I mean, I’m paraphrasing.
First up was John Allen, who attempts to plant the flag of tolerance atop the moral high ground in the debate over Amoris Laetitia:
“There is nevertheless an increasingly nasty cycle of finger-pointing in print, online, in social media, and sometimes even face-to-face, and if there’s to be an end to it, perhaps what we need is the equivalent of a verbal truce. If conservatives troubled by some aspects of Amoris Laetitia and other aspects of the present papacy could at least concede that, in the main, those on the other side are not enemies of the faith, and that their positions are not a blatant rupture with Catholic tradition, that might be a powerful confidence-building measure.” HERE
To which Mundabor shot back, “Guerra!!” HERE
“Truth is the most important thing there is on this planet. Compared to it, “niceness” does not even appear on the radar screen. To ask for a verbal truce when a war for our souls is raging is exactly the same as asking for a kinder way to converse with Satan lest the proper manners are forgotten. It boils down to this: if for you Catholic Truth is sacred, nothing else count in comparison to it. There is literally nothing else that can be seen with a binocular.”
My thoughts on the matter were already penned on this weeks ago. From Ecclesiastes, this is “a time to be far from embraces…a time for war.” HERE Also, regarding the name of this blog HERE,
“Every one therefore that shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven. But he that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven. Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s enemies shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for me, shall find it.” Matt 32-39
Does any of this describe anything going on in your life right now? Because, if not, you’re doing it wrong. If your testimony is limited to unoffensive doctrine, that’s not the preaching from the housetops He was talking about. If the extent of your mission consists of one hour on Sunday, you are not worthy of Him. If you are a priest afraid to make people uncomfortable, you are not worthy of Him. If you are too polite to offer charitable correction to father, mother, son or daughter, THEN YOU LOVE THEM MORE THAN HIM AND YOU ARE NOT WORTHY OF HIM. The Word of God will always and everywhere divide men against themselves, including within families. Everyone chooses a side.
It’s not the Will of God to bring division, destruction, and death. Rather, it is the will of him who can destroy both soul and body. Lucifer’s “non serviam” caused the first great divide, and subsequently the Fall and the concupiscent wretchedness of sinful man. The divisions are the result of the free will of men, who repeat the non serviam with their thoughts and deeds, with which God does not interfere. Seeking to avoid division means leaving souls to die.
We make our own choices, and those choices determine where we spend eternity. Make a choice to stand for the Truth. Your soul depends on it, and you might save a few more along the way.
In that same post, I said something that turned out to come true just last week, when Francis and others accused those standing for Truth to have some sort of mental sickness or “bad spirit”:
The disciples should expect to be treated as the Pharisees treated Jesus, like when they accused Him of being possessed by Beelzebub (Mt 9:34, 12:24; Mk 3:22; Lk 11:15). But they should fear not, so long as they remain focused on the spiritual and not the material. You too will be accused of being evil, precisely because you are proclaiming the Truth.
Mr. Allen, perhaps you remember that “peace in our time” turned out to be very bloody. You might want to strap yourself in.
Then from Austen Ivereigh, some very interesting revelations in his happy birthday letter to Francis. He wastes no time getting to the New Age catechesis:
“If Pope Francis allows himself the chance today, he might pause at his 80thmilestone to review his core life task and be grateful for its remarkable fruition. A core life task is the source of our sin as well as our redemption. It is our inspiration, as well as our temptation. It is the playing out of the hand we were given at birth, developed in childhood, and which as an adult we must deploy in the service of others lest it lead us into a dead end.” HERE
No, the source of our sin is not the source of our redemption. That would mean God is the source of our sin. The source of our sin is also not our “inspiration”. This is rather like the gospel according to Whitney Houston, “Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.”
Mr. Ivereigh then transitions to the Enneagram, a New Age tool for divinizning personality traits, among other things:
On the Enneagram, that personality-type identifier first created by the desert fathers which received its modern form from the Jesuits, Francis is an Eight – as Father Richard Rohr OFM, the leading Catholic authority on the Enneagram, has confirmed to me in an email.
(Pope Francis, incidentally, knows the Enneagram well and is not against it. But he is wary of the way it can be misused and lead to excessive introspection if not deployed within a solid spiritual framework.)
The Enneagram has long been used in retreat houses to help people identify their core compulsion, usually a driving need or desire inherited from childhood which in adulthood needs to be ‘redeemed’ if it is not to hamper our ability to function and relate to others.
Well, what a relief! Father Richard Rohr has been officially consulted! Francis is an Eight, and Francis isn’t against it!
The Enneagram turns contemplative prayer inward, overly focused on self, at the expense of contemplating divine transcendence. Disguised in a shroud of false humility, it is a dangerous descent into ego-centric meditation. Then, the “discovered” personality traits are used to justify bad behavior — blaming sin on “personality” instead of the conscious choice of a disordered will, hence eliminating both culpability and the need for repentance. It diabolically conflates the “dying to self” of true Christianity, where we are called to surrender our will to God’s will, with an eastern self-mastery of introspective navel-gazing. If allowed to progress, it leads to outright sorcery by attempting to meld our consciences to the material essence of God (quite different than uniting our will to God’s will).
Fr. Rohr is a false doctor of the false church of The Third Way, a preacher of gnostic mysticism. He claims that it is impossible to understand the teachings of Christ without first achieving a higher level of consciousness known as non-duality, which teaches there are no black and white laws of God, only shades of grey that must be “discerned” after we’ve achieved “emotional sobriety”. Since no one is to blame for their actions (because we can’t choose our own personality) +Rohr is pro-gay, pro-communion for unrepentant sinners, and pro-intercommunion. He accuses the Church of suppressing higher-level thinking, keeping Her adherents in a childlike simplistic mindset. He blames Christianity for all of the wars, misery, misogyny, repression, corruption, greed, and deceit of the last 2000 years. His only commandment is Thou Shalt Be A Pacifist.
Ivereigh invoking +Rohr’s imprimatur in support of Francis really helps us understand the broader pogrom, doesn’t it? If you want to learn more about him, HERE is an article to get you started, and a few short videos HERE and HERE. He is all over youtube.
Lastly, Mr. Ivereigh gives us this:
For years…(Francis) worked on a study of Guardini’s theory of ‘contrastingness’ (Der Gegensatz), in which the philosopher describes “two elements, each of which are irreducible, impossible to confuse with each other, yet are indissolubly bound together, and cannot be thought of except together.” An example would be the way permanence and change co-exist in a human being. People both change and stay the same. This is a contrast, yet the coexistence and codependence of each quality is what makes us human…it has deeply influenced his understanding of leadership and politics…in the service of what he calls “people-building.” The most important of these is that ‘Unity prevails over conflict.’ He rejects both those who avoid conflict and those who embrace it in such a way as to become its prisoners – fueling polarization. The third way, he says, “is the willingness to face conflict head on, to resolve it, and to make it a link in the chain of a new process.”
There is no third way.
Law of the Excluded Middle.
Google it.
Oncet, a long time ago, ABS was a member of a Parish Lenten Program during which time we read and discussed a book by Richard Rohr. Other than the opportunity it gave me to speak about Tradition, the course was worse than a waste of time- it was an occasion of sin for the gullible.
After the course, ABS took the book home, placed it inside the cover of an inverted metal trash can cover, doused it in lighter fluid, and set it on fire. As it burned, ABS took a photo and mailed it to Fr Rohr with the salvation; “I just finished your book.”
This is the best comment ever to appear on this site.
concede that, in the main, those on the other side are not enemies of the faith, and that their positions are not a blatant rupture with Catholic tradition
i.e., concede that we are right! No thanks, bub. The thing about the Enneagram is that it does not provide any substantive evaluation. So what if Francis is an 8, which I think is a “leader” or something. The question is to what is he leading? Hitler, Stalin and Mao were no doubt “8s” as well.
ABS and c matt, great comments. I particularly love that a photo of the burning book was sent to the author. Hilarious!
BTW, this nonsense was floating around in the 70s and 80s in convents and retreat houses everywhere. It’s amazing that it has persisted, rather like a very bad incense that just won’t clear out. Much damage was done by it.