If you’re looking for online resources for studying the faith, and especially for learning how to explain and defend it, here is a list of useful blogs and websites:
The Joy of Eastertide
Surrexit Dominus Vere, Alleluia!
The Lord is truly risen, Alleluia!
“Exult, let them exult, the hosts of heaven,
exult, let Angel ministers of God exult,
let the trumpet of salvation
sound aloud our mighty King’s triumph!
Be glad, let earth be glad, as glory floods her,
ablaze with light from her eternal King,
let all corners of the earth be glad,
knowing an end to gloom and darkness.
Rejoice, let Mother Church also rejoice,
arrayed with the lightning of his glory,
let this holy building shake with joy,
filled with the mighty voices of the peoples.”
It would be easy to summarize the spirit of these first lines of the Easter Proclamation or Exsultet from the Easter Vigil. They are animated by a mood of ecstatic joy. So, too, is the entire hymn.
The joy of this proclamation and of Easter in general is founded on the victory of Good over evil, of Christ over Satan and his hold on humanity. In His Passion, Christ has reconciled humanity with God. For the first time since the fall of man, the souls of the righteous of all eras can enter heaven and enjoy for eternity the beatific vision, the blessed beautiful vision of God Almighty. Previously, this was impossible, even for the greatest figures of the Old Testament. Neither the patriarchs, nor Moses, nor King David, nor the prophets, nor even John the Baptist could attain salvation until Christ Jesus had paid the debt for sin. As Our Lord taught,
“No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man” (Jn. 3:13).
But now that Christ has paid that debt, everything has changed.
It was not the Resurrection that redeemed us, but Our Lord’s Passion and death upon the Cross. The Resurrection is the completion and perfection of these. And yet, it is far more. The Resurrection provides us with the primary reason for believing. Why should one be a Christian? One should be a Christian – above all other reasons – because Christ rose from the dead by His own power, having overcome evil and all its effects on fallen mankind. The Resurrection is proof of the veracity of the Christian religion. It is the primary “motive of credibility” by which we have reason to repent and believe, in the knowledge that the Kingdom of God is at hand for those who are willing to strive to enter it. But if Christ had not risen from the dead, we would have no reason to believe that He had succeeded at His intentions and effectively overpowered evil with good, vanquished Satan, and redeemed us. Then the morbid reflection of Saint Paul would be correct. In First Corinthians chapter 15 he wrote,
“But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:13-19).
The joy of Eastertide is the only fitting response to the Resurrection. But this joy can be vulnerable to the mocking remarks of our anti-Christian world. Unbelievers have framed their challenge in the form of a simple and reasonable question:
“If Good has defeated evil, then why does it seem instead as if evil has defeated Good? For misery, violence, hatred, war, poverty, disease, and death are everywhere, as they always have been. Traditional religion itself has been replaced with a so-called “spirituality” that has a very dark occultic edge to it, and the superstitions of the ancient world have been revived. Hence, this Christian Easter joy seems to be entirely misplaced because there seems to be no meaningful improvement in this world since Christ’s alleged Resurrection.”
Even from a Christian perspective, we would have to admit the truth of this objection. If we consider the modern world, it does seem as if evil is the victor and Good the victim. The Church has lost one major spiritual battle after another. She has tried to fight the good fight of faith for millennia; she has striven to resist the reign of evil with her ministries and to oppose the degradation of humanity with her preaching. Countless Catholic activists through politics, culture, education, and the media, have striven, even at great risk to their own safety, to infuse the world with the spirit of the Gospel. And yet, what has been the result? The rise of atheism and agnosticism, the mainlining of Satanism, the normalization of paganism, witchcraft, and the occult, the decimation of the traditional family by ideologies of sexual insanity, and – necessarily – the suppression of speech and thought that are opposed these. We now have widespread no-fault divorce, abortion, euthanasia, same-sex “marriage,” and transgenderism. Marriage has been defined as an “evolving paradigm” and an “enduring relationship.” An “evolving paradigm” is just a fancy description for nothing at all; and an “enduring relationship” is something that you can have with your dog. I had an enduring relationship with a German Shepherd named Max, but it was in no way similar to marriage. And even the Church has made her own special contribution to this moral anarchy with the clerical sex scandals, with the ordination of men who were recognizably perverse and the promotion of clerics who were demonstrably criminal.
The Church has endured over half-a-century of doctrinal confusion, so that the faithful are now ignorant of even the rudimentary teachings of the Catholic faith. When Catholics vote, they often do so directly contrary to the moral principles of the religion they profess.
In light of this depressing list, we could say that, in general, nature itself is under attack – nature, which is the manifestation of the intelligent designs of God for His creatures. Ultimately, then, it is God Himself who is under attack and is being denounced in the most hateful terms and driven out of the world He created and redeemed in love.
How, then, do we reconcile our seemingly absurd Easter joy with the darkness that has descended all around us? Are the faithful called by the Church to live in a fantasy world? Does faith require us to deny the evil that everyone can see – everyone except us? Is religion itself only an opiate that creates a false but pleasant delirium?
The joy of Eastertide can give the impression that Christians believe that, in defeating the devil, Christ has terminated all traces of evil once and for all. This most certainly is not the case, and it is not the teaching of the Church. In fact, the opposite is true. Since Our Lord’s victory upon the Cross, the spiritual battle between the forces of Good and evil has only intensified. The victories on the side of good are countless, but they are often invisible by nature because interior. These are victories within souls, conversions, turnings from grave sin and superstition to faith, hope, and charity.
In ancient times, Satan was the unchallenged prince of this world. With the exception of Judaism, the world’s religions and philosophies could offer only a lame resistance to the powers of evil; and even Judaism offered a sometimes superstitious and impotent opposition. But with the advent of Christ, His Gospel, and His Church, a divine power and authority over evil appeared on earth that had never before been witnessed, and these were given to mere men. Thus, the ministry of the priest today absolves sinners of their tortuous guilt, and the ministry of the exorcist today liberates the possessed from the grip of demons. And remarkably, these demons leave screaming in terror and pain. It is just as it was in New Testament times, when they cried out to Christ,
“Have you come to torment us before the time” (Mt. 8:29)? “Have you come to destroy us” (Mk. 1:24)? “I adjure you by God, do not torment me” (Mk. 5:7)!
Imagine, the preternatural patron of despair begging for mercy. How the tables have been turned…by the Easter victory.
In addition to this power and authority over evil, unheard sacred truths have been declared, so that people can have an intimate knowledge of the ways, will, and nature of the one true living God. The New Law of the Gospel has revealed the way of perfection, the way of the saints. And the Holy Spirit has infused the sanctified with gifts, virtues, and charisms that blind those primordial spirits of darkness with divine brilliance. Truly, the atoning sacrifice of Christ upon Calvary has obliterated Satan’s effortless monopoly over mankind. And with Our Lord’s Ascension into heaven, the just souls in the Limbo of the Fathers were finally set free to rejoice in the presence of their Creator. Now, the gates of heaven are held wide open for the sons and daughters of God to enter.
In Christ, Satan has suffered an eternal defeat. A divine power is now exercised over him in a world that once belonged to him. This power is held in varying ways and degrees by all the faithful, by both clergy and laity. And in both cases, it is agonizingly humiliating for that fallen spirit who was once the most magnificent of God’s angels. Sinners and unbelievers now have access to saving truth and sanctifying grace as never before. In Christ and through His Church, there is a salvific potential presently among us that has the power to transform every foaming demoniac into a translucent saint. For the powers of darkness and the gates of hell, everything has changed.
Christ did not become incarnate and teach, suffer, die, resurrect, and ascend in order to eliminate all evil from the face of the earth. He did not. He came to dethrone the evil one and liberate those who would be liberated. The signs of this dethronement and liberation are primarily internal; they exist primarily within souls. But even these internal effects are visible in the ministries of the Church and in the lives of the saints.
If the world has seemingly not been transformed by Christ’s victory, if the changes since His Easter victory have not been impressive enough, it is because few people have responded to that victory. It is no shortcoming on God’s part nor on the totality of the victory.
Since the Resurrection of Our Lord, the spiritual battle between Good and evil has only intensified. In a sense, the conditions of the world are worse because more is now at stake. Now that hope has appeared, despair must exert itself all-the-more. For Satan is now a preternatural loser of the lowest degree, and he is fighting a war of desperation, seeking to regain what he lost. In this last-minute struggle which he can only lose, his objective is simple and clear: it is to undo what Christ has done, to stop what Christ has started, to take away what Christ has given to us. Satan must attempt to contain that immense salvific potential that God has unleashed in this world. And he must fight like he has never had to fight before because the Lord has truly risen, and in Him all the dead in this world may rise.
Catechesis on Abortion
On the Integrity of the Gospels
There have been many scholarly theories proposed over the centuries that deny the Resurrection of Christ and propose alternative explanations in its place. Alongside these theories, there has been a popular objection that challenges the Resurrection event without distorting the biblical text. Critics say, “Cite all the biblical passages about the Resurrection. What you cannot produce is a firsthand account of the moment. No person witnessed the Resurrection; no one saw Jesus awaken from death, remove His burial cloths, and walk out of that tomb. Your own religion has left you without an eyewitness record of the most important event”.
Let’s momentarily suppose that the suggestion lurking behind this theory is correct: the New Testament is fiction, Jesus Christ may never have existed, and certainly the Gospel story of the Resurrection is a myth. It was all made up by an unknown group of religious fanatics somewhere, at some time, and for some unknown reason.
If such is the case, why did the same biblical authors, as they freely composed the elaborate Gospel myth, fail to include an eyewitness account of the Resurrection? Why did they not place a fictitious individual in the tomb, an imagined observer who could describe in detail the moment Our Lord’s lifeless body was re-animated by His soul? After all, it would have been a simple matter of borrowing from the various accounts of dying and rising savior-like figures found in other religions. The absence of such an account is an extremely awkward omission for the Church. It makes no sense.
In fact, this is precisely what the apocryphal “Gospel of Peter” supplies – a detailed account of the resurrection. But this ancient document is a false gospel composed by an unknown author approximately in the year 150.
The reason the four canonical Gospels lack an eyewitness account of the Resurrection is that no eyewitness existed. The evangelists were not liars but honest God-fearing men. They did not invent the Gospel, but meticulously recorded what they knew to be true, what Jesus Christ really said and did. And if there was no firsthand account of the Resurrection, then so be it; they would not create one, even if they desperately wished that one existed.
The absence of an eyewitness account of Christ’s Resurrection is indicative of the honesty of the evangelists and the integrity of the Gospels. It is an omission that bears witness to an uncompromising fidelity to truth, even to the embarrassment of the Church. But there are many other indications of this fidelity throughout the Gospels. Regarding our present Easter theme, consider the following picture of the nascent Church as presented by the New Testament.
Jesus solemnly pronounced Simon Peter the “rock” on which His Church would be built. The next thing Our Lord said to him was, “Get behind me, Satan”. This same apostle – the head of the apostolic band and the first pope – would deny Our Lord three times. But the gravest betrayal would be committed by another apostle – Judas Iscariot, who would afterwards die by suicide.
During the agony in the garden of Gethsemane, the three members of Jesus’ inner circle – Peter, James, and John – repeatedly nodded off. Our Lord objected, “Could you not watch with me for even one hour?”
When a crowd armed with swords and clubs led by Judas eventually arrived at the garden to take Jesus by force, Peter offered little more resistance than to cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant. Moments later, the three apostles were running for their lives, leaving Jesus to confront the “hour of darkness” entirely alone.
As Jesus stood before the high priest and the Sanhedrin council, Simon Peter proceeded to publicly deny even knowing Him. Jesus was soon falsely charged with the sin of blasphemy and condemned to die by crucifixion.
While Our Lord endured three hours of agony upon the cross, among His apostles only John stood by, accompanied by Our Lady and several women. After the completion of the sacrifice of Calvary, Jesus’s lifeless body was taken down and placed in a tomb by two members of the council that had recently condemned Him.
On the morning of the Resurrection, several pious women rose before dawn and proceeded to Jesus’ tomb, intending to properly anoint His body. To their amazement, the tomb was open and the body of Jesus missing. Within this small enclosure, two angels announced that Our Lord had risen and the women were to go and announce this joyful news to His disciples. But the apostles greeted this good news with skepticism. It all sounded like female nonsense. Nevertheless, Peter and John ran to the tomb to see for themselves and found it just as the women had described.
The two Apostles then returned to the others. Meanwhile, Mary and apparently the other women remained at the tomb, weeping. As they pondered the great mysteries at hand, Jesus appeared and spoke to them with the deepest tenderness. And again, they were to go to His disciples – this time with instructions to meet Him in Galilee.
As rumors of Jesus’ resurrection frantically spread, two disciples on their way to Emmaus met Him on the road. Although they conversed with Him about Old Testament Messianic prophecy, they did not recognize Him until He broke bread in their home. They immediately returned to Jerusalem with the good news, but the Apostles would not believe them.
On the evening of the Resurrection – the first Lord’s Day – Jesus appeared to ten of the Apostles as they hid in the upper room. They could hardly believe their own eyes. Jesus reprimanded them for their persistent unbelief and consumed food in their presence to convince them He was truly alive, body and soul. At this appearance, Thomas was missing.
Following this visitation, the ten Apostles informed Thomas they had seen the Lord. But he would not believe it until he had seen and felt physical proof. On the following Lord’s Day, the eleven were gathered in the upper room, and again Jesus appeared to them, giving them all – especially Thomas – physical proof of His resurrection.
Forty days after the Resurrection, following many appearances to the Apostles for the purpose of instruction, Jesus gathered with the eleven one last time in Galilee. And still they doubted. Nevertheless, at this moment He gave them the Great Commission, lifted up His arms, and ascended into heaven.
The Gospels present a disgraceful image of the ancient Church. The apostles, in spite of years of daily instruction from Christ, manifested ignorance and misunderstanding, vanity and rivalry, and stubborn skepticism and unbelief. And even though Jesus had announced three times He would be executed in Jerusalen and then rise from the dead, still, they hesitated to believe it even as the resurrected Christ stood before them.
The question this poses to the above-mentioned critics of the Church is this: If the evangelists composed the Gospels out of thin air, if they recorded, not historical facts and truths but only religious dreams and fantasies, then why did they present the apostles as clueless incredulous buffoons? If the Gospel writers were the unprincipled liars that critics suggest, why did they not substantially alter the Gospel texts to make the ancient Church appear quite a bit more dignified?
In biblical theology, the term integrity refers to the veracity and credibility of the biblical text. Holy Scripture is trustworthy because it has not been altered with additions and omissions meant to distort the truth for the Church’s benefit. The facts have been accurately recorded, and these have been maintained through the centuries. This explains both the absence of a resurrection account and the embarrassing image of the apostles.
The Catechism teaches, quoting the Second Vatican Council,
“Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures’ (CCC 107/Dei Verbum 11).
The Meek and the Mighty
The history of salvation reveals God’s inclination to choose the meek as primary instruments in the fulfillment of His will. The ordinary, the poor in spirit, the lowly and rejected, those who possess little in this world constantly appear as central figures. This is true, however, not only regarding the righteous, but also regarding the unrighteous. God constantly places at primary events and moments – of all people – sinners who are part and parcel of the great Gospel event.
Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a physician, but rather those who are sick. I have come to call, not the righteous, but sinners” (Mk. 2:7). “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt. 15:24). When arguing with the Jewish authorities, He said, “Tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom of God ahead of you” (Mt. 21:31). And in response to those who prided themselves on their own righteousness, He told the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. In this story, the Pharisee boasted before God of his many good works. He “celebrated himself” – to borrow an expression from the lexicon of contemporary spirituality. Meanwhile, the Tax Collector hung his head in shame, struck his breast in sorrow, and softly prayed, “Oh God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” And quite predictably, it was this lowly publican that Jesus declared justified before God, rather than the self-righteous Pharisee.
Over and over again, the sinner appears as a central figure in the Gospel. But to be clear and emphatic, it is not his or her sinfulness that merits Christ’s praise, but the eventual effect that guilt has on certain souls. That is, it is the repentant sinner that repeatedly and purposefully appears in our Lord’s parabolic teaching, the one who responds to divine grace and radically changes in one way or another.
Consistent with this divine empathy for sinners, the Birth of Our Lord was attended, not by the sagacious Jewish authorities – the Pharisees, Sadducees, and scholars of the law – but by recalcitrant Jews and idolatrous heathens; that is, by shepherds and Magi.
At the birth of Christ, an angel appeared to shepherds in the fields and announced, “For this day in the city of David there has been born to you a Savior who is Christ the Lord” (Lk. 2:11). Due to their occupation, shepherds neglected to practice many of the customs of Judaism and were therefore looked down upon by pious Jews.
The Magi were pagans who naturally observed none of the customs of Judaism and likely practiced various superstitions, such as divination and astrology.
And yet, God called these two groups of sinners, and His call was accepted. After learning of the birth of a Messianic figure, both the shepherds and the Magi set out for Bethlehem, while the smug doctors of Jewish Law sat at home with their tassels and phylacteries.
God is like a siren. He wails and cries and calls out to us. He knocks on our doors and wraps on our windows, always trying to get our attention. And it is often the case that our good fortune in life leaves us deaf to His appeals and unaware of our dire needs of soul. It is more often those who are down-and-out who hear and answer Him. It is those who are nearly without hope, who are struggling, losing battles, falling and failing, and who are painfully aware of their sins and shortcomings – such are commonly the persons that respond from their depths of darkness to the divine appeal. They are the proverbial prostitutes, tax collectors, shepherds, and Magi. Whereas, it is the mighty – or those who think they are mighty – that appear throughout sacred history as obstacles to the divine plan and non-participants in the blessing of salvation.
The events surrounding the Birth of Our Lord contain invaluable spiritual lessons. First and foremost, it is that the call of God goes out to all of humanity. There is no favored race or culture; nor is there a nation or continent that is excluded from the plans of divine providence. And there is no individual person who is by design beyond the reach of God’s grace and mercy, no one who will be able to say on the Day of Judgment, “But Lord, You never called me, so I never heard your Voice”
God’s call is universal; it is catholic. All people hear it, but only so many welcome it. The Magi – those superstitious star-gazing heathens – received the call and set out first for Jerusalem, and then for Bethlehem where they fell to their knees in adoration of an infant Messiah.
May we Christians, who have heard the divine clarion call to the fullest degree possible, be as humble in receiving the Son of God become the Son of Mary as were those wayward shepherds and Magi.
“The Catholic Church Is a Cult!”
One of the more common criticisms thrown at Catholics by Bible Christians is the claim that the Catholic Church is a religious cult. Many moons ago, during my loud-mouthed anti-Catholic years, I also held this opinion and enjoyed making the accusation against poorly formed and, therefore, timid Catholics. To put it plainly, it worked. They generally crumbled at this dramatic claim, having no training from the Church in responding to such an error, nor to the countless other anti-Catholic errors and lies that have been repeated by Bible zealots for up to five centuries.
If we’re to be decent and honest people even as we debate others, we must use our words properly, in accordance with their true meaning, and not merely for dramatic effect. The word “cult” has specific meanings that have nothing to do with one’s own convictions, opinions, or prejudices. According to a standard dictionary, the term refers to a small, devoted, and often unorthodox body of adherents – religious or otherwise. That’s not an exclusively Catholic understanding of the word, but an objective and accurate understanding, such as any expert in cultism would hold. But according to the more pejorative meaning as intended by the anti-Catholic, the word “cult” refers to a body of mindlessly indoctrinated religious zombies that holds an isolationist we-they mentality towards non-members, proselytizes aggressively, and is carefully monitored and controlled by a clerical leadership, all under the omnipresent satanic eye of the pope.
Now let’s test this understanding of the term “cult” in light of the actual facts of life within in the Catholic Church. I dare say that the Church is the antithesis of a religious cult, almost to a fault. In other words, I sometimes wish there was a greater resemblance between the two, but there is not.
The sad truth is that the members of the Catholic Church – including both clergy and laity – generally care very little about our parish membership and attendance at the sacraments or about our devotion to studying the ancient faith through Bible and catechism. If we began to attend other religious services and non-Catholic Bible studies, perhaps a family member or friend might speak up; but the majority of Catholics around us would remain indifferent and silent. Even more, they would fear to mention the topic at all, lest they violate the first and foremost commandment of modernity: thou shalt be tolerant. After all, contemporary Catholics have been indoctrinated in the school of hyper-ecumenism, so that they believe one variation of Christianity, or even one world religion, is basically as good as another. And practically speaking, this happens to be the most convenient position of all, since it spares one the tense and difficult duty of testifying to Catholic truth with those who reject it. Isn’t it funny how that works out.
For example, when I left the Catholic Church in my twenties, no one particularly cared about it; no one followed me to the Quaker meetings I attended for two years, nor to the hundreds of other Protestant gatherings I visited for another four years. I even had dinner with a priest at the time of this religious confusion, and he said nothing about holding to the true faith. I guess he was practicing the modern virtue of tolerance, and to my soul’s demise. When, as a result of my own searching and studying and not to the intervention of some caring Catholic, I finally returned to the Church after about seven years of spiritual mayhem, once again no one particularly cared about it (well, except my mother and girlfriend).
If the Catholic Church is truly a cult, then where were all the militant cultists who would have tried to scare me back into strict Catholic conformity from the instant of my first departure? Did the pope personally call and threaten me with disfellowshipping, excommunication, or damnation? Certainly not. Did he at least issue general warnings to all the members of the Church that salvation is possible only within the bosom of Mother Church? No. Did the local bishop or priest monitor my denominational wanderings, with the intention of making a punitive institutional intervention? Absolutely not. Did a specially trained band of lay catechists, evangelists, or missionaries come to my home, or follow me to work or to the grocery store, in order to corner me and apply persuasive group pressure? No, no, and no, because the Catholic Church is anything but a cult. She has none of the recognizable cult qualities – at least, no more than the typical religious, political, or cultural body of ideological enthusiasts.
Aggressive anti-Catholics deliberately misuse the term “cult” for its sensational effects and dark associations that are meant to stir up frightening emotions, all in an attempt to scare the poorly formed Catholic out of the Church. However, the irony is that such people are the ones who are exhibiting cult-like behavior in their assertive and unrelenting efforts to influence the Catholic with non-Catholic beliefs, in order to draw him or her out of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
The ever-popular cult accusation reminds me of an incident during the Christmas season at a local Barnes and Noble bookstore. My wife and I had wandered around the store for a while, and then we decided to have a bit to eat and drink at the in-house coffee shop. Afterwards, as we were preparing to leave, a young woman intercepted us and began to ask us religious questions. Apparently, she was an evangelist from some sort of strange local sect. Her presentation was heavily scripted, as she consulted her cell phone for nearly every theme and statement. Among the various bizarre beliefs that she asserted was the notion that, according to the Bible, God was a female and should be addressed as such. I tried to explain that man and woman were both created in the image and likeness of God, not regarding their bodies, but regarding their souls, which were spiritual, immortal, and rational. It was useless; she wouldn’t listen to a word of it. Instead, she stated that Christians who denied God’s femininity was heretical, and then added that, actually, all Catholics and Protestants were heretics. They might think they were Christians, but, they were not. And she pointedly applied this accusation directly to us as Catholics. With our Christmas dogmas and traditions, we might think we were honoring God, but we were actually engaging in a form of paganism that was only tainted with Gospel elements. On and on she went with this opinion and that opinion, condemning our faith and practices and correcting them with her own. She clearly was not a mainline Christian, nor a feminist, but I couldn’t quite identify her affiliation.
It took a while, but eventually I composed myself and began to form a strategy. When she made yet another bizarre doctrinal claim and handed me her phone to reveal the Bible passage that allegedly proved it, I held onto the phone and began to ask her questions. In doing so, I took lead of the discussion, put her off script, and deprived her of her much-needed resource, her cult connection.
Yikes! The reaction was memorable. She couldn’t afford to allow an actual discussion. A true debate was too risky. In order for her religious ideas to prevail, our meeting had to be a monologue held by her, rather than a dialogue shared between the two of us. She knew it, and I knew it, too. Hence, with her confidence now collapsed, she became loud and aggressive. She refused to answer any of my questions or to respond to my corrections of her claims about “what Catholics believe”. Each time I tried to speak, she deliberately spoke over me. Finally, (and I can still remember the expression of shock on my wife’s pretty little face), she demanded that I return her phone, stop talking entirely, and silently listen to her teaching. When I gave back her phone but refused to remain silent, she awkwardly announced that she needed to leave in order to find her husband somewhere in the store. In an instant, it was all over and she was gone. I felt something like intellectual whiplash.
As my wife and I were leaving the store, I looked back and noticed she had actually moved on with her presentation to the next table of unsuspecting coffee drinkers. And I must admit that I offered up a little prayer for her husband…her poor, poor husband. I can only imagine their discussions each night about who’s going to wash the dishes. Oh, to be a fly on their wall, just for an hour.
There. That’s what a cult looks like. That woman was a mindlessly indoctrinated religious zombie who held an isolationist we-they mentality towards non-members, proselytized aggressively, and probably was carefully monitored by her leaders. And she was exceptionally adept at the art of not listening. But I will offer her one compliment: she was enthusiastic. She was dedicated to her religion and was willing to work, suffer, and even be humiliated in its service. For that I respect her. And I wish Catholics served God and His Church with the same selfless devotion, but we do not.
In the name of the purposeful graces and grave duties received at Confirmation, we Catholics had better find within ourselves the fortitude to ask our Bible Christian critics if they can certify, without the slightest degree of doubt, that all their biblical interpretations that condemn Catholicism and promote another form of Christianity, are infallibly correct. Or else, might they merely be repeating the traditional interpretations of Protestantism, as passed down by the devotees of division? Can they prove that they are directed by the Spirit of God, and not merely by an over-confident human ego? For according to these zealots, the Spirit of Truth given to the Church to guide her into all the truth must bear the blame for the many divisions and contradictory doctrines among Christians. After all, it is this Spirit that is claimed to be the source of their biblical understanding.
Could this possibly be correct? Could it truly be the Holy Spirit that has caused such confusion? No, it is impossible. The Holy Spirit is neither the inspiration behind the private interpretation of Holy Scripture nor the author of religious cults and denominations. He is not the confuser, but the clarifier. He is not the divider, but the uniter Who draws all persons of good will to “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all” (Eph. 4:4-5).
Catholics Cannot Be Freemasons
DICASTERIUM PRO DOCTRINA FIDEI
NOTE FOR THE AUDIENCE WITH THE HOLY FATHER
13 November 2023
The Request of His Excellency, the Most Rev. Julito CORTES,
Bishop of Dumaguete (Philippines)
Regarding the Best Pastoral Approach to
Membership in Freemasonry by the Catholic Faithful
Recently, His Excellency, the Most Rev. Julito CORTES, Bishop of Dumaguete,
after explaining with concern the situation caused in his Diocese by the continuous rise
in the number of the faithful enrolled in Freemasonry, asked for suggestions regarding
how to respond to this reality suitably from a pastoral point of view, taking into account
also the doctrinal implications related to this phenomenon.
Membership in Freemasonry is very significant in the Philippines; it involves not
only those who are formally enrolled in Masonic Lodges but, more generally, a large
number of sympathizers and associates who are personally convinced that there is no
opposition between membership in the Catholic Church and in Masonic Lodges.
To address this issue appropriately, it was decided that the Dicastery would
respond by involving the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines itself,
notifying the Conference that it would be necessary to put in place a coordinated
strategy among the individual Bishops that envisions two approaches:
(a) On the doctrinal level, it should be remembered that active membership in
Freemasonry by a member of the faithful is forbidden because of the irreconcilability between Catholic doctrine and Freemasonry (cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Declaration on Masonic Associations” [1983], and the guidelines published by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines in 2003). Therefore, those who are formally and knowingly enrolled in Masonic Lodges and have embraced Masonic principles fall under the provisions in the above-mentioned Declaration. These measures also apply to any clerics enrolled in Freemasonry.
(b) On the pastoral level, the Dicastery proposes that the Philippine Bishops
conduct catechesis accessible to the people and in all parishes regarding the reasons for
the irreconcilability between the Catholic Faith and Freemasonry. Finally, the Philippine Bishops are invited to consider whether they should make a public pronouncement on the matter.
Ex Audientia die 13.11.2023
Franciscus
Víctor Card. Fernández
“The Essentials of Catholicism” Talks
There are countless philosophies, religions, denominations, and cults in the modern world. In addition, many Christians interpret the Bible contrary to Catholic teaching, while others insist Catholics have a moral duty to leave the Church in protest against sex scandals and other corruption. As a result, the faithful are surrounded by an omnipresent stream of anti=God, anti-religion, and anti-Catholic blather.
If Catholics are to survive these chaotic times and answer the Gospel call to “make disciples of all nations,” they must have a sound knowledge of the faith that will enable them to effectively explain and defend it.
Timothy O’Keefe of “The Fullness of Truth Apostolate” is continuing the talks entitled The Essentials of Catholicism that examine fundamental Church teachings and respond to common objections to them. There is no fee, but donations to the apostolate will be greatly appreciated.
The talks are held in the Holy Trinity Parish Center cafeteria on the first and third Thursdays of each month from 7-8:30 p.m. from October to June.
Holy Trinity Parish Center is located at 331 Elm Street, Westfield, MA. For more information, please contact the apostolate by phone (568-2195) or by email (thefullnessoftruthapostolate@juno.com).
What Must the Church Do?
Many people in the modern world – both Catholic and non-Catholic – speak as if they were ecclesiological theologians; that is, experts on the Church. They sound as if they have a thorough intellectual grasp of the identity, nature, and mission of the Church of Christ. And due to this infused enlightenment, they boldly pontificate about what the Catholic Church should do. Our synodality-infatuated era seems even to have elevated this tendency to a pious exercise. It’s as if the pope and bishops have said, “Please! Tell us what we should do, and we’ll do it!” The result is that all the howling malcontents, who neither hold the entire faith nor practice it, feel encouraged to howl even louder, in the belief that their complaints will be dogmatized in some post-synodal apostolic exhortation authored by pope Francis.
Everyone seems to know exactly what the Church should do, what she needs to do in order to be relevant, up-to-speed, and happily conformed to the proclivities and infatuations of our era.
According to these experts, then, the Catholic Church should fully embrace the spirit of the times. She should not criticize the ways of contemporary culture, but dutifully endorse them. She should celebrate whatever the world celebrates and change however the world changes. Rather than a school of thought, the Church should be a school of fish swiftly following the same currents of thinking and living that all the other worldly fish are following. Hence, she should embrace the latest views on sexuality and gender fluidity and identity, and the newest notions of marriage and family. She should support alternative lifestyles and creative forms of relationships. She should transform herself into a social service agency, a political activism cooperative, or a get-out-the-vote center. She should end the outdated condemnations of contraception, pre-marital sex, and cohabitation, and finally ordain married men, women, and practicing homosexuals. She should adjust her doctrinal teachings so that other Christians are not offended by them, she should alter her moral teachings so that sinners are not made to feel sinful, and she should revise her concept of Church to include all people, especially non-believers. The Church should reverently embrace all the forces of modern culture so that even the agnostic and the atheist will feel happily at home sitting in her pews. The new sources of truth should be, not Sacred Tradition, Holy Scripture, and the living magisterium, but Washington, Hollywood, and the New York Times. And finally, the Church should abandon all references to the Ten Commandments in exchange for the new secular commandments of tolerance, diversity, inclusiveness, open-mindedness, non-judgmentalism, and non-partisanship. The Church’s single purpose, end, and objective should be to bring people together and to get along with everyone. After all, love unites but truth divides. So, skip the truth and just spread the love around.
According to our many secular ecclesiologists, this is what the Catholic Church should do. She should do whatever the world is doing, simply because the world is doing it.
In response to these prescriptions for the strictest conformity to the world, one bold question should be posed, and it is the only one that a true Catholic should care about. The question is not, what should the Church do, but instead, what must the Church do in obedience to her divine Founder and the mission He specifically assigned her? For she is an institution unlike any other and has a constitution unlike any other. It is called the Holy Gospel.
From the day of the Ascension of Our Lord, the Catholic Church’s mission has been carved in stone; it is clear, momentous, and urgent. The Church’s mission is not merely to be or exist, but to do. It is not merely to do anything at all, but to teach. It is not merely to teach the choir, but to leave her comfortable quarters and teach all the world. It is not merely to teach something, but to teach everything that belongs to the true faith. It is not merely to teach, but to sanctify all who will respond to her teaching. And it is not merely to teach and sanctify for now, but to teach and sanctify for all time, until Jesus Christ returns.
This is the God-given mission of the Catholic Church that must be fulfilled, and a thousand church bulletin or parish lawn mission statements of the flakey flowery type can do nothing to change this divine requirement. It is carved in stone and is clear, momentous, and urgent. To the degree the Church is faithful to this mission, she will find herself in conflict with the world, and the “musts” will directly contradict the “shoulds”. For she will be following, not the spirit of the times, but the spirit of eternity, the Holy Spirit, whom the world has rejected. And the judgment of God Almighty will fall upon the pitiable soul of every member of the clergy and laity that attempts to dissuade the Church from fulfilling such a divinely ordained mission.
Whatever the world has to say with its countless “shoulds” is irrelevant, because it does not know the Church, nor understand her, nor love her for what she truly is. Nor does it know, understand, or love the Church’s divine Founder and mystical Husband, Jesus Christ. The world is nothing more than – to use the strongest biblical expletive – the world.
“They are of the world, therefore what they say is of the world, and the world listens to them. We are of God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and he who is not of God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error” (1 Jn. 4:5-6).
Soldiers of Christ
“’It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ When [Jesus] had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight’” (Acts 1:7-9).
On the fiftieth day after the Resurrection, this promise of Our Lord was fulfilled. Acts chapter two records,
“When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim” (Acts 2:1-4).
The coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost was a dramatic event having immediate effects on the disciples. The forces announcing the presence of the Spirit – the wind and the fire – are among the strongest forces of nature. They fittingly represent power, extreme power. And such was the effect the Holy Spirit had on the disciples; it made them spiritually strong. This can especially be seen in Saint Peter, the three-time denier of Our Lord, who immediately stood up before the Jews and preached the first sermon in the history of the Christian religion. The result of this courageous discourse was the baptism of three thousand people in Jerusalem.
Following Pentecost, the disciples continued to communicate the Holy Spirit to others by means of Baptism, as well as Confirmation. Hence, the Samaritans received the Holy Spirit when Saints Peter and John laid their hands on them (Acts 8:14-17), and the Ephesians received Him at the hands of Saint Paul.(Acts 19:1-6).
Pentecost was the Church’s very first Confirmation. To this day, the coming of the Holy Spirit produces the same effects in the recipient who worthily receives Him. Those effects are: an increase of sanctifying grace, the bestowing of the spiritual gifts and virtues, and the placing of an indelible spiritual seal upon the soul.
Confirmation confirms or strengthens the entire spiritual, moral, and interior life. For this reason, in the Nicene Creed we profess to believe in the “Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life”.
This reference to the “life” that the Holy Spirit gives means the supernatural life of the soul. The Spirit sanctifies the soul, filling it with the life of the Holy Trinity.
One of the many catechetical errors that have been taught in the last half-century is the idea that, in the sacrament of Confirmation, we are the ones who do the confirming. Because the duty to openly testify to the Catholic faith was suppressed in the new Confirmation catechesis, something had to be put in its place. So, the new emphasis in Confirmation became the notion that the sacrament was a sort of rite of passage in which those who were baptized as infants were now to make a personal and deliberate choice to be Catholic. In other words, in the sacrament of Confirmation, those being confirmed freely confirmed themselves in being Catholic; they did the confirming. Pardon me, but if Confirmation was some sort of official moment to make a choice, couldn’t that choice just as much be a negative choice, a decision not to remain Catholic? Does it make sense to have a sacrament in which young people are invited either to remain in or to leave the Church – whichever they so choose? No, this makes no sense. It was a terrible catechetical blunder.
The sacrament of Confirmation bestows a special sacramental grace of fortitude. This grace, with its effects and its duties, is the essence of the sacrament. Fortitude produces spiritual and moral strength and courage. It was symbolized on the morning of Pentecost by wind and fire. It was the cause of Saint Peter’s otherwise inexplicable transformation from the man who had three times denied even knowing Christ into the man who boldly emerged from the Upper Room and stood before a crowd of Jewish critics and proclaimed the Gospel. This was simply fortitude in action.
Fortitude assists the recipients in three ways. First, in strengthens them in the battle to resist temptation. Second, it strengthens them in enduring the mockery and abuse that follow from being a faithful Catholic in an anti-Catholic world. And third, it strengthens them in fulfilling that special duty that belongs to the sacrament of Confirmation; namely, that of openly testifying to Jesus Christ and the Catholic faith. Confirmation makes of every recipient a missionary, according to his or her ability and state of life. All Catholics have this vocation, whether or not they fulfill it.
The Irish Butler’s Catechism says,
“[Confirmation obliges us] to profess our faith openly; not to deny our religion on any occasion whatsoever; and, like good soldiers of Christ, to be faithful to Him unto death” (Lesson 25).
The English Penny Catechism and the American Baltimore Catechism both teach,
“Confirmation is a Sacrament by which we receive the Holy Ghost, in order to make us strong and perfect Christians and soldiers of Jesus Christ” (Question #262/Question #166).
And the Roman Catechism says,
“[Confirmation makes one] stronger to resist all the assaults of the world, the flesh, and the devil, while their mind is fully confirmed in faith to confess and glorify the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The two themes found in these traditional catechisms are: Christian perfection and a soldier of Christ character. Confirmation makes us “perfect” in the sense that it completes the graces of Baptism. Whereas Baptism first made us children of God and obligated us to the worship of the one true God, Confirmation made us servants of God and witnesses of the Gospel. Baptism concerns our own salvation, while Confirmation concerns both our own salvation and the salvation of others. It makes us soldiers in the battle for heaven, not only for ourselves, but for others as well. The apologist Frank Sheed once said that the Christian battle is a strange one in that it is fought for our enemies, not against them. This is true from the moment of our Confirmation.
The “soldier” image evokes a character, a set of specific qualities. These qualities include: strength, courage, self-sacrifice, and fidelity to a cause higher than oneself. The soldier character is essential to any important or momentous undertaking. And there is no undertaking more important or momentous than the cause of salvation. This soldier image, however, has long been omitted from our modern Confirmation catechesis, and the effect has been predictable. We Catholics have become the antithesis of the Christian soldier. We are religiously weak and timid; we dread any degree of spiritual effort or sacrifice, and we are ashamed of the faith we quietly profess. It is as if we suddenly found ourselves on a battlefield we did not choose and have neither interest nor experience in firing our guns. We are pacifists who refuse to engage the forces of evil in the supernatural war of wars. We were commissioned by God to fight the good fight of faith, but we blithely laid down our weapons.
The elimination of this soldier image has been a catechetical tragedy. It is simply impossible to convey the truths, dangers, and difficulties of the Catholic life in this godless world without it. But the loss of this soldier image has also contributed to a loss of the sense of mission, to the understanding that every believer is meant to be a prophetic voice to a lost world. We are all meant to engage the world with the God-given weapons of truth and grace.
At #1302, the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines the effects of Confirmation as the following:
“…Confirmation brings an increase and deepening of baptismal grace:
- It roots us more deeply in the divine filiation which makes us cry, ‘Abba! Father!’;
- It unites us more firmly to Christ;
- It increases the gifts of the Holy Spirit in us;
- It renders our bond with the Church more perfect;
- [And it] gives us a special strength of the Holy Spirit to spread and defend the faith by word and action as true witnesses of Christ, to confess the name of Christ boldly, and never to be ashamed of the Cross.”
This excerpt from our 1992 catechism represents a substantial restoration of the lost Confirmation catechesis. Note the last effect mentioned:
“[Confirmation] gives us a special strength of the Holy Spirit to spread and defend the faith by word and action as true witnesses of Christ, to confess the name of Christ boldly, and never to be ashamed of the Cross.”
This sentence is worth repeating a hundred times. It plainly states a truth which, if it were believed and lived, could transform the state of the Church from hesitant, confused, and indifferent to convicted, enlightened, and dedicated. It could make the Church that which she is by nature and design; namely, missionary. But the question is, Who will teach this? Who will act on the graces of their own Confirmation and declare these truths to our young? And who will declare them to the not-so-young, to those who have, for decades, believed error and taught error and aggressively opposed authentic Catholic teaching?
Soldiers of Christ are desperately needed in the Catholic Church. The formation of such an army requires proper instruction in the faith, sacramental grace – especially that of Confirmation – and a renewed spirit of mission on all levels of the clergy and laity. Such a formidable army could lead to the conversion and salvation of countless enemies of God and His Church.
The Fullness of Truth Apostolate 