Is Our Lord pleased with Laudato Si? - Updated

Jesus explains that human and scientific interests are not a Priest's concern.

 

This morning, finding myself outside myself, I could see some Priests.  They were dedicated to human and scientific interests which were unnecessary to their state of life, and which were done with the mixture of a rebellious spirit to their superior authorities. 

 

Then Our Lord, who was very distressed, said to me: 

 

"My daughter, the human and scientific interests are not the Priests' concern. A muddy and putrid second nature is formed, and the works that come out of those interests - even holy ones - stink so greatly, nauseating Me so much as to be intolerable.  Pray and repair for these offenses, for I am weary."  (08/25/1906.)

 

From the approved Volume Seven of the spiritual "Diary" Book of Heaven, of the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta.  Imprimatur of Archbishop Joseph Leo and Nihil Obstat of (now Saint) Fr. Annibale Di Francia. 

Update - from a vision of Luisa's (08/12/1910 volume 9): 

 

". . .  I saw many priests running away from the Church and turning against the Church to wage war against Her.  I looked at those priests with great sorrow, and I felt a light that made me comprehend that the origin of this and all the evil of priests is in dealing with souls about human things, things all of a material nature, without a strict necessity.  These human things form a net for the priest which blinds his mind, hardens his heart to divine things, and prevents his step on the path that befits him in the office of his ministry.  Not only this, but it is a net for souls, because they bring what is human, and receive what is human, and grace remains as though excluded from them.  Oh! how much evil is committed by these - how many slaughters of souls they make!"

 

To learn more about the mystic Luisa Piccarreta, click Here.

The Counter-Encyclical

Against the Errors of Environmentalism

Brother Alexis Bugnolo, one of the world's foremost experts on St. Francis of Assisi and Franciscanism, and editor of the Franciscan Archive, presents a counter-encyclical to the Laudato Si' of Pope Francis.

Ostensibly written by a future Pope, its full title is “On the Honor and Glory Due to the Divine Majesty of the Most Holy Trinity – Against the Errors of Environmentalism. It “affirms and declares” that the totality of Laudato Si' and all its parts are to be considered merely as the personal doctrine of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and not of the Apostolic See of St. Peter.

Some highlights of the counter-encyclical

“We consider it necessary to remove a grave scandal which has shaken the whole world: namely, that which emanated from the once unsullied throne of this Apostolic See. I speak of the encyclical letter, Laudato Si' of my predecessor, Francis, of infelicitous memory . . . promoting in an official papal document, into which he mixed many half-truths, the falsehood of environmentalism unto the deception of the entire Catholic world.”

The counter-encyclical enumerates many reasons to attest that “it is not man who is the lord and master of creation, but God; that it is not man who is first and foremost responsible for the heavens and the earth and all these contain, but God. . . For this reason it is theologically an effrontery to God to say or concede that the environment of this planet earth depends upon mankind.”

“To say or imply, therefore, that man's activities in general make this world ugly or pollute it is false, erroneous and implicitly heretical, inasmuch as it impugns the Divine Goodness, Providence and Wisdom of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

“This sinful obsession with earthly things is, as the glorious Doctor of the Church, the Seraphic Saint Bonaventure frequently notes, the necessary consequent of a human spirit bent down to face earthly things by the weight of his own sins and vices and concupiscences.”

“We recognize and declare, that since God at the beginning had both made all things and declared them together with man, 'very good' (Genesis 1:30 and throughout), that it is a mortal sin of blasphemy to call them or their use evil, and thus, likewise a grave error and sin, to say that their non-use or discarding, is of itself, or according to its genus a sin.”

Brother Alexis Bugnolo links to this work Here and Here. A printable version of the text is made available by this blog, Here

Posted 06/19/2015 by Frank Rega, www.frankrega.com

Our Lord's Words to Luisa Piccarreta

From the Church-approved volume six of her spiritual "Diary," the Book of Heaven.
Imprimatur of Archbishop Joseph Leo and Nihil Obstat of (now Saint) Fr. Annibale Di Francia. 
____________________________________________________________________________________

"My daughter, when the soul does all of her actions for the sole purpose of loving Me, and wants no other recompense for her work but my love alone, she walks always in daylight - it is never nighttime for her."

"My daughter, true love forgets himself, and lives of the interests, of the pains, and of everything that belongs to the beloved."

"Indeed, there is no beauty that equals suffering for the love of God alone."

"My daughter, in the Creation I gave my image to the soul; in the Incarnation I gave my Divinity, divinizing humanity."

"Therefore,  hold peace as your greatest treasure if you cherish being united with Me."

"Oh, how difficult it is to enjoy pleasures, to dress luxuriously on the outside, and to despise those things internally!  On the contrary, the opposite occurs - that is, one loves in his interior, and enjoys, what surrounds him externally."

"My daughter, my Life manifests Itself in the creatures through words, through works, and through sufferings, but what manifests It more clearly are the sufferings."

"The Life of God in the soul is Hope, and the more you hope, the more Divine Life you contain within yourself.  Therefore, hope -- hope always."

"In fact, if the soul lets herself be dominated by the cross, the cross destroys three evil kingdoms in her, which are the world, the devil and the flesh, and it constitutes in her three more good Kingdoms: the Spiritual, the Divine and the Eternal Kingdom."

"Not only this, but since the other things had been created for man, and man for God alone and for His Delight, as a consequence he was not only to encompass all creation within himself, but he was to surpass it to the point of receiving the image of the Supreme Majesty within himself." 

"How much attention it takes so as not to let material things enter inside, if by necessity she has to deal with them!  You, my daughter, be attentive; otherwise, if I see anything which is not divine in you, I will not make Myself seen anymore."

"Stability alone is what reveals the progress of Divine Life within the soul, because, since God is immutable, one who possesses Him shares in His immutability in good."

"Daughter, let everything in you be sealed by love.  If you think, you must only think of love; if you speak, if your work, if you palpitate, if you desire . . .  If even just one desire which is not love comes out of you, restrict it within yourself, convert it into love, and then give it the freedom to go out."

"Everything, everything should be enclosed in one single word: 'Love.'  If the soul does not enclose everything in this, it can be said that she does not know a thing about loving Me, and according to how much the soul loves Me, so do I expand the gift of suffering."

"In fact, the mind nourishes itself with what it thinks, and by looking at God alone, of the things down here, she looks only at those that God wants, not bothering about anything else, and so she remains always in God."

"The weight of any action, be it even an indifferent one, increases according to the dose of love it contains, because I do not look at the work, but at the intensity of love that the working contains."

"Indeed that of the soul which pleases me most is perseverance, because perseverance is seal of eternal life and development of divine life."

"This is the order of my Providence, of my Justice and of my Love - that in each era I must have at least one with whom I might share all goods, and that the creature must give Me everything she owes Me as creature. . .  This is precisely why I choose victim souls. .  . During the time of My Passion I had my dearest Mother who, while I shared all my pains and all my goods with her, was most attentive as creature, on gathering within herself everything that creatures were to do for Me. Therefore in her I found all my satisfaction and all the gratitude, the thanksgiving, the praise, the reparation, the correspondence which I was to find in everyone else."

To learn more about the mystic Luisa Piccarreta, click Here.


Posted 06/18/2015 by Frank Rega, www.frankrega.com

Notes on Two American Icons, Yogi and Elvis

As the great catcher turns 90, an online petition to the White House seeks the Presidential Medal of Freedom for Yogi Berra.

On the day that Elvis Presley died, an astonishing and mysterious phenomenon occurred shortly after his passing. 
 

Part One: Yogi.

Yogi Berra Celebrates 90th Birthday. Here's a news article from the big day itself:

LITTLE FALLS, N.J. (AP) — As Yogi Berra might say, when you turn 90 you should celebrate it right the first time. Please click Here. 

"As Yogi Berra turns 90, baseball tips its cap." For an entertaining collection of reminiscences and birthday greetings from his teammates and friends. Click Here. 

And finally.... 

We petition the White House to award Yogi Berra the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his military service and civil rights and educational activism. This is important: click Here to sign the online White House petition seeking Presidential Medal of Freedom for Yogi Berra.

Part Two: Elvis.

Dick Grob, who was in charge of the security detail that protected Presley, received an urgent phone call on the hot summer afternoon of August 16, 1977. The brief call to his home alerted Grob to the frightening news that Elvis was being taken to the hospital by ambulance in serious condition. Grob continues:

“Thoughts continued to race through my mind as I tried to assess the situation, Elvis was not at Graceland but en route to the hospital, so he must be “damaged.” It was becoming clear, I at least needed to go there first. That way I could assess the situation. If Elvis was going to be admitted, things would be handled as they were when he had entered the hospital before.

“As I raced at speeds up to 100 mph toward Baptist Hospital, only slowing for red lights and then speeding through them, I was mentally running through the thousands of different possible scenarios. I was still trying to fathom what might have happened. Not once did it occur to me that Elvis would be dead, that he had died at Graceland sometime before. Not once did this worst of all possible disasters pass before my eyes.

“Even with the air conditioning pouring out full blast I was already dripping wet with perspiration. Suddenly I felt a sudden and very different cold come over me. It wasn't like the cold one receives from an over-productive air conditioning system. This was an eerie unexplainable frostiness . . .

“Beside the chill, something else happened. I saw no visions, heard no words booming out loud to me from above, nothing like that, but I had a feeling, a mental thought. Through my mind passed a very clear meaningful message. It was more than my own thought, for I had been thinking any number of things but not anything close to this. It was as if someone were talking to me, telling me something, communicating with me. There was no sound. Whatever it was, was inside my head, in my mind. The clear, mental voice that I sensed, said: “Dick, slow down, it's over, there is nothing you can do now, don't kill yourself or anyone else because it is too late and there will be plenty of work to do.”

“Little did I realize then, how true that voice and its meaning was to be in the days ahead. I immediately slowed to the speed limit, below the limit. It's funny, as I look back on that drive now, I can recall the instant when I mentally felt and heard that voice. I still get shivers from it. This was a voice without a body, a voice without a tone, a voice without a face, yet there is no doubt in my mind who was conversing with me mentally. An immediate calm came over me and all the negative thoughts stopped passing through my mind at once. My mind was no longer cluttered with different disasters . . . My mission had dramatically changed. Deep in my mind I knew Elvis would perform no more for mortal man. His next performance would be backed by a band of heavenly angels. Somehow, I knew exactly what I would find when I reached the hospital, and that my entire reason for being would dramatically change in the next few minutes.” 

Excerpted, condensed and edited from pp. 195-200. The Elvis Conspiracy? by Richard H. Grob, Fox Reflections Publishing, 1979. Info on this book Here.

Posted 05/17/2015  www.frankrega.com 

 

Seeking converts is solemn nonsense? The Council implicitly taught so.

Our Lord emphatically used the active verb “preach;”  he did not call for some kind of passive evangelization, yet this is what our recent Popes have embraced.

Pope Francis:

"Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us."

Pope Benedict XVI:

"The Church does not engage in proselytism. Instead, she grows by “attraction”:

Also:

“On the other hand, this unity [of all Christians] does not mean what could be called ecumenism of the return: that is, to deny and to reject one's own faith history. Absolutely not!”

courtesy of www.tripadvisor.com

Vatican II scrupulously avoided language such as “a return to Peter's fold.”

As explained by Cardinal Avery Dulles, “the Council implicitly taught that the united church of the future” will not result from the submission of other churches to Roman Catholicism. 

“Vatican II . . . distanced itself in two important aspects from the type of Catholic ecumenism now described [that is, the effort to bring other churches and communities to the obedience of Rome]. First, it linked the concept of union to that of reform. Scrupulously avoiding language such as a 'return to Peter's fold,' the Council recognized that in its present form, Catholicism suffers deficiencies in behavior, ecclesiastical discipline and even the formulation of doctrine, and that, therefore, the Catholic Church, as a human and earthly institution, needs a continual reformation.

“Second, Vatican II recognized that the life and truth of Christ are acting in other communities and that, consequently, these should not consider abandoning anything that the grace of the Holy Spirit has wrought in their hearts. On the basis of these two principles, one may sustain that the Council implicitly taught that the united church of the future will not emerge from the submission of the other churches and their absorption by Roman Catholicism.

“The longed for Una Sancta can be a joint creation that simultaneously completes and transforms all the churches that rejoin it. The Catholic Church, without dissolving herself in any way, would modify herself by entering this more encompassing unity.”

American Cardinal Avery Dulles (1918-2008), “Ecumenismo: problemi e possibilita per il futuro,” quoted on page 303, in Will He Find Faith? (Inveniet Fidem?), by Atila Sinke Guimarães.

Posted 04/27/2015 by Frank Rega, www.frankrega.com

When the Lord Returns, Will He Find Faith? - 2

The Vatican II mentality is open to toleration of heresy and error.

In his book Will He Find Faith? (Inveniet Fidem?), Atila Sinke Guimarães demonstrates that the thoughts and philosophy of the “experts” involved in composing the Conciliar documents are often in opposition to traditional Catholic doctrine. He does this by extensively quoting from their published works. Excerpts presented below from the writings of two of these men indicate their progressivist toleration of error and heresy.

Fr. Yves Congar, quoted in quoted in Inveniet Fidem? (pp. 34-35).

Fr. Congar made inportant contributions to several of the Conciliar texts.

• “The fact is evident, in our attitude toward others, we passed from anathema to dialogue.”
• “Today there is not only respect for, but also an interest in the other as the other.”
• “The modern spirit has a bias that favors the heretic in every sphere: by denying received ideas, he opens a way for progress. The heretic brings the new, even in the order of truth.”

Fr. Edward Schillebeeckx, quoted in Inveniet Fidem? (pp. 36-37).

Fr. Schillebeeckx was one of the most active theologians during the Second Vatican Council.  

• “The objection someone raised to this – that evil and error have no right to exist – is based on a misunderstanding.
• And a person has the right to admit as true that which in all sincerity appears true to him (even if objectively it is an error). This is why the person who errs has the same rights. Consequently, tolerance is an ethical and cultural duty for every man.”
• “The State itself is, therefore, obliged to oppose any propaganda or organization that threatens freedom of conscience. This is why in extreme cases tolerance can resort to the use of arms.”

Guimarães comments that Schillebeeckx's intolerant tolerance presents the other side of the “sweetness” and “mercy” often put forth by the progressivists.

When the Lord Returns, Will He Find Faith? – 1 is here.

Posted 04/20/2015 by Frank Rega, www.frankrega.com

 

 

 

When Our Lord Returns, Will He Find Faith?

Writing in what is essentially a college or graduate level textbook, Atila Sinke Guimaraes develops the thesis that, based on the Council, progressivism denies the fixed, immutable character of the Catholic Faith. His book, Will He Find Faith (Inveniet Fidem?), is the sixth of an eleven volume encyclopedic study of the sufferings of the Church since the Second Vatican Council. The book details the transitional and evolutionist character that progressivists have imposed upon the faith. This new faith is no longer objective, but subjective; no longer absolute and universal, but relative and adaptable to history.

In a section dealing with new meanings given to infallible, dogmatic formulas, one of the particulars that Guimaraes cites concerns the dogma of Jesus Christ as true God and true man. The rejection of the truth that Jesus is God is the notorious Arian heresy, which denies the divinity of Jesus. This error “. . . denies that the Son is of one essence, nature, or substance with God; He is not consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father, and therefore not like Him, or equal in dignity, or co-eternal, or within the real sphere of the Deity.” http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01707c.htm

The refusal to accept the other half of the dogma, that Jesus is true man, is the heresy of Docetism, which denies the humanity of Jesus. The Docetists were a sect that taught that Christ only “appeared or seemed to be” a man. “Some denied the reality of Christ's human nature altogether, some only the reality of His human body or of His birth or death.” http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05070c.htm

In a subsection of his book, under the heading The Humanity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Guimaraes sets his sights on a volume written by Joseph Ratzinger in 1971, when he was at the University of Regensburg in Bavaria. While there he co-founded the journal Communio, along with Hans Urs von Balthasar, Walter Kasper, and others. In this book Fé e Futuro (unavailable in English), the future pope wrote: “But is it possible for God to be a man? A man completely human and at the same time true God, and hence entitled to demand faith from all and in all ages? Or is this not simply a case of overestimating a moment from the past? Once again, are we not encountering a mentality that we no longer share?” [quoted in p. 217, Will He Find Faith?]

Guimaraes asserts that with these remarks, Ratzinger “calls into question the dogma of Christ as true God and true man.” It should be noted here that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is fond of stating that he sees no change in his views over the years, e.g.: http://www.traditioninaction.org/ProgressivistDoc/A_071_Ratzinger_Same.htm

 

 

Since Guimaraes presents the above excerpt in a section dealing with the Humanity of Jesus, he apparently sees this as an attempt to deny or at least revisit the concept that Jesus Christ is true man. Spiritual writers and mystics present clear reasons why it is crucial to accept that the Lord, although a divine Person, was truly human:

“Beware, therefore, My child, lest thou hearken to them that say that there is a higher and better road for more perfect souls; a way, not of My Heart, but of the mere Godhead. A way which, setting aside or overlooking My Humanity, can lead thee in a sublime manner to thy end, through the Divinity alone. Whoever says this to thee, be he a man or an angel, believe him not, trust him not. For, through My Humanity I came to men, and through this same Humanity, must men come to Me.” [The Imitation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Rev. Peter J. Arnoudt, TAN Books, chapter 26, book 4.]

“I assumed a Humanity which, moderating the rays of the light of the Divinity, was a means to instill trust and courage in man to come to Me. By placing himself before my Humanity, which spreads temperate rays of My Divinity, man has the gift of being able to purify, sanctify and even to divinize himself in My Deified Humanity. That is why all good things for man come from My Humanity.”
[Book of Heaven, Luisa Piccarreta, Volume 3, entry of Aug. 1, 1900]

When Our Lord returns, will He find the Catholic Faith?

Will He Find Faith (Inveniet Fidem?) by Atila Sinke Guimaraes, 2007, Tradition in Action, Inc., is available here: http://www.traditioninaction.org/books.htm

Posted 04/16/2015 by Frank Rega  (my Mom would have been 100 today, a prayer for her please).  www.frankrega.com