Pressure ever-mounting; crash coming...

 Friends,

Things are mounting to crash-level madness. Afghanistan is a complete fiasco (maybe the powers-that-be intended just that to happen? Part of a far bigger plan?). People are fed up. Even Donald Trump was booed at his mega-rally in Alabama when he tried to encourage people to get 'vaccinated'. I'm glad. Someone needs to get it through his head what's going on. (If the "vaccines" turn out to be half as half deadly as many are predicting, then Trump will be dead politically, but we'll have to wait for that to develop.) 

I see the FDA is going to approve the Pfizer "vaccine" as early as today, regardless of all the injury and death it causes, and regardless of the fact that Pfizer lost the "control group" and regardless of whatever "good" effects it is claimed to have, they're limited, and have to be propped up with continual "booster shots". I would expect a number of legal people to file emergency stay petitions with various courts. But once the FDA (as political an organization as any) gives its approval, suddenly government will have legal force to compel vaccination.

Microbiologist Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi details "vaccination" effects. 

Information from Israel, Norway, etc., i.e. heavily vaccinated countries, is revealing that the so-called "Delta variant" is NOT a product of the unvaccinated, but rather a product of the vaccinated. This is just incredible, but absolutely true. Yet, the forces of government grind ever on to force everyone to be "vaccinated".

The news from Australia and New Zealand is insane. Absolutely, purely insane. (Lots of video.) The police in Australia are beating more people than the Taliban are beating in Afghanistan. I read about a couple of runners, joggers, that were chased by a helicopter, chased to their home and the chopper stayed over their house, preventing their getting out again. 

Meanwhile, Australia's truckers are getting ready for a strike. They, the "Long-haul truck drivers, "are not permitted to stop and eat, or shower, or rest outside their vehicles by orders of the government." That is insane. So they're going to try a nationwide shutdown.

Thousands have been arrested, shot with rubber bullets (nasty things, if you don't know; they're huge and dangerous) sprayed with tear gas or pepper spray, and so on. 60 people, the entire congregation at one church, were arrested. Absolute madness. And all this, according to world meters, for a total of 984 deaths (supposedly) due to Covid, or 38 per million. My friends, this is madness!

For just one great video of Aussie man-on-the-street interviews, click here. "You won't see this video in the mainstream media". The interviews begin at about 55 seconds in. At 7:08, especially, watch the Anglican priest's speech. Excellent!

Things are truly out of control, and literally anything can happen, and might just well. And remember, all this madness in Australia, France, and other countries, is expected to come soon to the U.S. Get ready, for someone somewhere will "go postal" and then a national martial law will be imposed and the fight will be upon us.

One good bit of news is that since neither Biden nor Camel-toes Harris is capable of doing anything, the Left has no leadership acceptable to the majority of the country, and the Right will be forced to stand up for individual rights or be itself destroyed.

A few weeks ago, just to show how divided and sick our society is, I listed some of the headlines at LifeSiteNews. (One could do this with any news organization, but Lifesite is more honest than most.)

• Australians snitch on fellow citizens over lockdown protest; The month-long lockdown in Sydney was recently extended to last another month. Politics - World Jul 28, 1:54 pm By Isabella Childs
  

• Former Planned Parenthood president was told to say ‘abortion’ in every interview; Dr. Leana Wen — who is an outspoken abortion supporter — was voted out by the board in 2019 after she was warned that she didn’t focus enough on abortion.
  

• Biden expected to announce vaccine mandates for all federal employees, DOJ declares mandates legal
• America had its first show trial on Tuesday and it was loathsome
• Big Tech using shared global ‘counterterrorism’ database to go after Trump supporters, ‘far-right’
• Trudeau withholds health care funds to New Brunswick, alleging sufficient abortion access isn’t provided
• DC cardinal rescinds permission for Latin Mass at National Shrine that would ‘be at odds with the restrictions’
• NY Gov. Cuomo: ‘Knock on doors,’ ‘put [people] in a car,’ ‘get that vaccine in their arm.’
• Full 8th Circuit to review Missouri pro-life law blocked by 3-judge panel
• Pro-LGBT James Martin: You’re not pro-life unless you take the COVID vaccine
• ‘The elites control Canada’: Veteran pro-life activist on the fight to save the unborn
• Polish priest fined by German court for criticizing homosexual predators in the Church

An P again: every day, it just gets nuttier and nuttier. Sooner or later, probably sooner, the system will just go BOINK! and crash. In fact, I've been seeing a number of mainstream articles about "the coming crash". In the beginning of the 16th chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, we read this famous passage:

1 And there came to Him the Pharisees and Sadducees tempting: and they asked Him to shew them a sign from heaven. 2 But He answered and said to them: When it is evening, you say, It will be fair weather, for the sky is red. 3 And in the morning: To day there will be a storm, for the sky is red and lowering. You know then how to discern the face of the sky: and can you not know the signs of the times?

Ok, so how is it that so many cannot see the signs of impending doom? How is it that the mainstream media insists on counterfactual "fact-checking" that tells us what we know is false?

In The Gospel of Mark, Chapter 3, we read the following:

22 And the scribes who were come down from Jerusalem, said: He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of devils He casteth out devils. 23 And after He had called them together, He said to them in parables: How can Satan cast out Satan? 24 And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. 26 And if Satan be risen up against himself, he is divided, and cannot stand, but hath an end.

Abraham Lincoln used this passage in his famous 1858 "A House Divided" speech, which won him national acclaim. (Well, not so much in the South.) But today we in the West are divided in cultural basics, and I mean the very essence of what constitutes life, personhood, sexual identity, and so on. Absolutely basic stuff.

For example: Is abortion murder? Is the taking of a human life permissible when the person hasn't even been born yet, and thus innocent? If that is so, why not kill a new-born babe? (Many actually do and academics with cushy jobs and tenure argue for just that.) Can two men, or two women (or two women and one man, etc.) "marry"? Doesn't that equate coitus, the sexual process involving the physical transmission of life, with anal intercourse and tribadism? Must a man who has been surgically mutilated and chemical polluted (à la Bruce Jenner) be called a woman? Do not laws passed and enacted that declare a man who claims to be a woman a woman – actually, legally – negate the female sex from legal standing?

All of these items involve lying about the actual nature of thing – things understood in their right nature in all of human history – in order to achieve some social end and the promotion of some cultural statement, almost always narcissistic statement by the cretinous. But can we base a healthy society on lies, at all, especially such sociopathic narcissistic lies?

In politics, the situation is the same. The Western government system is based on elections, because of the practical idea that all government needs audit, and regular elections encourage perpetual audit. Yet underlying all that, deep below the electoral mechanism, is the Western and Christian religious idea that all men (the English word means all people) are created by God and thus equal, not in individual ability, but in individual rights. Yet what happens when massive questions arise about the legality of elections? Doesn't it behoove the winners of the election to work with the losers to uncover any irregularities of outright fraud, and thus ally fears and suspicion? And when the winners try every trick in the book to keep the elections in shadow, obscured legally and forensically, isn't it obvious that the losers are going to conclude fraud DID occur? Denying audit of such an election is the recipe for revolution, or slaver. Or both.

Or how can an economy work when jobs are shipped overseas? People are equal legally but not in talent, drive, and fortitude. Not everyone can "code" or "flip burgers" all their lives. Doesn't a country like the U.S. become a mercantile colony of China when American manufacturing jobs go to China, and then the Chinese sell the products back to Americans? What sort of government promotes that? It's insane. What government closes down oil exploration and pipelines in its own country but allows its traditional enemies to build their own pipelines?

One could go on and on. Perhaps most significantly of all, what sort of government bends every law and smothers every right to force "vaccinations" on its population for a disease that does not kill 99.5+ of those supposedly infected with it, especially when the "vaccines" are emergency use only?

Does any of this make any sense? Maybe to Chinese Communists and a few other groups who want to see Western Civ go down, but not to too many others. 

It makes no more sense than a narcissistic moron stamping down on the central religious rite that has animated and encouraged and form a great religious Faith or two millennia. But that is the world we live in, and it cannot, and will not, last much longer.

It's the signs of the times, about a house divided against itself.

An Préachán

Heaven, Hell, Limbo, General Thoughts

A great essay by Dr. Peter Kwasniewski has been posted at OnePeterFive.  However, just a note: Dr. Kwasniewski didn't mention Limbo. For a review of that, see this old Catholic Encyclopedia article for a discussion of Limbus patrum and Limbus infantium. Regarding the latter, after reviewing it, I was once again struck by the severity of the disagreement between the most eminent theologians in the Church's history.

Being followers of the Lord Christ isn't easy, on many levels, as all here know and have often attested. Even Dr. Kwasniewski has discussed how difficult his life has been -- has been made to have been -- for following the Traditional Faith. And in general, for a Christian, the question of Hell and who goes there is one of the difficulties. We can read Holy Writ that makes it plain those without Our Blessed Lord are Hell-bound, and He Himself plainly says the road to Hell is wide and easy. (Matt 7:13, for example.) But he also tells the Pharisees "not to judge" -- meaning not to judge specific individuals' final destination. (He clearly teaches us to judge immoral behavior and shun those who insist on practicing it: see Matt 18 about the brother who sins.) And what of all those of the human race who never heard of Him at all?

Also, if we stress Hell too much, we turn off people. Now, mind me, I don't mean the modern Vatican II Church's pablum about that; I mean in the old-time preachin' down in the hills, or among the Calvinist Orangemen: the endless focus on Hell produced serious neurosis. I've heard a number of first-hand accounts of individuals who either went mad or certainly got as far away from "religion" as they could because of it. Ironically, a successful revival, like The Great Awakening, too often left what wags called a "Burnt out" or "Burnt over" district. As in most things, I suppose, there's a Golden Mean in preaching Hell. Clearly, though, we've gone far, far, way too far into the "Don't worry, there, there" school of religion as therapy. The Christian Faith is Faith first, the Transformation in Christ, the infusion of Grace; and if there's anything "therapeutic" about that, it comes of Our Lord's boundless Grace.

But perhaps the real problem is that while it is clearly necessary to preach Hell, we can't judge individuals as to whether they go there or not. (So many of us SO want to say that of people we know, but it is as much the sin of presumption as saying a recently deceased went to Heaven!)

Oh, certain cases are plain: Hitler, for example. If Adolph went to the Pearly Gates and St. Pete threw them wide open and said, "Adolph! Come on in!" Hitler would look in and see countless Jews -- Ancient Jews, Jews at the time of Our Lord on Earth, and Jews in plenty thereafter because we non-Jews become descendants of Abraham and members of the Covenant via Baptism and especially the Most Holy Eucharist. Hitler wouldn't enter Heaven because it is full of Jews! Or take a pornographer (various names come to mind): they'd look in through the Pearly Gates and see the most beautiful, attractive people imaginable, beyond their imagination, indeed! But they'd see NO lust! "To Hell with this!" they would say and go look deep past the Gates of Hell. There they'd see infinite ugliness, but lust the likes of which they never dreamed of. Guess where they'd go. In a real way, one can say, each individual chooses Heaven or Hell for themselves, with Our Lord God on Judgment Day reflecting them back to themselves in perfect clarity, such that each of us will know upon that instant whether we really wanted to do God's will in our lives, or thwart it. (In that moment, we'll be like the angels were on their Day of Judgment, knowing what they knew in absolutely perfect clarity.)

[Note that Matt 25, starting at verse 31, would suggest everyone is surprised by their sentence of Bliss or Damnation, the opposite of this idea I mention, or seemingly so. One must remember that the dead are outside of time, in what Boethius called "the Boundless Now", so all moments are eternally "present". No one will celebrate their millionth year in Heaven or lament their millionth year in Hell: time there doesn't exist as we experience it on Earth.]
Finally, there's the question of justice. Justice is giving something its due. Rejection of God is due Hell, as a matter of justice. Without Hell -- which as Dr. K shows the Vat2 Church really isn't "into" ("We're just so NOT into Hell, peeps!" say the hip Vat2 prelates), there's no justice for those who reject Our Lord, and they deserve justice just as much as anyone else; in other words, without Hell, there'd be no justice for those who obeyed Him, either, those who entered into the Covenants He established for our salvation, and who, despite temptations, and by God's bountiful Grace that enabled us to stay in the Covenants, stayed fast. The "there's no Hell/no one in Hell" crowd have simply no answer to this argument.

Ultimately, there's one thing I certainly believe about this matter, one sure and certain thing. All the Damned and all the Saved and all the (I suspect, just an opinion, quite a host) in Limbo, will all aver with the strictest conviction what ol' Abraham Lincoln said in his second inaugural, when he quoted the Psalmist, in the second half of verse 9 of Psalm 19, "...The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Amen to that!

An Préachán