THE STILETTO May 16, 2010

The stiletto is a small, yet, very sharp dagger, capable of penetrating deeply into the very heart of a man, causing excruciating pain that far exceeds the deceptive size of the blade. Modernist priests, given to mocking the things of Heaven often wield this lethal weapon in their wicked sermons of disreputable cant and impudence. Like the size of this knife, they come disguised as small indeed, for only a man of puny character would openly dare to laugh at Our Lady of Fatima, in order to discourage belief in the peril of the fires of Hell among other eternal verities. Not every slayer inserts the knife in the same manner. Some choose a clean cut, the act dispensed with quickly, with a minimum of suffering for the victim and themselves. Others prefer the torturous kill so as to inflict the most grievous wound, taking the jagged route.

Such [the latter form] was the sermon just two days hence of the great Feast of Our Lady of Fatima in a local parish and such is the subject of this fiery and blunt column!

Now the modern heretic is very clever, like his Father, the Father of Lies. He dispenses his poison in a friendly liquid, so as to disarm his audience. He starts off with a truism that no one in his right mind would deny; in this case, he denounces a horrid prayer he heard someone utter, to wit, the person praying was seeking to be ignominious or degraded in order to lift up the honor of God. Of course the person may have put matters inelegantly, while intending to ask for the grace of humility before the august, glorious God. However, let us take the priest at his word and cede his point that such a prayer was at best a distortion of Catholic piety, which is where he wants his parishioners to find themselves so as to place themselves within the ambit of his authoritative pronouncements; in other words, softening for the kill to come. He aims to take his time at slaying Tradition and popular devotion, a familiar theme of his, enjoying his position as a supposed intellectual with the gift of oratory: He has a captive gathering, for these well mannered folks hardly dare leave Sunday Mass.

This kind of preacher makes the same mistake over and over again, hoping the Catholics in the pew won't have the presence of mind to analyze his diatribe with any skill. He wants them to presume, along with himself, that because the first statement was on its face accurate in its judgment, therefore all subsequent like assertions are equally so. This is like saying because A is true and because B resembles A, ergo A and B must be equal.  A is the misguided person supra. B is the Fatima Decade prayer that one repeats between the decades of every Rosary.

He embellishes his dissembling, on "popular piety" by stating that no Catholic is obligated to believe every word of a Saint --- he listed a few, such as St. Teresa of Avila, St. Therese of Lisieux and St. Francis of Assisi. He never says what writings of these Saints are to be set aside as if only revealed dogma is to be believed. 

Let me use an analogy. When my father said that he loved me, I believed him without reservation because his actions told me that he loved me more than words --- I had experience, although I knew my father's character, so that I would have believed him without any need of proof. My father's many counsels to me, while not dogma, that is, infallible, were cherished by me because I knew his uprightness and his heart. I loved him back and no one would have ever been able to convince me to disregard his wisdom. The writings of the Saints are like this but of even more worth, for often the Saint, who is not called to declare dogmas --- this is the task of Peter --- has been inspired by God, sometimes directly instructed by Him in a mystical vision, to provide special counsel to souls yearning to unite their wills with the Will of God because they seek Him and salvation above everything else. Such souls can be encouraged by particular Saints. No one says to his neighbor, ah, the wisdom of St. ------ is equal to that of God. Father Insolence insists that this is the case: to take notice of the wisdom of the Saints is itself unwise just because it does not have the declaration of a dogma. A strange utterance for a priest to make, for one of the dogmas of the faith, the dogmas he pretends to so carefully safeguard is the dogma on Hell itself. Father does not say there is no Hell, he simply says it no longer matters as we, like all good Protestants are already saved, which is to negate Hell in the practical, if not the theological sense, even if he does not realize this. He also neglects to reflect that if the Saints can be so easily dismissed, ought not his own declarations of derision be disregarded by his parishioners? After all, he has as yet to be canonized! What is good for the Saint is ever more so for the non-Saint, surely!

Having done away with Saintly counsels, counsels which never prevented the Saints themselves from attaining sanctification, Father Agenda finally launches into a frontal attack on the Fatima Decade prayer, in particular the "fires of Hell" aspect, which he has already demoted to a superstition by virtue of the context generated by his own dogmatic statements effected by taking Scripture out of context! The irony abounds. Meanwhile he overlooks that Saint Paul, one of the authors of Scripture, inspired by the Holy Ghost, wrote inerrantly, by definition. One of his sage counsels that no one who values his eternal happiness ought to set aside, is in Phil. 2: 12: St. Paul instructs us thus, "with fear and trembling work out your salvation." We might still go to Hell!

It is not the fact that any teaching or counsel comes from a Saint per se, but the ultimate source, the Saint being but the means of transmittal, that is germane.  Father Modernist does not mention this important reality. Now, Our Lady [Fatima] is not just any Saint, as if any Saint could possibly be any old anything, she is above the Saints and Angels, she is the Mother of God and the Queen of Heaven and Earth, and Spouse of the Holy Ghost. In the order of grace she is just below the Trinity. Little Jacinta, Francisco and Lucy were taught the Fatima Decade prayer by the Angel [St. Michael] at Fatima in the weeks preceding Our Lady's appearance, not on his own authority and for a sentimental pious devotion without validity for salvation. He was obeying the Queen he served and for a most relevant reason: Many souls were falling into Hell, Baptism and Father's wishful thinking not withstanding! And the source, the ultimate source? God Himself, for Mary does nothing without being in unity with the Blessed Trinity! Yes, the Decade prayer is not a dogma of the faith, but a person of humble faith is ever ready to receive with gratitude and submission an aid of grace when that help has been officially approved and promoted by Holy Mother Church. There is a law of the Church that says how we pray determines what we believe. Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi. A supplementary axiom of this is, tell me what you choose to disregard as to prayer, and I will tell you what you actually believe or do not believe in. If you do not think the fires of Hell are a possibility, your idea of sin will be radically different than someone who thinks quite the opposite. This priest is not only rash, brazen, impious and blasphemous, he is in grave danger of the fires of Hell. Every Saint was conscious of his sinful state and the dangers of Hell; those most certain of Hell are those who so cavalierly downplay it.

Father wanted to impress his starving, startled flock with the notion that it is Scripture as interpreted by him alone, that matters. The terrifying irony is that in Matt. 18: 6 we read: "But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea."

One of the mothers said to me, "How do I go home and undo what he just did?" She has several children, some of whom are minors. The scandal is grave, and it runs deeper than the slice of the stiletto and the depth of the sea. The irony went further. Father stressed the unity of the Trinity and the unity of the Body of Christ, yet he scattereth the flock more ignominiously than the demeaned prayerful person in his opening salvo.

He who begins by dismissing the Mother of God's wishes, later, if not sooner, ends with disbelief in her Son. To Jesus through Mary because this is the very will of God.

Our Lady told us that many souls go to Hell because they had no one to pray for them.

"O My Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need."

"O My Jesus, it is for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners and in reparation for sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer this sacrifice to Thee."

Pray for this poor priest, who is old, before it is too late ...


COMMUNION ON THE TONGUE: Cant, Can't and Won't March 3, 2010

She said, upon hearing of the US Bishops' guidelines for receiving Holy Communion during the swine flu [non]-epidemic, which recommended Communion "in the Hand", 'Oh, I wouldn't take It on the tongue anyway ...' her conclusion being that the Traditional and only non-sacrilegious manner of receiving Our Lord was a most unpleasant experience. Another joined in the chorus of "can't and won't and why not" for him. Nothing we haven't all heard hundreds of times before. But the "can't" --- as in "I won't" --- is nothing less than cant, a form of sentimental jargon or hypocritical sophistry; I intend the latter meaning, especially since the young woman's intention does not comport with human reason. Of course, she is in high company since the Vatican's permission for "Communion in the Hand" does not square with human reason either, not to mention that it violates the dictates of the dogmatic counsels of the Council of Trent, an action that brings down upon us the wrath of God. If it were impossible for Churchmen to do such a thing, the Council of Trent would not have had to include its anathemas in the first place as they would be unnecessary and confusing. Just as St. Pius V, the Pope of Trent, issued anathemas with the bull Quo Primum on the Mass. Trent's anathemas are there because such a frightful possibility, the practical apostasy of shepherds, is always with us.

Those of you who agree with the lady [supra] might find my declaration the view of a troglodyte and not that of a sensible, faithful [to Rome], "compassionate" Catholic. This, too, I have heard a hundred times and more. By now you are perhaps asking yourself, why does she write, "does not comport with human reason"? The Holy See allows the practice, does it not?

Well, let's look at it this way, from human experience, specifically physical necessity; ontological necessity, that which exists in reality apart from our opinion on it; and the Vatican's own law here.

First, the Holy See did not give permission for the laity to self-communicate, meaning, take the Sacred Species in their hand to administer to themselves. They can't because this would be so radical a departure that even the modern Vatican would not dare. How the Vatican got around the violation of Sacred Tradition was that the Extraordinary ministers could not take the Host directly from the chalice themselves to communicate; if it were not so woefully unfunny, this would be comical, because then, while pretending the priest is communicating to them, they then proceed to take the Host directly from the chalice to communicate to everyone else! Obviously the Holy See expects us to not be able to make the necessary distinctions, that anyone with common sense can make. Although the Holy See can unwisely grant a permission or indult for a practice that might harm the faith, it can never abrogate that which is held sacred by Tradition. For instance, when Pope Paul issued his New Mass, people mistakenly thought that the Immemorial Roman Mass of Tradition given in perpetuity in Quo Primum, had been banned. Those of us who said otherwise were scorned and brushed aside by our fellow Catholics as if we were quaint, annoying bees to be endured under their bonnets. Years later --- three Pontiffs later --- we learned otherwise, as those of us who make it a priority to know these things had insisted on.  Let me restate this principle: a permission or indult is never a command to be imposed. When Pope John Paul II introduced the fourth set of Rosary mysteries, he said that it was voluntary, as in optional. He had no choice, because as liberal as he tended to be, he knew the traditional teaching on popular piety that is in keeping with the faith. He could not abrogate what Our Lady gave to St. Dominic. Not that I think he would have if he had thought he could. I know he genuinely loved the traditional Rosary. Unfortunately he seemed to have a love affair with novelty at the same time. 

St. Vincent of Lerins teaches: "This custom has always prevailed in the Church: that, the more religious a man was, the more promptly did he withstand novel inventions."

  Many a person considered those of us who took the Holy Father at his word and opted out of the Illuminative mysteries "disobedient." The modern Church is filled with contrarian notions, the mandatory is now an option and vice versa. The only "heretics" today are those who hold to Tradition and its traditions. Such is our lot. It is an adage of the Church according to the Saints that when God is angry with His people, He sends them bad priests. Bad can be defined in two ways: filled with vice as we know from the just revealed scandal concerning an aide to the Pope, or ignorant of and [or] hostile to Tradition and the dogmas of the faith in their full. If anyone thinks that we are not being chastised by God let him think again. The majority of diocesan priests are at least ignorant, and too many of those anti-Tradition as well. As one devout Catholic mother of seven recently said to me: "The laity will have to save the priests." It is supposed to be the other way around, of course. And as a middle-aged man acknowledged in my presence, shortly after her, "If they wanted to be Protestants, why didn't they just leave the Church? Now they are trying to make us all Protestants. I hope the Traditional Mass comes back as it once was." Both are younger than I am, yet wise beyond their years. And probably Saints in the making for they make sacrifices to keep the faith in their respective parishes while all around them is a crumbling Catholic facade.

On the rarest of occasions it is licit to permit a lay person to touch the consecrated species when no priest is available to take care of a discarded Host, for instance. Even then, the person should use a clean linen cloth if at all possible to envelop the Host. Thus, technically speaking, we cannot say that a lay person may never touch the Body of Christ with his hands. This crisis is much like that of a dying child in need of Baptism when no deacon or priest is available in time. Having recognized such an urgency and that the good of souls is the highest law of the Church, we all know that this exception is exactly that, an exception for the sake of a soul's eternal happiness with God. Now, no one goes around saying, "Since the Church allows an exception in this regard, why not allow the laity to Baptize regularly, thereby helping the priests with a shortage of time." No one agitates for this, even the most misguided liberal in the pew. Why not? There are not enough babies being born in the first place, and in the second, because they know that if the laity are permitted a regular indult that sooner, if not later, things will go awry and the integrity of the Sacrament will be lost or placed in doubt. Underneath it all they suspect on some level that this is what happened with "Communion in the Hand" in some way they are not able to articulate.  The discomfort hovers just below the surface of the confusion that enshrouds today's Catholic in a myopic miasma. They know somehow that things are not quite as they ought to be and have no idea how to set things right, if they had the power.

Ergo, the rare exception as to the Sacred Species in no way led anyone who held the Catholic faith whole and entire, to say to himself, forty years ago,  "I will pressure the Church for the 'right' to distribute Holy Communion at Sunday Mass."  The earliest known such dissident was none other than the first Protestant who rebelled against the Catholic faith and introduced the practice of "Communion in the Hand" --- the apostate Archbishop Cranmer with his so-called new Mass. He had no faith in the True Presence and knew that he could induce others to begin disbelieving by subtly shifting the focus from the sacerdotal priesthood to the priesthood of the laity, a far different reality. How many of today's Protestants believe in the Real Presence, apart from the fact they have no sacerdotal ministers to confect the Sacrament? Most likely only a few more than the number of Catholics who don't either ... The modern day Cranmers in the Church have learned their lessons well from their long ago mentor whose ghost lived on in the guise of the now deceased Archbishop Bugnini of the infamous Consilium.

No, the practice of "Communion in the Hand" began its horrific imposition as a bold-faced lie; they told us it was part of being a "good Catholic and following the Council" ---Vatican II. Permission had not been granted --- it was all illicit even under the liberalized Vatican rules. It was only after contacting the Chancery upon becoming suspicious and most uneasy when things got all together out of hand, no pun intended, did we learn we had another, you guessed it, option. Too many years --- too late --- to sound the alarm. When they are up to no good, the powers that be hide their intentions within a cluster of options; the single exception is when they know the traditional option is preferred. Then they hide the options within a conjured up mandate and hope we don't catch on. They own up to the "option" of Tradition [which is not optional for a true Catholic] only when there is no denying it any longer and it is mostly pro-forma anyway.

The sanctuary had already been overrun by invading hordes, the fort betrayed by those who should have defended her. Then, when enough Catholics, who had already begun to lose some of their faith --- and didn't know it --- had become accustomed to the practice and in widespread locales and numbers, an imprudent Holy See, whose permissions and policy-making are not protected from error as are dogmas, granted an indult. The rest, as it is often said, is history. Oddly, most irrationally, while rendering "licit" what is illicit, and what cannot be rendered licit whatever the rationale, what they themselves now permit, the Holy See simultaneously forbade and still forbids, self-communication, simply because by definition and ontological necessity, i.e., any lay person who takes the Host in his hands and then places It in his mouth is self-communicating. Otherwise words meaning nothing, and there is no such thing as a definition at all.

You resist reason, still? Okay, let us use a cogent metaphor. I am ill with a fast spreading infection and in need of an antibiotic immediately. I see my physician who prescribes something. He has nothing left in his office to administer to me directly as he sometimes does. His secretary calls the order in to my local pharmacist. I speed to his establishment, hand him the money he is owed. My situation is critical and every minute counts. The pharmacist pours me a cup of water, removing one of the pills, which he hands to me, then I place the pill in my mouth, actually on my tongue, and gulp it down with the help of the water. Now, there are a few people waiting for their prescriptions in the alcove of the pharmacy; they witness my taking the dose. None of them, being rational human beings, turns to the person at his side and says, "Oh the pharmacist administered the pill to her." No, if they comment at all, it is to say, in keeping with reality, "He gave her a pill and some water, but she gave the medicine to herself; she must be really sick not to wait until she gets home." I self-administered or self-communicated if you prefer. You see,  the doctor and pharmacist are the source of the medicine for what ails me, but the minister of the actual dose is me. No one can deny it because it is a self-evident fact to anyone with the use of reason. It is no different than if I had purchased a loaf of bread, and being ravenous and shaking with hypoglycemia, I removed a slice and ate it on the spot. I fed myself. The grocer was the supplier only.

Note that I deliberately said "on my tongue" above. Why? Not for the sake of the metaphor, which would turn it into an imperfect metaphor, but for the sake of reality itself. Thus the metaphor can be applied with acumen and precision. Why?

Because the reception is always on the tongue, realistically. How you might ask? Elementary my dear Watson. Those who take the Host from the priest into their hand, place it on the tongue in their mouths. No one I know takes the Host and wedges It between his tongue and jaw to purposefully avoid the tongue. Yet they think this is what they are doing, not receiving on the tongue. Go figure! The human mouth when ingesting any particle involves the tongue by God's design of physiological necessity. Try swallowing a bit of food without your tongue's assistance. Let me know how you make out. So why don't we all stop pretending we are doing other than what we are and just go back to basics with less hypocrisy? Not to mention the screaming irony! And even more the utter sacrilege!! I mean where is the rationality in the pretense? That we no longer receive the Host on our tongues? Because we do, each and every one of us that receives the Host because we can have wheat gluten. The only real difference is in who is administering and in the widespread loss of belief in the Real Presence. We should take pride in this???!!! Call it progress?

The latter is far more gruesome to contemplate than that young woman's revulsion at "receiving on the tongue", which we have just demonstrated is exactly what she is doing despite her denial. Do I mean to suggest that she intended to be cavalier about the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord? Not at all; she is poorly taught, which is not her fault in all likelihood. Archbishop Burke of the Vatican Signatura told Raymond Arroyo on EWTN that Catholics need to be better catechized, as we have been neglected for two generations, in so many words.

The Council of Trent teaches:

The Minister of the Eucharist

To omit nothing doctrinal on this Sacrament, we now come to speak of its minister, a point, however, on which scarcely anyone can be ignorant.

Only Priests Have Power To Consecrate And Administer The Eucharist

It must be taught, then, that to priests alone has been given power to consecrate and administer to the faithful, the Holy Eucharist. That this has been the unvarying practice of the Church, that the faithful should receive the Sacrament from the priests, and that the officiating priests should communicate themselves, has been explained by the holy Council of Trent, which has also shown that this practice, as having proceeded from Apostolic tradition, is to be religiously retained, particularly as Christ the Lord has left us an illustrious example thereof, having consecrated His own most sacred body, and given it to the Apostles with His own hands.

The Laity Prohibited To Touch The Sacred Vessels

To safeguard in every possible way the dignity of so august a Sacrament, not only is the power of its administration entrusted exclusively to priests, but the Church has also prohibited by law any but consecrated persons, unless some case of great necessity intervene, to dare handle or touch the sacred vessels, the linen, or other instruments necessary to its completion. [Emphasis added by me.]

Second, let us consider our reigning Pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI. Father Calvin Goodwin of the FSSP, informed us in his commentary during the Consecration of the exquisite new church at Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Nebraska, "the Pope only gives Communion on the tongue and to a kneeling communicant." Indeed. Pope Benedict knows the American Bishops, at the very least, as a whole, would not comply with any change that was mandatory in re Tradition and the sacred. Which is why he only suggests in his liturgical pronouncements, does not command. But he leads by example for those who are searching for the truth and all that is holy under Heaven. As Father Goodwin also noted, "At every Mass the walls of the church are white with Angels and all the Saints are there in adoration ..." The church is filled with Angels and we are there in tattered jeans, when we have a good dress or pair of slacks [for the men]  in the closet, our womanly heads shorn of modesty, some of us chewing gum, chatting before the Blessed Sacrament, self-communicating ... anyone not filled with dread and horror, has either never had the fullness of the Catholic faith or has simply lost it!

 If you dispute this, ask yourself, why it was that Pope John Paul II, felt the need to issue a letter to the American Bishops to follow the law of the Church regarding the use of extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist, yet inexplicably did nothing when by and large it was resisted and dismissed by both bishop and priest. One local pastor said, and I quote verbatim: "I know I should obey, but I have gotten used to things and I like it, and I am not going to comply." A lay person said, "If he can disobey, so can the laity." And she did just that, eventually, leaving the Church, the ark of safety, outside of which there is no salvation, not just the parish. Another asked whether our situation in the United States was a genuine emergency that met the guidelines of the Holy See. She seemed to think it was. I told her no, otherwise why the need to write the letter with the rules? It would be confusing and unnecessary.  If the bishops were already in compliance the Pontiff would not need to instruct them to obey. No, Pope John Paul had to issue it to the Bishops because they were not following the rules. Extraordinary had become ordinary. In mission countries where there is one priest for thousands of Catholics who have Mass once a month or so, for example, yes, a genuine need, not so in the western world, despite the decline in the clergy. There are no such "ministers" at the Traditional Mass and Mass is only a few minutes longer. Truly, it can be said it is sometimes shorter since there is no "handshake of peace" and the time taken up with the production of distributing all the ciboriums to the laity. If it is time that is the consideration, perhaps removing novelties, such as the noisy handshake and all the hand clapping events in the Sanctuary with the Blessed Sacrament there, after Mass, would resolve that.  It seems that hands are a big part of modern liturgy. The lines between the common priesthood of the faithful and the sacerdotal priesthood are now so blurred we have lost our sense of place and the sense of the sacred. But I suspect it is not time that matters, but the new religion that the new Mass of our modern Cranmers has spawned. Too many have been converted to it, most especially the priests who say this Mass day in and day out. These priests see their vocation as " a career".  What else should we expect from a priest who is content to let himself be called "a presider"? Just last week a local pastor referred to "his career." And this was in the context of getting more seminarians. Pray, tell how? Dioceses where the traditional orders are welcomed have fuller seminaries in general. Just ask Bishop Bruskewitz and Cardinal Pell! The new Mass, while valid, is freakish to contemplate in the light of all the Eucharistic miracles of the past centuries.  Two weeks ago a local parish had the Vatican exhibit on Eucharistic miracles, complete with pictures and a video; the priest, when encouraging his parishioners to attend, indicated that those who did not believe in the Real Presence might have second thoughts. Think about this! Here is a priest who gives Holy Communion to his parishioners some of whom he rightly presumes do not  believe as they ought. One would think that he would have long ago conducted a series of homilies on the dogma. Apparently it is not important enough to him to do so. The stigmatist of Breton,  Marie-Julie Jahenny had a vision from our Lord Who told her that a new Mass was coming, a  new Mass "whose words are odious to Me..." We need say no more.

You now ask, well, how can the Vatican issue an impossibility, that is, the law that we are not to self-communicate, then do so in essence?  Because modern Churchmen no longer operate under the rule of reason, nor do they rule at all, but by default or open neglect. There is nothing pastoral about the loss of so many souls, the emptying of the churches, convents and seminaries. So accustomed are modern Churchmen to contradiction, such as all those found in the pastoral documents known as Vatican II, that they are blinded by their own unreason. To put it another way, let us look at what a Sacrament is, how it operates as a sign that God's grace is given through its administration.

Every Sacrament has three necessary aspects, apart from the proper disposition of the one receiving it, and these are form, matter, and the minister. Let us go back to our example of Baptism. This Sacrament has a specific form, "I Baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." Anything added to the words, between the quotation marks, or deleted or changed, such as in the name of the "Creator", invalidates the Sacrament. The matter is clean water, it is not champagne, coffee, tea or milk, etc. Just water. Now, the water is to be poured over the head of the person being Baptized while saying the words of Baptism. Even with the immersion manner, the minister still pours water over the head of the person being Baptized. Just think of St. John the Baptist with his shell filled with water to Baptize Christ. The minister of the Sacrament must do this. He cannot give the water to an adult to be Baptized and have him pour it over his head, as this would also invalidate the Sacrament. No one can Baptize himself in any part. Because Baptism is the sine non qua of salvation, in His generosity, Christ permits anyone who intends to do what the Church intends in Baptism, to Baptize in an emergency. This is clearly understood, that the indult or permission is contingent on a genuine need, not a devised one because of someone's agenda and who created the crisis in order to have the emergency. A nun who had been in charge of vocations for her order told me that she deliberately did not seek them so as to have the laity with less nuns so that the lay-centered [c]hurch could be born. Not suprisingly, she was also a "gay" activist.

In the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, the three conditions also apply because these are for all seven Sacraments. Only with this Sacrament as with the Sacraments of Penance, Confirmation, etc. [excluding Marriage in a most unusual situation, only], the minister is always an ordained priest or bishop;  a deacon is also ordained and while he cannot confect the Blessed Sacrament, he may distribute It because he is a sacerdotal member, part of the clergy. If the priest is not validly ordained, there is no Blessed Sacrament, all appearances to the contrary. If he uses invalid matter, such as a piece of cake or bread with sugar and milk, for instance, in it, there is no confection of the Sacrament. If he changes the form, given by Our Lord and always used before and formally codified after the Protestant revolt in the Council of Trent, there is no Eucharist. The ministration is now done, the Sacred Species exists, the True Presence is there. For Baptism to be valid someone must receive it. For the validity of the Holy Eucharist, no member of the laity need receive it. A priest may say Mass alone and in traditional orders this happens quite often, where there are several side altars as in the church consecrated supra.

The distribution of Holy Communion is unique, for it is the direct application of the fruit of the Sacrifice of the Cross. Using illicit non-ordained laity to distribute it in a non-emergency as defined by Pope John in his letter, or "Communion in the Hand" does not invalidate the Sacrament, but it is a Sacrilege.

In closing, let me quote from the magnificent and ever timely article by John Vennari, editor of Catholic Family News, titled, Communion in the Hand is a Sacrilege, February 2006:

Communion in the hand and so-called Eucharist lay-ministers make a mockery of the Divine Truth that Our Lord is truly present in every particle of the Eucharist, and make a mockery of the holy rubrics used by the Church for centuries as a safeguard against desecration.

Because what happens with Communion in the hand?

The Host is placed in the hand, which is not consecrated. The communicant picks It up with his own fingers, which are not consecrated. The sacred particles fall to the ground, are stepped upon and desecrated.

Likewise with so-called Eucharistic lay-ministers, their hands are not consecrated; they should not be touching the Sacred Host. The sacred particles of the Host fall to the ground, are stepped upon and desecrated. The fingers of "lay-Eucharistic ministers" are not washed, so any particle remaining will also be desecrated.

No authority in the Church, not even the highest, can dispense a Catholic from the duty of preserving the necessary reverence owed to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Any Church leader who does so labors under the "diabolic disorientation of the upper hierarchy" warned against by Sister Lucy of Fatima, and is derelict in his duty.

Only forty-five years ago, Communion in the hand was unthinkable in Catholic churches. It was recognized for the sacrilege that it is. Only forty-five years ago, Eucharistic lay-ministers were unthinkable in Catholic churches. It was recognized for the sacrilege that it is.

But now, these abuses are permitted and promoted by a liberal hierarchy who --- in this area and in many other areas --- suddenly approve what the Church always rightly condemned. This "suddenly blessing what the Church always condemned" is the hallmark of the Vatican II reforms.

The truth, however, is that God does not change, and man's duty of reverence toward the Blessed Sacrament does not change, even if we have many leaders who in their destructive liberalization of the Catholic Church, seem to care little or nothing for the true reverence we owe to Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist.

Thus, anyone who receives Communion in the hand, or who receives Communion from a Eucharistic lay-minister, or who is a Eucharistic lay-minister himself or herself -in the objective order --- is committing a sacrilege. It is a misuse of a holy thing. It is a mockery of what the Church has taught and practiced. It is a desecration of the greatest gift that God has given us: the Real Presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Eucharist.  Reprint #2075.


DOING LIFE, FORTY DAYS AT A TIME FEBRUARY 19, 2010

Thirty-seven years is a long time to endure any injustice, ever more so when the injustice is the abomination of abortion, upheld, protected, and financed, by our government, resolutely pro-abortion, by all three branches. The judiciary has the power to declare null and void by simple declaration all the laws legalizing abortion, simply because abortion is a grievous violation of the natural law, one that cries out to Heaven for vengeance by God---there are but four such sins that contravene the natural law with such penalty. No such law is licit and those in charge of ruling and or legislating the law are bound to respect the natural law's limits on human behavior. Any such law that transgresses the immutable natural law is invalid on its face and such a declaration of nullity requires no justification, for it is its own justification, by necessity and definition. For the first rule of law is the natural law, and the first rule of the natural law is this very mandate. To date the highest court in the land has refused to follow the natural law and its first law of operation; the bloody scourge continues and we are without excuse before God. The judgment at Nuremberg renders any plausible denial of culpability moot, if not mute.

Those of us who adore the holy will of God, adore His law, Divine and natural, because His law is not inseparable from Him---His Will is expressed clearly and succinctly in the law---and thus are bound to the sanctity of human life---its sovereign inviolability, live and work amidst a particularly pernicious form of apostasy that lends itself to the shielding of our eyes that we might not see the gravity of the evil we effectively endorse.

For all practical purposes, thirty-seven years is as much as forty, an entire generation, decimated by the enormity of the human slaughter of the most innocent among us. In reparation for this savage crime, and in constant preparation for moving the hearts and awakening the consciences of our fellow countrymen, we are engaged in a mighty spiritual battle, named Forty Days for Life. This action consists of prayer at abortion sites, fasting, and outreach to those contemplating an abortion and others in the local community. I am a soldier in the first cohort. It is a joyful work, for it is the work of God and Our Lady and nothing on earth save raising a family comes as close for a lay woman like I am. I have been fighting "the good fight" for almost as long as I have been married; I should be wearied---I am not; the anger is there, but it is tempered with hope through prayer and sacrifice. We know that our little efforts in Augusta at Family Planning, better known as Abortion Central on Thursdays are paying off. We save, through the grace of God, and not our own merits, babies, one at a time. Every so often a young couple approaches the site slowly, their vehicle stopping to pause at the gated entrance [left open during the killing hours and more]; then the car backs off, and moves down further past the gate and parks in a recess from the main road, called Gabriel Avenue, if you can take in the irony, then drives once more past the killing gate, then moves toward the major highway, sometimes waving or holding up a peace sign made with the hands. Or a couple enters the grounds, but leaves soon after and they give us a signal, what we interpret as a thank you sign. Other times, mostly, we fail, but not completely, such as when we witness a young woman---they are mostly younger than forty if appearances are a reliable gauge---with tears rolling down the side of her cheek as she exits the gate; she was there for hours so we know she did not change her mind. Her child is dead. The facility schedules abortions on Thursdays and the women are kept for four hours as a rule. The routine is routine, if killing can ever be considered routine. They do not come alone, someone drives them. Often the driver leaves and comes back later. Imagine what it must be like for a young, frightened woman or girl, actually, with no close support at the time of her greatest need. The brutality of abortion has a thousand different daggers. Who can calculate the weight of the silent stilettos that prick deep in the spiritual battle such a girl wages within herself? Certainly not us, although we might guess because we, too, are wretched sinners. So we pray either in gratitude for a baby saved or for the sorrowing mother we have just seen leave, and pass our way on her way to a far more harrowing journey than she originally reckoned with. The death purveyors do not talk of grief for a dead baby. And we also duly note those who leave after "the procedure" with defiant faces, sometimes clenched fists in our direction. They, too, are in much need of prayer. Perhaps more than anyone else. Prayer increases love, love increased, increases prayer.

We are first and foremost pro-life. Yes, we are against abortion, but we want to save babies scheduled for being killed. The impact has been big enough to cause "Family Planning" to post a campaign for funds to be pledged, so much per one of us, named "protesters". It was almost comical at one point, if such a hideous reality could ever be funny, because the amount of the pledges were emblazoned on a banner that was changed with such regularity and by such amounts down to the odd or even penny, which is very odd to say the least, that I was immediately suspicious, much the same as the so-called new jobs created by the Obama regime. The banality of evil and modern skullduggery has its own identifiable rhythm. Who ever donates funds to a cause in non-round amounts, say, $50.18? I duly noted that during the coldest part of the winter, the banner went unchanged, too convenient in keeping with the harshness of the climate, as if to say that during colder months the wallets of the abortionists were not open to protest against our protest by filling the coffers. After all it was the "giving season" as the pagans among us refer to Christmastide. My suspicion grew. Then one day the banner was removed. Did the money dry up or was the ruse simply too much to keep up under the raw Arctic-like wind? The ground, too frozen to accept the bloody sewage? Actually it does not matter at all. For if the abortuary was, indeed, gaining pledges because of our activity, the money was only blood money on its hands, not ours, and we remained---remain---tranquil, serene in prayer, out of love for the abortionists along with the babies and their mothers and fathers. Part of my suspicion was that the placement of the banner was for "our benefit", that is, to discourage us. If so, the campaign failed utterly, that banner tossed about in the wind, only spurred us on with urgency and our own audacity of hope! We are so much more than simple protesters, we are preservers, attestors, advocates forsave the lives of the babies scheduled for execution and the souls of those killing them! The greater portion of our task is little, if at all, understood by most our countrymen, and certainly not by the mass media outlets which control and "write" the flow of information. One reporter said that we did not look like protesters. Well, what exactly does a protester look like? Obviously in his mind he had a preconceived idea and expected his readers to have formed the same. He appeared to be genuinely taken with our prayerful demeanor. In strictly human terms the task seems daunting. But not so for those who see with the eyes of faith and have dedicated their lives to life. Any ballyhoo that accompanies modern life in America is beyond our ken, its allure an alien notion to us. The present socio-political climate of celebrity and cant is not so serene. It is permanent winter in America, now. And just as every winter brings its "February thaw", so, too, does the long cold, but ever, never really cold, war for the sanctity of human life. This year's thaw is heralded by the news that 51% of the polled public now considers itself "pro-life" whatever that truly means for those who answered so. It is a thaw without definition, yet easier to measure than the climatic sort. It is talk, not walk. The thermometer? The Tea Party movement and the mid-term elections, and most especially the pundits, right, left and so-called middle of the road. Show me an authentic middle of the roader and I will show you a man who is violating the rules of the road mandating common sense. When it comes to the sanctity of human life there can never be a middle of the road position, either innocent life is sacred or it is not. A baby is a baby or it is not.

When the Tea Parties sprang up I realized they were not for me, for the urgency that fired the bellies of the advocates were all financial and rights oriented, nothing wrong with these of course, perfectly normal and sound, but the critical, the underlying right that is above all human rights was not even a blip on the radar screen. The Tea party crowd will endorse pro-abortion fellows like Massachusetts' Scott Brown. Now, of course, it can rightly be pointed out that in politics we may not always have a perfect candidate. But it can also be more rightly rejoined that such perfect candidates exist but the Tea Parties are not motivated to seek them out, because abortion is not the sine non qua "issue" for them. And this is the root of the winter that will continue to plague America through the long not so hot anymore summer and beyond. Abortion is killing us, along with the babies being slaughtered. Abortion is killing our national soul. Like all hardened sin, the longer we are steeped in it, the harder it is to repent.

The irony screams, imposes itself upon the observer! The Tea Party people say they are there to keep the two parties honest, with transparency and the will to do the will of the people, but apparently the people have no will to will an actual end to abortion, just other ills they recognize. So the polls are half right and half wrong, meaning they are meaningless. Now I am very happy that the Obamacide of America has slowed a tad, and that Leviathan's food supply is running a bit low, thanks in large part to our Tea Parties. But along with the tea me thinks the adherents have imbibed some Kool Aid and a pretty hefty amount at that.

They want our natural rights from God upheld right down to the least important, but the most important one of all, the very one without which all other rights are endangered, is the sovereign right to life for the innocent. Even the guilty are entitled to a trial.

Until we rid the land of the guilt of innocent blood, God will not honor our attempts to right ourselves. He will punish us with our own self-willed blindness, the blindness that lets us think we can have our cake and eat it too, that we can put the cold-blooded murder of innocent babes in the womb [and out sometimes] on the back burner. The blindness keeps us from seeing the truth before our very eyes, i.e., if we are reluctant to save the innocent we could save now, and using the same means that we are not reluctant to use for our other aims, when the hour is nigh and the iron hot, when will we ever have the will in more opportune times? Those times will not come until we say no more abortion, then act as if we really mean it! God's grace is not ours for the asking when we sin so grievously, remaining unrepentant. God's sword will come as it always does in the form of the enemy within who will be rewarded at the last minute by some unforeseen event that will give it new impetus for power. The exultant so-called conservatives haven't a clue for now, let us pray fervently that they will receive the grace of grace itself. Meanwhile that enemy will be the Scott Browns among us who fancy themselves celebrities in women's magazines and without. If they have no sense of proportion of modesty, their first guard against corruption is already corrupted. Once more it is the party of abortion, Republican, Democrat, or Tea and none of them for me! Abortion is one of those crimes that blinds the upholders or those who look the other way by doing nothing. It is a most special form of self-abuse nationally speaking. In a talk on the Mass and the Third Secret of Fatima, Fr. Nicholas Gruner said that until the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is done as requested by Our Lady, the Church will not be revitalized. It is a parallel that until we delegitimize abortion, can America regain her vitality. Abortion is killing us, along with the babies being slaughtered. Abortion is killing our national soul. Like all hardened sin, the longer we are steeped in it, the harder it is to repent.

The natural and liturgical seasons come and go in the cyclic dance of change and unchange, the colors and habits of a lifetime inhabiting our hearts and nurturing our souls, but for us in the trenches of the cultural war, fighting for life, it is always Lent, forty days at a time ...

OF SIMPLICITY, OVERSIMPLIFICATION, AND SIMPLETONS November 30, 2009

This column continues our running series on the war against Christ and His Holy Mother being waged in divers ways in our land. Two recent events, on their face appearing to be disjoined, are thereby all the stronger as co-weapons striking at the sanctity of the eternal verities: There is but One True God, and that He took on human nature in order to be crucified upon the Cross in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world; that He received His human nature from His Holy Mother, Mary, ever a Virgin; that He is both True God and True Man and salvation is only through Him and His Holy Church, the Catholic Church.

As always the marauding hordes of malcontents interspersed with misguided do-gooders seek every opportunity to dim the Light of the World, Jesus Christ, in particular during the holy season of Christmas. The enemies of Christ are two-fold in kind: [1] the malicious who know what it is they do in so far as they are jealous of the power and rule of Almighty God, His perfection, His very essence and Being --- this kind is the most prevalent in the juridical sense; [2] and those who do not have the gift of true faith, who reduce the wholeness of the Truth of Jesus Christ by their diminution of the role of the Mother of God, Most Holy Mary, not only as a perpetual Virgin but as the mediatrix of all graces as willed by her Son, Jesus. These are more numerous in the practical, everyday sense. They are far more insidious because they come disguised as friends, not the enemy. Both deny Eternal Truth, one in frontal attacks by way of a concerted effort to have it banned from the public sphere, the other by the distortion of doctrine itself, thus the very suppression, the invasion of our hearts, minds and souls. We no longer can think and are almost afraid to say what we ought to believe and used to know, long ago. The two small but mighty cataclysms of which I speak come from these two armed camps arrayed against God in all His glory and in all truth.

I will address the second kind of attack herewith.

There is a former presidential GOP candidate, who has written a book, titled, A SIMPLE CHRISTMAS; at first blush the work seems to be inspirational, to uphold the real meaning of Christmas, and I am certain that this is precisely what the author intended. He is a former Baptist minister as I understand it, and typical of his class, filled with zeal, acquainted with the Bible and little else doctrinally speaking, certainly not the light of the only true religion, the Catholic faith. One of the lessons depicted in the book that he is most proud of is that Mary was just like every other human mother and that her virginal womb was not inviolate [he does not use this phraseology, but this is the very essence of his thesis] but that she bore Christ in physical agony. Where is the outcry against this blasphemy? Was the affront so subtle we missed it altogether? We no longer can think and are almost afraid to say what we ought to believe and used to know, long ago.

The rupture that would have engendered such pain would have penetrated through her physical perfection, beauty and purity, if not her spiritual "fullness of grace". This claim debases the Mother of God by raising us up to her equal, quite ironically. She isn't any more in nature than we are, thus we must be her equal in childbirth. He wants us to identify ourselves with her in our childbearing experience, or rather have her identified with ours. All human mothers, save one, are conceived with Original Sin, our heritage from our great great, so great grandmother of long ago, Eve. In the book of Genesis God tells women part of their punishment: that they will bear their children in pain. And so it has ever been. The new Eve, who is to be the mother of the new Adam, Christ, in order to be worthy to give her human nature to Him cannot be so conceived. Not only is her womb to be pure and inviolate, the marriage act by which God created her could not have passed on the taint of Original Sin. This is the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church. The Church has always taught that Mary is ever Virgin, and conceived without Original Sin so that she had no concupiscence, her virginity was not only physical, it was whole, that is in mind, heart and in her soul. Whole means that the physical cannot be separated from the rest. Her only object of love was God alone! She neither had any rupture from God, in sin, no matter how small, nor in her womb.

The great mystic Ven. Mary of Agreda was permitted sublime glimpses of the Divine mysteries; in her treatise on the Nativity of Jesus she writes [emphasis mine]:

"The most holy Mary remained in this ecstasy and Beatific Vision for over an hour immediately preceding her Divine delivery. At the moment when She issued from it and regained the use of her senses She felt and saw that the body of the infant God began to move in her virginal womb; how, releasing and freeing Himself from the place which in the course of nature He had occupied for nine months, He now prepared to issue forth from that sacred bridal chamber. This movement not only did not cause any pain or hardship, as happens with the other daughters of Adam and Eve in their child births; but filled Her with incomparable joy and delight, causing in her soul and in her virginal body such exalted and Divine effects that they exceed all thoughts of men. Her body became so spiritualized with the beauty of Heaven that She seemed no more a human and earthly creature. Her countenance emitted rays of light, like a sun incarnadined, and shone in indescribable earnestness and majesty, all inflamed with fervent love. She was kneeling in the manger, her eyes raised to Heaven, her hands joined and folded at her breast, her soul wrapped in the Divinity and She herself was entirely deified. In this position, and at the end of the heavenly rapture, the most exalted Lady gave to the world the Only-begotten of the Father and her own, our Savior Jesus, true God and man, at the hour of midnight, on a Sunday, in the year of the creation of the world five thousand one hundred and ninety-nine (5199), which is the date given in the Roman Church, and which date has been manifested to me as the true and certain one." [From THE MYSTICAL CITY OF GOD.]

By leading his readers to think of Our Lady as physically the same as you and I in the matter of Jesus' delivery in the stable at Bethlehem, the author oversimplifies to the point that one of God's greatest miracles is denied Him in actuality, for the Incarnation [and Birth of Jesus Christ] is truly such a miracle, beyond human comprehension at all without the gift of true faith which enlightens human reason. If Mary is conceived without Original Sin there is no need for the punishment of painful childbirth; not that the Mother of God is spared human suffering, but her daily trials and mortification are in union with that of her Divine Son in His human nature, not the kind of suffering that is merited because of sin; rather the suffering in reparation for the sins of others.

The simplicity of Bethlehem is worlds away from the simple Christmas, the banality of the modern world in denial of the Truth that can set us free. Mike Huckabee sees with "a glass darkly". The same author needs to be reacquainted with Scripture. He says: "Peace on earth and good will to men." The Gospel of St. Luke, Chapter 2:1-14 reads:

"AT THAT time, there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that the whole world should be enrolled. This enrolling was first made by Cyrinus, the governor of Syria. And all went to be enrolled, everyone into his own city. And Joseph also went up from: Galilee out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea to the city of  David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to be enrolled with Mary his espoused wife, who was with child. And it came to pass, that when they were there, her days were accomplished, that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her first-born Son, and wrapped Him up in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds watching, and keeping the night watches over their flock. And behold an Angel of the Lord stood by them, and the brightness of God shone round about them, and they feared with a great fear. And the Angel said to them: Fear not; for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, that shall be to all the people; for this day is born to you a Saviour, Who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David. And this shall be a sign unto you: You shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger. And suddenly there was with the Angel a multitude of the heavenly army, praising God, and saying: Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace to men of good will."

 This, too, is worlds away from the former Arkansas governor's wishful phrase.

The juridical, frontal assault, as always has its roots in the Anti-Christ Litigating Union or ACLU & Company. The locale is Washington State of a curious liberal bent, aided by the sorely misguided, grace-bereft Supreme Court. The story goes like this. Last year the governor took some heat because she permitted non-Christian and anti-Christian displays at Christmas in the capitol rotunda. The rubric used to justify this blasphemy at Christmas, a sacred holiday, was "freedom of speech". Now our benighted court and its lower satrapies have held that freedom of speech demands that any and all such "speech" must be allowed on public grounds, at all times in the interest of fair and balance so to speak. To forego more public outrage the state is not having any displays at Christmas this year; the only symbol will be the "holiday" tree. In effect the atheists win anyway you count. The whole point of their tedious exercise is to blunt the proclamation of Christ; any evangelization for their cause is a bonus.

Now this action on the part of the state of Washington is to "reason" without the aid of grace and natural reason itself. There is no national holiday for Atheists United, no national holiday for Hanukkah and so forth. Christmas is a national holiday, the most sacred one of the year. Let us use an analogy. It is Martin Luther King Day. The festivities have been in the works for weeks. A renegade group arises, claiming to have an equal right to display their ideas, their doctrine of White Supremacy, and on a par and in the same venue as the speakers and displays honoring the slain civil rights hero. They insist they have a right to march in the local Martin Luther King parade. What has been the proper response in the past? Yes, common sense, not to mention plain old justice has up to now prevailed. Even the befuddled courts have said that no one who opposes an organization's beliefs and goals has a right to march in a parade sponsored by said organization. Thus the "Gay Pride" sect cannot march in a St. Patrick's Day parade. It is free to have its own parade at another time as we all know too well and much to our repulsion at such garish, depraved exhibitions. If the Washington pismires want displays in the rotunda to counterpose Christmas, let them petition their legislature for their own public holiday. If we were sane and still normal, this would be our approach to their reproach, their encroachment. Afraid to not invite them to the picnic, we declare a day of artificial rain and cancel the great event except in name only and only a half name at that. Some strategy: bargaining with the devil!

I repeat, Christmas, the annual remembrance of the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ, is a national and state holiday. A nativity scene is the moral, metaphysical equivalent of a parade and should not be trampled on or assaulted by competing displays at that time and in that place. If the state of Washington thinks it has no choice but to permit Atheists and Festivists a place in the public square, then by all means, do so, some other time, in an "ordered" fashion. If the "Gay" activists cannot march in a St. Patrick's Day parade why should anti-Christians "march" in on the Christian crèche? Logically, they cannot. Having denied the Social Kingship of Christ in practice, we find ourselves hostage to the denial of right reason itself because we have spurned the grace of God and courted His anger. To scorn the filial fear of God is to show contempt for His holy love for filial fear is born of love. We are now denied the public expression of the love of the Infant Savior within our midst.

Atheists can intrude on Christmas, an irrationality, but homosexualists cannot intrude on St. Patrick, a rational norm. The Saint is greater than God. The principle is precisely the same in both cases, yet it is applied only in one. The blind leading the blind into complete chaos, social meltdown and the tyranny of the unnatural, anti-reason, and the absurd! We have exchanged the exquisite simplicity of human reason and right balance for the pose of simpletons who are interchangeable with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, dumb, dumber, now dumbest, revealing a death wish however we may protest otherwise.

We only have to look to Europe, at last rising up in response to the Islamization of their countries largely due to mass apostasy joined to an overbearing, unwise PC ethos that only benefits the interloper with an agenda and who holds no such ethic, but is practical and crafty enough to use it to gain a strong foothold by which to undermine western society from within. It appears that it is already too late now, there. Let us pray and hope it is not, here. I do not have much hope because our leaders are by and large in apostasy themselves, and where there is some semblance of the Christian creed, that creed has been cannibalized because heretical and or apostate Catholics and Protestants have thrown aside the gift of faith or have never had it to begin with. How much of the debacle is our fault, that of you and me, who have failed to bring others to Christ, to His One True Church, to the Truth? Only you and I can answer this in our hearts. The "Reason" for "the Season" cannot even be publicly honored, because we have lost the seasoning of "salt" and all human reason ...

THE LEFT HAND OF GOD:
Our Theologian-in-Chief Or the Audacity of Pious Fraud August 22, 2009

The state religion, that is---be nice, never show frustration with your double-dealing Congressman, keep your religious beliefs to yourself unless they are pagan or Muslim, celebrate "diversity", be scrupulous in obeying the tenets of Political Correctness, be sensitive in all matters except that which concerns Christians [if they are traditional], always trust the government which is wiser than you are, go along to get along---is in danger of imploding due to a sudden outbreak of over the top audacity of hypocrisy or pious fraud---on the part of Obama and his minions, in the White House, and especially in the majority media.

Our new theologian-in-chief, ever quick with a bit of Biblical scripture as a proof text that Jesus is a socialist, Bishop Barack, hopelessly incompetent and flailing about in a vituperative pit of demagoguery, held a conference call with selected religious leaders of the various faiths, including Jews and Muslims, to wit, a come to Jesus moment:

"We are our brother's keeper ..."

This was the clarion call from the Left Hand [of God] to support the annexation of health care and all the ills that will accompany anything social that the government touches, let alone controls through an unanswerable bureaucracy that weighs the people down with inane, burdensome regulations.

Barack Obama? Was it barely a year ago that he was in San Francisco, Pelosi's turf, mocking the folks back home in Pennsylvania, for "clinging to religion" among other important facets of ordinary life? What a flashback!

Fast forward to August, 2009: We have a "moral" imperative to support government run health care. Who is clinging to religion, now????

Indeed we are our brother's keeper as was Cain [Gen. 4:9] and we cannot harm any innocent person, nor can we refuse to aid him if the situation presents itself and we have the means that does not endanger those we already care for or are responsible to. The evangelical counsel to help another in need is generally the purview of the individual and not the government, apart from the expressed powers granted to it in the constitution. The government is to preserve the right to life and property [police power and national defense] and so forth, but not supply every means. For instance I need a car to travel as I do not live in a city. It is my means to acquire food to sustain life. Who dares to suggest that everyone like myself who needs an affordable car can demand that the government furnish me with such and such a model at the going price at your expense? Heck, the US government under Obama can't even deliver on the "Cash for Clunkers" scheme that temporarily served to make foreign auto manufacturers richer, not Americans. And we are supposed to trust it with personal medical decisions? The act of alleviating the suffering of a person who is ill or in medical distress is an act of charity, not justice. The government's domain, "Caesar", is justice, not charity. Obama wants to force us to render unto Caesar what belongs to the Good Shepherd and His flock, charity being the highest theological virtue. And it is a profoundly Christian virtue, for it is the Catholic Church that brought this kind of selfless ideal to a pagan world immersed in cruelty and debauchery.

Flashback to Europe and then Cairo, Egypt, some few months ago. Our imperious theologian-in-chief stood on the world stage to proclaim that America "was not a Christian country" but that in its diversity it is a "Muslim country". The kind of moral imperatives he is intoning hardly exist in Islam. He can't have it both ways, eschew our Christianity, then invoke it when it suits him. He surrendered any such right from that one brazen moment on, at last revealing his true loyalty.

Fast forward, Obama wants us to now incorporate one of the mainstays of Christianity to shore up support for his totalitarian vision of control over every aspect of our lives, to "transform" the very essence of "America." He aims to please himself and the stratagem is say what it will take, including a false guilt trip. Where is his guilt? Perhaps he left it behind on one of his jaunts.

But let us briefly, for the sake of argument, take this grandiose deceiver at his word, almost impossible to do by definition.

If we are our brother's keeper, I presume he means to include one's actual brother and or other relatives because does not charity and kindness begin at home?

Well, let us see now. Oh yes, I remember, he has a half-brother living in poverty in Kenya, which he bypassed for another country on the continent. Hmmm? Expansive, expensive date nights, vacations in Hawaii, the upscale Martha's Vineyard and so on. An aunt existing in substandard housing in Boston, while she awaits a hearing on possible deportation.

There is a verse from the New Testament that BHO-TIC forgot to cite, so conveniently:

"Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam in thy own eye, and then shalt thou see to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." [Matt. 7:5]

Enough said on this point.

There are so many more, let us take up but a few.

Flashback to another Jesus moment---Obama's appearance at Jesuit-run Georgetown University in DC, where the price of homage was that any image of this God he so loved and followed had to be covered before he would awe the crowd. To this Catholic it was shock, as in outrage, not awe. It was blasphemy worthy of some adherents of Islam, actually.

And since Obama likes scripture, here are a couple of pertinent passages he seems to have missed:
Luke 17:2

The first concerns the least of our human brethren, the most vulnerable and helpless. In another words, the preborn baby and the newly born baby, all just blood and guts to be disposed of for the man who sold his soul to be the slave of the unnatural ideology of NARAL and Planned Parenthood. Any man who would refuse to back a law that protects a baby who survived an abortion, who is content to leave him or her to die on a cold table in a back room is hardly a man who has the moral authority to lecture anyone else on any matter. It is too monstrous a crime! This is and will always be the heinous reason why BHO is unfit for public office of any stature, for he cannot and must not be entrusted with our very lives; we can at least fight back a little, unlike the infant abandoned to die alone. This one crime didst beget another, reference the second citation above:

Campaigning for the chair of TIC, his magnificence in deceit and insolence, without any sign of a conscience, stood before his adoring fans to proclaim that abortion was something he would not hesitate to use if one of his little daughters became pregnant out of wedlock. He called the baby "a punishment". This would be scandal enough as it were, save for the fact that both of these innocent children of his were present. Imagine saying such a thing in front of one's young daughters! But, then, on the other hand, what's a little scandal for one's family when the same father exposed them to the lucre-filthy, racist screed and bitter harangues of the irreverent, dissembling minister in Chicago and for years on end. Let's repeat the passage, for it bears repeating, not only for Obama, but for ourselves, sinners everyone:

  "It were better for him, that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should scandalize one of these little ones."

The problem that Obama has with his healthscare is that he always speaks in generalities, hesitant to provide too much detail, because if he did the game would be up, and not our reluctance to help our neighbor in genuine need, more of which we could do if our confiscatory taxes were lessened: the heart is willing, the purse empty, gratis big government with itching fingers. Details are what trips him up, every time. He could not even get his own familial history correct. This is why I think his college transcripts are shielded from public scrutiny. He is hiding something. I don't care about his supposed birth certificate, it is that transcript I want to see.

Any mere mortal would have been trapped in the web of lies he spun. Obama was the darling project of the news-making media and they were going to make news even if they had to lie for the liar. Corruption is not the exclusive characteristic of the DemoPublican party of abortion and self-aggrandizement.

The details on healthscare are becoming more clearer the further one delves into them. The disparaged "death panels" are alive and well in government "care" AKA the VA [Veterans Administration]. Sick veterans are regaled from a book on end of life decisions that those who have been through it tell us that the push is in one direction only, suicide or euthanasia, passive usually. If anyone thinks that government run health "care" is good, look to the VA and weep, nothing short of shame that those who sacrificed so much should be counted as so little.

This is why the Prez himself and the Congress have reserved an opt out of clause for themselves if this nightmare passes. Obama tells us if we like our coverage now we can keep it. Well, does not he and the Congress like their present coverage? You bet! Logic leads me to pose this question: If we can keep ours, can you not also, so why do you need an opt out of option that the rest of us cannot have? To ask is to answer. This is the most telling aspect of all!!!! The press does not have the fire in the belly to be inquisitive about the details that are tantamount to the preservation of life itself.

Perhaps one of the more singular examples of the misuse of the right to a free press is that of abortion, specifically in connection with religion or moral principles.

Flashback one more time: it can be any incident where the pro-lifers and abortionphiles are engaged in public demonstrations. One of the constant chants was "no one has the right to impose their moral beliefs or religion on another." Of course the natural law belongs to everyone who claims to be human and a society, to maintain civilization, must impose the natural law on itself; but let us not delay further. The media was all over this one, it became one of the mantras of the supposed good guys.

Flash forward: suddenly the media has discovered that religion or morals can and must be imposed, although it has no constitutional grant. The hypocrisy sickens as it thickens. Just as it does in the corresponding slogan, "It's my body!" Now it seems to be No!---it is only your body if you want to kill the baby who has a separate body of his own in utero, otherwise it is not your body, it belongs to the almighty state and the likes of abortion advocate, Kathleen Sebelius. The hypocrisy sickens as it thickens.

A short but powerful addendum to the supposed Christianity of TIC:

One of the religious leaders in on the confab was a certain female rabbi who was one of the participants in an illicit "Catholic" ordination of another woman. This is the kind of respect Obama has for the Catholic Church, whose earthly head is the very Vicar of Christ Himself! Whatever personal failings he may have as pontiff. So much for sensitivity. He is more solicitous for the rights of terrorists than he is for the rights of Catholics and their health care facilities. If he can get them to compromise there, he can break the fragile spine of the Church in America because once the compromise is solidified in the minds of the faithful, despair will be the disorder of the day and with it a great loss of faith endangering many many souls. Why should anyone be surprised at his contempt for practicing, faithful Catholics? After all, he has nothing but contempt for Christ!!!

Oh, weep for the Audacity of the Pious Fraud we have allowed to ascend to such power!

OF SCOUNDRELS, CARP AND MEN August 6, 2009

Fishermen know that the fish rots from the head first; perhaps there is no more putrid stench than a rotting fish, apart from eggs. The odiferous air emanating from Washington is like no other smell we have ever detected before. It reeks of hellish sulfur fit for such scoundrels who are given to embittered, elitist carping when the people, men who still have the use of their common sense, refuse to be hooked, line and sinker.

The Baracracy just cannot accept that we no longer will tolerate their lies and nefarious plans for us; no! this is an affront to all things totalitarian! So they take a page out of the book, Rules for Radicals, Obama's "bible", specifically the rule that says isolate your enemy and mock him to the elites so as to discredit him. An old trick that used to work more than it failed to do. No longer, no longer! Unlike our lying, craven rulers, we have actually read the bill. Imagine such treason! Theirs, not ours, no matter the howls from the Washington carp.

Pelosi and Company are outraged that we, the people, are truly outraged over the Obamascam on health "care". They do not want a healthy, robust debate, because this would reveal to all the world the real plan. And they know we know at last. We have the videos and newspaper reports from years ago, when the creature from the sea, Leviathan, was being hatched downstream. We know with infallible certainty that Baraccus and those of the Alinsky school told the elite that a single public payer plan was the ideal, but that it would not be possible at first, because this might alarm the populace, so that the plan was to work it in gradually. Even writers of the same ilk of bottom feeders were boasting of this!

Two malodorous Marxist carp, Pelosi and Boxer of California, wouldn't you just know, are putting out the word that the people are simple minded "astro turf" [fakes essentially] and our dissent from slavery is "manufactured" or organized. Pelosi calls the people the "mob". The same number with the same passion, if there in support of our demise would be labeled, something quite different, we can bet on this! Boxer is a most peculiar kind of carp, the larger tawny-toned fish to the left with Pelosi the green fish under her belly: she is given to ruminating on her credentials as an US senator who resents being addressed as Ma'am by a military officer, insisting she is called "senator", although all military personnel are trained to say Ma'am as a matter of respect. Her ignorance is outmatched only by her insolence. Flailing and lurching from the net she set for herself, she swims swiftly deeper downstream into the next, lecturing a Black leader on how he ought to think; curiously when he did not address her as senator, she refrained from a repeat scene. Apparently only White men have to submit to her ego-driven tirades. Her racist tendencies are surely amok. At last, faced with rebellion from a people who want to remain free as is our natural right from God, she is reduced to ridiculing the attire of the town hall protesters. Barbara Carp finds that they are "too well dressed" to be citizens with authentic grievances. Imagine that! The press, NBC, that is the National Barack Corporation, ABC, or All for Barack Corporation, and CBS, Cover for Barack System, and CNN, Censoring all Natural Nonconformity [against Obama], have given this absolutely laughable, yet heinous attempt to silence the bare bones truth the easy pass treatment, as if to say she never said it as she said it. Barbara is the most vicious of all the female carp. She ignores the fact that a number of the people attending the town hall are Democrats, some of whom are outraged, too, while others are there in support of the socialist nightmare. From my vantage point they were all dressed in casual clothes, without distinction. How did she sort through the crowd to determine her omnibus defamation??? The derision is an exemplary sign of desperation.

The anger? Yes, when the likes of Sebelius says she has not read the bill, although she will be part of the rigid death mandating enforcement mechanism. Philly Specter says it is a thousand pages and too large to read in such a short time. This is contempt for the people and bold lies. We know it and they know we know it! We must be demonized!

Now there are all kinds of carp [s]: large mouth, freshwater, shell cracker, steelhead, among others. Take your pick, any one of these describes Barbara to a tee. She needs to be reeled in for good before she pollutes the political waters further, for her own good as much for the republic.

Speaking of fish, the White House is teeming with rotten refuse, the corrupt variant of carp, one of which had the audacity to post a blog caveat to wit that the populace who are stirring and swimming against the tide, to free themselves from the offal and bilge are doing so on a "fishy" basis. Imagine this!!! The blog asks people who receive suspicious or "fishy" e-mail, that is, the truth about what is contained in the health bill that our unrepresentatives are running from or refusing to read at all, is "disinformation". Such e-mail is to be sent to the White House. No one knows what the Gestapo or secret police intend to do for reprisal to stifle debate. Healthy fish of the world, unite against the stinking rotten fish in DC, laugh out loud and keep swimming gloriously free as God intended.

It is so laughable it is to laugh out loud indeed that the Obama school is afraid of organized dissent, since that school of sharks is organization central. Recall that Obama said that one of the qualifications for the US presidency was community organizing. His octopi are skilled at emitting dark poison at their opponents for starters, per the Rush Limbuagh show of today. Every political convention and campaign is organization plus. Plus in the case of Obama is the special treatment, such as the organized pressure put recently to the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as the fix to squelch the prosecution of his special buddies, criminals, the Black Panthers, both being the new face of racism, Chicago style. H stands for Hussein, but even more it stands for Hypocrite!

He keeps saying "It isn't about me ...". It is all about him and only him and his hatred of normalcy and the American republic. [To a Congressman dissenter: "You will ruin my presidency!"] He is not an uniter, he is a divider so as to conquer. He is not a builder, he is a destroyer, a radical no less radical than his sycophants and hangers-on and wannabes. The ultimate neo-xenophobe and the ultimate fascist, who believes that the ends --- the end of America itself, justifies any and all means. He does not believe in America, he believes and aspires to AmeriCorps [ACORN reborn] and all the hell on earth it will bring within its wide wake.

Baraccus selachii and his sharks don't want us to know about the teams of brown shirts that will be making regular visits to the elderly to instill them with the ethic of the good little Nazi to seal their doom with "an end of life plan" --- read euthanasia. If compliance is not immediately forthcoming, they will come again to put on the big squeeze to kill off the small fry, the old, the frail, the easily frightened. One of Baraccus's sharks [czars] is for killing children who were born with difficulties, euthanasia for those over 65, and other atrocities ---   symptomatic of the problem with the supposed health care plan. It is not about health care, it is about control of people for the sake of the race of supermen, the elite in Washington and the co-opting of the Catholic hospitals so as to destroy the Church finally. The US Congress and Baraccus himself are on public record as stating that they will be exempt from the bill. If for no other reason this should raise the alarm!

It is not about health care: As Rush Limbuagh says, "It is all about a monument to himself and the establishment of a power base that can never lose." Exactly!

We must not allow ourselves to be uplifted to the point of complacency. The diabolical, both carp and shark, will not lose gracefully: they will fight to the death by hook, by crooked hook. Having successfully, with the help of ACORN, held salmon runs upstream to spawn illicit voting, in California, Minnesota and elsewhere, if the people will not put up with canceled town hall meetings and the chum's rush, and go to the polls resolutely not to be easy prey once more, the Baraccus school will launch cheating at the polls stream wide and full-blown. If caught, they will carp and scream, claiming they voted Republican to really reel in the vote and suppress liberty. I am telling you that we may have to resort to the recall yet, and even this may be up for grabs with the selachii circling vengefully in their blood lust.

And do not be led astray by deliberate misdirection ---  the cost of the bill, it is the bill in any form itself that is the threat to survival. The federales only need one fin in the water to devour everything smaller in sight and they will because of the evil in their guts ...

Mystery Solved! June 10, 2009

As I was preparing to sit down to write this column, I decided to tune into the Rush Limbaugh show, an hour into the program. Apparently Dave Letterman, a late night TV entertainment host, on what network I have no idea, as I don't watch such junk, attacked Sarah Palin. My ears perked up as she is the subject, a timely occurrence. Letterman had hurled aspersions against Mrs. Palin's daughter, the likes of which I cannot describe because of the vileness. A caller, obviously not a Rush fan, provided Limbaugh with an opportunity for some satire which was brilliant, especially because it revealed the truth about the media. While the media treatment of Palin is my topic for today, Rush happened to touch upon the comment from a pundit that Obama "was like God." For the media, this actually translates to "is God." The call-in critic could not offer one example to back up his complaint. Rush proceeded to demonstrate his acerbic wit that is always on point. I will slightly recap a small portion; bear with me for this is related to the purpose of my column:

"What do Obama and God have in common?"
GOD DOES NOT THINK HE IS OBAMA.
[Grammatical typo removed from early posted edition.]

"What is the difference between Obama and God?"
THE MEDIA LIKES OBAMA.

[I could add, THE MEDIA BELIEVES IN OBAMA.]

"What is the difference between Obama and God?"
GOD DOES NOT HAVE A PROBLEM WITH HIS BIRTH CERTIFICATE.

[This line is a slight paraphrase, I don't recall exactly the actual words, however this is what he conveyed.]

"What is the difference between Obama and God?"
GOD'S PLAN TO SAVE US IS ACTUALLY WRITTEN DOWN.

Precisely. In uttering his commentary, Rush means no dishonor to God, but is merely illustrating the truth, stripping the media of its crass pretensions and its frenetic attempt to protect their anointed one from all critique. As Rush said, "when you utter the truth, they hate you." Indeed! And thus the Obama domestic war team's assault to squelch Rush.

Contrast this with the media's treatment of Sarah Palin, long after the election. As the slurs and invective increase against her and members of her family, both in ugly tone and content, I have been pondering why? Oh, we all know they feared her popularity and common sense ideas during the campaign. But Obama has been in office for 6 months now, yet one would think the election was in full swing. Of course it is, on the part of Obama and his Chicago-style machine. The central cause for any megalomaniac is himself. Obama is in eternal campaign mode, forever promoting himself while under the guise of running the country. Here, we remove the first n in running, substituting an i. If the media were honest they would say ruining the country, not running the country.

While covering for Obama, they are angry they cannot uncover any real dirt on Palin, who was absolved of all ten ethics counts levied against her, patently obvious a political tactic to damage her. So they make it up as they go along and dirt has never been so dirty. Sarah Palin and her daughter are not soiled, the media is, with regular folks who are not so easily fooled.

I asked myself again and again, why the venomous vitriol? It is beyond the pale and so over the top that there has to be another agenda, apart from fearing her political potential.

And then, the cobwebs slipped away. It is because of her young son who was born shortly before the campaign. Sure enough they despise her strong pro-life stance, nothing new or unexpected there. In fact, if they even so much as liked Sarah Palin just a little, conservatives would have second thoughts. She was hopelessly mismatched with McCain who has some friends, if few, in media land. What he gave with his right hand he withdrew with his left. Normally the media likes a good loser, which is what Palin was, yet they can not seem to let matters be. The slime rolls off their libelous lips in a frenzy.

It is Trig, her son. They hate her, and when I say hate, I mean loathe with all the fury of Hell. Not because she is so much pro-life, but because she gave birth to a baby the elites think is unworthy of life. They hate him, for what he is and what they think he can't be. Our liberals, our progressive nihilists despise purity, the purity of a completely innocent child who will always retain his innocence, a child that cannot be corrupted with their pernicious poison of all things that are against the natural and Divine Law. Hence the brilliance of Rush's observations.

How can you know? you ask. Well, I am surmising somewhat, I admit, but I know something about human nature, and human nature combined with the culture of death mentality. You see, I know a number of families with a Down's child, a child who was also welcomed and is loved and cherished. Five of them at least. In four of the cases, behind the back of the mother, a liberal or progressive nihilist ---- take your pick it is all the same harm to society ---- said to me, and every time these exact words: "Why didn't she just get an abortion?" Meaning, how dare she give birth to a defective!

It is from this cult of superficial perfection that such an attitude is cultivated and instilled. It is also revealing that in those four cases as it was with the fifth, that the families are self-supporting, happy, intact families that place no burden whatsoever on the nay-sayer in each case. The real threat of Sarah Palin is that through her son, a public figure so to speak, because of the exigencies of public service, virtue for its own sake is once more front and center. And the self-sacrifice that virtue demands. This is the underlying threat to their pride and pomposity. The "beauty" they espouse has been rendered utterly ugly because they reject the sublime beauty of love espoused to the virtue of the joy of sacrifice because of that love.

They only sully themselves, how sad and pitiful.

Go, Rush go!

Upward, Sarah, upward and onward!

IF THERE IS A NEXT TIME, THIS TIME THERE WON'T BE THE SUBTLE SABOTAGE OF 'FRIENDS' TO CAUSE YOU TO STUMBLE ...