"After Ireland"

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MariaChristi

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Dear Brothers and Sisters,

My husband and I have been blessed by letters from Brother Philip Anderson, Abbot at Our Lady of the Annunciation of Clear Creek Abbey. This past week, we received a very good assessment and an encouragement from him, in which he stated:
…Indeed the vote in Ireland was about more than just Ireland. It was about matters of life and death that continue to concern the entire world…
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Abbot Anderson also quoted from a homily delivered at Chartes Cathedral in France (just a few days before the Irish referendum). His Eminence Robert Cardinal Sarah addressed the same issue, referring to the words of St. John in his Gospel:
The light has come into the world, and men have preferred darkness (Jn 3:19).
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…Let’s look around us! Western society has chosen to establish itself without God. Witness how it is now delivered to the flashy and deceptive lights of a consumer society: to profit at all costs and frenzied individualism. A world without God is a world of darkness, lies and of selfishness! Without the light of God, Western society has become like a drunken boat in the night! She does not have enough love to take in children, to protect them beginning from their mother’s womb, to protect them from the aggression of pornography.

…Dear pilgrims, let us give up the darkness. Let’s choose the light! Let us ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to know how to say “fiat”, that is “yes” fully, like her, to know how to welcome the light of the Holy Spirit, as Mary did.
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Abbot Anderson’s conclusion asks: “So, what now, after Ireland?” His answer includes a lot more from the Cardinal’s homily that would exceed the word count allowed by CAF, if I added to this thread, but basically the Cardinal calls all of us to prayer - perhaps even spending a few days in a monastery – to experience that it is possible to put God concretely in the center of one’s life. He asks us to seek God alone! Return to the Source, especially in France where the monasteries built Christian civilization.

Many cannot go to a monastery, but Baptized Catholics have become temples of the Holy Spirit! Do we spend time pondering all Jesus said and did as Mary did, in our hearts? Do we do the Truth we hear as Mary did?
 
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ireland seems to be a lost nation; the Catholic Church has lost two of Her fairest daughters;

france & ireland
 
I’d be careful about “permanently”. But rebuilding
Christian civilization in the West will likely be the work of centuries, and it’ll get worse before it gets better.
 
Dear brian,

Thanks for your reply. Ah, but “lost” is a strong word – I do not like to use it when there is still hope for a person or a nation. I believe that just as God preserved a “remnant” in the Old Testament so He is preserving a “remnant” in the New Testament. His call is irrevocable. We are imperfect human persons and we fail, yet especially for us who are Baptized in the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and received with Sanctifying Grace a share in His Divine Life, and the infused gifts of supernatural Faith, Hope, and Charity – we need to remember who we are and “Whose” we are. This Sunday’s second reading from Ephesians is encouraging.

Ireland and France cannot be “lost” while even a “few” remain Faithful. God has done wonders with a few loaves and fishes; he can do more than we can even imagine in a few hearts that are as open as Mary’s Heart at the message of an angel. Remember her words to the three shepherd children at Fatima:
In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph.
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Also remember her words recorded in Luke’s Gospel:
He puts forth His arm in strength
and scatters the proud-hearted.
He casts the mighty from their thrones
and raises the lowly.
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Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Your Faitful; kindle in us the fire of Your Love.
Jesus, we trust in You.
Mary, Mother and Model of the Church, pray for us.
 
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Dear Jharek,

Thanks for your reply. Let us pray for the Church, both clergy and people, for we have all sinned. Let us each examine our own consciences and ask ourselves how we have lived the Truth, in whatever country we are at present.

In the Letter to the Ephesians, we hear:
…living the truth in love, we should grow in every way into Him who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, with the proper functioning of each part, brings about the body’s growth and builds itself up in love. (Eph 4:15 -16)
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Going back to my original post in this thread, it seems to me both Abbot Anderson and Cardinal Sarah are pointing all of us back to earnest prayer. Without God we can do nothing! Any country, any person in any country needs to pray and learn to live the Truth God has revealed to us.

Mere attendance at Mass is not necessarily prayer, said to say. May God renew us all from deep within, and especially through the intercession of Mary, Mother and Model of the Church, whom He gave to us from His Cross.
 
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Dear BoomBoomMancini,

Like the word “lost”, “permanently” is a strong word too. I agree. The Catechism of the Catholic Church has some very strong words on the final days:
The Church’s ultimate trial

675 Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. the supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.

676 The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgement. the Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the “intrinsically perverse” political form of a secular messianism.

677 The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection. The kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God’s victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven. God’s triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgement after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.
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I agree that it will get worse before it gets better and so we really need to heed the words of Jesus to “Watch and Pray…” (cf Luke 21:36, Mt. 26:41, Mk 14:38). Thanks for your reply.
 
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As long as the Eucharist remains with us, the Church will be here with us. God never promised that the Gospel would be accepted in all nations. Neither did he promise that those nations that accepted the Gospel would remain with the Gospel. He just told the apostles to evangelize all nations. It’s up to the nation to accept/reject.

But, here we are on Bastille day of all days. And we have folks in the United States who celebrate it who don’t even know what they are celebrating. Only masons, non-catholics, atheists, etc… should be celebrating such a day. France has had it’s curses since marginalizing the Church (WW2 Occupation comes to mind), so folks beware.

As far as I can see, the United States is still not clear of danger as long as we have folks who reject the Gospel in our Senate (Senators who publicly marginalize Catholic SCOTUS nominees due to their religion), because they are too blind to distinguish a nominee’s duty as a judge from a nominee’s religious beliefs.

But, the grace of God is still strong. So we have hope while still knowing we can expect persecution.
 
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No doubt. The child abuse scandals, and the hierarchy’s failure to handle them, have done more damage than most people think. The more I learn about these horrible crimes the less faith I have in the hierarchy.
 
Did you know that Catholic Tribunals keep decisions private (they aren’t turned into press releases)? Calumny is a sin.
 
Poland is one of the last Strongholds of Crist’s Disciples in Europe.
 
For me the question has not only been “what to do after Ireland”, but also what to stop doing.
As I argued in this post, Ireland has demonstrated beyond dispute that the Church Herself is infested with “catholics” who have no qualms about grossly violating the Church’s ethical teachings.

Why do I bring that up? Because to me it means the Church as a community can no longer be trusted. The person sitting next to you in the pews could be a pro-choicer. And that’s a huge problem, because you can’t assume any longer that you have common (ethical) ground with your fellow church-goer.

For me, this really has a bearing on your question about what to do next, and about Abbot Anderson’s point that it’s time to put God at the center of our lives. I agree with him that it is time for that indeed – at any cost. But I no longer believe the Church (as a community) provides the means for that. She can’t fulfill that role anymore, not with half of its members (an estimate based on the Ireland referendum) actively going against her ethical teachings. In plainer terms: putting God at the center of your life means striking out on your own.
 
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Roguish said:
For me the question has not only been “what to do after Ireland”, but also what to stop doing.
As I argued in this post, Ireland has demonstrated beyond dispute that the Church Herself is infested with “catholics” who have no qualms about grossly violating the Church’s ethical teachings.

Why do I bring that up? Because to me it means the Church as a community can no longer be trusted. The person sitting next to you in the pews could be a pro-choicer. And that’s a huge problem, because you can’t assume any longer that you have common (ethical) ground with your fellow church-goer.

For me, this really has a bearing on your question about what to do next, and about Abbot Anderson’s point that it’s time to put God at the center of our lives. I agree with him that it is time for that indeed – at any cost. But I no longer believe the Church (as a community) provides the means for that. She can’t fulfill that role anymore, not with half of its members (an based on the Ireland referendum actively going against her ethical teachings. In plainer terms: putting God at the center of your life means striking out on your own.
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It’s not just the ethical teaching. Most so-called “Catholics” don’t believe the Church’s theological teachings either.
 
deMontfort said:
It’s not just the ethical teaching. Most so-called “Catholics” don’t believe the Church’s theological teachings either.
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True. The RCC has become a very change association, where many of its members don’t subscribe to the very things that are supposed to define the association, be it theory or practice. It’s like being a member of a soccer (football) club yet considering it fine to grab the ball with your hands, fine to have 20 men on a team, and basically fine to make up your own rules and decisions regardless of what a referee decides.

It is an extremely peculiar situation, one that hasn’t arisen in any other religion, or even any other association, as far as I know. Why are there so many people who self-identify as Catholics, yet refuse to behave in accordance with what the term “Catholicism” means? Really, the RCC is the only religion where a huge part of its constituency seems to decide for themselves what Catholicism means, and to disregard what Catholicism’s formal representatives have specified.

To put it in plainer terms: why is it normal among catholics to reject Church teachings (and thus Her authority), yet continue to claim that one is Catholic? One would expect someone who disagrees to leave, or at least stop practicing. Catholics (many anyway) don’t do this. They reject the teachings – then keep coming to Church, thus undermining the RCC from the inside.
 
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All too true. For the record, people who call themselves “Catholic” but reject the what the Church teaches are fake Catholics as far as I’m concerned.
 
So is failure to mete out justice. It’s only calumny if the statements are false. Are you implying that all those cases of sexual abuse by clergy, and cases of cover up, are false allegations? If anything, convictions should be made very public to show that justice is being done.

I find it repulsive that people try to hush these crimes up, as if not talking about it will make them go away. the crimes committed by these gay, pedophile priests are quite real, and so is the inaction of much of the hierarchy. From what I can see, it’s only improving because of exposure from outside sources.

I’m fairly confident in the clergy from my parish and diocese, but i’ll not let my guard down.
 
Bon_Croix said:
But, the grace of God is still strong. So we have hope while still knowing we can expect persecution.
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Thanks for your reply. I agree with you on the power of God’s Grace. I recall it was in reading the words of St. Therese of Lisieux where I first encountered her beautiful sentence: “Everything is Grace!” (Sorry I cannot remember in which of her writings I found that sentence, but it has remained with me since I read it many, many years ago) 🙂
 
Dear Escabrosa,

Thanks for your reply, but I did not begin the thread to discuss all the sins of which we are capable in the Church and outside the Church. It is a given that sin injures the whole Body of Christ. My purpose in beginning the thread was to stress the ponts made by both Abbot Anderson and Cardinal Sarah on prayer.
 
Yes, YoungCatholic Guy,

I thank God for the Faith in Poland at present and I pray that the Polish people will remain strong in their Catholic Faith. 🙂
 
I think we’ve forgotten that there are limits to forgiveness and that we shouldn’t give a free pass to those who are unrepentant. I’m guilty of it myself, from time to time.

Jesus tells us how to handle it in Mathew 18:15-18, but I don’t think we exercise those informal social controls as we should.
 
Dear Roguish,

It seems to me, in your reply, that you may be separating the Body of Christ from the Head Who is Christ. The word “community” indicates some union and the fact that Catholics are Baptized has given them a share in the Body. Are they sick members of the Body, are they near death, are the dead in sin? Certainly the Church has had sick members who were healed or even brought back to life by God’s Grace.

Certainly the First Letter of John warns us not to trust every spirit:
Beloved, do not trust every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they belong to God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

This is how you can know the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ come in the flesh belongs to God,

and every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus* does not belong to God. This is the spirit of the antichrist that, as you heard, is to come, but in fact is already in the world.

You belong to God, children, and you have conquered them, for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

They belong to the world; accordingly, their teaching belongs to the world, and the world listens to them.

We belong to God, and anyone who knows God listens to us, while anyone who does not belong to God refuses to hear us. This is how we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of deceit. (1 John 4: 1-6)
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This thread was not intended for debating but rather as a call to prayer. May I ask anyone who is entering the thread, to please re-read the original post. Thanks.
 
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