Comments on Two Major Secular News Events

A New Year, some shocking news: Two Items of note.

Iranian leader killed in Baghdad

Big news today, the U.S. killing of top Iranian special forces leader in Baghdad, and his Iraqi associates. Wait, what? Wow, bolt out of the blue, right?

Maybe, maybe not.

I'm providing no links; this is all over the Internet.

Many expect full-scale war, while others don't think the Iranian regime leadership has the ability to do that, esp now that Kassem Suleimani, the Iranian al-Quds leader, is dead. Suleimani was a major player in the Iranian regime, you see, and in its military actions outside of Iran, a man who was responsible for a whole host of nasty things in various countries, as in even ballistic missile deployment. Another man killed was one Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, Suleimani's top Iraqi associate. Al-Muhandis was founder and leader of Kata’ib Hizballah, an Iraqi Shia paramilitary group, and was directly involved in the attack on the U.S. embassy. Of course, De Gaulle once said (I think it was him) that cemeteries are full of "indispensable men". Maybe so.

Yet another (indispensable?) associate, one Hadi al-Ameri, whom Obama had once invited to the White House, was arrested yesterday (I guess it was) by US forces in Iraq. Al-Ameri had led (or was one of the leaders of) the recent attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. Al-Ameri was also head of the Badr Organization, a Shia political party and Iranian-officer d militia.

Sure looks like a liquidation of high-level anti-U.S. people, doesn't it? No need to have a full-scale war like George W. Bush was talked into when you can just "headshot" a few leaders and end all the trouble.

Everyone in the loathsome Islamic Republic regime leadership must be aware of what this signifies. Certainly, at the very least, they know none of them are safe, and Donald Trump isn't Jimmy Carter or Barrack Obama. They're breathing fire an brimstone, the regime leaders are, as one would expect, but they know they could be taken out at any time. What good does it profit them to have militias and suicide brigades -- even vast if poorly trained conscription armies -- when they themselves can be killed instantly, anywhere?

Of course, the de-masculinized Western leaders will be in shock. Nothing new about that. (Did everyone see this? Pope Francis tells teens they’re not a ‘disciple of Jesus’ if they try to convert non-believers."

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/does-pope-francis-repudiate-the-great-commission ) Ben Rhodes, a close Obama associate and involved in Obama's Iranian -- uh -- love fest, is outraged. Rhodes is famous (infamous) for commenting on how easily it is to manipulate MSM reporters. (He was right about that!) And Democrat Senator Chris Murphy has written, "Soleimani [sic] was an enemy of the United States. That’s not a question. The question is this – as reports suggest, did America just assassinate, without any congressional authorization, the second most powerful person in Iran, knowingly setting off a potential massive regional war?”

1. If Suleimani was the second most powerful guy, the new second most powerful guy, not to mention the first, must be underground, in hiding. 
2. As for massive regional war, well, they've been having that off and on for millennial The Iraqis and Iranians killed over a half-million of their young men (wasn't it?) during their 1980-1988 war. (That was an interesting war in that it showed how stupid the high-level military leaders in both countries were, and how little they valued the human lives of their miserable subjects.)

3. Congress? Who would trust them for anything?

Also, the Washington Post called Suleimani "most revered". That's actually vomit inducing. It was Suleimani who led the IED program to kill U.S. and Coalition military people. He's responsible for the death and maiming of thousands of such, and Allah only knows how many of his own people he's brutally murdered. No doubt he never heard of Matthew 26:52.

Logically, this was also a serious retaliation against Shia forces in Iraq who staged the attempted U.S. embassy takeover. Now, it is said that when one of these staged protests occur, as happened in November 1979 in Tehran when "students" seized the U.S. embassy there during the feckless Jimmy Carter presidency, and then recently in Baghdad, the way to deal with it is not hand wringing and surrender, but "headshots" of the guys running the show. Drop them, and the curtain falls. (It's not necessary, in other words, to solve the problem the way Napoleon solved the problem of Parisian Revolutionary mobs: he turned the cannons on them.) But if such precision is not possible, give headshots to the first "protesters" over the wall. That ends such "events" promptly; indeed, with celerity. (As in Kent State, "back in the day.") This killing of Suleimani & Co. (and also arrest of others) is the equivalent of that, on a different, much higher, level. 

So, what is all this really about? We have only speculation at the moment, but FWIW, the initial word is that Kassem Suleimani and friends were in Baghdad to run a coup d'état against the current Iraqi regime. This might be true, it might not. Whether there's any validity to that report, certainly it is obvious, though, that this "culling of the bulls" while there's been an ongoing, nation-wide protest in Iran against the hated and loathed regime, is an extremely significant event. It has got the attention of every leader in the violent Mid-East, that's for sure. News has spread through Iran itself, and Iranians online are cheering the event (while Iranian leaders fiercely vow vengeance, of course). Are we witnessing the beginning of the fall of the Islamic Republic? Was this Trump's plan when in strengthened sanctions against Iran, thus causing the domestic shortages that sparked the newest uprising?

We'll learn more as things develop, obviously. Otherwise, we've just got speculation. But a major player in the Iranian regime's military is now dead. Major Iraqi associates of Iran are dead or arrested. That has to weaken the regime significantly. How far would Lenin have gotten without Trotsky? This is especially true in the Mid-East where you have a few leaders and a lot of ignorant, low-level cannon fodder following them.

One final possibility: this is an attempt by the U.S. government "Deep State" to take out Trump because one of his main campaign promises was to keep us out of such foreign war imbroglios. Many pro-Trump people want us totally out of the Mid-East (and the UN, too). This is quite possible, but we'll have to see.

Impeachment Development

The other big news, however, is an item you need not speculate about at all. I haven't written much of anything on Trump's impeachment because I've been waiting for "the other shoe to drop;" i.e., this isn't about impeachment, but rather accessing the Mueller Team's opposition research on Trump. Huh? Yeah, the whole odd-ball impeachment thing is a joke-show, but actually it is cover for something else.

While it was up and running, the Mueller Team (Mueller not having too much to do about any of it except serve as a quasi-respected figurehead, and who lost all respect after his embarrassing Congressional testimony) was using grand jury testimony to dig up all sorts of non-Russia hoax personal dirt of Donald Trump and his family as "oppo research" to run against him in 2020. Yes, tons and tons of info was garnered by Democrat lawyers and activists against Trump over the two-year period the Mueller investigation went on. That info is of course extremely valuable to the Democrats. Now that Trump has been impeached, the Democrats have filed for the courts to release it, "because we need this information now that Trump is impeached."

Actually, right after the impeachment vote, a week or so ago, the House Dems went to the courts (DC Court of Appeals) with this, and now, today, they'll make oral arguments before the court why this info needs released to them. THIS IS WHY THEY DIDN'T SENT THE ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT IMMEDIATELY TO THE SENATE. Clearly, all this was "in the works" for some time before now.

If the court rules in their favor, the Dept of Justice will appeal it to the full DC appeals court, and if that full court approves the Democrats' request, it'll go to the Supreme Court. But none of that really matters. The Democrats have the info now, and have had it through the impeachment sham. If they don't get official permission to mine it, they'll leak it to their allies in the press.

It's what they do.

For the full story of all this, check out:

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/01/02/2020-resistance-dem-operatives-open-new-leak-clearing-house/#more-179950

And that's about all there is to say to that.

I will note that this whole Russia Collusion hoax was similar: it wasn't about Trump being in cahoots with Putin. Everyone involved knew that wasn't true. As Doug Wead, presidential historian, said the other day, every intelligence service in the world knew that Russia story was untrue within 24 hours of it becoming public. https://theunionjournal.com/every-foreign-intelligence-service-knew-within-24-hours-trump-russia-collusion-was-bogus-story-video/

And as 22-year FBI veteran Frank Watt wrote here: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/12/two_possibilities_in_trump_wiretapping_and_neither_is_good.html

there's no way on Earth that such a series of investigations and wiretaps and so on that led up to "Crossfire Hurricane" (the investigation of the president) and "CH" itself, could have happened without multi-level knowledge and approval in the FBI and DOJ, and in the Obama White House. (Read Watt's article; it is excellent.)

Now, if a 22-year FBI veteran can write so plainly about what happened, you know full well that Attorney General William Barr knows it too, as does John Durham, U.S. attorney for Connecticut, whom Barr charged with investigating it. If serious indictments of many high-level people don't happen in a few months, wow, NO ONE is going to believe anything out of the U.S. government again (as in why we kill certain terrorists, as happened in Baghdad).

But my point is that just as Trump's impeachment is about getting "oppo research" on Trump as opposed to the officially stated reasons for it, so the Russia Collusion hoax was to cover up the Obama Administration's long term, multi-year plundering of the NSA archives and data for political opposition research. That was what the then NSA Director, Admiral Mike Rogers discovered during 2016 and why he went and reported it to Donald Trump when Trump was president elect.

If you don't know this story about Admiral Rogers -- who relinquished the NSA command in May 2018 and retired a month later, wow, you really don't know what's been going on. He's the real hero in all this mess, the true "whistle blower", and the word is -- "scuttlebutt" to use an old Navy term -- that Rogers has been working with John Durham.

So, two big news items today. "Never a dull moment, really." One we can only speculate about, and the other we should all know about in cold, clear detail.

Happy New Year,

An Préachán

Happy New Year? Some Dismal Thoughts

Amici,

As the year 2019 ends, I'm tempted to try to find good things to reflect upon, but can't. Bad things seem to be multiplying insanely.

Three basic problems in the world exist, and there seems to be no way to effectively deal with them.

First: Communism, et al.

Second: Scientism

Third: Catholicism

First, Communism or the truly "Red Socialism" (as opposed to, say, the very-Capitalist-yet-Welfare-States of Scandinavia) is a religion that many, many "intellectuals" in the Western World adhere to, and also that has many followers among the ignorant classes in a host of countries. It survived the collapse of the Soviet Union, it survives in Communist China, thrives throughout Latin America, while in the West, it has morphed into "Watermelon Communism" – Green on the inside and Red on the inside.

Communism is a lot like the Jehovah's Witnesses. Think about it. JWism is a publishing house that cons many ignorant people around the world into "selling" JW's products (Watchtower Bible and Tract Society publications). The big shots of the "religion" get rich on the backs of its followers. Now, all religions, from Catholicism to Mormonism, want their adherents to contribute money, but JW's laity is its worker ants. In the same manner, Communist higher-ups live "the good life" by manipulating its masses in the same vein. 

With all such, it is that underlying "religious fervor" keeps 'em all going. (Just because Communism doesn't believe in a god, except the god of self, so what? Buddhism has no god, either.) And Communism/Red Socialism will bring down the West and reduce us all to poverty, not to mention serfdom. This is because Communism's "long march" through Western institutions – very much including all-things family related (study up on the Frankfurt School of Communism), they seem to have won. They rule Western Entertainment, Academia, a good portion of the political class and significant elements of the underclasses. And they work hand-in-condom with all the deviants to force sexual deviancy on the rest of us – the goal of that is to bring down the family. Here's a good article on how the Chinese are doing this: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/12/coming_backfire_chinas_family_separations_in_xinjiang_a_recipe_for_islamic_radicalism.html It has some info on how Communism has always wanted to re-order human family life (as in put it out of existence).

And notice how all of the above squeezes the Middle Classes, the people who actually work for a living, and who are benefiting from President Trump's Mainstreet-Not-Wall Street Nationalism-focused Conservatism. Here's an interesting and insightful article by Salena Zito, a "shoe-leather" journalist who takes the time to spend time getting to know people in Rust-Belt towns like Ashtabula, Ohio.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/the-great-revolt-enters-a-new-phase-how-the-populist-uprising-of-2016-will-reverberate-in-2020/

She's excellent. Zito, a Catholic, is probably an old-line Democrat herself, and you'll see how many "knee-jerk" pro-Trump people don't trust her if you read the Comments, but then many of them do understand where she's coming from. She's a great read. And she predicted Trump would win in 2016. She was right.

As part of Communism's break up of society, we have all the "racist" talk and Social Justice Warrior crap. These two articles below discuss the outrageous attacks on Jews in New York City, and the reasons for the Leftists who run NYC's response -- well, NON-responses. The articles are valuable "eye openers".

https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/29/we-can-no-longer-ignore-the-attacks-on-jews-in-new-york/

and

https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/29/identity-politics-enables-anti-semitic-violence-enough/

And that is in the "financial capital of the world", New York City. As the author of the second piece writes:

And Jews are dying because of it—namely, because identity politics demand that violence against Jews be ignored in favor of “protecting” other minority groups. This type of selectivity actually worsens racial relations rather than improving them.
The left has spent the last three years marketing itself as having seized the moral high ground on tackling Jew-hatred, which may explain why their recent anger towards Trump’s Executive Order a few weeks ago, designed exclusively to combat antisemitism on college campuses, was particularly virulent. The mask has slipped, and for the left, battling antisemitism has become a means towards eviscerating the right, rather than a noble end in and of itself. I am curious how much more Jewish blood will need to be spilled before ending violence becomes an end inherently worth pursuing.

(Highlights are my own.)

Now Communism has in common with the Vatican II Church the foundational idea that people, humanity, is basically good, so all we need to do for joy and happiness is remove the Oppressor, whether nasty Capitalists or "Pharisee" "Rigorists" in the Church. However, on the larger world scene, war (all sorts of conflict) seems to be an ever-growing threat. (And it just goes to show that "humanity is basically good" is not true, not remotely.) So if the Commies in the West "shut down" the West's ability to defend itself and global commerce, etc., via local takeovers or civil wars, then we're all going to soon be living in a post-holocaust-like "Dystopia", wherein life will truly be, as old Thomas Hobbes wrote, "Solitary and poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Scientism: But I'm almost more concerned with the blindness of "our betters" when it come to Scientism, defined as "best or only objective means by which society should determine normative and epistemological values." (As Wikipedia puts it.) You can readily see the basic Scientism fallacy in economics, with so many academics apparently being economic determinists, thinking because people have feet, as Chesterton once wrote, they only walk around on them to find shoes for them. All such ideas fuel "Globalism", of course, which has both great good and also great harm, depending. Trade between nations whose first concern and focus is protecting their own citizens is fine; trade wherein national sovereignty is surrendered is not. Another aspect of Scientism in economic issues is the conceit that someone trained in a grad school, earning an MBA, is smarter in business savvy than a guy who worked his way up in a company from the mailroom. That's been the cause of a massive amount of business failure and disasters in the last 40 years.

In another aspect of Scientism, one the reasons the Catholic Church crashed and burned, was post-WWII its bishops went to psychologists and psychiatrists for all their answers, instead of to the Church Fathers and theologians of the past. It is, in fact, a mirror image of Scientism and MBAs. But I suppose today, Scientism is a problem first and foremost via Global Warming, of course. On the one hand, GW is is being successfully used as a tool by the "Watermelons" and their Luddite collaborationists, but also far, far too many average, everyday folks are taken in by it.

For example, it is easy to find article like this: https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions that shows how consistently wrong all such prognostications have been. You'd think people would "step back from the brink" and "chill out". In any event, this article linked to above is interesting because it opens with an excerpted report from 1967 that predicted "Dire Famine by 1975", followed by a hosts of newspaper articles reporting a new Ice Age descending upon us. Of course, these all eventually peter out and are replaced by dire Global Warming predictions of 20-so-years-ago. All these have hyper-dire warnings from that time about what the world would be like today have turned out bogus as well, of course. Reading the invaluable Wattsupwiththat blog https://wattsupwiththat.com/ is endlessly fascinating for anyone remotely interested in science, and how complicated and not clearly understood planetary earth science issues can be manipulated.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/12/11/greenland-ice-losses-rising-faster-than-expected/

For example, read this article above then the Comment section wherein a lot of questions and objections are raised, sensible ones – extremely so. For example, "spangled drongo's" news about the latest Australian Bureau of Met sea levels for a stilling pond adjacent to the broadest piece of ocean in the world. The latest mean sea level at Ft Denison tide gauge is 6 inches LOWER than the first reading taken in 1914. Wattsupwiththat is full of such astute and informative commentary.

In general, the GW alarmism kind of reminds me of all the dire lamentations that the election of Donald Trump would destroy stock markets, such as Paul Krugman used to squeal about: https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/26/paul-krugman-said-markets-would-never-recover-from-trump-the-dow-is-up-10000-points-since-2016/

Krugman was completely wrong. Utterly! (Is he fired yet? Don't hold your breath.) Yet the mainstream media would never remind you of that. (A major part of our problem today is the mainstream media is inhabited by Leftists as strongly as Academia and Entertainment.)

But in terms of science, right now the Global Warming (renamed "Climate Change") "narrative" seems to be still in control. Here's an article lamenting how the European "Green Plans" would bankrupt Europe. First, Holly Sheer on the staggering costs of Europe's Green Deal:

https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/27/why-the-eus-pricey-green-deal-will-hurt-workers-and-the-elderly-while-helping-nobody/

An excerpt:

Additionally, current green or renewable energy sources still come with environmental costs. They’re expensive — often exorbitantly so, with each of the 28 member countries needing some €575 billion every year to cover these costs of implementing green energy — and still have negative impacts on wildlife, habitats, and workers involved in sourcing the parts. Even implementing these energy sources doesn’t guarantee ridding emissions problems.

If the EU has all this money to throw around, perhaps it’s time to examine North Atlantic Treaty Organization spending and funding, and why the USA is responsible for “69% of overall defense spending by NATO member states.” If the EU has money to spend, it’s time to make its expenditures on its own defense more proportionate, instead of continuing to allow U.S. taxpayers to fund their security while they use their own tax revenue for unproven fantasies like the Green Deal.

Trump, roundly loathed and hated in certain circles in "Europe", has pulled the U.S. out of this GW nonsense and if re-elected (and if you read the article at Lifesite below, you'll see Obama himself intentionally hamstrung the agreements years ago, in 2009) – and what with China, the world's biggest polluter and most polluted country – only talking big about even beginning to clean up its act 'round about 2030, maybe the tide will swing against the Global Warming hoax. But I'm not betting on it. As this article

https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/elephant-in-the-room-latest-un-climate-conference-was-a-joke

says, in its final paragraph, perhaps the most cogent and succinct explanation of "it all" I've ever read:

The Left has gone Green because it solves what has always been the fatal flaw in socialism; the inability to produce growth and improve people's lives. Now that the Greens have proclaimed growth to be bad and affluence to be evil, socialism is the perfect model for managing mass poverty in an "equitable" manner. Environmentalism will be pushed regardless of the state of scientific knowledge because socialism requires it. Capitalism will be condemned because it corrupts people with a destructive desire for more. And China and other rising nations will be ready to pick up the pieces if any "big country" in the West falls for this suicidal ideology. With its strong domestic growth program, its globe-spanning Belt and Road Initiative, and its daring space exploration agenda, "socialism with Chinese characteristics" is a very different beast. Its attitude is full speed ahead. Can we afford to do any less?

(Highlights are, of course, my own.)

The whole article is good; I recommend it. The author is William R. Hawkins, "...a consultant specializing in international economic and national security issues. He is a former economics professor who has served on the staff of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee."

So, it is all about about being on the road to a real-time version of Orwell's 1984. Now I've come around to thinking that only a major, civilizational-level war will finally kill off Global Warming. A war would both give people something else to think about and end the ability of our "Betters" to control us on an International level, because a war would trash out the whole shebang. We'll see.

Catholicism:

We certainly cannot expect guidance from the Mainstream Church, as this article shows: https://wdtprs.com/2019/12/amazonian-and-pachamama-skubala-in-annual-vatican-christmas-concert-video/

An excerpt:

Marco Tosatti caught it and it is on Twitter (below). An indigenous woman from the Amazon region got up in front of the camera, had them all cross their arms over their chests (they did it) and explained about Mother Earth and vibrating.  More Pachamama crap.  On Youtube, 1:44:25 in original language. How ridiculous is this becoming? If she had told them all to strip naked and hug each other, the prelates in the front row would probably have been the first to comply.

I guess there's three categories of stupid, in ascending stupidity: Stupid, Staggeringly Stupid, and then Catholic Church Hierarchy Stupid.

There's so much going on in terms of the wretched Bergoglio that I can't remotely keep track. “Combat hatred, small-mindedness and prejudice. Do not be content with making superficial proposals or abstract synthesis: accept instead the challenge of the overflowing restlessness...” is a sample of his latest drivel.

Check out the Canon212 website for more such news: https://canon212.com/ Or OnePeterFive is a good site, too. https://onepeterfive.com/

Suffice it for me to write here that the Church, acting like a focus-group tested NGO and currying favors with all the latest breathless idiocy and deviancy, is not the way Christianity is either lived or preached, and that as an old Lutheran professor of history at OSU once told Msgr Frank Lane, "We need you guys to be Catholics!" So it is that if Catholicism goes the way of the Presbyterian Church USA (to give just one of a plethora of examples; indeed, the mainline Catholic Church is becoming more Episcopalian USA than the Episcopalian USA Church is!): Protestantism has no grounding, and there's IS no Christianity except the "Ghetto Churches" of the fissiparous and separatist xenophobic Orthodoxies, or the (truly) mindless emotional chaos of the Pentecostals, many of whom "speak in tongues" praising Satan. (A well-known and researched phenomenon, actually.)

All of these three maladies are tied together, of course. Just one example: Communism infiltrated its strongest critic, the Catholic Church, back in the 1930s, as detailed by the famous Bella Dodd, who was converted by the Holy Ghost working through Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who's cause for Beatification, you may have heard, has been "sidelined" (translated: trashed).

And so it goes. 2020. What will it bring? I've come to believe we're in Third Secret of Fatima territory right now, and nothing that happens will surprise me. It may well kill me, but surprise me -- nope, not a whit.

Happy New Year

An Préachan

A Christmastide Contemplation on the Incarnation

A Christmas meditation on the Incarnation

Amici,

A Blessed and one hopes Merry Christmas 2019 to everyone.

In lieu of an online card, I offer a Christmas-tide reflection on the Incarnation, if wanted. FWIW. I know people don't seem too keen or either philosophy or theology today, certainly you're unlikely to hear any such from a pulpit. (And remember, "back in the day" Presbyterians were supposed to preach at least 45 minutes, all theology! Those were the days!) But human beings are thinkers  – or should be. Aristotle's "rational animals." So here's a little of both philosophy and theology, just because it is Christmas.

Premise: The Incarnation is the fulcrum, the centerpiece, the raison d'être of Christianity.

"...For through the Mystery of the Word made flesh, new radiance from Thy glory hath so shone on the eye of the soul that the recognition of our God made visible draweth us to love what is invisible." From the preface of the Nativity, Proper Prefaces

That's a wonderful, holy insight into the profound power of the Incarnation, but alas, not much understood today. For some would say it is the Crucifixion and Resurrection that is the heart of the Faith, what the Faith is about. Perhaps most would say so. It is curious that while you hear in popular Christianity that "Jesus died for you," you don't hear too much on the Incarnation, not as a subject in itself and what it entails, and can mean, to "the eye of the soul".

One hears a lot about "Jesus, meek and mild," Who died for our sins. But the Incarnation? St. Matthew in 1:22-23 quotes Isaiah 7:14 about a virgin conceiving a son: Matt 22: All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” – which means “God with us”. God with us. Great name. But what does it mean?

(You haven't lived till you've read modern Jewish commentary on how "virgin" there in 7:14 isn't the word for "virgin" but just a "young woman" and the child so born was just another king of Judah, and so on; it is glaring aspect of the massive change in Judaism post the three great 1st/2nd century Jewish Revolts, the first of which destroyed Jerusalem and killed about a million Jews, and the third killed almost another million and saw the expulsion of the Jews from the ancient Land of Israel altogether. After all that Messianic-fever inspired slaughter, the survivors – those who hadn't converted to Christianity along the way – decided Judaism had had enough of Messiahism, and they downplayed passages formerly seen as heralding the Messiah, such as Isaiah 7:14, which Jewish scholars in Alexandria themselves had translated as "parthenos" in the century or so before the advent of Christ.)

But at Christmas one does sometimes hear it commented upon ironically that Easter, which is a superior feast to Christmas, gets less attention than Christmas. Our Lord died on Good Friday and Rose Again on Easter Sunday, after all. Right? Usually, it is chalked up to the commercialization of Christmas as opposed to Easter, which is mostly about bunnies and brightly colored bunny eggs (who knew bunnies laid eggs?).

However, Christmas – as one of the Feasts of the Incarnation – is on par with Easter, for without the Incarnation, we wouldn't have the Resurrection. They are two sides of Christianity's single Incarnational coin. To split that coin is to engage in counterfeit.

Christmas is one of the major Incarnational Feasts, the others being: The Solemnity (these are all Solemnities and require the Solemn High Mass) of the Annunciation, traditionally "Lady Day" in old Catholic England, is celebrated on March 25. It's also known as the Feast of the Incarnation (or Festum Incarnationis). Then there's the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, celebrated on December 8 (her birth is celebrated on September 8.) The Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity became a human being through his Mother's freely willed participation in his Incarnation; hence, her importance to His Incarnation. It would not have happened at all had Mary declined God's offer.

One can say Easter is an Incarnational feast as well, for the Incarnated God is bodily offered up as food for eternal life, mirroring the Pascal Lamb's far more humble, and temporary, sacrifice. (Protestantism was one of those attempts to simplify the Faith, and it deleted the Eucharistic feast as the Real Presence of God in the Flesh, thus leaving its adherents a sort of spiritual junk food, à la carte.)

Christianity is all about the Incarnation, actually, if you consider it a moment. The point of it is to transform us, actually. Hence its necessity. But even as a basic notion, the Incarnation is a radical one, and many reject it. That God became a human being in order to save those of the human race whom He called, and who would choose to turn to Him – that's a Mysterium Fidei, but also a theological puzzle. Why would such an Act be a necessity?

First, consider, this God of ours is not a Supreme Being God (Zeus, Indra, The Dagda) but the Absolute Being God, Being as such, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Moses, who told Moses that His name is "I AM" and thus identifies as the Absolute Being God, the God the great philosophers of later times would define (Aristotle, Aquinas, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, Maimonides, and various others over the centuries, down to today, such as Edward Feser).

Although the great philosophers of the past were able to deduce the existence of Absolute Being, and many of His attributes, only Revelation could reveal that that God (the only God worth the title "God"), became a human being. Obviously, this teaching separates Christianity from both Judaism and Islam, which cannot accept of the Most Holy Trinity. The Most Holy Trinity is a revelation which, if nothing else, introduces the highest love: charity, charitas / agapé, into the very Essence and Being of the Creator. (Absolute Being as absolutely singular, such as described by the Muslim teaching "Tawhid" about Allah, could not have such an interior dynamic within Itself. And Allah doesn't. He's a paroxysm of will, and never described as a lover, but a "willer".)

Yet why the necessity of the Incarnation? There's a question worth pondering, for how you answer it will define how you understand Christianity and how thus you comprehend and interact with God. Why the necessity of becoming a human being and suffering and dying? God is Absolute; if God says something, that something exists. Period. He doesn't need therefore to do anything but to choose of His own will, to accept the prayers of those who turn to Him, surely (sort of like Allah does, according to Muslim teaching, when he's in the mood to be merciful). God sustains all being in being, in existence. If He stops doing that, it all stops – or whatever particular part of it He wants stopped. (Curiously, Islam teaches Allah destroys everything and recreates it all every split second, almost always the way it was before – yet Allah keeps everything going not out of love – which is not exactly an attribute of Allah's to begin with, but rather habit; the Arabic theological term for Allah's habit of keeping things as they are is 'ada).

In contrast, Christianity's God made a Covenant with all Creation, that it was good and real, and blessed in itself (see Genesis 2, the first few verses). Christianity's god is a God of love, as in self-sacrificing love, but also boundless, giving love. Even contractual love, such as in a marriage, for God has made Seven Covenants from the beginning, the last being the Holy Eucharist by which we are transformed in Christ.

Yet one has to respond to that love by transforming one's life, and doing so through participation in God, via entering into the ancient Covenants through Baptism and then the Holy Eucharist. It is in that Sacramental life that we "enter in" to Salvation, our natures changed, ourselves uplifted. In short, orthodox, full-Catholic Christianity is a complex religion. That's a problem for us orthodox Christians, perhaps the biggest. It takes a lot of study, reflection, and prayerful contemplation to understand even initial aspects of the Faith, and because of all that there's been an endless attempt to simplify it, to "boil it down to the basics". Protestantism, on a basic level, was one such attempt; Vatican II another. But one can't "boil it down". Too much is always and ever left out, and the Baby Jesus gets tossed out with the manger hay. Why should it be simple? The Faith is itself a Mysterium Fidei that we'll spend Eternity in contemplation of, after all – we'll never exhaust its beauty; or, if we're in Hell, we'll spend Eternity in repudiation of it.

But the urge to simplify is ever-present. The current pope himself is notorious for how he "doesn't get it", as he clearly gives basically a Lutheran understanding of salvation, with heavy doses of German-originated moral-relativistic "Modernism" as a side dish, and a very sulfuric horderves of Socialism, a political theory which purports to be motivated by Christian charity but in reality is based on and conjures endless envy, the nastiest of the Seven Deadly Sins. However, any reading of the Gospels, especially but not necessarily in conjunction with the rest of the New Testament, clearly shows Our Lord Christ requires superhuman efforts at true, profound moral perfection. "Be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect." Matthew 5:48 (This idea appears in Deuteronomy 18:13 and Leviticus 19:2, or in St. Paul 2 Corinthians 7:1, and a host of other verses – Philippians 3:15 has an interesting way of putting it.)

Protestants as a whole don't get it, either. They are descendants – of a sort – of St. Augustine, the "Doctor of Grace" and they focus on Christ dying for our sins, as Augustine did. (Augustine is why Western Orthodoxy – Catholicism – has the Crucifix as the most ubiquitous symbol of our Lord, unlike the Christos Pantokrator in the Eastern iconography.) But God is greater than any sin, and could overturn the Fall of Adam and Eve in a second – since it happened in time, and Adam and Eve didn't have a full understanding of what they were getting themselves into. When the Angels fell, on the other hand, being outside of time as we understand it – existing in Eternity, in short – their Fall was made in full knowledge of what they were doing, and it was permanent (being in Eternity, how could it be anything else?).

Yet Historical Christianity teaches that God became Man, while fully remaining God, 100 percent of both, and not inheriting the Fallen Nature of human beings (thus his Mother had to be conceived immaculately, obviously, since He received His human nature fully and solely from His Mother.) And He wants us to be like Him, as the verses quoted above indicate. We obviously can't do that, unless we're fundamentally changed. Now we're on the trail of why the Incarnation was a necessity.

St. Augustine, a dour, reformed hedonist, stressed that Fallen Nature because he had wallowed in it for much of his life, a lot like Martin Luther wallowed in it 1100 years later; yet Saint A felt the full impact of the infusion of grace from God that transformed the moral pagan lout Augustine's nature. So, Saint Augustine stressed ever this so-relevant-to-him personal insight, how it was an unmerited grace that saved him. (Grace ultimately derives from the Greek χᾰ́ρῐς, (kháris), meaning "gift." Also prevalent was the idea of Atonement: that Our Lord Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, suffered the Passion and Crucifixion as a vicarious punishment for our sins and a redemption from them.

Yet Augustine was a Catholic, believing in the Real Presence and the infusion of grace necessary to change our nature, and the necessity of a changed nature, which along with the rest of the Sacraments all involving an ordained priesthood and hierarchy – himself being a bishop; Protestantism differs from Augustine in many ways, but an important one is that it sees no transformation of the sinner, no infused grace, but rather an imputed grace that, in Luther's famous image, is like snow covering a manure pile. For the Catholics and Orthodox, that idea never passed the smell test.

But prior to and encompassing the whole Passion and Crucifixion and Resurrection is the Incarnation, the latter the necessary foundation of the former – but again, why? Why were all these needed? Incarnation, Passion, Crucifixion, Resurrection?

At Christmas we should perhaps ponder the core of the Christian Faith isn't quite only that "God died for your sins" but rather that we are transformed in Christ via His Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection. The Easterners (whether in Communion with Rome or not) have always stressed this transformation, and they call it Theosis. It is why the main iconography of Our Lord in the East is Christos Pantokrator, Christ the Ruler of All. In short, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity had to become a human being in order to take on human nature in order to change it, to uplift it, to make us New Creations in Christ.

Simply: God Incarnated into the human race in order to Incarnate the human race into God. The Incarnation was necessary not only for God "to empty himself" (Philippians 2:7) but for God to give us "participation in Himself" (2 Peter 1:4). This is the significance of Christmas; it is the reason for the Incarnation. It is what Salvation is.

This Christmas, therefore, I myself want to contemplate the following, and pass it on to you, for what it is worth:

•    The Incarnation: Absolutely necessary and central to salvation, wherein God becomes a human person, Jesus / Yeshu'a (Yehoshu'a: "Yahweh is salvation").
•    God’s Incarnation didn’t lower God so much as elevate human nature, in Christ, enabling…

•    "Theosis" (Divinization) which by grace χᾰ́ρῐς / kháris); a word originally meaning just "gift") – not by nature – is our incorporation into Christ, raising us up to participate in His Divinity (as St. Peter teaches in 2 Peter 1.4). Usually described in the Western Church as an Infusion of Grace, it means our natures are changed. (Compare to Protestantism's Imputation of Grace: God assigns grace to us but doesn’t actually divinize or change our nature; i.e. Luther's manure pile.)

•    St. Athanasius the Great (296-373): "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God" (i.e., participate in the inner life of the Trinity). (De inc. 54, 3: PG 25, 192B) and [CCC 460]

•    St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274): "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods." (Opusc. 57, 1-4) [CCC 460]
•    This teaching is stated in many ways throughout the New Testament, and is heavy in St. John:

•    John 1:12 “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (Obviously, a new creation.) Reread the first three chapters of St. John's Gospel, and then chapter 6, for a powerful meditation on what the Incarnation means.

•    This teaching is also central to St. Paul: 2 Cor 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (Again, a new creation) 2 Peter 1:4 might well put it best; see also St. Paul in Romans, 6:4, 7:6, 12:2; Galatians 3:27; Ephesians 4:22-24; Colossians 3:8-12. (Protestants, the Biblical literalists, somehow see all these passages, especially the extended Eucharistic discussion in John 6, as being merely metaphorical; literary devices, basically.)

•    And note how Theosis makes sense of Our Lord's teachings. In general, Our Lord Jesus seems to demand the impossible of “ordinary” humans. In Matthew 5, during the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives the Beatitudes, then says we are “salt of the earth” and “light of the world”, discusses how He has come not to do away with the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them – and the point of both Law and Prophets was to perfect us. Our Lord discusses elevated behavior regarding anger, adultery, divorce, making oaths and not retaliating (“turn the other cheek”) and love our enemies. He ends with "You, therefore, must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:48) That is something manifestly impossible for “normal” human beings to do.

There it is, a mere suggestion of the complexity and profundity of Historical Christianity, of the East and West. John Paul II used to like to say he wanted the Church to "breathe with both lungs", which of course the 14 separate,  Autocephalous Orthodox Churches not in Communion with Rome just laughed off. But the first thousand years of Eastern theology was just as Catholic as Saint Augustine's theology was, and it is worth dwelling a bit on it.

A Blessed Christmas and Excellent New Year to all.

An Préachán

A Deductive Argument Against Sola Scriptura...

Sola Scriptura, the Protestant argument that the Bible is the sole basis for the Faith, rather than Church or "the traditions of men", is easily enough refuted. But Protestants of course need it mightily because without it, they have no predicate for being Protestant. I mean, where do they get their authority to interpret the Bible in the first place? Did our Lord breathe on them at some point, and say, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost! Whatsoever ye declare bound on Earth shall be bound in Heaven?" (St. John 20:22-23) 

Well, actually, Calvin seems to have thought he was a prophet or new apostle, or so I understand. (I remember hearing that somewhere, but Calvinists don't broadcast it, much like Luther's many versions of "Logic is the devil's whore" or "the Christian must pluck out reason from his mind as one plucks out an eye.") 

Were I ever in a formal debate with Protestants, that's the first question I would ask. "Where do you get the authority to teach – anything?" They'd have to refer to Sola Scriptura, or go home. 

While various Bible verses have been used in varying degrees to argue for Sola Scriptura, it is usually 2 Timothy 3:15-16 that is invoked. It reads, starting with verse 14: "4 But continue thou in those things which thou hast learned, and which have been committed to thee: knowing of whom thou hast learned them; 15 And because from thy infancy thou hast known the holy scriptures, which can instruct thee to salvation, by the faith which is in Christ Jesus. 16 All scripture, inspired of God, is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice," (The relevant section I've bolded and italicized) 

This version is the Douay-Rheims. This following are verses 15 & 16 from the New International Version: "...And how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness...".

Pretty close, the two versions. The Catholic version says "profitable" where the Protestant version has "useful", The Catholic version has "can instruct thee to salvation" whereas the Protestant one has the more colorful "make you wise for salvation." The Greek I have, too. 

In any event, nowhere do these verses suggest that Scripture alone is what salvation or the Faith in general, are based on. And in other places, St. Paul writes (2 Thessalonians 2:15):  "So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter."

Such a passage obviously undercuts any Sola "Scriptura" idea. But my deductive argument against Sola Scriptura is based on 1 Timothy 3:15 which reads in the NIV: "If I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth." Call me an unreformed type, but I like the Douay-Rheims English better: "But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth."

Anyway, here's the deductive argument. Premise one (major premise): 1 Timothy 3:15 shows that St. Paul the wordsmith capability, the phrasing, words, grammar, etc., to have written "If I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household, which is the Scripture of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth."

Premise two (minor premise): In all of the vast corpus of Pauline text, the "Apostle to the Gentiles" does not in fact write any such passage, not remotely, as shown so well in 2 Timothy 3:15-16. 

Conclusion: St. Paul did not in fact communicate any such idea because he did not want to. He had the ability, and the space, but he didn't. It was not his teaching.

Simple. 

We hardly need get into the demented inbreeding of First-order logic (a.k.a. predicate logic, quantificational logic, and the so whimsically named "first-order predicate calculus" or its papa (or would it be "mama"?) propositional logic (also called symbolic logic and Our Lord only knows what else), to conclude St. Paul had means and opportunity to "do the deed" regarding Sola Scriptura, but not the motive. 

He wasn't a Protestant.

An Préachán

Protestant - Muslim intellectual links, an interesting speculation

Amici,

One of the problems Catholics have traditionally had when arguing with Protestants is that they are not – to put it politely, very logically consistent. Many examples exist, but their answers to how the Canon of Scripture was worked out and their defense of Sola Scriptura both come to mine, not to mention the problems raised by their various interpretations of Sola Fide in every day life and in theological questions of great import. 

Often times, I don't think our Protestant friends really do bother with answering those questions. Or rather, should one, as a Protestant, be inclined to ponder them in the first place, then one might very well find oneself becoming a Catholic! So, whence comes this tendency to avoid rationality in regards to Faith? To begin this meditation, let me quote Protestantism's founder: in one of his debates, Luther, brought up short by logical argument, shouted, "Logic is the Devil's whore!"

I guess Protestantism has carried that "genetic trait" down the generations. Or to put it another way, the Medieval Nominalists who were the precursors of Protestantism weren't too big on logic, either. They rejected Aquinas as being too rational, and they in fact rejected human rationality – at least when it came to things religious. I suppose they either re-created or were influenced by the strain in Islamic thought that had produced the Al-Asherites, and today the Wahabi-Salafist school of Muslim theology. These rejected/reject the idea that human thought can know anything of God, and that all we can know of God is of revelation – in fact, they were/are quite extreme that even any science, chemistry, biology, etc., is blasphemous, because it plumbs the mind of God.

So, with that background in Islam, and the influence of certain Medieval Muslims in Christianity (there was a flowering of Aristotle in the High Middle Ages, partly because of Aristotle's works translated from Arabic), I would guess that some of the Al-Asherite/Salafist sort of thinking came in, as well, with tracts and excerpts of actual Muslim thinkers being translated, not just Aristotle. The parallels between certain aspects of Protestantism and Islam are just too strong for it to be coincidental, unless there's some sort of human trait (that obviously not all humans have) that produces it.

Thus we can speak of "Protestant Anti-Intellectualism" in the same way we can speak of Islamic anti-intellectualism. A great book on that latter subject is Robert R. Reilly's The Closing of the Muslim Mind, How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis – well worth reading for itself, and the insights it gives into the recent murderous, savage behavior by a Saudi flight student at the U.S. Naval Air Station – and all such insanity, actually – but also for the insights it provides to Catholics trying to understand Protestant "thinking".

One of my favorite Luther quotes is, "Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and ... know nothing but the word of God." That is unadulterated, pure Al-Asherite Wahabi-Salafism. Couldn't be purer.

Anyway, some speculation, of course, but also a pondering, a meditation, but after all, we Catholics, with our long tradition, derived from the philosopher Justin Martyr and formalized by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, (died 524), famous author of The Consolation of Philosophy, who encapsulated the entire Western Christian intellectual program with his saying, "Insofar as you are able, conjoin Faith and Reason." That seems to be the antithesis of the Al-Asherites then, the Salafists today, and Protestantism from its inception. I for one know, from arguing with certain Baptists, that they are amazingly Salafist when it comes to religion, but not of course in any other field. Wahabi-Salafist Muslims extend that to all fields of human knowledge. 

An Préachán

Unbaptized Children, Hell, and "Let the children come to me..."

Amici, FWIW, and to save some the trouble of deep digging for answers to the question of what happens to unbaptized chidren, some ponderings...

• Preamble 
  Our Lord is clear in the Gospels: those who don't believe in Him are lost. However, as for children, He said let no one prevent them from coming to Him (Matt 19:14). This passage clearly means first, at that exact point in time, and also (we can clearly deduce) for the rest of his Earthly ministry: "Apostles, let the kids come to me; don't hinder them."
  Second: Traditionally, and no doubt truly, the Church interprets this passage as meaning anyone who wants Salvation must have the clear, innocent, beautiful Faith and love (charity) children have. (Cold calculations, measuring everything to a finely balanced metric, don't cut it.)
  Third: "Such is the kingdom of Heaven" – considering that these were as of that moment unbaptized Jewish kids, it is highly probable indeed that He truly meant ALL children were His, for He made 'em, knows their destiny (whether they become adults or not) and so on. Remember, when God says X, X happens. All Creation was created by the Father through the Son (the Logos) so I think it reasonable to understand Our Lord Jesus, Joshua, "Yahweh Saves", is proclaiming here that children will be saved.
  Don't know it for sure, of course, but it makes sense.
  So an answer: Trust God. If one is going to believe in the Christian God, He went to literally infinite trouble to become a human being, amazing the good angels (and of course confounding the bad ones) and redoing Creation on the off-chance (as it were) that some (small or large, probably small) portion of His human creation wouldn't deny Him. He was Incarnated in us so we could be incarnated in Him, through His grace ("grace" meaning "gift".) If He enabled the Immaculate Conception, as a pure gift (grace) through his not-yet-at-that-time Incarnation, He can save unbaptized infants. He's Lord of the Sabbath, in short; the Sabbath (here standing for Fallen Humanity, and Creation, and the curses of the Fall, etc.) is not His master.
  The BVM: The Blessed Mother. She is our great Advocate. And she's a mother. Does anyone think she wouldn't advocate for children who no fault of their own were not baptized? Does anyone think He would deny Her?
  Protestants and Orthodox: I suppose Prots are all over the map with answers to this. Most of the ones I've ever known think all kids go to Heaven, as a matter of course. The Orthodox Churches (14 independent "Ghetto" Churches), deny the Catholic teaching that unbaptized infants go to Limbo. But then, they've made an absolute mush of Purgatory, and trashed out a number of other things, like divorce and remarriage, so "whaddatheyknow"?
  Robert Bellarmine, much in the news because of his teachings about bad popes, was the last major Catholic thinker to teach that unbaptized infants went to the Hell of the Damned. Aquinas, Vulcan Academy-trained in logic, taught unbaptized infants didn't go to Fiery Hell, but a mild and happy Limbo, and his position eventually carried the day, but the Church has never actually dogmatically defined this.
  An Préachán

The Führerprinzip and Pope Francis

A friend sent me a link to yet another "Pope Francis is God" website. A "wherepeteris" .com. this is all founded on the Führerprinzip principle, the leader as (absolute) prince. 

It's just "intellectually easy" for these lemmings. Führerprinzip people (volk?) don't have to think. Vatican II was the Voice of God and the subsequent popes were God Incarnate, and so on. 

I always point out that Jodl and Keitel were hung on that Führerprinzip "We were just following orders" defense. Wilhelm Bodewin Johann Gustav Keitel and I share the same birthday, oddly enough. Universally derided as a lickspittle and lackey, and one not having much IQ, both he Alfred Josef Ferdinand Jodl, a "Colonel General", were hung on my mother's 33rd birthday. But both of them did what these "Oh, he's pope, so God Himself appointed him and we have to following him, like lemmings" clowns do. These Francis-lovers ought to be Mormon; Mormons have a living prophet to tell them what's what.

Ugh.

So is this why Pope Francis is a Communist? Or at least very friendly to "serious Sociailsm"?

Amici,

It's been well remarked upon that Bergoglio is either a Communist or a Communist/Socialist sympathizer. His comments against Capitalism and in favor of some sort of Socialism are legion, that's for sure. 

Whether Bergi himself is or not, it is essential to make plain that in the morality of the political realm, Socialism is evil because it strokes envy; indeed, it is built almost entirely out of envy. It pretends to be sourced in Our Lord's charity, and a call for true "social justice" but, alas, it is clearly evil, stoking the fire of envy in every way. 

And envy is famously the ONE sin that has no pleasure in it, unless spite is considered a pleasure. (It is in Hell.)

And in a sense, that is the real, underlying problem with the Novus Ordo Mass. With everything else that can be said for or against it, the N.O. seems designed to so easily stroke the ego. It's format, one can argue, is built almost entirely out of some aspect of pride; for example: pride the priest faces me, pride the priest talks to me and pride that I "understand" every single word, pride that I don't pray at my own pace but in rather lockstep with all the others; i.e. "we're all equal; no one is spiritually better somehow."

Those messages are there; they're built in. Many can ignore them, the saintly, the truly humble, but for the rest of us, that "ignoring" hard to do. 

So, is it no wonder Bergi & Co. all seem to be very, very Communist friendly?

An Préachán

The Novus Ordo Mass and Watching the Priest's Face

The perils of the ad populum Mass

I have occasion to go to a N.O. from time to time, and it is amazing, when one attends an N.O. only rarely, how "face-centered" it all is. Even with me, myself, and I, all three of us, constantly thinking, "No, I'm going to focus of the liturgy and Our Lord, focus, focus, focus...", helplessly find myself contemplating the priest's face, his every blink, angle of head, raised eyebrow.
It's just incredible. And then, of course, POW! I've got to shake hands! Er, wait...what? It is incredibly disconcerting experience, and one that is -- shall we say -- "not conducive to prayer."

It's just best to sit in the back, or look out a window, if by God's grace, there's a nice one to look out of.

None of that makes the rite invalid, I hasten to add, because God is always faithful (Romans 3:3), and we have entered into the New Covenant with Him (and thus into all the old ones), and He is always faithful, whether we are or not. But wow, I thank the Lord I only experience an N.O. rarely now.

Closely related to this: there's no way to attend a Traditional Latin Mass for the first time and not be surprised at the ornateness of the priest's chasuble. (A chasuble is the outer most garment of a priest who is vestured to say Mass.)

The ornate chasuble a TLM priest wears, of which we mainly see the back, prevents all that "face-watching" endemic to the New Mass. The chasuble symbolizes the royal robe the Roman soldiers threw over Our Lord, and when the priest vests, he prays of the chasuble as the "yoke of Christ". And on top of all that beautiful symbolism, it acts as a mobile iconostasis, an icon screen. separating us from the Mysteries at the altar as the iconostasis does in an Eastern Liturgy.

An Préachán

How to witness to a non-TLM Catholic about the TLM Mass

First, never rag on what they experience, for how are they to know any better, being brought up in it? Always remember: People like what they're used to. An old adage, and a true one.

Secondly, pray and really live the beauty of the TLM in your life outside the Liturgy, or I suppose one can say, bring the Heavenly beauty of the TLM into your public life, live as through Heaven -- and the Eternal Presence of Our Lord -- is here, for He is. Stress ever the Real Presence, and that that is the great aim of the TLM and the ancient Eastern Liturgies: to celebrate Immanuel, God with us, in His Real Presence. That's the reason for all the art, the exquisite music, the vertical worship. The Lord God of Hosts became Incarnate in us in order that we could become incarnate in Him. Theosis. It's that "Faith made manifest" that attracts. Always has, always will.

An Préachán 

More anti-Sede rant...

Just a bit more anti-Sede rant.


To all Sedevacantists, at least those not trying to set up their own little church, in effect:

Look, I don't mean to be unkind, but you are just like meé i.e., a peon in the Church and our "opinion" and whatever "research" we do or did do or might conjure up is immaterial, inadmissible, and irrelevant. 

Repeat this: WE ARE NOBODIES. We're like those low-level imps and hellions in a Possession who do a lot of chatting, and take up time making noises and stinks, but we're the bottom of the totem pole. Heaven and Hell have hierarchies. Should we end up in Heaven, we'll be cleaning the paving stones of the streets using toothbrushes. We're that low.

The Big Shots in the Vatican 2 Church hierarchy could care less what we do -- or think -- or believe. And both Heaven and Hell are far more interested in what we do, than what we putatively convince ourselves we believe. (You can bet they're very interested in what the modern bishops have done: lists are kept, the records are exact, and diabolical teeth are being sharpened.)

And as for prophesy, and those who quote Our Lady from various of her visits: Our Lady is our Shield and Limitless Resource, but for this one Jewish girl, born in utter obscurity and through her own freely-given Fiat, is through Our Lord Co-Redemptrix with her Son, we would none of us be here discussing this.

However, regarding her prophesies, powerful and shocking a warning as they are: I'm sorry: neither you nor I have the authority to interpret prophesy. We can keep our eyes open, definitely. But we're just nobodies trying to account for the absolute disaster that the Vatican 2 Church is. You go "whole hog" whereas I, being Irish and phlegmatic, know all too well how miserable life is. For example, in the last couple of days, Taylor Marshall and George Neumayr posted a Youtube discussion about the recent USCCB meeting in the Harbor Marriott in Baltimore. 

Three-quarters of those lemmings in Roman collars should have been just marched into Baltimore harbor. Listen to it. I get so angry with what's going on that I could chew neutronium.

But the bottom line is, as the Vat2 Church collapses and -- I hope -- the Reconquista Church is born, all we can do is pray for a firm God-given Faith in the New Covenant, regardless of the unbelief of others, and treat our neighbors as Our Lord requested, while staying in the sacraments as best we can. That latter is a problem if you think you can't find any validly ordained priest who's been given the faculty to hear Confession by a bishop who's also valid, but there it is. We're just too low on the totem pole to decide which bishop is which. Thank God there are enough good priests left -- maybe more than we hope for or maybe fewer than we fear -- who can administer the sacraments.

It's called Faith. No one said it would be easy.

An Préachán

Sedevacantism and Romans 3:3

I myself have never had much interest in Sedevacantism, unless it would be discussing whether Josef Ratzinger could be said to still be pope. My guess is that some future pontiff will declare Ratzinger's quasi-abdication/retirement/whatever-you-call-it to have been invalid, and thus that Bergoglio -- an obvious heretic, if ever heresy was practiced, preached, or professed -- was (past tense, since this is a future pope talking) an anti-pope.

But of course I don't know that will happen, and though I can clearly know "Bergi" is a heretic, and a rank one, especially odious in that he has no time to answer the Dubia Cardinals, nor the collection of theologians and laity who have asked him pleadingly to clarify his teaching on divorce and remarriage, and God-knows-what-else, but yet he somehow he manages to find the time to give lengthy interviews to old Eugenio Scalfari, that ridiculous Communist "journalist". Whatever. He may validly be pope, or not; but he's definitely a heretic. For what that's worth. 

So, I understand the Sedes' frustration. Declaring the popes since (who? John 23, Paul 6? Or...?) whomever to be invalid popes solves one aspect of the absurd Modernist Church. But it creates even worse ones, such as I wrote to a Sede at OnePeterFive:

Will you just stop about the Sedevacantist garbage? Just. Stop.

The Vatican II Church is a mess, true. But Sedes throw the Infant Lord out with the dirty bathwater. You, and all Sedes, need to re-read the opening of Romans chapter 3, especially the context of that chapter's verse three, which famously says, "For what if some of them have not believed? Shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid." That is what should be the engraved-in-gold motto of all Trads regarding even the most absurdly celebrated N.O.

You write, "Maybe the [New] Mass created by enemies of Christ isn't even valid." Subtle, as a brick. Oh, yeah, and like you KNOW that, do you? You blaspheme God, actually, for you're writing that the unbelief of the servants of the New Covenant are making God's side of the Covenant, His signature on it, without effect. Outrageous.

It's as simple as that, and what St. Paul wrote about those Jews of his day who rejected the New Covenant through their unbelief, applies to all Sedes.

Most Sedes are just desperate Catholics trying to hang on to their Faith in an Age of Heretics in High Places. Some of them, though, do commit both Blasphemy and Protestantism. I.e., they say God is not faithful, and they say that they themselves somehow have the authority to assert this and that. They don't. 

But St. Paulo had it right, in spades. So what if a bunch of these clowns are unfaithful. Does that invalidate God's side of the Covenant? Not. One. Iota.

An Préachán