non veni pacem

by James Andrew Dunn, 3 hours ago:

Once upon a time in the 1980s, “television evangelists” were part of the American landscape. To their credit, they and their pentecostal congregations were reliable conservatives who voted the right way and, while they not-so-secretly despised the Catholic Church, they were awkward allies in staving off dangerous legislation that would have brought on America’s demise much, much earlier. What does this have to do with the subject of Mark’s post here? Consider the following…1. The television evangelists of that time (Jim Baker, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggert, Robert Tilton, etc.) gained their audiences with the (protestant/pentecostal) Bible and its teachings. But… in no time at all, they all evolved quickly into 90% fundraising operations. Every time you tuned in, the message increasingly was “give us money, give us money, give us money.” In the case of Oral Roberts he even said God would “call him home” if he didn’t raise X amount of funds by a certain date. Sadly, a lot of people did not see the warning signs and gave away much of their hard-earned funds to these charlatans.

2. One by one starting around 1987 or so, scandals broke and so did their (fake) ministries. Those who contributed financially to these scoundrels had no return on their investment and were betrayed. But that was not the worst of it…

3. After the aforementioned pentecostal megachurches and their television evangelists fell from grace, there emerged a new force to replace them… If I may borrow from Ann Barnhardt, the “super-fun rockband church.” The difference was that the focus of these new “churches” was and is to this day, not-so focused on Christianity but rather on feeling good, social justice and coming together on Sunday in the auditorium to listen to some electrical guitars and keyboard perform against light shows and in-between motivational speeches. The former pentecostal mega-church people flocked here in droves. They did not come into the Holy Catholic Church (not that anyone bothered to try and convert them but that’s another topic).

4. Today the “moral majority” is all but dead. We had eight years of Barack Hussein Obama and the most anti-Christian administration that was elected and re-elected by the children of those former evangelists who flocked in record numbers to vote for Ronald Reagan. Socialism is favored by an increasing number of clueless young and old alike in this nation, many of whom have been raised as atheist or agnostic by their former Bible-thumping parents and grandparents. I could go on and on but you see how this country has changed both morally and spiritually since the end of the 1980s.

Bringing this into a Catholic perspective for 2020, I will say BEWARE of any Catholic news outlet, blog, etc. where “donate now” messages pop up immediately after login and you get stalked by them to donate via email or engagement in any sort of way. Also BEWARE of Catholic lay “media celebrities” who focus their ministries on themselves rather than Christ. BEWARE of any Catholic whatever group who militantly expresses a venomous desire to destroy the SSPX. Lastly BEWARE of people who are addicted to social media and especially Facebook and Twitter which do nothing but breed anger, narcissism and stupidity. YOUR CATHOLIC FAITH IS IN DANGER if you allow yourselves to be hooked by such people.

Bergoglio is not pope, and he never was pope. He’s not even Catholic. Do not be scandalized by him. Do not lose your faith. Do not follow anyone who causes you to doubt your faith.

God is in charge, God is in control, God has this. Do you really think that God, all powerful creator of the universe, is pinned down and about to tap out to a bunch of scheming sodomites?

I am writing this post because people are being scandalized by something else, and souls are at stake. Do not EVER doubt that God knows the way out of this. The chessboard is set exactly as He knew it would be set since before He created time.

Yesterday, Steve Skojec published a big piece at 1P5 on doubting the faith. Today he’s promoting it on twitter. I can’t tweet him back, as he blocked me long ago. Here is a sample from the article:

“What do we do when time and again, we are confronted with the unthinkable? What happens when the pope himself — THE POPE HIMSELF (sic) — says contraception is OK, or approves Holy Communion for people living in adultery, or changes the Catechismin a way that reverses the Church’s infallible bi-millenial teaching on the moral liceity of the death penalty (in a way that opens the door to reversing everything else), or signs an interfaith document that undermines the exclusivity of salvation through the Church? What do we think when we hear again and again through one of the pope’s most trusted confidants that he thinks hell doesn’t actually exist, and that the souls of the unrighteous are merely annihilated? What about when he says the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 wasn’t really a miracle – wasn’t “magic” – but just some act of sharing? What about when he says of the Blessed Mother that she wanted to accuse God of lying to her? Or that Jesus actually “became sin“? What of a hundred or a thousand other troubling things?”

https://onepeterfive.com/no-more-platitudes-its-time-to-take-a-hard-look-at-the-crisis-of-catholicism/

We should probably start by asking, can a true pope can do any of these things? Can someone even be Catholic, let alone pope, if he believes these things? If not, is there any chance he’s not really pope? Did anything strange or unusual happen around or just before the time of his “election?” Is there any evidence that maybe he’s not the pope? Evidence that Benedict’s abdication may have been invalid? Should we dig deeper and see what we can find, or should we dismiss this completely and conclude God sucks, and so does His Church of lies?

A third option? A hidden but rational explanation?

Folks, the Catholic Church, the One True Faith, is not a “defective product.” We are called to fight. Act, and God will act. Do not be tempted to run.

Written by AP, splashed across national and local news sites. I copied this from the front page of yahoo.com: https://www.yahoo.com/news/vision-2020-happens-us-election-160042541.html

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Is it possible the election will be up in the air and we won’t have a president on Inauguration Day: Jan. 20, 2021?

Even if the election is messy and contested in court, the country will have a president on Inauguration Day. The Constitution and federal law ensure it. Here’s what happens after voters go to the polls on Nov. 3:

First, states have more than a month to count ballots, including the expected surge of mail-in ballots, and conduct recounts if necessary. But states’ electoral votes have to be cast on Dec. 14.

Courts will be mindful of that in refereeing any disputes. During the 2000 election, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ended Florida’s vote recount, saying time had run out before electors were set to meet.

When the electors meet, the candidate who gets at least 270 of the 538 electoral votes wins. But what happens if election issues still prevent a winner from being named? The Constitution has an answer.

The 12th Amendment says that in that case, the House of Representatives elects the president and the Senate elects the vice president. The new Congress that enters in January is the one tasked with carrying out the so-called “contingent election.” The president has only been selected this way once, in 1825. The winner was John Quincy Adams.

In a contingent election, House members have to choose among the three people with the most electoral votes. Each state delegation gets one vote, and 26 votes are required to win. In the Senate, the choice is between the top two electoral vote-getters and each senator gets a vote, with 51 votes required to win.

What if that fails and the House hasn’t elected a president by Inauguration Day? Then the 20th Amendment takes over. It says the vice president-elect acts as president until a president is picked. And if there’s no vice president selected by Inauguration Day?

Well, then the Presidential Succession Act applies.

It says that the speaker of the House of Representatives, the Senate president or a Cabinet officer, in that order, would act as president until there’s a president or vice president.

Happy Feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Today is the Patronal Feast of the SSPX.

At the foot of the Cross, the Mother of God became Our Mother. Remember, Mary was more holy at the moment of her birth than all the saints combined at the moment of their deaths. Yet she only grew in holiness. This happened in many ways throughout her life, but most especially by her Son allowing her to participate in His Passion. Her participation is the only time “compassion” literally took place in the history of the universe. This was an act of love, in both directions.

She is our model, and Our Mother.

She is our model, because she is the epitome of bearing suffering well, ordering suffering towards its rightful object, uniting our suffering to the Cross, participating in our own redemption through the grace of suffering. It is even possible to experience joy through suffering while yet in this life. There is no escaping suffering, because it is for our own good. If you haven’t really experienced it yet, believe me, it’s coming. Get prepared.

She is Our Mother, precisely because her suffering entailed the participation in Christ’s Passion in a real way. Meaning, she suffered with Him every sin ever committed. She knows you, and she wants you to ask for her help. You are never given a burden heavier than you can manage, provided you work with the graces being offered. And guess who mediates all those graces? Yep, your Mother does that.

Pray the Rosary every day.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

Stabat Mater sequence, literal translation:

1. The grieving Mother stood weeping
beside the cross where her Son was hanging

2. Through her weeping soul,
compassionate and grieving, a sword passed.

3. O how sad and afflicted
was that blessed Mother of the Only-begotten!

4. Who mourned and grieved, the pious Mother,
looking at the torment of her glorious Child

5. Who is the person who would not weep
seeing the Mother of Christ in such agony?

6. Who would not be able to feel compassion
on beholding Christ’s Mother suffering with her Son?

7. For the sins of his people
she saw Jesus in torment and subjected to the scourge.

8. She saw her sweet offspring dying,
forsaken, while He gave up his spirit

9. O Mother, fountain of love, make me feel
the power of sorrow, that I may grieve with you

10. Grant that my heart may burn in the love
of Christ my Lord, that I may greatly please Him

11. Holy Mother, grant that the wounds
of the Crucified drive deep into my heart.

12. That of your wounded Son, who so deigned
to suffer for me, I may share the pain

13. Let me sincerely weep with you,
bemoan the Crucified, for as long as I live

14. To stand beside the cross with you,
and to join you in your weeping, this I desire

15. Chosen Virgin of virgins,
be not bitter with me, let me weep with thee

16. Grant that I may bear the death of Christ,
share his Passion, and commemorate His wounds

17. Let me be wounded with his wounds,
let me be inebriated by the cross and your Son’s blood

18. Lest I be set afire by flames of death, Virgin,
may I be defended by you, on the day of judgement

19. Christ, when it is time to pass away, grant that
through your Mother I may come to the palm of victory

20. When my body dies, grant that to my soul
is given the glory of paradise. Amen

No one is sick. You can go to a bar or restaurant with 200 other people in the same room with no mask, and yes, everyone is doing it. The place we went last weekend had a thirty minute wait for a table. But there are politics to be had. So even though they have all their plexiglass and PPE deployed at the ready, Dr. Chad and his teachers don’t wanna go. Even though the state and county health departments have approved classroom learning, Dr. Chad has an agenda.

Dr. Chad should be held accountable for every suicide and drug overdose he causes.

Published at the Leftist rag The Atlantic yesterday:

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In presidential elections, once is a fluke; twice is a pattern. I struggle to imagine how, beyond utter shock, millions of Democrats will process a Trump victory. A loss for Biden, after having been the clear favorite all summer, would provoke mass disillusion with electoral politics as a means of change—at a time when disillusion is already dangerously high. If Democrats can’t beat a candidate as unpopular as Trump during a devastating pandemic and a massive economic contraction, then are they even capable of winning presidential elections anymore? Democracy, after all, is supposed to self-correct after mistakes, particularly mistakes as egregious as electing Donald Trump—whose unfitness for the nation’s highest office makes itself apparent with almost every passing day.

Liberals had enough trouble accepting the results of the 2016 election. In some sense, they never really came to terms with it. The past four years have witnessed the continuous urge to explain away the inexplicable, to find solace in the fact that the voters betrayed them. How could so many of their fellow Americans side with a racist…

That was then. This time, it would be worse… Because Biden’s poll numbers this year have mostly been higher than Clinton’s were in 2016, a Trump victory will be even harder for the left to absorb.

If Trump manages to win, recent polling data indicate, he will likely do so despite losing the popular vote. That will fuel disillusion not just with the election outcome but with the electoral system. The popular-vote numbers will be used to argue that Trump won without winning—again…

Accepting the things that never should have happened is far more difficult. A certain kind of cognitive dissonance—the gap between what is and what should be—can fuel revolutionary sentiment, and not just in a fluffy, radical-chic kind of way. In such situations, acting outside the political process, including through nonpeaceful means, becomes more attractive, not necessarily out of hope but out of despair.

This distance between what a society should be and the tragedy of what it actually becomes is less of a problem in democracies, because democracies are supposed to be responsive to voters’ demands and grievances. But they aren’t always. The gap will grow larger under a Trump presidency than a Biden one, and this has implications for mass unrest and political violence across American cities. For democracy to work, the losers of elections need to believe that they can win the next time around. Otherwise their incentives to play the spoiler increase. A breakdown of democracy is always a possibility, but the country is more resilient than it may seem, and consolidated democracies seldom break down in any circumstance. That said, this is one of those propositions that is better left untested.

Full article https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/democrats-may-not-be-able-concede/616321/

Happy Feast of the Exultation of the Holy Cross!

Fr. George Rutler will be a guest on Dr. Mazza’s radio show today, Noon PDT, 3pm EDT:

https://www.virginmostpowerfulradio.org/our-shows/the-bar-of-history/ 

They will be discussing Father’s latest book: 

https://www.sophiainstitute.com/products/item/our-peculiar-times

I predict lively conversation. Fr. Rutler’s ability to formulate a devastating argument is nothing less than Inspired. Back when he was pastor at Church of Our Savior, he was always in the box, to my eternal benefit. Let’s just say he had the ability to explain you to yourself such that you walked away with a radical reordering of priorities… things you weren’t even thinking about or knew existed before you walked in. Maybe because it was in the early years of my reversion.

Dr. Mazza is no slouch either, so tune in and enjoy.

You really aren’t ready for what’s coming. In so many ways.

To the protesters blocking the entrance & exit of the HOSPITAL EMERGENCY ROOM yelling "We hope they die" referring to 2 LA Sheriff's ambushed today in #Compton: DO NOT BLOCK EMERGENCY ENTRIES & EXITS TO THE HOSPITAL. People's lives are at stake when ambulances can't get through.

— LA County Sheriffs (@LASDHQ) September 13, 2020

The second video is better. (Language)

https://twitter.com/selfdeclaredref/status/1305045405202345984?s=20