted the Bishops were hard hit by the priestly sex abuse scandals. No doubt many of them feel that they have lost their moral authority. But that is no reason or excuse whatever for abdication or compromising their role and responsibility as Successors of Christ. Leading their flocks to the abyss of hell is a far greater crime than even the sexual abuse of minors. Govern, teach, and sanctify as ordained by God or RESIGN and make way for worthy bishops.

This massive scandal exposes a grave flaw also in the thinking and strategies of the pro-life movement in Canada. The “pro-life” cause is, and always has been, an integral component of a Christian defense of the dignity and rights of all human beings and this movement is centred, not in the laity, but in the calling of the Apostles to teach and preach the whole counsel of God. The laity courageously picked it up when Bishops and their Priests laid it down yet it is a work which cannot be successful in any significant measure under the primary leadership of laity. I believe time has borne out this truth. It is past time for laity to channel their outrage not only at fellow Canadians on Parliament Hill once a year but every day in front of chanceries and cathedrals throughout our nation insisting:

EITHER…

that Bishops confess their sins, adhere in word and practice completely to the Oath of Fidelity, remain open to the judgment of laity in this regard, and undertake a drastic change of program in catechesis aimed at spiritual formation of the faithful in total conformity with the Church's teaching,

OR…

RESIGN.              

Bishops must (re)discover that the laity are qualified to speak in this area and that Bishops will be held responsible for their failures and infidelities (and not only by a blogger here and there on the Internet). Ideally, some body of laity must serve as a watchdog to the Bishops; a group that could muster significant credibility and one that has one or more Bishops on side. This is a crucial strategy for pro-lifers and Catholic laity in general and they must lock arms only with Bishops who prove themselves to be authentic Apostles of Christ. “Nice guy” Bishops who are willing once a year to accept accolades for showing up at a March for Life while constantly failing in their duties throughout the year must not be given a platform.  

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Some related postings from Contra|Diction blog:

In Darkest Canada And The Way Out

Canada’s Bishops Fiddle While Justin’s Star Rises

More Fallout In Canada From Evils Of Contraception

Is Cardinal Collins Admitting That Humanae Vitae Is Being Ignored In Toronto?

Msgr. Foy To Catholic Bishops: Repudiate Contraception Or Lose Canada

New Uprising Of Faith For Archdiocese Of St. John’s?

What (Unworthy) Catholic Bishops Fear Most

What Catholic Bishop Is Watching Over Justin Trudeau’s Soul?

Ye Shall Judge Angels

Local Women Who Run Baby Killing Centre Received Eucharist At St. Teresa's Parish

The Political Calculus Of Too Many Catholic Bishops

"It isn't enough for a bishop, or priest for that matter, to be a privately orthodox prelate — not in the face of the evil threatening his sheep these days. He must say all that needs to be said. He needs to have the fortitude to stand in front of the sheep and say in no uncertain terms everything they don't want to hear." Michael Voris

 

Canada's Catholic Bishops have adopted this calculus almost universally and the result of their silence and omission has been the creation of a pseudo-catholic culture in our nation, you might even term it the rise of a "parallel" church.

FLASHBACK: It’s Not The Homosex, Stupid

Here’s an article I wrote in 2008, as commentary on a disturbing trend. It's still very much relevant, if not more so. You may like the way in which it accounts for the intersections of various crises in today’s culture wars. (Or you may not!)

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It’s Not The Homosex, Stupid

With all due respect to savvy Mark Steyn who quipped “It’s the Demography, Stupid,” I wish Steyn would have pushed back for us the curtain of Western society’s bedroom a little further in order to give us a glimpse of the smirking elephant in the closet. Heaven knows we desperately need a paradigm shift in our thinking about sexual “freedom” in the bedroom.

Is it my imagination or do you notice that a great many “conservative” culture warriors—individuals and organizations, Christians and otherwise—have taken to lobbing grenades at those promoting and engaging in homosex, making that the defining strategy, if not obsession, of their war? According to them, among the top threats to our civilization is the “homosexual” agenda.

So let me ask you. What would you think of drivers who ignored red lights but who regularly demonized speeding drivers as the real enemies on the road? Comical? Yes, but consider this. Heterosexuals who rail against homosex, which indeed is a particularly odious variation of sterile sex, are—with strikingly few exceptions—themselves egregiously addicted to their own pleasurable variety of sterile sex. Equally comical, of course, if you consider sterile sex per se to be in a league with dangerous behaviours such as running red lights.

But please don’t jump ship at this point. Hear me out. I know that our post modern society, parroting the relativism of its enlightened pulpiteers, considers this subject settled and entirely off limits. Any suggestion to re-open it is probably constituted an offense in itself—a possible relapse to a prudish repressive sexual ethic of Victorian times.

“But we believe in real marriage, the traditional kind, one man and one woman for life, and sex only in that context. That’s the correct standard because it’s God’s standard. A married man and woman can make their own decisions in good conscience about the kind of sex they engage in. It’s nobody else’s business.”

Indeed, that’s the claim, but tragically these days it rarely goes beyond a claim. For too many conservatives, yes, and Christians also, who normally relish opportunities to expose politically correct speech, the lack of reasoned debate and evasions of the truth, a remarkable about-turn takes place when the truth concerning sexual disorders gets a little too close to home.

Whoa there! Truth? Disorders? According to who?

Can it be a shock to the reader that throughout two millennia of Western civilization—as well as nearly two millennia of Jewish thought which preceded it—the moral consensus on sterile sex could be summed up like this: All sexual activity, both heterosexual and otherwise, practiced with a view to circumvent procreation constitutes a perversion of God’s order and an abomination.

Here we could take our pick of sources, from the Early Fathers through to Martin Luther, John Calvin, or any other reputable preacher, bible scholar or theologian, right up to the early and mid 1900’s. All—without exception—considered these acts as “a most unnatural wickedness, and a grievous wrong.”

Thus we had the American and Canadian laws which prohibited the sale and distribution of devices that aided in such perversity and which were not rescinded until the 1960’s. Thus we record the witness of some of Western society’s most public figures, such as U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, who matter-of-factly labeled the practice of birth control as “the capital sin” against civilization.

But are such ideas peculiarly Western, or even Christian? A surprising number of non-Western cultures throughout history fully squared with Christian teaching on this point. Mahatma Ghandi, a world famous reformer and Hindu, condemned sterile heterosex as a corrupter of morals, a destroyer of marriage and a further degradation of women.

But regardless, truth—the old-fashioned objective kind—is no respecter of cultures and the fallout in our society from a denial of this particular truth has been debilitating. Take note of the Anglicans, the first Christian denomination to break rank with the faith of their fathers on this major doctrine. They formalized the opening of a Pandora’s Box in 1930 by allowing certain exceptions for sterile heterosex and are now being rent asunder by the practice of sterile homosex in the bedrooms of their Bishops. Coincidence?

The extreme break with Christian tradition represented by this acculturated disorder raises serious questions about just how much hostility towards God we have harbored this past generation or two. Some say our rejection of God—played out in this sexual arena—has so cursed our Western society as to account for not only our sex-crazed degeneracy but also family and marriage deformities and breakups, the abortion holocaust, dangerously higher quotas of immigration due to falling birthrates, the growing threat of Islam, the secularization phenomenon with its evil twin Christianophobia and a mounting civilizational self-loathing.

This is a hard pill for many to swallow. But can we admit this much at least: Steyn got it perfectly right when he prophesied the death of Western society due to reproductive sterility. Not for a moment did he suggest that even ten thousand new conferences and/or books on Islam, the tyranny of homosex, the battle for marriage and the family, secular humanism or Christophobia would save us. No, very clearly he stated that it was the question of birthrate which we have refused to address. That alone will cause our society to implode. Steyn put his finger on the precise nature of the problem. Likewise the solution, if it was any closer, might jump up and bite us.

The yearning of many contemporary Christians for a cultural fix through revivalist and “biblical” calls to repentance must also take the birthrate—and sterile heterosex—into account. Though some will contest the point, it must be admitted that any conversion wrought through the preaching of a Whitefield, Finney, et al will not only demand our hearts get right with God but will necessarily reinstitute cultural prohibitions and taboos supporting the age old and exegetically superior biblical interpretation of the sin of Onanism.

The very thought makes many shudder and some to say,

Surely, God, we can instead pay women to have babies, still hold on to our hard earned sexual “freedoms” and save our future. Otherwise, God, this is really going to hurt!

The suggestion that our future hinges on the abandonment of sterile heterosex is utterly disconcerting. It’s too much to grasp—let alone admit—that old fashioned traditional Western wisdom on sexuality was spot on.

But no, it was much more than that. It truly was a civilizational bulwark.

Preachers and pundits would do well then to cease from their various crusades against homosex, Islam, etc. in order to refocus their energies and resources to formulate a new strategy which targets the real enemy. By attacking the ideology and behaviour which is directly fuelling our demographic demise, our odds of making gains in this war are markedly improved.

Another point must be raised. The defense of current phony and lethal sexual “liberties” may be worthy of the label progressive but hardly worthy of the label conservative, and certainly unworthy of the name Christian, at least historically. Such perversions of true liberty were legitimized by the victories of yesteryear’s liberals yet they currently enslave us because they are defended by today’s “conservatives.” Conservatives must seriously examine their own complicity in the sterile sex agenda—which has aided in the destruction of society and has rightly identified them as co-conspirators—and be encouraged to instead stand in defense of established Western wisdom.

Conservatives must decide what it is that they are fighting to conserve. Indeed, what else deserves conservation, other than the collective wisdom and institutions central to Western thought and civilization? Isn’t this precisely why conservatives fight unhesitatingly against abortion, attacks on marriage, disintegration of family, pornography, lowering of morals, etc? Yet why have we not been fighting the one mortal enemy which Western wisdom has explicitly warned—in loudest fashion this past 100 years—would spawn precisely such an epidemic of evils? Sterile heterosex is a beguiling demon of tremendous significance and must be opposed with all our energies and by all possible means.

Instead, we have been trying to beef up our society in order to withstand the intense battering spawned by our own endorsement of sexual license: Educate about the radical homosexual agenda. Expose the dangers and tyranny of secular humanism. Equip Canadians to confront the threat of Islam. Bolster the family and marriage and fight those who attack it.

It’s like trying to engineer more impact resistant cars rather than require drivers to stop at red lights. At this stage, it seems we have even forgotten the red light is there, or perhaps by now we have removed it entirely from the intersection. Is it any wonder the “culture war” is being lost?

So yes, it is the behaviour and specifically it’s sterile sex—of all brands. With great courage, it needs to be identified as such, properly condemned and duly proscribed.

Which again brings us back to Steyn’s famous line and his sober closing:

It's the demography, stupid. And, if they can't muster the will to change course, then "What do you leave behind?" is the only question that matters.

In Darkest Canada And The Way Out

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

Is Msgr. Vincent Foy the only honest senior cleric in Canada?

Msgr. Foy, a retired priest and canon lawyer of the Archdiocese of Toronto, was born in Toronto in 1915. Over these last fifty years of moral and doctrinal chaos in the Church in Canada he has fearlessly defended the teachings of the Magisterium and pointed the path to fidelity for all to tread. Many of my blog postings over the years have referenced his articles and dogged determination.

A few days ago Msgr. Foy completed a brilliant and comprehensive landmark posting on his blog entitled Saving the Church, which included the following preface:

At the present time, in many countries the Church is in grave danger because of the contraceptive mentality and many other evils. To save the Church, many reforms are necessary. I am listing some suggestions for this purpose.

He then proceeds under several headings, such as "Build a Culture of Life", Revive Parishes", "Provide Authentic Liturgy and Sacred Architecture", "Be Faithful and Orthodox" to identify the painful failures of the hierarchy and to unfold his suggested plan to save the Church.

There is no other way to say this:

No other senior Canadian cleric and, in particular, no Bishop, has accurately diagnosed the disease and prescribed the radical remedy for the pseudo-Catholic culture entrenched in Canada's society over this past half-century as has Msgr. Vincent Foy.

Considering the depth of the crisis implied and the role every Catholic Bishop must actively play to sustain it Msgr. Foy's shocking assessment is tantamount to declaring a wilful and wholesale apostasy of an entire generation or more of senior Catholic leaders in our nation. Such a charge calls into question the honesty and integrity of virtually every Catholic Bishop in Canada. Is there even one diocese in Canada where the faithful are exposed to anything resembling Msgr. Foy's remedy?

When will Catholics be outraged enough to adopt a sufficiently militant approach? After all, they have been deceitfully robbed, through a thousand lies, of their religion.

Fr. Paul Nicholson: The Priesthood after Vatican II

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca 

Very interesting insights from Fr. Paul Nicholson in a talk given two years ago in Tulsa, Oklahoma, republished yesterday to the Sensus Fidelium YouTube account.
Canadians especially will find this video enlightening. Use this video to launch further into Fr. Nicholson's preaching/teaching ministry, maybe even join the Crackerjack Club.
Support Fr. Nicholson's missionary endeavours here.

Bishops: Mind Your Own Store First

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

"Frankly, the Bishops who are engaged in all this need to mind their own stores first. They were not consecrated bishops and  given the roles of successors of the Apostles to be engaged in partisan political struggles, especially when their more progressive approach Catholics are not bound to follow. Mind your own store first. Your parishes are a wreck, your people are woefully ignorant of the faith, your clergy are deformed, your liturgies are circuses but you'll fight like hell on the issue of illegal immigration or the death penalty. Talk about straining a gnat and swallowing a camel."---Michael Voris

Bravo, Michael.

Hallelujah He Is Risen

Paolo Veronese [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Ye Shall Be Hated Of All Men For My Name's Sake

And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.

Image: Peter Gertner, Wikimedia Commons

Indiana And Gay Wedding Cakes at Muslim Bakeries

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

Steven Crowder does a nice job on the gay conniption fit over the recent Indiana and Arkansas bills.



Our own Premier Wynne weighed in on the controversy with a totally predictable response.

I tweeted out my call to Cardinal Collins to intervene (or will he continue his silence?)

#Ontario Premier Wynne advocates suppressing religious freedom. Shouldn't Cardinal Collins speak up? http://t.co/JTsegepsUV #WakeUpBishops
— Contra|Diction (@Contra1diction) April 3, 2015

P.S. Brian Lilley has a great summary of the state of Religious Freedom in the West, right here on this video.

Satan Wages War In Archdiocese Of San Francisco

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

"Mean old conservative priests hurt feelings of parishioners." So explains Michael Voris.

Archbishop Salvator Cordileone, a #GoToBishop who himself is facing a huge firestorm, must pass judgment on the priests accused by their parishioners.

Witness A Revival Of The Complex Confusions Of The 1960s

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

According to Father Paul Nicholson, the current Pontificate is fostering "a revival of the complex confusions of the 1960's." This is a remarkable observation; one might even term it prophetic.

Hallelujah! Christ Is Born!

Source

How Do You Get An Inquisition Started?

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

Michael Voris explains.
But of course Stefan has been saying this for ten years.

A Synod Or A Revolution?

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca
What's really taking place these days at the Synod of Bishops in Rome?
Michael Voris sums up the dangerous affair.

The Modern Campus Cannot Comprehend Evil

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

What follows is a very impressive and insightful piece by Camille Paglia although I would amend the title to The Modern World Cannot Comprehend Evil. To my thinking the terrifying reality she expresses is a consequence of losing our Christian insight on The Fall and the constant struggle in this world between Good and Evil. This may sound very basic but we have abandoned the basics.

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Camille Paglia: The Modern Campus Cannot Comprehend Evil

The disappearance of University of Virginia sophomore Hannah Graham two weeks ago is the latest in a long series of girls-gone-missing cases that often end tragically. A 32-year-old, 270-pound former football player who fled to Texas has been returned to Virginia and charged with “abduction with intent to defile.” At this date, Hannah’s fate and whereabouts remain unknown.

Wildly overblown claims about an epidemic of sexual assaults on American campuses are obscuring the true danger to young women, too often distracted by cellphones or iPods in public places: the ancient sex crime of abduction and murder. Despite hysterical propaganda about our “rape culture,” the majority of campus incidents being carelessly described as sexual assault are not felonious rape (involving force or drugs) but oafish hookup melodramas, arising from mixed signals and imprudence on both sides.

Colleges should stick to academics and stop their infantilizing supervision of students’ dating lives, an authoritarian intrusion that borders on violation of civil liberties. Real crimes should be reported to the police, not to haphazard and ill-trained campus grievance committees.

Too many young middleclass women, raised far from the urban streets, seem to expect adult life to be an extension of their comfortable, overprotected homes. But the world remains a wilderness. The price of women’s modern freedoms is personal responsibility for vigilance and self-defense.

Current educational codes, tracking liberal-Left, are perpetuating illusions about sex and gender. The basic Leftist premise, descending from Marxism, is that all problems in human life stem from an unjust society and that corrections and fine-tunings of that social mechanism will eventually bring utopia. Progressives have unquestioned faith in the perfectibility of mankind.

The horrors and atrocities of history have been edited out of primary and secondary education except where they can be blamed on racism, sexism, and imperialism — toxins embedded in oppressive outside structures that must be smashed and remade. But the real problem resides in human nature, which religion as well as great art sees as eternally torn by a war between the forces of darkness and light.

Liberalism lacks a profound sense of evil — but so does conservatism these days, when evil is facilely projected onto a foreign host of rising political forces united only in their rejection of Western values. Nothing is more simplistic than the now rote use by politicians and pundits of the cartoonish label “bad guys” for jihadists, as if American foreign policy is a slapdash script for a cowboy movie.

The gender ideology dominating academe denies that sex differences are rooted in biology and sees them instead as malleable fictions that can be revised at will. The assumption is that complaints and protests, enforced by sympathetic campus bureaucrats and government regulators, can and will fundamentally alter all men.

But extreme sex crimes like rape-murder emanate from a primitive level that even practical psychology no longer has a language for. Psychopathology, as in Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s grisly Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), was a central field in early psychoanalysis. But today’s therapy has morphed into happy talk, attitude adjustments, and pharmaceutical shortcuts.

There is a ritualistic symbolism at work in sex crime that most women do not grasp and therefore cannot arm themselves against. It is well-established that the visual faculties play a bigger role in male sexuality, which accounts for the greater male interest in pornography. The sexual stalker, who is often an alienated loser consumed with his own failures, is motivated by an atavistic hunting reflex. He is called a predator precisely because he turns his victims into prey.

Sex crime springs from fantasy, hallucination, delusion, and obsession. A random young woman becomes the scapegoat for a regressive rage against female sexual power: “You made me do this.” Academic clichés about the “commodification” of women under capitalism make little sense here: It is women’s superior biological status as magical life-creator that is profaned and annihilated by the barbarism of sex crime.

Misled by the naive optimism and “You go, girl!” boosterism of their upbringing, young women do not see the animal eyes glowing at them in the dark. They assume that bared flesh and sexy clothes are just a fashion statement containing no messages that might be misread and twisted by a psychotic. They do not understand the fragility of civilization and the constant nearness of savage nature.

[Source]

Unfaithful Bishops and Catholic Media

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

Latest episode of The Vortex by Michael Voris of ChurchMilitant.TV

Become A Counter-Revolutionary Inside The Church

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

Little by little various Catholics are waking up to this disaster, this mockery of the church and it is a mockery. Holy Communion in the hand, altar girls, rock band masses, ugly uninspiring church buildings and architecture, a collapse of Catholic education, a failure to preach on anything significant or meaningful or even truthful in many cases, a near complete sell-out to the Democratic Party in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars in government money for  “fighting poverty”, in short, the men who ordained them to the priesthood and consecrated them to the episcopate brought revolution to the Church and these man are maintaining that revolution, however blindly.

Episcopal Failure Causes Deepest Division

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

Should the Church love so little that she encourages people to eat the bread or drink the cup of the Lord unworthily, so as to be “guilty of the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Cor 11:27)?

I can’t blame Dr. Jeff Mirus for his “moral frustration” for “appointing to high office bishops who obscure Catholic teaching.” For the serious minded Catholic it’s a heart-breaking reality every day.

I’m sure there are plenty of divisions in the Church caused by the kind of pettiness and vanity that create cliques and express themselves in endless gossip. But in my experience over the past forty years, by far the greatest divisions within the Church have been created by bishops and priests who have failed to explain and defend Catholic doctrine. By their verbal contradictions, their administrative policies, and their failure to staff teaching positions with those who think with the Church, such clergy have created the deepest divisions of all.

…

Now, do not Churchmen who misrepresent, deny or complain about Catholic teaching foment division? Should the members of the Church be unconcerned about these remarks? Should they not rather give voice to their concern? Once again, more disunity has been caused in the Body of Christ by exactly this sort of episcopal failure than by any other single factor in my lifetime.

Read the full commentary here: An Appointment that Francis Should Withdraw

HomoFascism Causing A Newfoundland Conniption

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

Matt Barber is wanted in Canada for hate crimes. Apparently he has upset some of the “pride” people from my home province of Newfoundland.

The Telegram, another mainstream Canadian publication, further reported that both my column and the fact that the Newfoundland Herald published it each constitute “a hate crime under the Criminal Code of Canada.” (Ahh … don’t you love the smell of tyranny in the morning? Come and get me, you homofascist Canucks.)

Check out Matt’s twitterfeed also.

The Sound Of Abortion

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

Impressive depiction of the magnitude of the abortion calamity. (No graphic images)

I discovered it earlier this week on a very good posting by Catholic Bandita entitled If the Catholic bishops responded to abortion the way they do to child migrants

Professional Catholics Or Pseudo-Catholics?

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

…a faithful Bishop…needs to gather together all the unfaithful professional Catholics in his charge and summarily fire them at the exact same moment in one fell swoop on a Friday afternoon. Do exactly what happens in corporate America; hence the name Black Friday. When they're in the room the IT manager will be deactivating their diocesan emails. They will be instructed to hand over their keys, their pass cards….

So which is it, professional Catholic or pseudo-catholic?

Witness The End Of A Civilization

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

Yesterday, President Obama signed his executive LGBT non-discrimination order, barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity among federal contractors.

Dr. Jeff Mirus describes it as the end.

It seems to be our lot to witness the end of a civilization. We can trace its death to the empire of desire. Clearly, this pleasure principle began to affect us in unusually deep ways with the wholesale separation of sex from life in contraception. Since then, it seems, there has been no turning back. Our deadly divorce from reality now seems all but irrevocable.

Coincidence? There’s that all too familiar reference to contraception again.

You mess with God’s design and you could lose an entire civilization. And people ask me why I have such a visceral reaction to a local “pride” parade and why I’m calling on Bishops to repent of their neglect and disobedience.

My children and grandchildren will have to live with the tyranny of the new social order.

Yours will too.

Take No Pride In Sin

From Facebook page for CBC

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

Today the "Pride" Parade took place in our fair city of St. John's, NL.

See my Twitterfeed (simply glance at the column to the right of this posting) for my remarks throughout the afternoon on the disgraceful event. The parade was the culmination of one full week of "Pride" celebrations, launched with a flag raising on Monday past from both Confederation Hill by our provincial government Justice Minister, as well as from City Hall by our mayor and Councillors. The Telegram captured the "celebratory feel" of the event in their article earlier this week.

Think about it, a very high profile public celebration of sodomy and gender bending winding its way slowly through the streets of St. John's and nary a word of protest from Christian ministers and churches. And, no surprise, the numbers of participants are increasing year by year. If you listen to the conversation on the airwaves you can quickly determine that the LGBT activists are chomping at the bit to get into the schools and get a chance to pervert the thinking of children at the earliest possible stages. As with any kind of evil, corruption and rot, the stuff spreads by infection.

Unless of course, the gatekeepers who—for the most part—claim to be children of light (i.e. Christians) do their duty to resist the spread of the disease by standing firm on the moral law of Christ. But typically there is little of such resistance today from political leaders.

Yes, again, for the proliferation of this kind of public filth, I blame weak Catholic Bishops who promote pseudocatholic beliefs in Canada which give rise to a perverted religion which is actually a cultish enemy of the Christian faith. Most, if not all, of them, neglect to teach the Moral Law and the very important concept of the Common Good. As a result we get highly secularized Catholic politicians who don't have a clue about the values of the kingdom of Christ because their consciences have been no better formed than the average agnostic or atheist with whom they have rubbed shoulders all their lives.

Such as Mayor Dennis O’Keefe, who attended “very Catholic” St. Bonaventure’s College and who paves the way for all the “progress” which the homosexualists make in our city.

In fact, just about all the “progress” made on the social front (abortion, homosexuality, same sex “marriage”, divorce, etc.) in our province and throughout Canada has been pioneered and spearheaded by an inordinate number of Catholics who wind up in law and/or politics often because of an inherited and deep seated Christian ethos of serving their fellow man.

But all to no avail because the Bishops seem to take no interest in shaping and forming the consciences of their flock with solid moral teaching in order to ensure that the Catholic politician makes his/her mark for Christ and not for the Father of Lies.

#WakeUpBishops. They will have much to answer for on Judgment Day.

America Needs A Genuine Catholic As President

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

Catholic Bandita declares that she favours GOP Rick Santorum.

I like the way Rick Santorum comes out strong on fiscal issues – see his new book Blue Collar Conservatives: Recommitting to an America That Works – as his lead argument, but then refuses to back down when asked a question on social issues. He recognizes that the Left is waging a culture war and that we have to fight back to defend the First Amendment and the family as the basic unity of society

I think she makes an important argument about the state of the GOP leadership. She recently covered The Case Against Mitt Romney in 2016 and again made the case for Santorum.

Hopefully Santorum will be better positioned for the Presidential run of 2016. Clearly he is the only Catholic politician in the POTUS contest who reflects, more or less, Catholic social teaching and fidelity to Church doctrine. If I felt the urgent calling to travel to the USA to help any one American presidential candidate get elected in 2016, at this stage it would have to be Santorum.

It really all comes down to the common good.

Toronto Blogging Priest An Ally Of Msgr. Foy On Humanae Vitae

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

Fr. Denis Lemieux can get very animated by the truth of Holy Mother Church. He just completed a series on Humanae Vitae. I’d like to meet this priest, as I would Msgr. Vincent Foy.

From a recent blog posting:

Sex is a very good thing, created by God and blessed, a power for love and life in this world that is very strong. But fragmented into its component parts, which is exactly what contraception does—the physical pleasure over here, the expression of love over there, the creation of a new life somewhere far, far away—all that inherent power within sex runs amuck, is turned in on itself, and does great harm. Not because sex is bad, but because (to put it baldly) we are bad, or at least somewhat so.

Apparently then, not every Canadian priest suffers from preposterous beliefs.

On Slander, Calumny And Detraction

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

Lisa Graas @CatholicLisa has a very useful entry on calumny (often called slander) and detraction. Distinctions in this field are crucial.

Very timely…considering I have, at times, been accused of exactly those serious sins.

As you can see, the less someone deserves a good reputation, the less right he has that we preserve it for him, and we may even reveal secret faults if our intention is for the common good and not merely just to damage a deserved good reputation. In the case of someone who is leading others astray, secret faults may be revealed for the good of those who are being led astray.

It is always helpful to know the real definitions of things before we go around accusing people of calumny and detraction. You see, if we falsely accuse people of calumny and detraction, we are then guilty ourselves of calumny.

On detraction, if someone (such as a blogger) reveals something that is true about the private life of a person who is publicly leading people into heresy or sin or some physical danger, and if the intention is for “the common good” or for “legitimate private welfare,” that is not detraction. Just revealing something that was private is not, in and of itself, detraction. It is only detraction if it does not serve the common good or the legitimate private welfare of the person being spoken about or someone else.

…

Is there a lot of calumny and detraction in the blogosphere? I don’t think so. If there is, however, then the best way to deal with it is to explain what calumny and detraction are and let people decide for themselves if they are guilty, not to accuse people.

Read her full posting here.

Sodomy, New York City And A Cardinal

Michael Voris hits the ball once again out of the park.

Evil advances for one reason and one reason only…because the Catholic Church is not fighting it. Pope Saint Pius V said “all the evils of the world are due to lukewarm Catholics and Saint Pius X, Pope Saint Pius X, said “all the strength of Satan's reign is due to the easygoing weakness of Catholics. And perhaps most frighteningly of all, for leaders, Pope Saint Pius X, when congratulated by his mother upon his appointment as bishop of Mantua, he replied, “Mother you do not realize what it means to be a bishop. I shall lose my soul if I neglect my duty.”

Pseudo-Catholics Are Living A Lie

Published today to SignOfContradiction.Blogspot.ca

“Not nice”: the only anathema that the Church of Nice hands down. So the church is gonna have to take a hit and accept that the vast majority of its membership who call themselves Catholic simply aren't. They're already not in union with the Church on a score of teachings but are allowed to continue behaving as though they are. It’s living a lie. A new evangelization needs to appeal to anyone who will listen, who will hear—not  to those who won't face the reality of hell for all eternity.

We have a false religion at work in Canada, as I've insisted many times, thanks to too many unworthy Bishops.

Michael Voris says they're simply living a lie.

Canada’s Bishops Fiddle While Justin’s Star Rises

Some pundits laugh when the suggestion is made that Justin Trudeau might one day be Prime Minister of Canada. He’s just too much of a pretty boy, not ready for prime time.

But that’s wishful (conservative) thinking. Justin’s star is indeed rising.

Make no mistake about it, as Prime Minister of Canada, Justin will finish what his father started. In fact he’ll go one step better! He’s already proved that. And Canada will sink further into its moral abyss, one engineered mostly by all the “devout” Catholic Prime Ministers who strangely knew nothing about the concept of the “common good” of society.

Nor do all the other rank and file Catholic politicians raised up on the milk of pseudo-catholicism. One wonders whether, in fact, the Catholic Bishops themselves know much about such a concept. According to Karl Keating of Catholic Answers, MOST of them have no knowledge of the writings of Benedict XVI,  John Paul II, or even Vatican II!

A few years ago, during the reign of Benedict XVI, these scholars, a man and a woman, were appointed by the Vatican to high posts connected with a then-current synod of bishops. Working closely with the bishops both before and after they came to  Rome and with the Roman authorities who arranged for the synod, the pair discovered something surprising: most bishops who come to synods are unprepared to teach anyone much of anything.

You, like me, probably think the role of a synod is for bishops to think deep thoughts and to conclude their gathering with published findings and marching orders that go out to the world's many dioceses. That may have been what Rome had expected when synods began to come into regular use some years ago, but realities "on the ground" have upended those expectations, according to the two scholars.

What the Vatican discovered is that the world's bishops—not all of them, but most of them (emphasis mine)—simply haven't done their homework. At this previous synod, it turned out that most of the bishops showed no knowledge of the writings of Benedict XVI or of his predecessor, John Paul II. Many of them hadn't even read the documents of Vatican II! (This was more true for bishops from Third World countries, but it applied to bishops in Europe and North America too.)

How could such unprepared men expect to know the depth of what Benedict and John Paul had been teaching if they never read those popes' encyclicals and their other writings? How could these bishops maneuver well in the modern world if they hadn't even become familiar with what was promulgated at Vatican II?

It proved to be an awkward realization for Rome. The men who were expected to go out and spread the word didn't even know what the word was. And so the synods quietly have become something else. Instead of being sessions at which learned bishops issue teachings for the masses, they now are sessions at which the bishops themselves are taught the teachings.

[Source]

Maybe this explains why the Catholic Bishops of Canada unleashed such a Pandora’s Box in 1966 when, unbelievably, they declared then-current legal restrictions on the use of contraceptives to be “harmful to public order and to the common good.” Of course that travesty of justice (and outright denial of Catholic teaching) was followed up in 1968 with the rejection of the Pope’s teaching as expressed in Humanae Vitae. Since then a blackout from the Bishops on the subject of the moral law, accompanied by unrestricted abortion, has devastated Canadian society.

During the 38 year reign of renegade Catholic Prime Ministers in Canada the Catholic Bishops didn’t take decisive action to discipline any of them by means of Canon law provisions and Vatican directives. Nor did they make efforts to control the fallout from such severe scandal by rightly molding the consciences of the everyday lay Catholic, especially the politician. Indeed, there’s been a long history of defending the renegades, even, more recently, pretty boy Justin.

And now we hear some Bishops are concerned because of a pro-abortion policy instituted by Justin Trudeau. Was Trudeau’s action really a surprise? It’s impossible to believe that both Trudeau’s priest and his Bishop were unable to determine his position on abortion, if they were interested in finding out. And don’t you think they should have been interested? Clearly, up to this point, nobody with spiritual oversight over Justin really thought his soul was in danger. Again, how is that possible?

But, nevertheless, that’s the current pseudo-catholic paradigm in Canada.

And for the good of Canada’s future, saving Trudeau’s soul ought to be a top priority with the Bishops.