Bernard

“If angels could be jealous of men, they would be so for one reason: Holy Communion.” St Maximilian Kolbe

"The Eucharist is the perfect sacrament of our Lord's Passion, as containing Christ crucified." St Thomas Aquinas

“Martyrdom is nothing in comparison with the Mass, because martyrdom is the sacrifice of man to God, whereas the Mass is the Sacrifice of God for man!” (St. John Marie Vianney)

Question for Protestants If you believe the Eucharist is merely symbolic, how do you reconcile Jesus' explicit words in John 6:53-56 where he says, "Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you"?

"To remain living on in sin with the idea that some fine day you may reform, is nothing but a devil’s snare, by which he has ruined many a soul, just as sure as he thus will ruin yours." - St. John Vianney

« The coming of a world state is longed for, and confidently expected, by all the worst and most disordered elements. This state, based on the principles of absolute equality of men and a community of possessions would banish all national loyalties. In it no acknowledgment would be made of the authority of the father over his children, or of God over human society. If these ideas are put into practice, there will inevitably follow a reign of unheard of terror. » „Сви најгори и најнеуређенији елементи чезну и са сигурношћу очекују долазак светске државе. Ова држава, заснована на принципима апсолутне једнакости људи и заједнице поседа, протерала би сваку националну лојалност. У њему се не би признавала власт оца над његовом децом, или Бога над људским друштвом. Ако се ове идеје остваре у пракси, неизбежно ће уследити владавина нечувеног терора. »

Prayer of a Soul Taken with Love Lord God, my Beloved, if You remember still my sins in such wise that You do not do what I beg of You, do Your will concerning them, my God, which is what I most desire, and exercise Your goodness and mercy, and You will be known through them. And if it is that You are waiting for my good works so as to hear my prayer through their means, grant them to me, and work them for me, and the sufferings You desire to accept and let it be done. But if You are not waiting for my works, what is it that makes You wait, my most clement Lord? Why do You delay? For if, after all, I am to receive the grace and mercy which I entreat of You in Your Son, take my mite, since You desire it, and grant me this blessing, since You also desire that. Who can free himself from the lowly manners and limitations if You do not lift him to Yourself, my God, in purity of love? How will a man begotten and nurtured in lowliness rise up to You, Lord, if You do not raise him with Your hand which made him? You will not take from me, my God, what You once gave me in Your only Son, Jesus Christ in Whom You gave me all I desire. Hence I rejoice that if I wait for You, You will not delay. With what procrastinations do You wait since from this very moment you can love God in your heart? Mine are the heavens and mine is the earth. Mine are the nations, the just are mine and mine the sinners. The angels are mine, and the Mother of God and all things are mine, and God Himself is mine and for me, because Christ is mine and all for me. What do you ask, then, and seek, my soul? Yours is all of this, and all is for you. Do not engage yourself in something less, nor pay heed to the crumbs which fall from your Father’s table. Go forth and exult in your Glory! Hide yourself in It and rejoice, and you will obtain the supplications of your heart. St. John of the Cross

A profile of the next Pope, writes Cardinal Two years after the text signed 'Demos' (later revealed to have been written by Cardinal Pell) a new anonymous document, linked to the first, defines the seven priorities of the next Conclave to repair the confusion and crisis created by this Pontificate. First: Real authority is damaged by authoritarian means in its exercise. The Pope is a Successor of Peter and the guarantor of Church unity. But he is not an autocrat. He cannot change Church doctrine, and he must not invent or alter the Church’s discipline arbitrarily. He governs the Church collegially with his brother bishops in local dioceses. And he does so always in faithful continuity with the Word of God and Church teaching. “New paradigms” and “unexplored new paths” that deviate from either are not of God. A new Pope must restore the hermeneutic of continuity in Catholic life and reassert Vatican II’s understanding of the papacy’s proper role. Second: Just as the Church is not an autocracy, neither is she a democracy. The Church belongs to Jesus Christ. She is his Church. She is Christ’s Mystical Body, made up of many members. We have no authority to refashion her teachings to fit more comfortably with the world. Moreover, the Catholic sensus fidelium is not a matter of opinion surveys nor even the view of a baptized majority. It derives only from those who genuinely believe and actively practice, or at least sincerely seek to practice, the faith and teachings of the Church. Third: Ambiguity is neither evangelical nor welcoming. Rather, it breeds doubt and feeds schismatic impulses. The Church is a community not just of Word and sacrament, but also of creed. What we believe helps to define and sustain us. Thus, doctrinal issues are not burdens imposed by unfeeling “doctors of the law.” Nor are they cerebral sideshows to the Christian life. On the contrary, they’re vital to living a Christian life authentically, because they deal with applications of the truth, and the truth demands clarity, not ambivalent nuance. From the start, the current pontificate has resisted the evangelical force and intellectual clarity of its immediate predecessors. The dismantling and repurposing of Rome’s John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family and the marginalizing of texts like Veritatis Splendor suggest an elevation of “compassion” and emotion at the expense of reason, justice, and truth. For a creedal community, this is both unhealthy and profoundly dangerous. Fourth: The Catholic Church, in addition to Word, sacrament, and creed, is also a community of law. Canon law orders Church life, harmonizes its institutions and procedures, and guarantees the rights of believers. Among the marks of the current pontificate are its excessive reliance on the motu proprio as a tool for governance and a general carelessness and distaste for canonical detail. Again, as with ambiguity of doctrine, disregard for canon law and proper canonical procedure undermines confidence in the purity of the Church’s mission. Fifth: The Church, as John XXIII so beautifully described her, is mater et magistra, the “mother and teacher” of humanity, not its dutiful follower; the defender of man as the subject of history, not its object. She is the bride of Christ; her nature is personal, supernatural, and intimate, not merely institutional. She can never be reduced to a system of flexible ethics or sociological analysis and remodeling to fit the instincts and appetites (and sexual confusions) of an age. One of the key flaws in the current pontificate is its retreat from a convincing “theology of the body” and its lack of a compelling Christian anthropology . . . precisely at a time when attacks on human nature and identity, from transgenderism to transhumanism, are mounting. Sixth: Global travel served a pastor like Pope John Paul II so well because of his unique personal gifts and the nature of the times. But the times and circumstances have changed. The Church in Italy and throughout Europe – the historic home of the faith – is in crisis. The Vatican itself urgently needs a renewal of its morale, a cleansing of its institutions, procedures, and personnel, and a thorough reform of its finances to prepare for a more challenging future. These are not small things. They demand the presence, direct attention, and personal engagement of any new Pope. Seventh and finally: The College of Cardinals exists to provide senior counsel to the Pope and to elect his successor upon his death. That service requires men of clean character, strong theological formation, mature leadership experience, and personal holiness. It also requires a Pope willing to seek advice and then to listen. It’s unclear to what degree this applies in the Pope Francis pontificate. The current pontificate has placed an emphasis on diversifying the college, but it has failed to bring cardinals together in regular consistories designed to foster genuine collegiality and trust among brothers. As a result, many of the voting electors in the next conclave will not really know each other, and thus may be more vulnerable to manipulation. In the future, if the college is to serve its purposes, the cardinals who inhabit it need more than a red zucchetto and a ring. Today’s College of Cardinals should be proactive about getting to know each other to better understand their particular views regarding the Church, their local church situations, and their personalities – which impact their consideration of the next pope. Readers will quite reasonably ask why this text is anonymous. The answer should be evident from the tenor of today’s Roman environment: Candor is not welcome, and its consequences can be unpleasant. And yet these thoughts could continue for many more paragraphs, noting especially the current pontificate’s heavy dependence on the Society of Jesus, the recent problematic work by the DDF’s Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, and the emergence of a small oligarchy of confidants with excessive influence within the Vatican – all despite synodality’s decentralizing claims, among other things. Exactly because of these matters, the cautionary reflections noted here may be useful in the months ahead. It is hoped that this contribution will help guide much needed conversations about what the Vatican should look like in the next pontificate. Demos II A profile of the next Pope, writes Cardinal NEWDAILYCOMPASS.COM Two years after the text signed 'Demos' (later revealed to have been written by Cardinal Pell) a new anonymous document, linked to the first...

"Why is the believing Catholic not subject to neurosis?" A question posed to Karl Jung in 1939 Social media grenade-launcher Matt Walsh recently posted the following on his FaceBook page: It's a fair question. It's certainly hard to make the case that our lives are so much more difficult than, say, those of our Great Depression era grandparents or great-grandparents. Add to this the fact that despite the ubiquity of mental health services in American society, we are in the midst of an ongoing and worsening mental health crisis, particularly among the young. It's almost as if the expansion of mental health services has in some way contributed to the proliferation of mental illness. Thousands of articles like the following have been written over the past half-decade examining the problem and ultimately failing to come up with good answers: Over 50% Of Liberal, White Women Under 30 Have A Mental Health Issue. Are We Worried Yet? Depression rates among US adults reach new high: Gallup Rates of Depression and Anxiety Are Rising in Young People Many will no doubt blame the mental health crisis on a host of pop-politico-cultural bugbears: sexism, student debt, racism, transphobia, the COVID shutdowns, MAGA-terror, etc. But could the core reason for this epidemic of mental illness be that fewer people than ever before in the West are practicing Catholics who make regular and devout use of the sacraments of the Church? Now before you dismiss this possibility out of hand, I'd like to call your attention to a talk by one of the primordial psychoanalysts of the early 20th century, Carl Gustav Jung. Jung was the offspring of a Swiss Lutheran pastor. Several of his uncles were also Protestant pastors, and it was expected that Carl himself would find a career in the ministry. Instead, Jung rejected Christianity and entered the nascent world of psychotherapy as it was developing under Sigmund Freud. During his life, Jung had numerous spiritual experiences, nearly all of which a believing Catholic might consider encounters with the demonic. All this is to say that Carl Jung was no great friend of Catholicism. And yet, in a lecture he gave in London in April of 1939, on the eve of the outbreak of the Second World War, Jung was asked to offer insights on why the believing Catholic was not subject to neurosis, or at least not to the same extent as, say, Protestants or Jews. Jung's answer is fascinating: Of course, by "the Mass", Jung was referring the Traditional Latin Mass as it was known everywhere by Catholics prior to the late 1960s. After a tangent during which Jung elaborates on ancient symbolism as found in Catholic ritual, he returns to confession with this very curious passage: God only knows if what Jung says above regarding the Pope giving him a private blessing is actually true. His account has a pretty thick overlay of hubris, so it is perhaps best to take it with a grain of salt. But the fact remains that this former Lutheran spiritualist psychoanalyst who occasionally had communication with potentially demonic beings was astounded by the psychological resilience of practicing Catholics. I looked up the American study Jung cited and found out that it was part of a 1938 work entitled Explorations in Personality: A Clinical and Experimental Study of Fifty Men of College Age by Henry A. Murray. Murray was another mid-20th century psychological researcher who was no great friend of Catholics. In his conclusion, Murray writes: Were they really "self-deceived"? Or had they adopted a faith that allowed them to see the world as it truly is, understand it, and react to the challenges presented by life in healthy and resilient ways? Given that Murray's later career included abusive experiments on college students, one of whom was apparently so damaged that he went on to achieve infamy as the Unabomber, I'm not particularly concerned about his judgments on self-deception. Sad to relate, those very aspects of Catholicism which formed such mentally strong men and women in the past—the Mass, the rituals, the sacraments and confession in particular—were all watered down and de-emphasized in the aftermath of the 1960s. The result has been that today's Catholics, practicing or otherwise, seem just as susceptible to mental illness as the rest of society. Nevertheless, we can hear echoes of this resilience even today. Anecdotally, some of the most emotionally and psychologically solid people I have ever known may be found among that relatively small remnant of Catholics who steadfastly practice the faith with reverence and devotion. Never have I encountered a group of people who have endured so much personal suffering with such abiding grace. I am continually amazed at how many of these good people are struck with truly gut-wrenching family tragedies. And yet, they are able to endure, heal, and carry on, trusting that Christ will always be with them and that their departed loved ones are even now praying for them before the heavenly throne of God Almighty. It is not controversial to observe that many of the current-day princes of the Catholic Church have wandered far from the traditional teachings and practices of the Church. Perhaps if these men would pause their awkward shamble after adolescent sexualized mysticism, they might realize that the ancient practice of Catholicism which they largely discarded in the 1960s was among the greatest treasures that God has ever gifted to mankind. At the very least, we can posit that the traditional practice of Catholicism is a way to comprehend the triumphs and tragedies of human existence that does not ultimately drive men mad. The same can not be said for the neurotic mess that modern Western secular culture has become. Gloria Romanorum: "Why is the believing Catholic not subject to neurosis?" A question posed to Karl Jung in 1939 GLORIAROMANORUM.BLOGSPOT.COM Social media grenade-launcher Matt Walsh recently posted the following on his FaceBook page: "Many people claim to know for a...

Although you feel tepid, approach with confidence, for the greater your infirmity the more you stand in need of a physician. —St. Bonaventure

As “pride is the beginning of all sin,” (Eccl. x, 15) so humility is the foundation of all virtue. Learn to be really humble and not, as the hypocrite, humble merely in appearance. -St. Bonaventure

У бекству од Бога Уместо Бога, Синодални форум ИВ тражи уточиште у родној идеологији. Auf der Flucht vor Gott WWW.DIE-TAGESPOST.DE Statt bei Gott sucht das Synodalforum IV Zuflucht bei der Gender-Ideologie.

Today is the Feast Day of St. Thomas Becket, who was martyred in 1170 in the Canterbury Cathedral for opposing royal encroachments on the authority of the Catholic Church in England. St. Thomas Becket was a true champion of Christendom—the reign of Christ over all, both clergy and laity. In this fascinating letter written to King Henry II in 1166, the great saint explains Christendom. These and other ancient and medieval sources are very important to read, because they show that the categories of thought in Christendom were entirely different than modern categories. For most of Church history, Catholics conceived of the two primary governing authorities in society not as “Church” and “State,” but as “Temporal Power” and “Spiritual Power.” This is deeply significant, with all sorts of implications. Suffice it to say, our modern conception of “Church” and “State” is intellectually impoverished, and tends to obscure the nature of reality. Unpacking the significance of this would take a longer explanation. But St. Thomas Becket’s letter to King Henry II is a good introduction: “For your sake [I write this letter] for three causes: because you are my lord, because you are my king, and because you are my spiritual son. In that you are my lord I owe and offer to you my counsel and service, such as a bishop owes to his lord according to the honor of God and the holy church. And in that you are my king I am bound to you in reverence and regard. In that you are my son I am bound by reason of my office to chasten and correct you… Christ founded the Church and purchased her liberty with His blood, undergoing the scourging and splitting, the nails, and the anguish of death, leaving us an example that we should follow in His steps. Whence also saith the apostle, ‘If we suffer with Him we shall also reign with Him. If we die with Him, with Him we shall rise again.’ The Church of God consists of two orders, clergy and people. Among the clergy are apostles, apostolic men, bishops, and other doctors of the Church, to whom is committed the care and governance of the Church, who have to perform ecclesiastical business, that the whole may redound to the saving of souls. Whence also it was said to Peter, and in Peter to the other rulers of the Church, not kings nor to princes, ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (Matt. 16:18).’ Among the people are kings, princes, dukes, earls, and other powers, who perform secular business, that the whole may conduce to the peace and unity of the Church. And since it is certain that kings receive their power from the Church, not she from them but from Christ, so, if I may speak with your pardon, you have not the power to give rules to bishops, nor to absolve or excommunicate anyone… Let my lord, therefore, if it pleases him, listen to the counsel of his subject, to the warnings of his bishop, and to the chastisement of his father… It is known almost to the whole world with what devotion you formerly received our lord the Pope and what attachment you showed the Church of Rome, and also what respect and deference were shown you in return. Forbear then, my lord, if you value your soul, to deprive that Church of her rights. Remember also the promise which you made, and which you placed in writing on the altar at Westminster when you were consecrated and anointed king by my predecessor, of preserving to the Church her liberty… We are ready faithfully and devotedly with all our strength to serve you as our dearest lord and king with all our strength in whatsoever we are able, saving the honor of God and of the Roman Church, and saving our order [the clergy]. Otherwise, know for certain that you shall feel the divine severity and vengeance.”

'Synodal way' architect says political tactics built pressure for change 'Synodal way' architect says political tactics built pressure for change WWW.PILLARCATHOLIC.COM An architect of Germany’s “synodal way” has explained how organizers used tactics employed successfully in politics to build pressure for change in the Church.

Мит о 'рођеном геју': када се идеологија маскира у науку КОМЕНТАР: Доступна истраживања не подржавају тврдњу да истополна привлачност има непроменљиво генетско порекло. Срамота би било за Цркву да баци пешкир, баш у тренутку када наука доказује да је све време била у праву. The ‘Born Gay’ Myth: When Ideology Masquerades as Science WWW.NCREGISTER.COM COMMENTARY: The available research does not support the claim that same-sex attraction has an immutable genetic origin.

Jesus Christ welcomes everyone, but does not welcome everything and this makes us understand how Catholics cannot, morally, collaborate with everyone. Tavole di Assisi: Gesù Cristo accoglie Tutti, ma non accoglie tutto - Il Corriere Nazionale WWW.CORRIERENAZIONALE.NET I Cattolici di numerose organizzazioni riflettono, laici e religiosi, come servire la Comunità e la Politica nella società digitale. di Antonino Giannone^ Ho seguito ad Assisi i lavori del...

The scandal of Fiducia Supplicans An in-depth analysis and demolition of attempts to defend the indefensible. “The scandal of Fiducia Supplicans.” Edward Feser: The scandal of Fiducia Supplicans EDWARDFESER.BLOGSPOT.COM By now many readers of this blog will likely have heard about Fiducia Supplicans and the worldwide controversy it has generated, which may ...