Why the Devil can’t stand normal Catholics
“What does the Devil hate?” asked Fr Dwight Longenecker at his blog. The answer was “supernatural normalcy”. “Satan loves everything that is perverted, twisted, destroyed and diseased.” Therefore he hates “all that is natural and free and good and wholesome and normal and fine and happy and whole.
“He hates good Catholic families. He hates ordinary Catholics who work hard, pray hard, laugh hard and who love God, love life, love one another and live life to the full.”
There were many everyday saints, hidden in the world, who had “a certain grace”: “They are naturally interested in other people, and don’t give two hoots about themselves.” They had become real. They had become supernaturally normal.
Accepting that the Pope is the Pope
At the Coming Home Network, Jean Koneazny Pollock described her journey out of sedevacantism – the belief that post-Vatican II popes are false popes. Pollock and her family became convinced, through friends, that the “new sacraments” were not valid. “Any man who had
become consecrated a bishop or ordained a priest after the sacraments had been changed was not a real bishop or priest. Not only that, but because they accepted Vatican II and its heresies … they were ipso facto excommunicated.”
What changed Pollock’s view was a 2015 article with the title “Deposing a Heretical Pope”. It was disconcerting, she recalled: “This article was proving, by using Church documents and quoting saints, that even if a pope became a heretic, no one could depose him, and (the kicker) he remains pope.”
A journey back to the Church began, as she began to accept that the pope could be pope and the sacraments could still be valid.
Today, Pollock trusts that God is guiding the Church. “I don’t pretend to have all of the answers concerning everything that has come out
of Rome.
“And I can keep in mind the very real truth that no one, not even the Pope, is impeccable in their decisions. They can be imprudent.
“But I have changed my whole way of looking at things since I have been given the grace to return to the bosom of the Church.”
The true way of all your loves upon earth
At Aleteia, Philip Kosloski described JRR Tolkien’s “greatest love”. The Lord of the Rings author wrote two significant letters to his son Michael on the Eucharist. In the first, he wrote: “Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament … There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth.”
It’s not surprising that “within Tolkien’s Middle Earth there was a special type of bread called lembas, which sustained Frodo and Sam as they reached the place where their journey ended”.
✣ A friar is combining Eucharistic adoration with axe-throwing in an attempt to reach out to Catholic men.
Conventual Franciscan Brother Andrew Hennessy, based in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, organised an evening for men aged under 30 called “The Man Tour”. It involved a trip to Flying Axes, a bar in Louisville, Kentucky, where patrons can eat pizza, drink beer and throw axes into plywood; followed by Eucharistic adoration at Mount St Francis Centre of Spirituality, where Brother Andrew and his fellow Conventual Franciscans live. After that the evening was focused on “cigar-smoking and conversation”.
Brother Andrew called it a “night of recreation and holiness”.He said his aim was to strengthen the Catholic community and to “reach out to guys who are on the periphery of the Church”.
Philip Wiese, director of youth ministries for the New Albany deanery, said people aged 18 to 35 were at a defining time in their lives. “The questions in life become more clear,” he said. “Pope Francis talks about going to the peripheries. We need opportunities for people to come into the Church and to grow in their relationship with Christ and the Church without being overwhelmed – to involve them in something that strikes them as interesting.”
✣The week in quotations
We risk presenting Christianity as no more than a system of values Cardinal Gerhard Müller National Catholic Register
Always keep a-hold of nurse / For fear of finding something worse Quoting Belloc, Richard Dawkins worries about the decline of European Christianity Twitter
I welcome, not without some struggle, your resignation Pope Francis’s letter to Mgr Viganò New York Times
We are all vulnerable Pope Francis on World Down’s syndrome Day Twitter
✣Statistic of the week
99% Proportion of people with Down’s syndrome who say they’re happy American Journal of Medical Ethics
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