The Death of My Brother

Dear Pat,

Thanks for calling about John’s death (only 53 years old!), even though it was 5:30 in the morning here in Italy. I am so sorry for John because he never made the decision to grow up and mature, and he developed a whole slew of excuses to not want to work and to be a burden to others which he was able to con with his intelligent lies and smooth talk as do many alcoholic and drug addicts. He never was able to hold a job for very long. But I have not lost hope in his eternal salvation, in particular, because with all of his faults, he had the humility to keep his brown scapular on which at least indicates a small sigh of trust in Jesus and Mary rather than only in himself as so many “successful” Catholics have done in their modern day self autonomy and self-sufficiency. I offered my Mass at 8:00 for John. You were the only one of my remaining 2 brothers and 2 sisters who called me. Thanks.

As you said, our family was and is a very dysfunctional family. I remember what you said about what Dad one time said to you, that made me very sad. Some of the kids were not wanted by our parents. I think the most not wanted was John, the last child. John inherited this rejection, at least at the psychological level, by his parents. Even without words, a child realizes this rejection. John lived out this rejection in his life. Later he used the “end of the world” as his excuse to not change his life for the better, and continued to find all kinds of excuses the rest of his life.

Do you remember when Dad sent to you, and two other brothers and sisters, a tape cassette to express his anger when John left home with your help around 1977 or 1978? Now I am writing a letter about the death of my brother John.

I got the impression from Dad as we were growing up that our family was just about the best family that could exist. Later I began to realize that Dad’s religion and his own assessment of his own holiness was heavily based on being better than others rather than just looking at Jesus as our model. This is why it was so important for him to criticize others so as to feel more holy.

One time when Dad was strongly criticizing Pope John Paul II because he did not do as our Dad thought he should do, I commented to him, when he provoked my response, that I do not presume to believe that I know more than the Pope who sees the whole world and Church situation better than me and that he is specially guided by the Holy Spirit as Jesus promised (Mt 16:18). Needless to say Dad was not very happy with my response!

Dad and Mom were trained in the old school in which the main goal of religion was to avoid hell, so they felt obliged to obey the Church in no birth control and the rest of the commandments. But they never matured to discover a God Who loves them immensely so as to do things to please the One Who loves them most. They never found and developed a personal relationship with Jesus. It is like a child who obeys his parents only out of fear instead of out of gratitude and love for all that the parents do and sacrifice for the child. Without gratitude, there is no salvation. This lack of Christian maturity was reflected also in how Dad most often disciplined his children out of fear instead of love, and we children felt this misguided motive in the short run and in the long run.

Our younger sister and her husband practiced and taught Natural Family Planning. When I listened to some of the audio cassette tapes produced by NFP in 1990 which my sister gave to me, I was struck by the rather strong attitude of feeling superior and holier than the 97% of the Catholics who did not follow the Church’s teachings by using NFP (according to NFP members at the time). I came to realize why many Bishops at that time had a difficult time with some of the promoters and teachers of NFP because they lacked the humility to simply be grateful to God for the gift of NFP for themselves without judging and condemning the other numerous “sinners” who did not use NFP.

It was not easy for Dad and Mom, not only on the material level to raise 6 children, but above all due to the lack of true spiritual guidance. 400 years ago there was held an important Council of the Church at Trent which was of great importance for the Church; its fruits are still felt by the Church today. The Council of Trent was a response to the Protestant Reformation which inaugurated a Catholic counter reform not only on the doctrinal level but also on the spiritual and moral levels. There were a whole series of reforms with the religious congregations and formation of the clergy. There were great innovators and renewers such as Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint John of the Cross, and after the Council, Saint Ignatius of Loyola.

On the one hand the Council of Trent had a great importance, above all for the formation of the priests and seminaries. But on the other hand there were collateral effects, not wanted or intended, like with medicines, such as a certain closure to the Sacred Scriptures caused by the desire to counter the subjective interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures promoted by Martin Luther. There was created a separation between the Old and the New Testaments of the Bible. But this brought with it grave consequences inside the Church. The New Testament was proclaimed in Latin which very few people understood. This gave rise to devotions, which are very good and did a lot of good. But unfortunately these religious practices of piety and spirituality were very often presented and lived as a moralistic obligation; this was caused by a tendency to separate the Mass and Holy Communion from the whole of Christian life which is fundamentally striving for an ever greater personal and loving relationship with Jesus Christ. This moralism made many see religion as many “do’s and don’ts” instead of leading toward a more mature spiritual life with a personal loving trusting relationship with Jesus in which “I can” do all these things for love, or better “I want” to do all these thing (such as obeying the Church in birth control and all of the 10 commandments) for this true and mature motive of love of the One Who loves me most, Jesus Christ. The Mass began to loose the important aspect of being the prayer of the community and drifted toward individualistic types of spiritualities. The clergy were to take care of the whole Mass; the faithful could only associate themselves from a distance and thus dedicated themselves to their personal devotions. Even Holy Communion appeared as a private devotion without any special ties to the Mass. It is true that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom!” (Ps 111:10; Prov 9:10; see also: Job 28:28; Prov 1:7; 3:7; 15:33; Is 33:6). But “Perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love” (1Jn 4:18). Many Christians did not go forward in maturing from the “beginning of wisdom” and did not become “perfected in love”!

It is interesting that most schismatic traditionalists hold on to the Council of Trent which condemned the subjective interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures while they themselves do the same thing in subjectively interpreting not only the Sacred Scriptures but all of the teachings of the Church and writings of the Popes.

Another rather strong negative influence on Dad and Mom was the jansenistic mentality which was still rather strong up to the Council, even though it was condemned by the Church many years ago (Pope Innocent X in 1653; Pope Alexander VII in 1656). Jansenism stressed God’s selective salvation and produced a general harshness and moral rigorism, denying God’s mercy to all mankind. Disregard of papal teaching led to an arbitrary attitude toward the use of the sacraments, notably reducing the frequency of penance and the Eucharist, and giving rise to Gallicanism, which denied papal primacy and infallibility. A great help in stemming the damage being done to many souls was by way of the apparitions to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-90) and the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus which helped people discover the burning love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in a personal loving relationship with Jesus. This mentality considered God as a cold judge and very few are worthy even to receive Holy Communion and that salvation was almost impossible. But of course those who adhered to and promoted this heresy and distorted view and relationship with God felt that they were among the elect and better than the others. Since Dad and Mom did not have a good priest to help them realize the negative influences of this current of thought, they went in that direction which ultimately led to the family of our sister and Mom leaving the Church and entering the sectarian groups with a similar mentality which was not based on humility and the mercy of God, or that salvation is gratuitous (http://necedah-cult.blogspot.com). Few priests 60 years ago explained the very beneficial reasons for the Church’s teaching on birth control and the other important teachings, but most priests only said the Bible and the Church say so and you must obey; 60 years ago for a good number of Catholics this was enough but it did not help Catholics go toward greater maturity as Christians. Today, very few people will obey without an explanation about the truth with leads to a greater good and helping people to embrace the teachings of the Church as their own, in their own name. One cannot give to God the “paid bill” with a list of all the Holy Communions and Rosaries said and say therefore God must let me into heaven; salvation is a gratuitous gift although as St. James tells us “faith without works is dead” (Jms 2:17). Certainly Holy Communion and the Holy Rosary are very, in fact extremely important, but it all depends on the intention and the motive for which one receives Holy Communion and for which one prays the Rosary. The Pharisees and Scribes followed the law very scrupulously but Christ said: “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5:20). “For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mt 9:13; Mk 2:17; Lk 5:32). “You received without pay, give without pay” (Mt 10:8).

I remember a couple of times when two or three of Dad’s sisters came to visit us, how Dad’s sisters several times just smiled at Dad, or sluff him off or just walked away, because they knew all too well that their little brother believed he was always right when there was any disagreement on just about any issue. Do you remember when we were rather young and Dad and Mom would storm out of the house of the Reinharts in Carol, Iowa when the relatives did not agree and totally accept what Dad and Mom said in regards to religion and politics? I remember them doing the same thing with the pastor near their house where they went to daily Mass. It is true that Jesus told the apostles: “And if any one will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town…” (Mt 10:14; Mk 6:11; Lk 9:5). But the apostle spoke the words of Jesus, for the glory of God, not their own works or for their glory! The truth without humility or charity is an idol!

The personalist principle of Blessed Pope John Paul II has helped greatly in this aspect of explaining and persuading people about the truth with leads to the true good. If people could only be led to understand this truth about good then it would cease to be a burden, it would cease to be oppressive. It is all important that the moral law not just be there like a big battery of do’s and don’ts, mainly don’t’s; that we might be able to understand the human rhyme and reason for the right of this and the wrong of that. So the truth about good has to be understood. Then we can take it into ourselves and make it the inner law of our own actions. In this way God’s laws then ceases to be a burden.

There are many, who seeing this hypocrisy of lack of humility, love and trust in God in many Christians, justify throwing out all the tremendous treasures in the one true Church. I tell them that I go to Mass not for the priest or nice friends, but for Jesus. If people want to use religion to serve themselves instead of using religion to serve God, to discover the will of God through the teaching of the Catholic Church, and to do the will of God with the help of the sacraments, that is their choice and God, Who is true Love, will respect that choice for all eternity!

To explain simply, as well as to avoid the typical elusive argumentation which covers up the true motive of so many who are fleeing from God (even though they believe they will go to heaven if they still believe that such a place exists), I tell people that if they want to make it to heaven, they must seek the Truth (big “T”) in a difficult and confusing world, especially listening the Vicar of Christ on earth, the Pope; then live this Truth with God's help, so that they can spend eternity with the Truth, who is God. Most people today do not even take the first step of seeking the Truth which is inconvenient because it bothers our almost dead consciences indicating to us that we must change our lives and suffer. Most people choose the easy way of convincing themselves that there is no eternity after death and thus they freely choose to lower themselves even below the level of animals with a mortal soul, thus thinking that they have no responsibility for their great God-given dignity and great responsibility. When they die, after fleeing the Truth all of their lives, God, out of true love, will respect and confirm their choice, and they will go to the place where there is no Truth, no God for all eternity! The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 1035) as well as the saints clearly tell us that the greatest pain in hell, more than all other pains put together, is the total and absolute and eternal separation of the creature from its Creator, Who is the TRUTH! To say that it is impossible to discover the truth is to imply that God is an idiot; “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father, but by Me” (Jn 14:6); “The Truth Shall Set You Free” (Jn 8:32)!

If we realize this, we can sympathize with Dad and Mom who were not helped by priests to obey the 10 Commandments explained by the Church not as an obligation only but as the loving divine providence and guidance of God for the good of each person, of each family and of each community and of the society as a whole. Dad and Mom, as well as a great many Christians today, were never offered Christianity and the revelation and guidance of God through Jesus Christ and His Church as from a God Who loves each of us personally and immensely. Thus there was not the foundation of responding to this great and immense love but only the fear of hell and punishment; this great lacking does not lead to a childlike trust and loving relationship with our Father in Heaven. “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 18:3). The fundamental aspect of true love is to forget self, go out of self to love God and neighbor. This is exactly what God did in creating all of us even though God did not need us in any way; God, on the cross, suffered immensely due to so many who refused His love because they were not willing to trust and obey God and to suffer with Jesus on the Cross in their daily lives living out the Gospel and the 10 Commandments explained by the Church that Jesus left us!

Thus Dad and Mom obeyed the Church in not using birth control like a child who feels forced and fearful of punishment instead of a child who learned to trust Holy Mother Church as the way to arrive at true and lasting happiness and fulfillment. Saint Thomas Aquinas tells us that true virtue lies in the middle between the two extremes. There were those who obeyed the Church because they felt forced with the motive of avoiding hell. And there were those who rebelled totally against the Church and threw out everything. It is interesting how the two extremes meet; the liberals throw out the Church because they do not want to accept the proper interpretation of the 10 Commandments which means they must give up illicit pleasures and mortify themselves so as to be able to love others in a true authentic way; the schismatic traditionalists throw out the Church due to pride, seeing all the “sinners” in Church, thinking that they are not sinners as did the Donatists sect in the fourth century. There are few who find the middle path of true virtue which is based on child like trust in God Who left us His Church, with the Pope as the head, to guide us for our true and lasting good. Even here one must struggle to maintain the middle path of virtue of realizing that the Church, the Body of Christ, like her head, Christ, is both divine and human. Thus just as the child Jesus “grew in wisdom….” (Lk 2:40). This is explained in great detail in the classic article: “An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine”, by John Henry Newman (http://www.newmanreader.org/works/development/).

But this is not a type of modernism in which truth subjectively changes according to “a kind of motion of the heart”, or a “felling for the divine”. This is a progression of understanding more and more the divine truths that exist from all eternity and do not change. In Christ’s human nature, he “grew in wisdom”, but in His divine nature, Christ knew all things. It is a mystery. This analogy is very similar for the Body of Christ, the Church, which is both divine and human!

One must also distinguish this proper growing in wisdom from positivism, in particular today, legal positivism, in which a great number of judges and government officials interpret the law and the constitution according to their world view, according to “modern times”, without any respect for what the majority of the citizens voted to approve or even offering the people to change the law by majority vote. Relativism says all is relative, and thus also relativism is relative which relativists do not want to admit. Relativism leads to legal positivism which is the idea that whatever the law does is OK and cannot be criticized as unjust. The individualism of this culture leads to an isolated collection of individuals each of which is his own god. Pope Benedict stated just before being elected Pope: “Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be "tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine", seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. WE ARE BUILDING A DICTATORSHIP OF RELATIVISM that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires.” (http://www.vatican.va/gpII/documents/homily-pro-eligendo-pontifice_20050418_en.html). When people throw out the saving and freeing laws of God which commands that the strong must help the weak, automatically we go toward the law of “MIGHT MAKES RIGHT!”; “the law of the jungle”! If you are not the strongest, you will end up under a very horrible dictatorship that could care less about you even though you voted for these people who offered so many beautiful lies and promises. One forgets so easily the old saying: “There is no honor among thieves!” Those who do not pray and seek to live their prayer; those who do not seek the Truth, the will of God, and thus do not seek to live this Truth, the will of God, will be very easily led by the pied piper with a hidden tail, a hidden agenda, while they believe they are so intelligent, wise, sophisticated, modern and politically correct, while they criticize and ridicule those who seek to submit to a higher power above themselves and above this material visible world! These little self made gods begin to call good evil and evil good (Is 5:20-21). Those who truly pray and seek to live their prayer will much more easily see through the smoke screen and see the difference between nice lies and true, lasting and beneficial fruits for everyone, not just an elite few! Of course the elite would not like to be treated as they treat those outside of their special group!!! What great evangelical principles! These elite believe that they are the only ones with wisdom to direct everything and thus do not understand how it was possible for the American experiment of democracy lasted so long. But the people of a democracy must continually work to sustain this precious gift. Upon his farewell address to the nation, GEORGE WASHINGTON tried to impress upon his fellow countrymen that it was “Religion and Morality” that served as the foundation for our young nation. Without the foundation of Religion and Morality that George Washington and the other founding fathers provided for us, there is simply no real hope for the future of this country. The people in so many countries of the world which were not given the gift of a Christian foundation are used to continual dictatorships. We Americans let our flag down in maintaining “religion and morality” with vigilance and soon the USA will be under the worst dictatorship that ever existed on the face of the earth! The USA received much from God and thus the punishment will be greater for not having used these talents to build up the kingdom of God (Mt 25:14-30).

Listen to what the elite say about us peons! Rockefeller asked Aaron Russo: “WHAT DO YOU CARE ABOUT THOSE PEOPLE, what difference does it make to you? Take care of your own life; do the best you can for you and your family. The rest of the people they don’t mean anything to you; they’re just surfs, they’re just people.” (“Nicholas Rockefeller admitted the elite s goal is a 100% mic”; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mp6J6pT6xU; “Rockefeller: The Goal is to get everybody chipped!” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isVFYXdCpJI). What would Hitler have done if he had at his disposal the technology of today to be able to monitor every human being on the face of the planet. The Austrians swallowed the lies of Hitler in an economic crisis and thus 98% of the Austrians voted for Hitler before Hitler invaded Austria!

There is a lawyer here where I live who has already taken at least one doctor to court because the doctor put in a microchip while performing a needed surgical operation. She also gave me the website of a group which is trying to fight this injustice but with very little success. There are thousands of doctors who have begun doing this terrible act. (Cicat; “Centro Internazionale Contro l'Abuso e l'Abuso Tecnologico” (International Center Against Technological Abuse) (http://www.cicat.it/?page_id=9).

Pope Benedict tells us: “Where positivist reason considers itself the only sufficient culture and banishes all other cultural realities to the status of subcultures, it diminishes man, indeed it threatens his humanity.” (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2011/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20110922_reichstag-berlin_en.html).

Fr. Bob Barron said in an interview with Colleen Carroll Campbell on EWTN (“Bold Evangelization in an Age of Beige Christianity”) that “many traditionalists attach the Church to a culture that they want to bring back; but the Church is bigger than this.”

FIVE HUNDRED YEARS AGO THERE WERE MANY SINNERS IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH which caused the Protestant Reformation; today there are many sinners in the Church which cause many to leave the Church. A good husband does not abandon his wife when she becomes old and not pretty. If Satan cannot get you on the extreme side of the liberals, he will try to get you on the other extreme which is even worse. One can jump out of the Divine Ship, the Church, either on the left side with the liberals or on the right side with the schismatic traditionalists. My father used to say to Protestants: “I’d rather have an ugly box with a diamond inside than a beautiful box that is empty inside.” He was referring to the fact that the Catholic Church has all seven sacraments; it is sad that Dad did not try to avoid the temptation to put himself above the Pope and fall into non constructive criticism which led the family further away from the great gift of the guidance and help offered by Christ’s Church. Schismatic traditionalists try to find a group that is “as holy” as they are!?! It is Jesus, the Son of God, Who decided to found His Church on 12 sinners instead of 12 perfect angels from heaven! Who is more intelligent and full of wisdom, God or us? St. Augustine even exclaimed while fighting off the Donatists: “How many sheep there are outside the Church and how many wolves are inside!” Many follow the mass media today in criticizing the Church and the priests and the bishops. I asked one of these puppets of the propaganda of the mass media who continually criticizes Catholic clergy instead of praying for them: “Would it have been better if Jesus Christ had founded the Church on 12 perfect men as yourself, Sir?”

In the U.S., there are over 30,000 independent protestant groups all interpreting the Sacred Scriptures in their own way, very often in contradictory ways. Jesus knew well that there would be many opinions and confusion about the most important topic of eternal salvation and so He gave to us the Church with the ROCK as our guaranteed and divinely protected guide (Mt 16:18). Those who break away from the Church wilfully put themselves above the ROCK that Jesus left us and they feel they are infallibly and directly guided by the Holy Spirit, just as all the founders of the protestant groups believed. The branches not attached to the Vine, the Church with the ROCK as the head, the branches wither (Jn 15: 5-6)!

Are we promoting and teaching the religion of the Gospels explained by the one true Church, the Catholic Church with the Pope as the visible head, or are we promoting and teaching a nice comfortable “Christian” religion without the cross, while rendering the consciences of our parishioners insensitive and numb? Are we truly good shepherds of our flocks to protect the sheep from the very numerous and subtly ingenious wolves of today? Or have we slipped into the comfortable and self-satisfying role of the hireling who gratifies himself with the applause of the sheep with his nice words that the sheep want to hear, but then when the sneaky shrewd astute sly wolf comes, he abandons the flock, not being ready or willing to give his life for the sheep due to the fact that he did not preach the uncomfortable truths which would make him unpopular or even be rejected by the majority of the self-seeking sheep (Jn 10:7-18)? “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths” (2Tim 4:3-4).

It is true that when I was younger I was treated as the favored son, the favored child being the only one genetically like Mom. They even spent money in their poverty to take me to a doctor when I was young to help me grow taller! Did they do this for the glory of God or for other motives?

But I too had to grow up and to go beyond the great lackings of our parents. I too could have rebelled, as at least one of our brothers did, and throw out my parents due to their hypocrisy and then throw out also their religion as an excuse to do whatever I pleased, like sex outside of marriage, without the restrictions of the 10 Commandments explained by the teaching authority that Jesus left us here on earth, the Church. I too could have embraced the delight of pride of feeling special and holy as our parents tried to maintain as is commonly done in the cults. Dad and Mom, as well as a great number of Christians, never reach a loving childlike trust in God and in His guidance through the Bible and His Church in order to come to realize that Jesus loves each of us more than we love ourselves, that His laws actually make us more free and joyful, instead of less free and less happy. Thus so many Christians did not grow out of their child egoism of immaturity, and they pass this on to their children.

The ones who led the 1968 massive rejection of authority on university campuses all over the world are now in positions of power! “The Woodstock Generation!”, those who received very little or no true altruistic example of love from the parents who threw out all rules in the sexual revolution, who never learned gratitude toward their creator nor toward their parents; the generation which separated freedom from the truth http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae_en.html) which meant license to do whatever you want to do without restrictions. Do you remember how Simon & Garfunkel mesmerized our generation telling us that we have no free will: “Like a rat in a maze the pattern before me lies” (“Patterns”), and thus we can blame everybody else for our problems: “When I think back at all the crap I learned in High School…” (“Kodachrome/Maybellene”). Remember how the “Fons” in “Happy Days” gave so many youth of our day a model that was contrary to the model and example that Christ gives to us. I remember Pat, when I returned after my first year in college and you finished the second year in high school, your personality had been totally changed into the model of the Fons; you were no longer Pat my brother but another person and I do not think you realized this. I was very surprised and very sad. Jesus offers us our true personality and character; the other very numerous god-less models and heroes of our day destroy the great design and personality that God has given to each of us. We make the choice which one we decide to follow and imitate and God respects that choice for all eternity! Contrast this hideous and immature attitude of the “great people” thrust upon us today by the motors of the culture of death with gratitude toward God, parents and teachers! We have all received so much from our Creator Who gave us all that we have freely out of love. So many ungrateful people are like tubes in which love enters at one end from God and from others and then they choose to block the other end of the tube, themselves, so as to use all they have been given for themselves rather than being an open tube which passes on the love received to others (Lk 8:38; Mt 10:8; Jn 1:12; Mt 7:7; Lc 11:9-13).

But I have a certain sympathy for these people because almost all of them come from families poisoned by the contraceptive mentality of their parents; the so-called sexual revolution, free from all restraints or rules which is false love and leads to the worst slavery; true love means to set oneself aside or sacrifice oneself for the good of the other ! Is a train more free off the railroad tracks or are preschool children more free outside of the protecting walls of the playground? We have swallowed the lies of the father of lies, Satan, offered to us by his numerous followers, especially today! When one does not earnestly pray everyday to seek to discover and do (“Thy will be done”!) God’s holy and saving will, one no longer is able to distinguish between good and evil, right or wrong, beautiful lies and promises, bad fruits and true good fruits as Jesus warned us: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits” (Mt 7:15-16). Those in the state of grace, who truly follow and live God’s commandments and Gospel, will be able to RECOGNIZE THIS DECEPTION. For those who do not "God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." (2Thess 2:11-12).

I followed the advice of my parents to leave UCLA and to go with Ann to Necedah, Wisconsin. Even though at Necedah I was totally surrounded by the sectarian mentality that the outside world is all bad and we special people at the Shrine were specially chosen by the Mother of God, somehow God gave me the grace to begin to realize the foundation there in the cult at Necedah was not one of humility and trust in God but rather pride and trust in self. When I succeeded in putting this intuition into words in the book “The Catholic Church and Private Revelation” (http://priv-rev.blogspot.com), my parents, in a real sense, excommunicated me from the family and it was a relief for me to go to Italy and enter a religious congregation, the Oblates of the Virgin Mary.

I believe that at least one of the paragraphs that Dad and Mom were not too happy with was the following:

“9.5: The Pit of Cynical Self-Deception:

But one of the most self devastating talents of rebellious man is the art of making rationalizations, excuses and exceptions for himself even though he subjectively thinks he is objective. What a deep pit of blind and proud self deception! Who can help such a one or such a group all stampeding in the name of God or Mary or holiness in the same perilous direction ironically away from God and His representatives? … (http://priv-rev.blogspot.it/2008/04/pr-chapter-ix.html).

When the illicit bishop at Necedah, Benedetto, read the following two paragraphs, he exclaimed to the our younger sister and her husband, who were present, “He (Brother Paul as I was known in the short-lived Franciscan order at Necedah) was writing this for us, for me!” The our younger sister and her husband acknowledge this in 1986 but later, without the help of prudent guidance or at least the study of Church history and the accompanying documents, they easily slid back into the sectarian mentality and thus closed themselves off from any input different from the sectarian mentality.

Put here Catholicism, by Barron, 130106, about fundamental definition of sin, closure….

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“7.14: Unconditional Surrender:

It is good to note that heresies and schisms in Church history did not come about all of a sudden. There were always various factors involved that developed in time. Besides the unwillingness to follow the teachings and guidance of Holy Mother Church, one of the major reasons for schism and heresy was ignorance, both culpable and non-culpable, about the Catholic faith, especially about what the Church is. The schismatics generally did not know what the three attributes and the four marks of the Church were or meant. Thus, when they left the Church, the Vine and source of all life, they did not miss her too much because they never developed a prudent appreciation of the Church based on solid reasonable truth from their catechisms. The leaders of some of the schismatic groups, which attempted to reunify with the Church, often would only go as far as they were willing to as the negotiations progressed. In other words, these lukewarm or stubborn schismatic leaders desired to reunite to the Vine due to their weak but bothered consciences but only under their terms and not the terms presented to them by the Church through her representatives which was normally the seated local ordinary who then corresponded with Rome. The leaders and followers of the schismatic or heretical groups who remained outside of the Church did not possess enough love or knowledge of Holy Mother Church and the importance of being united to her. Thus, they were unwilling to give up what ever was holding them back from unconditional surrender to our gentle but firm mother on earth, the Church.

It is also interesting to note that many schismatic or heretical branches which broke away from the Vine understood the meaning, at least for a while of the word apostolic. Thus, many such renegade branches who had a valid bishop within their group (usually the leader), carefully maintained their valid and documented apostolic succession in order to retain valid orders and thus valid sacraments. These types of groups, while admitting the validity and necessity of valid orders obtained from an apostolic succession all the way back to the apostles, who received their sacramental powers from Christ, DENIED ONE OF THE THREE MAJOR DIVINE ATTRIBUTES OF CHRIST'S CHURCH, AUTHORITY. Christ gave the Apostles, and thus the Church, the power and authority to infallibly teach, to rule, and to sanctify all willing men to the end of time. Almost invariably, a reform movement within a heretical group did not result in bringing most of the group into the Church but at least it brought the many of good will who were willing to accept truth when it was shown to them. A good example of this was the Oxford Movement in England, lead by John Henry, later Cardinal Newnan, within the heretical group called Anglicanism which began as a schism under Henry VIII (1534) but became a heresy under his successor Edward VI. (http://priv-rev.blogspot.it/2008/04/ch-7-ark-guided-by-dove.html).

But for a whole year I did not succeed in sleeping very well due to this expulsion by my parents. After the death of Dad (April 2007), the our younger sister’s family succeeded in leading Mom out of the Church. I had bought a plane ticket in December of 2007 to come to visit Mom, but finally she had the courage to tell me the real truth that she had left the Catholic Church and that I was not a validly ordained priest and that she did not want me to come home and celebrate in her home a false Mass. I continued to call Mom about once a month, but frequently she would vent her bothered conscience at me with the sectarian schismatic mentality that she learned from the totally controlled and closed environment of the Sedevacantists; I would simply respond with the straightforward truth which she could not tolerate. One time she said to me: “Well what is more important than the Latin Mass?” I responded immediately: “Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ!” And she was silent. She never matured to the point of seeking each day what Jesus wants. As for so many people today, religion exists to serve me not to help me serve God; things are totally upside down! Finally in March 2012, when she heard my voice on her phone secretary, she no longer responded to my phone calls; I am surprise it took her that long to close up totally as did the our younger sister and her husband years ago into the safety of their cult cut off from the outside world and any explanation not filtered by the cult. When I called Tom for his birthday in July, he told me that Mom will not talk to me anymore until I ask for forgiveness (I found this somewhat amusing since Mom does not respond to my telephone calls, so how can I ask forgiveness for telling her that she should return to the Church!)! After having suffered greatly years ago (1983-1984) after being rejected by my parents, this time it was not difficult at all. "Think not that I have come to send peace upon the earth: I have come not to send peace, but the sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be those of his own household. He that loves his father or mother more than me (or His Church?!?) is not worthy of me: and he that loves his son or daughter more than me (or His Church?!?) is not worth of me." (Mt 10:34-37)!

People are free to pout and to throw their tantrums and have a “pity party” even though it does great harm to themselves and to those around them, or they are free to try to learn to dialogue together to seek the truth outside of their heads or outside their special group, or outside those who feel they are more intelligent and wise and “politically correct”! But this requires diligent daily prayer to acquire this true humility and trust in their Creator instead of themselves. If a person is truly seeking the Truth outside of their own heads, they would be willing to listen also to those who are not in agreement with themselves, those outside their “special group” or cult. The spirit of Truth leads to openness; the spirit of non-truth leads to closure in oneself and in a very restricted group. Certainly there is a lot of crazy people and groups today which are to be avoided. But as Dad used to say every once in a while: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going!” The tough do not abandon their station, their position, in the heat of the battle covered with blood, in the greatest onslaught against God and His Church (Mt 24:21), against His laws and His true followers. Precisely when the world was very far from God and many had rejected their Creator, God the Father did not abandon us or close in on Themselves (the Most Holy Trinity), but rather sent His only begotten Son into the world, even though most of His creatures rejected Him (Jn 1:10-11) and ended up crucifying Him on the cross!

Jesus founded His Church on sinners like you and me, not on confirmed saints or angels in heaven. People who have slid into the sectarian mentality believe that only their little group is perfect and holy and totally orthodox (and “saved”!)! How many similar groups in the history of the Church are no longer in existence such as the Donatists of the fifth century, etc.; but the same pharisaical attitude continues to show up again and again. If you cut yourself off from the vine, the branch withers away. (Jn 15:5-6).

The Church on earth, the “Church Militant”, is made up of saints and sinners and everything else in between (Mt 13: 36-40, 47-50). In the early Church the heretical cult, the Donatists, explained these two parables of the fish and of the weeds in a rather simplistic way: the Church was made up of only the good people and the world was made up of all the evil people without hope of salvation. The Church would be in the world as a “closed garden” or better, the Ark of Noah in which only for the very few there is salvation from the general flood. St. Augustine’s thought won out which was that of the universal Church. The Church herself is a field in which grow weeds and good seed, bad and good together . St. Augustine even exclaimed: “How many sheep there are outside the Church and how many wolves are inside!” The world is not divided into children of darkness and children of light; but rather we are all children of darkness, we are all weeds, but destined, if we desire it, to become children of the light and good grain, receiving the Kingdom and converting ourselves. Nothing is fixed or fatal, no castes of the elect or of the damned. The field is, yes, the world, but it is also the Church: the place in which there is room to grow, to convert oneself and above all to imitate the patience of God. “The bad exist in this world either so that they might convert themselves, or that by way of them the good exercise patience” (St. Augustine).

Just like Adam and Eve lost their spiritual and material inheritance for themselves and for their progeny, so too parents who leave the Catholic Church deprive their children of the great gift of the Church here on earth. Those who cut themselves off from the vine will wither (Jn 15: 5-6), as is shown also by Church history. Church history shows that even in the most difficult times, the true followers of Christ did not succumb to a closed mentality or enter a cult, like the Donatists, trying to defend themselves from the strong spiritual onslaughts of Satan of the times. We must always fight for the truth even though there are many sinners “and wolves”, as St. Augustine put it, in the Church. There are many good examples of this spiritual toughness today such as seen on EWTN.

We must distinguish between heresy, apostasy, and schism. Heresy is denying a revealed truth. Schism is rejecting the authority of the Church, particularly the authority of the Roman pontiff as head of the Church. Apostasy is rejecting completely the Christian religion (CCC 817-819; CIC canon 751). “However, one cannot charge with the sin of the separation those who at present are BORN INTO THESE COMMUNITIES [that resulted from such separation] and in them are brought up in the faith of Christ, and the Catholic Church accepts them with respect and affection as brothers” (CCC 818).

If one is sincere with God and prays a lot, each rejection helps us to become more attached to the Truth, Who is God, and less attached to the false and temporal and pleasurable and prideful values or things that this world offers to each of us in very stimulating, alluring and subtle ways today with the mass media, destructive indoctrination in our schools and even in most religious institutions. We so easily and so willingly forget that life is a battle, a “DOUR COMBAT with the powers of evil” (CCC 409)! We all want to relax; but if we relax in a combat, the enemy advances immediately. Our enemy is much more intelligent than we are and never sleeps. One of his main tactics is to lure us to sleep spiritually so that we do not wake up until he offers his hospitality to us in his eternal abode. If the enemy does not succeed in luring us to sleep, he seeks to pervert our motives into pride.

After the sudden expulsion from the religious congregation, the Oblates of the Virgin Mary (1990), as well as a similar rejection by an Italian Pastor (2001; “Let Us Love Our Spouse”; http://spir-food.blogspot.com/2008/05/let-us-love-our-spouse.html), I took the advice of the Servant of God, Archbishop Fulton Sheen, and I began making a holy hour every day before the Most Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle. I cannot tell you how much this has helped me! A child was once asked what does it mean to love someone. The child simply answered to want to spend time with that person! How much time do we spend with Jesus in prayer and before Jesus in Person in the tabernacle of every Catholic Church? Who do we really love?

It was also very interesting to me that exactly during the same month (March 2012) that I no longer had a home in the United States, after over 25 years in Italy, the Italian government finally gave me the Italian citizenship. The providence of God was not lacking and was right on time!

I write this that it might help us to go forward without throwing out the baby (Jesus and His Church) with the bathwater (the great lackings and weaknesses of others) which is always a very strong temptation, especially if one has not persevered in sincere humble constant prayer to arrive at a loving trusting relationship with the One Who loves us most, Jesus. I hope these personal reflections will help. I realize that these words might be very strong if one has not formed a habit of prayer and seeking the truth each day. These words in this email would have been hard for me to swallow years ago. But unfortunately, life is short, and in particular for our generation because so few people are praying! When people do not want to consider the reality before them today in regards to the world situation (“Ignorance is bliss!”), I tell them simply that if more people would have been praying 100 years ago, Hitler would not have been able to do what he did. Today there are much less people praying than 100 years ago! The Body of Christ will be crucified in our generation which will purify the Church.

I am not a pessimist. We know the last chapter of the book! The true followers of Christ win, but after the crucifixion! But we should be realists like St. Thomas, based on the purely objective reality created by God. The further we get a field of this base of objective truth the more easily Satan and his puppets can manipulate us and lead us astray in any direction they decide.

In the prophetic classic book, written for our very difficult times, “True Devotion To The Blessed Virgin by St. Louis de Montfort”, Montfort writes:

“I will place enmities between you and the woman, between your race and her race; she will crush your head and you will lie in wait for her heel” (Gen. 3:15) (51). “God has established only one enmity–but it is an irreconcilable one–which will last and even go on increasing to the end of time. That enmity is between Mary, his worthy Mother, and the devil, between the children and the servants of the Blessed Virgin and the children and followers of Lucifer.” (52). “What Lucifer lost by pride Mary won by humility.” (53). “God has established not just one enmity but "enmities", and not only between Mary and Satan but between her race and his race. That is, God has put enmities, antipathies and hatreds between the true children and servants of the Blessed Virgin and the children and slaves of the devil.” (54)

Two armies are now being formed in our period of time: the army of Mary made up of the truly humble who submit to the lawful Authority that Jesus Christ left us, and the army of Lucifer whose members submit only to themselves in relativism or their special or perfect groups. In our generation will be fulfilled “she will crush your head and you will lie in wait for her heel”!

See also: “CARDINAL IVAN DIAS AT LOURDES ANNOUNCES: WE ARE AT THE FINAL BATTLE BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND ANTICHURCH. (Visit: “An Open Letter To A Fellow Priest”; http://testimony-polo.blogspot.com/2009/11/open-letter-to-fellow-priest.html).

The German people were not evil. The Japanese people were not evil. The Russian people were not evil. But it was a VERY FEW IDEOLOGUES that seized control and then MANIPULATED A COMPLACENT AND UNWARY POPULACE. Let us not say that it cannot happen in America! According to Edmund Burke, evil triumphs when the good do nothing. If the Godly, who have not fallen into the fundamental trap of being distracted and complacent with all kinds of illicit and detrimental pleasures, and do not go out to fight the forces of evil, the forces of evil will come to us. Those of good will, all true Christians (not the pharisaical proud or those who have embraced “license” to do whatever they please as freedom detached from the Truth!), are the stars of Heaven, so we must shine brightly especially today! On the darkest night, the stars shine the brightest. Today we are truly in the darkest spiritual night that ever was on the face of the earth. “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you!” -- Pericles (430 B.C.).

DO NOT FORGET THAT GERMANY WAS THE MOST EDUCATED, THE MOST CULTURED COUNTRY IN EUROPE. It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And yet, in less than six years (a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency) it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors. … all with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

"WE THE PEOPLE", is one of the most-quoted sections of the Constitution and of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. President Abraham Lincoln, at his famous “Gettysburg Address” in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863, said: … “that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Let us not pervert and destroy our country by changing Lincoln’s words to: “that government of the government, by the government, for the government”! Our precious and wisely written United States Constitution begins with the words: “We the People”! We must not let these ruthless conceited bureaucrats interpret this God-inspired document as: “WE THE GOVERNMENT”! This was precisely the reason for the American Revolution!

THE FIRST AMENDMENT OF OUR CONSTITUTION GUARANTEES THE FREEDOM TO PRACTICE ONES RELIGION PRIVATELY AND PUBLICLY. This is our most precious gift which many countries in the world do not enjoy; it is also the most important reason that our founding fathers of our great country came to America. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES IS NO LONGER FOLLOWED BY THE CURRENT ADMINISTRATION IN WASHINGTON D.C. If people do not pray and become more and more united to the Truth, Who is God, in humility and trust, they end up not knowing right from wrong, just from unjust, good from evil, even though they consider themselves wise and intelligent (Mt 11:25); in this way they end up being led by the pied piper, Satan and his very numerous followers today. And thus they are unable to distinguish between beautiful lies and true good and lasting fruits which help society and the fundamental cell of the society, the family. It is easier to believe beautiful lies than to work hard to study how a candidate has voted in the past and the laws that he has promoted. Has the candidate truly helped to build up society and the fundamental cell of society, the family? In many countries of the world, especially the rich countries where radical secularism has taken a very strong hold on society and the mind set of the people, good and evil are totally turned up side down. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!” (Is 5:20-21). This is why so many government leaders who are working together to arrive at the “New World Order” promote as their first priority, in a way as hidden and covert as possible, all kinds of illicit sex, pornography, abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, and the division and thus the weakening of the Catholic Church, so that the people do not care where the government is leading them, as long as they have their spaghetti, wine and sex. From a website in Italian one finds the following in regards to MASONRY AND SEXUAL CORRUPTION (http://cattoliciliberi.forumcommunity.net/?t=25524939) (visit: “Catholic Prophecy Today” (http://markbeast.blogspot.com). The great God-given gift and power and energy of the sexual drive can be used to build up society or to destroy society, just as fire can be used to warm the house or burn down the house. The devil knows this all too well. This is why our Lady of Fatima told the three children: “MORE SOULS GO TO HELL BECAUSE OF SINS OF THE FLESH than for any other reason.” At Fatima, the Blessed Virgin Mary told the three child seers that many souls go to hell because they have no one to pray or make sacrifices for them. In her Memoirs, Sister Lucy describes the vision of hell that Our Lady showed the children at Fatima: (http://www.fatima.org/essentials/facts/hell.asp).

Christians and Catholics who are in favor of abortion could care less what Jesus wants, or why Jesus died on the cross! They have made themselves little gods and they decide what is right or wrong, and then, as little gods, they have convinced themselves that hell does not exist or that there is nothing after death! Those so-called Catholic politicians who say I am against abortion as the Church teaches but then say I cannot impose my beliefs on others is like saying I am against murder but I cannot impose on others to not be able to murder others according to the law. For believers, at conception God gives the embryo an immortal, adult soul just like grown people!

On September 24, 2008, your wife wrote to me by email: “You probably need to stop sending us the smears about Barack Obama. You are not going to change our minds about him. We continue to be active in his campaign. I respect your views on abortion, and would not try to change your mind. Barack Obama does support Roe vs. Wade, as I do.”

When several cousins reacted negatively about what I revealed about Obama before the elections of 2008, I responded in an email of November 4, 2008: “I believe that if a person openly proclaims that the first thing he would do as president of the USA would be to promote and increase the incredible genocide of killing tens of millions of helpless, defenseless, innocent human beings, I believe that this person would be CAPABLE OF ANYTHING!” I then quoted the following:

"The first thing I'd do as president is sign the "Freedom of Choice Act" (FOCA). That's the first thing that I'd do." -- Senator Barack Obama, speaking to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, July 17, 2007 (http://www.nrlc.org/foca/index.html).

Beware also of FOCA-By-Stealth. Abortion advocates are counting on the economy and other pressing issues to divert the attention of the American people so they can surreptitiously and with little resistance advance their radical pro-abortion agenda. Read more about FOCA-By-Stealth at http://www.aul.org/FOCA_by_stealth; FOCA-by-Stealth Timeline: How Congress and the Obama Administration are Implementing FOCA BY STEALTH; http://www.aul.org/FOCAbyStealthTimelin.

It all depends if we follow the instruction manual of the Creator of ourselves, our families, our society and the whole universe. In the Catholic Church one can truly point to one place to find the fullness of truth of Divine Revelation and saving "elements of sanctification" (Lumen Gentium, no. 8) by which the faithful may be configured to Christ (http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html). But the Church also tells us: “Moreover, some, even very many, of the most significant elements and endowments which together go to build up and give life to the Church itself, can exist outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church…” “All who have been justified by faith in Baptism are incorporated into Christ; they therefore have a right to be called Christians, and with good reason are accepted as brothers in the Lord by the children of the Catholic Church.” (UR 3, 4; http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19641121_unitatis-redintegratio_en.html).

“Even though incorporated into the Church, one who does not however persevere in charity is not saved. He remains indeed in the bosom of the Church, but “in body” not “in heart” (LG 14; CCC 819). The Church clearly teaches against indifferentism and subjectivism (DH 1; Dignitatis Humanae, no. 1; http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651207_dignitatis-humanae_en.html).

How many Catholics do not make these distinctions and end up leaving the saving Ship left for us by Christ because they trusted more in their own intelligence and wisdom! This logic seems to imply that only the intelligent people go to heaven because they knew more than the Church and the Pope, guided by the Holy Spirit (Mt 16:18), while the unintelligent people who trust and submit to some guy in Rome in union with other heads of the dioceses around the world go to hell! “I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes” (Mt 11:25)!

THOMAS JEFFERSON, our 3rd. President of the USA, declared “That government is best which governs least.” He also said: “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have...” Is this not right in line with the Church’s principle of subsidiarity? I wrote the following paragraph to my representatives in the senate and in the congress: “Please promote the principle of subsidiarity so that our country does not become a socialistic dictatorship but remains “for the people and by the people”. SUBSIDIARITY is an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. The Oxford English Dictionary defines subsidiarity as the idea that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level. Let us give the power back to the people before it is too late!”

It doesn't take a brain surgeon to conclude that Mr. Jefferson must be whirling in his grave at the current effort by President Barack Obama to increase our government to a size and scope unprecedented in history, using taxpayer money in amounts that exceed our comprehension. With each new bill touted as "crucial" for the economy, the government is getting MORE CONTROL over banks, health care, jobs, housing and more. It is an all-out assault on capitalism and the form of government conceived and enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. With the Obamacare, we now have a huge bureaucracy between the patient and the doctor (totally against the principle of subsidiarity) and we are forced to pay for the murder of innocent, helpless and unwanted human beings, a true genocide! All those who have supported this diabolical agenda will find themselves in the category to be eliminated in the near future, if not for all eternity, if they do not repent, ask for God’s forgiveness and change their lives before it is too late!

If the citizens are not diligent in their moral life nourished with much prayer, slowly the citizens take the easy way of letting the government do more and more for them, allowing the government to acquire more and more power. We slowly become used to the idea that our rights come from the state, the government, and we surrender our rights to the state so that tomorrow the government can then take our rights away. Without diligent prayer and the living out of that prayer we quickly forget what was paid for with blood in the American Revolution and then wisely written in the declaration of independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” (http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/).

States and governments come and go, but people who do not pray to seek and do the will of God forget that they have a soul that does not come and go; the human soul from conception is immortal. This is why the declaration of independence had it totally right, written by men who believed in God and lived out what they believed. If the people give the government the power to legally eliminate categories of human beings such as unwanted babies or unwanted old people, tomorrow the government can change the category of people not protected by law and anyone of us can find ourselves in that category to be eliminated. One does not have to look too far back in history to see this process of the loss of living out ones faith: 75 years ago in Germany, 100 years ago in Russia, etc. We are quickly sliding ever more deeply into the culture of death where there will be no respect for life as it is in hell.

When I try to help people realize how far they have slid into relativism and no longer use religion discover God’s will and then to do God’s holy will but to serve themselves and to do their will, I cannot help thinking of how it must have been for Noah building the Ark as the people in the city laughed at him!

OUR LADY AT AKITA, JAPAN TOLD US IN 1973: "As I told you, if men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity. It will be a PUNISHMENT GREATER THAN THE DELUGE, such as one will never have seen before. Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor faithful. The survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead. The only arms that will remain for you will be the Rosary and Sign left by My Son. Each day recite the prayers of the Rosary. With the Rosary, pray for the pope, the bishops, and the priests."

"The work of the devil will infiltrate even the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against other bishops. The priests who venerate Me will be scorned and opposed by their conferees…churches and altars sacked, the Church will be full of those who accept compromise and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord. The demon will be especially implacable against souls consecrated to God. The thought of the loss of so many souls is the cause of My sadness. If sins increase in number and gravity, there will be no longer pardon for them." (http://www.miraclerosarymission.org/akita.htm).

If we could see the adult soul given to God at conception to every embryo, we would die of joy immediately! But those who do not pray and live their prayer, not only do not believe this by faith but want to destroy it for their own convenience! Those who proclaim the greatness of the human soul are scoffed at and ridiculed by those who have willingly lost and eradicated inside themselves the knowledge and faith given to them by God, imprinted on their very souls and hearts.

Just about all Christians say the Our Father: “Thy will be done”. But in practice today, the great majority of Christians live: “My will be done”! For a great number of Christians God for them is like a Coca Cola machine, a vending machine in which you put the coin in (a little prayer) and they expect the Coca Cola or whatever they want to come out of the machine. They do not trust in God but in themselves and in their intelligence and wisdom, and thus they do not seek to discover what God wants them to do, even though what God wants them to do is the best for them.

Those who have more responsibility given to them by God, such as bishops and priests, more will be required of them in this “final confrontation” between good and evil.

One of our brothers continued to frequent the sacraments regularly and to pray the Rosary, as he had learned from his family of birth, up until his second year of college. At a certain point he began to have sexual relations with girls before marriage without repenting or going to confession. He also began to focus on the defects of his father which helped him to justify throwing out all together the Catholic faith that he received from his parents. After more that 30 years outside of the Church and away from the sacraments, he even make the statement that all religions are the same. One of his poor sons, who was deprived of the inestimable gift of the Catholic faith, said: “I consider myself a deist”. A year ago when I telephoned our brother, he expressed to me his preoccupation about the date, December 21, 2012. Those who reject God the Creator will end up filling the void and believing in something; in this case, the infallible guide for my friend was no longer God, Jesus Christ, or the Church Christ founded, the Catholic Church with the Pope as the head, but science. I described to my friend what science had discovered, with the help of the computer, what the wise men saw 2000 years ago which motivated them to make a trip of about 1000 kilometers in order to find the King of the Jews born in Bethlehem. Unfortunately, after I finished this explanation, my friend was not interested in continuing our conversation on the phone since his infallible guide, science, had confirmed the extraordinary signs left by the Creator in the giant precise system of orbiting bodies in the universe, regarding the birth of Jesus Christ (http://spir-food.blogspot.com/2011/01/epiphany.html). (“Not 2012 But 2017!”; http://god-politics.blogspot.com/2012/03/not-2012-but-2017.html).

What the world does not tell us, as well as so many leaders in the Church due to human respect, is that true love means respecting our great dignity, being created in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27) and thus RESPECTING OUR CHOICE, OUR FREE WILL, even if we choose to eternally destroy ourselves by running from the Truth. The dignity, and thus the responsibility of parents, priests and bishops is very great! Saint John Crisostomo, Saint John Eudes and Saint Athanasius wrote about what the floor (bones of priests and religious) and the lamps (skulls of bishops) in hell are made of! OUR LADY AT GARABANDAL (Spain, 1965) revealed that "many cardinals, many bishops and many priests are following the road to perdition, and with them they are taking many more souls.” Contrary to common belief, the Catholic Church has never condemned Garabandal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garabandal_apparitions). It is very interesting that Our Lady revealed this at about the time that Pope Paul VI published Humanae Vitae, reaffirming the Churches constant teaching that artificial contraception is a grave sin and will end up destroying society and the family, the fundamental cell of society, by separating the marital act from responsibility and life, and by leading men to see women as sexual objects rather than as persons to love. A great number of lay people, priests and bishops ignored or rebelled against Humanae Vitae. Now is the first time in history that there are more grandparents than children; this is the fundamental reason for the crash of the economy – there are not enough children to pay for the retirement pensions. I once told my parishioners that if sometime in the future I begin to loose the faith and to preach in opposition to what the Pope teaches on faith and morals, “DO NOT FOLLOW ME TO HELL”! “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed” (Gal 1:8). We must pray very much for the first targets of Satan, those who received more responsibility in the “dour combat”, as Our Lady asks us often: PRAY FOR THE POPE, BISHOPS AND THE PRIESTS! Just as a mother cannot substitute for the role and the vocation of the father, and vise versa, so too the lay people cannot substitute for the priests and the bishops but can pray and offer sacrifices for them!

At a bar here in Italy, which also sells magazines, where I live and go for a cup of coffee after my daily Mass, one of the wives (co-owner of the bar; two family owners), was talking about the calendar, which they sell, with a completely nude woman on the front. I said to her that she will have to render an account to God after her death for selling pornography in her store. She was not happy with me and became frustrated. I then said to her that we men, as God has created us, when we habitually look at pornography without repenting and seeking to amend our lives, begin to look upon women as objects of pleasure instead of persons to appreciate and to esteem. She said with indignation: “But who says this?” I answered, Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae! I then said to her that when husbands, who are habituated to looking at pornography, make love with their wives, they are making love with the image of the pornography in their head, not with their wives, which is a true betrayal! Italians in general are very adept to making banal everything including the most sacred things of our faith. A week later her husband put a poster (about 36x24 inches) of a fully naked woman outside at the entrance of his bar in public view. When I protested he justified himself with an attitude of arrogance and laughing at me saying that God made women beautiful so why not look at them? He then pulled out another copy of what he posted outside his bar to show it to me close up inside the bar. I said that according to his logic men then should look at beautiful naked women and then leave their wives and break up the family and leave the children abandoned! He continued to joke and laugh at me. I am even more sad that the Pastor of the parish, who was present, just smiled and laughed at the inappropriate jokes so as to be in agreement with everyone as his way of treating others in a nice way and not being in disagreement with anyone! This Pastor is very generous and kind but it seems to me that his definition of “love” is to try to offer what the people want so that the people are all happy; when there is a conflict of interests between what he thinks the people want and what one reads in the Bible as explained by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, he ignores or pushes aside what the people do not want to hear.

To read the rest of this experience, visit: http://wordbelife.blogspot.it/2013/04/james-59.html.

If we do not seek the Truth with much suffering and prayer, listening to those who do not agree with us, there is a great risk of not spending eternity with the Truth! The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 1035) as well as the saints clearly tell us that the greatest pain in hell, more than all other pains put together, is the total and absolute and eternal separation of the creature from its Creator, Who is the TRUTH! The great majority of the people today have taken as their philosophy of life: “Ignorance is bliss”! Saint Faustina (died 1938) wrote in her diary: “Today, I was led by an Angel to the chasms of hell… But I noticed one thing: that MOST OF THE SOULS THERE ARE THOSE WHO DISBELIEVED THAT THERE IS A HELL.” (Diary, 741). Today, a great number of people have conveniently and willingly swallowed this lie that hell and the devil do not exist! Even many bishops have lost the faith and are leading many souls with them (http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=2879; http://www.vaticans.org/index.php?/archives/61-An-interview-with-the-Vaticans-chief-excorcist,-Father-Gabriele.html)!

So many people today have opted for the easier choice of not seeking the Truth outside their own heads and have convinced themselves that hell does not exist so that there are no consequences for not seeking and living the Truth. Relativism, according to Pope Benedict XVI, is "the most profound difficulty of our time." (http://popebenedictxviblog.blogspot.it/2005_05_01_archive.html; http://www.vatican.va/gpII/documents/homily-pro-eligendo-pontifice_20050418_en.html).

I realize that some of the topics in this letter are rather personal and revealing about the great lackings in our “dysfunctional family”. It might seem disrespectful to talk about these things while our mother is still alive, but it helps tremendously for each of us to understand our roots so as to see if we have been led knowingly or unknowingly, culpably or not culpably, in some wrong directions which have hindered us, often in a significant way, from arriving to true happiness which can only be found from the One Who created us.

I realize that these words would have been very difficult for me to understand years ago, and still more difficult to not reject immediately without pondering on these words with an open mind. But with the death of John and all that we have all gone through as a “dysfunctional family” (as you put it Pat), I think it might be of help for those of us who are willing to learn from each other and willing to take the risk of dialogue among ourselves. But this is not easy; it takes a lot of sincere prayer and humility to be able to open ourselves up to consider the possibility that we have allowed ourselves to take the wrong way out of pride or out of taking the easy way without restrictions from outside of ourselves, in particular, from God’s saving laws. I believe it is of the utmost importance, to save our very immortal souls, to talk about these things even though in this email I have indicated some of the fundamental lackings, culpable or non culpable, of our parents which have greatly influenced each of us. Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote: “Rarely affirm, seldom deny, always distinguish.” We must distinguish between the objective and the subjective; we must judge the actions which are objectively wrong so as not to do the same and perhaps give fraternal correction, but we should never judge subjectively, that is, the persons moral guilt which only God knows, since we do not know their motives, their intentions, their whole life’s history or even the graces and knowledge they have received from God. Those who are running away from the Truth do not want to make this distinction and thus accuse those who condemn the sin of condemning the sinner; this is why the homosexuals are very angered with the true Christians who hate the sin as Christ does (the act of homosexuality) but love the sinner (the person with the homosexual orientation).

But it can help a lot to see where we have come from, to be able to shed light on some of the psychological and spiritual traps we have been led into, as well as some of the things that have hurt us and led us in the wrong direction to our great detriment and spiritual blindness and possible eternal separation from our Creator. While we are alive everything can be changed with a good confession and a change of life with lots of daily prayer. The saints tell us that those who pray end up being saved; those who do not pray end up losing their immortal souls. After death, nothing can be changed for all eternity whether we believe it or not! This is why I also sent this email to our relatives (bcc) so as to offer them these thoughts about our roots that we all have inherited in one way or another.

I remember once Dad saying that it is not good to talk to children about a bad teacher that they might have in school at the time, but later in life it can help to sit down and talk about some of the non positive influences that were received by such a teacher.

What was the reaction of King David in the Old Testament when the prophet Nathan (2 Sam 12:1-13) pointed out the truth to David? Did David say to Nathan that your words are “very offensive” and thus refused to communicate with Nathan from then on? David had humility even though he was the king of all of Israel.

Those with some humility will probably end up being grateful for the concern of someone else to offer fraternal correction and wish to continue dialogue to learn more so as to go toward greater freedom in the Truth; those with little or no humility will most likely rebel and become even more hardened in their chosen path and reject any further dialogue with those who offer such correction even with all the best intentions, and perhaps even close in on themselves into a closed group. But even though there is this risk, God tells us to offer fraternal correction for the good of the one offered council and for others who might have been scandalized.

“If I say to the wicked, O wicked man, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way; he shall die in his iniquity, but you will have saved your life.” (Ezek 33:8-9).

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. …” (Mt 18:15-16).

Pat, tell me why you do not agree, let us dialogue to seek the truth together. Eternity is at stake!

I am sorry to hear about your motorcycle accident and the damage to your legs. As I said at the end of our phone call Pat: “I want to spend eternity with you!” I want to play tennis with you for all eternity, not just during this very short life. But there is no Easter without Good Friday, and there is no Resurrection without the crucifixion in our own personal lives in union with Christ crucified! “The Truth (big “T”) shall set you free”!!! (Jn 8:32), not the false truth (little “t”) of relativism so pervasive and destructive in our culture today! (About relativism, read the homily of Cardinal Ratzinger at the Mass preceding the conclave that quickly elected him Pope Benedict XVI: http://www.vatican.va/gpII/documents/homily-pro-eligendo-pontifice_20050418_en.html). “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father, but by Me” (Jn 14:6). Many try to copout of the responsibilities of living our call to seek and live the Truth by saying “Who knows” (agnostics) or even flat out denying the Truth. But I say to these type of “Catholics” here in Italy that to carry this logic to it’s logical conclusion would imply that God is an idiot because He gave us the ability to reason and yet did not offer to His rational creatures the possibility to use this reason to discover the Truth so as to serve the Truth and then to spend eternity with the Truth in heaven, as we learned as children in the catechism.

If I truly want well for you Pat (as they say in Italian: “Ti voglio bene!”), true love, I want well for you above all for all eternity and not just this very short life, which is the kind of love that so many offer today, even among many priests and bishops. This is misguided compassion; this is false love!

I tell the Italians in my parishes to pray the Rosary like their grandparents did everyday as a family. Many give me the excuse that there is no time and that 70 years ago there was no TV and they worked together in the fields. I respond to them that it is certainly more difficult today to pray the family rosary as Fr. Patrick Peyton told the families to do 70 years ago. But God gives the grace of the vocation for each person, in particular in this case, to the father of the family to truly be the provider but above all the protector and leader spiritually to be able to say to those in his family after supper: “Let us turn off the TV and pray the Rosary together!” If something is important to each of us, we find time for that; if something is not very important to us, we never find time for that! Each one decides his priorities and God will respect that choice, because God is true Love, for all eternity! God will not force anyone to spend eternity with Him in heaven!

God does not change His mind. He created us with great dignity in His own image (Gen 1:26-27), equal to the angels, and He will respect this great dignity and corresponding responsibility and not treat us as animals after our death, even if we freely decide to forfeit this dignity and responsibility during our life time so as to live as animals which do not have an immortal soul.

Forgive me if I write a little too straight forward, but as you know I received my BA in mathematics. But I have come to realize that this was probably a blessing in disguise since the liberal arts departments of almost all the major universities adopted a very secular mind set to the point of becoming very Christophobic, rewriting history according to their nihilist agenda and excluding good literature such as the writings of G.K. Chesterton. It was more difficult for these God-less activists to change mathematical formulas even though the great majority of the professors in the science and math departments do not have the humility to open their eyes to the possibility of a personal Creator. I told my bishop that in mathematics I studied infinity which led me later to discovered eternity, but few professors made the same logical conclusion; faith and reason are not in opposition because they both come from the same Creator! It is far more illogical to seek to blot out and circumvent all the indications of an intelligent design in creation than to open ones mind and receive the facts and reality as they are perceived with our 5 senses in creation! Obviously the fundamental motives to choose this destructive illogic is to not submit to Someone bigger than oneself and to believe that there are no negative consequences for ones actions after death. After I entered seminary training, I began to develop a real desire and yearning to learn from the documents of the Church and the true and the false philosophical and theological foundations that lead us toward the eternal Truth and true freedom and joy, or away from the eternal Truth which gives one an initial feeling of pride and self-satisfaction but later becomes the worst kind of slavery. It takes work and effort to seek the Truth but it also takes work and a conscious effort to run from and blot out this Truth stamped into our very human nature by the Creator. It is interesting that in the USA, more than in Europe, there has been a reaction to this radical secularization of the universities, including most Catholic universities; there have sprung up recently many new Catholic universities loyal to the Truth protected by the authority of the Church that Christ left us here on earth before ascending to heaven. The numerous universities which have abandoned the Truth protected by Christ’s Church will die out as the Truth seekers will have to build new universities. This reminds me of how it is getting more and more difficult for the “Pro Choice” movement to find youth to carry forth the flag of the culture of death, because they have murdered so many of their children even before they had the chance to make their “CHOICE”, to live or to die, to kill others or to give them a chance to live!

In our times we can see that in modern man there is a growing tendency to disregard God, because God is considered to be too demanding and uncomfortable. Under the influence of many factors, people want to put God aside by simply eliminating Him from their lives as a useless and superfluous Being. Behind this attitude there lies a cultural view which takes the conquests of science as its starting point and sets out to convince us that scientific and technological progress will more and more enable man to solve his problems and conquer the world on his own. Modern man therefore thinks he is self-sufficient and this is his great sin. Without God man is deprived of his true meaning. Another way of shrugging off God, for people who do believe in him, is to not recognize or to deny the practical consequences of their faith. We Christians too, can often recognize ourselves in those Pharisees and Sadducees whom John the Baptist berated (Mt 3:8). How often we are Christians more because of certain inherited habits or a smattering of religious instruction, rather than out of deep conviction or a conscious choice of God! Do we not perhaps reduce our Christianity to external practices and conditions without committing ourselves to carrying out God's commandments, particularly the commandment to love our neighbor, in particular the ones most vulnerable and weak, the “smallest of my brethren” (Mt 25:40)?

We know that, in these modem times, to renounce asserting our independence and to open ourselves to the power of God is often considered to be a humiliation or a form of alienation. The fact is, however, that by asserting our own independence we become closed within ourselves and in the end we run up against our own limitations. If, instead, we open ourselves to God, we welcome into our lives One Who is greater than we are Who can truly help us to fulfil ourselves and be happy.

May I also take this opportunity to wish you a Holy Christmas with Baby Jesus, born in utter poverty, and later died naked and rejected on a cross for each of us, and Who is waiting for each of us in the tabernacle in every Catholic Church. Mary, His Mother, will help us imitate and follower her divine Child if we ask her, especially with the Holy Rosary! Without this divine help, it will be impossible to not get sucked into the very strong mentality of our society today poisoned with the culture of death and promoted with all the motors of our God-less, nihilistic, secular culture (mass media, schools, religious institutions, governments) using attractive slogans and beautiful lies. I would rather be a fool for Christ than politically correct! “He who denies Me before men will be denied before the angels of God” (Lk 12:9). No government or any group on earth can offer me eternal happiness in heaven. Only Jesus Christ can offer me eternal life, whether we believe this Truth or not!

Your brother,

Joe

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P.s. The following is what I wrote to Mom in May 2012 after having tried to call several times without any response on the telephone except the phone secretary.

Dear Mom,

Since no one responds anymore to my phone calls to your house, as it has been also for Russ and Ann since they left the Church, may I wish you a Happy Mothers day by normal mail?

Have a nice day.

Fr. Joe

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P.s.

I will no longer call you by phone unless you indicate to me otherwise.

I discovered by various emails sent to me, which also contained the email address of Russ and Ann, that Russ and Ann do receive my monthly emails but have NEVER responded to my emails. That is why a year ago I stopped sending a Christmas card to Russ and Ann, and they promptly stopped sending to me their Christmas card the following year, even though they never wrote anything on their Christmas cards in the past except “Merry Christmas”. Pouting can easily become a grave sin and separation from God if not resisted and fought against with much diligence and prayer and spiritual direction.

If people do not have even a little drop of humility to seek the Truth (big “T”) outside of their own head or outside of their own little groups (cults) which totally agree with what they want to believe inside their own heads (little “t”), they will never discover the Truth, Who is Jesus Christ. You can lead a horse to water but you cannot force the horse to drink. Out of love, God totally respects our free will, to seek and live the Truth outside of our heads, or to NOT seek and live the Truth, found outside of our own wisdom and intelligence, in creation and divine Revelation. God will not force anyone to spend eternity with the Truth, Who is Jesus! As Pope Benedict has pointed out many times, the greatest trap of the devil today is “relativism” in which each person decides the truth according to his or her likes and desires. One reads only what is in agreement with oneself or the cult that agrees with them. Reality is interpreted by themselves alone. In this way they make themselves gods who can decide good and evil, the truth, and even reality by themselves, which is fundamentally Original Sin (Gen 3:4-5). But the problem is, in the real heaven created by the real God for those who willing learn from Jesus Who is meek and humble of heart (Mt 11:29), there is room for only one God, not two!

“I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes; yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will” (Mt 11:25; Lk 10:21)!

It is interesting how pride makes us blind: for little things scruples, for big things no scruples!

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I write these things because I do not want you to suffer after death. The great majority of so-called “friends” today want you to be happy for this very short life but eternity, as it really is, does not matter at all. This is false “love” detached from the cross and from the Truth (relativism!). Pope John Paul II when asked what verse in all of the Bible to leave to the people of God, he answered without hesitation: “The Truth Shall Set You Free (Jn 8:32), because he knew very well that the vast majority of people today do not want to seek the Truth outside of their own heads or their restricted group which agrees with them. If one seeks the truth, there is the risk that they will have to change their lives and suffer or have to give up their great attachment to their pride of deciding all things for themselves. “Ignorance is bliss”, bliss perhaps now but not later or after death for all eternity!

By now, who will you let communicate to you from outside of your chosen and erected closure, from outside of your closed mentality who does not agree with you? It seems that the only option I have left to be able to help you is to put into practice the request of our Lady of Fatima who urged us to prayer and make sacrifices for the conversion of sinners!

Christmas Letter 2011

Dear friends and relatives,

How are you? I HOPE YOU HAD TIME TO PRAY in silence before Baby Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament so as to celebrate Christmas for the One WHOSE BIRTHDAY we celebrate and not for all the other motives and desires that we have allowed our secular world in recent years to instill into our heads and hearts. How many of our children have been spoiled in waiting for presents at Christmas and have not learned from their parents that Christmas is a time to bring to this divine Baby presents of prayers, sacrifices and adoration? This Baby came to serve, not to be served. How many of us have remained spiritually immature like children who never learned to serve others as their parents and many others had done for them. For these undeveloped people religion exists to serve them; for them religion does not exist to help us discover the will of Baby Jesus and then, with the help of the saving Sacraments, to do the will of this Baby. The will of this Baby for each of us is the best thing we could possibly do for ourselves, but we trust in ourselves and not in this Baby Who came to die for each of us!

How much time do we spend with our “DIVINE PRISONER” as Saint Therese would refer to her Beloved in the Eucharist?

How many people go to the beach during the summer months to get a good tan? How many people spend time before the SON to get a good spiritual tan by way of the divine rays emanating to those who are willing to “waste” time before the Creator of the sun and the entire universe? Just as it takes time to get a good sun tan, so too one must spent time before the divine Sun, without hurry, to absorb these PRECIOUS DIVINE RAYS, like milk for babies, drop by drop before the Most Blessed Sacrament! Jesus is a Person; it takes time to develop a personal relationship. Did we go before this divine Baby in the Most Blessed Sacrament, in adoration with the countless angels and saints, to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESUS? How many parents teach their children to pray on Christmas like this: “Dear Jesus, for your birthday present, I want to love You, I want to adore You, and I want to be like You. Sweet Mother Mary, lead me to Jesus, hold me in your arms, and give me to Jesus.”

The Servant of God, ARCHBISHOP FULTON SHEEN used to say: “If you want to give precious divine sparks to your loved ones and others, you must spend time before the Divine Fire, the Eucharist!” This Servant of God recommended to all priests to make A HOLY HOUR BEFORE THE MOST BLESSED SACRAMENT EACH DAY; he recommended a half hour for the laity. For more than 12 years now I have faithfully put these words into practice.

“It is only in eternity that we shall know THE GREAT MYSTERY EFFECTED IN US BY HOLY COMMUNION. O most precious moments of my life!” (Saint Faustina, Diary 840).

Just about everybody likes to see a cute baby. Often when I go to dinner in the homes of various families, when there is a cute little child present, the child gets all the attention. So too, Christmas is a special time.

But we so easily forget that THE BABE OF CHRISTMAS IS THE INFINITE GOD before whom the angels and saints adore continually with great delight and joy in Paradise. The infinite God Who created the entire universe, Who is outside of time and space, entered time and space for love of us. It would be like one of us becoming a dog to save the dogs, but then the dogs rejected their savior and killed him. The Gospel reading for Christmas day: “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He come to his own home, and HIS OWN PEOPLE RECEIVED HIM NOT” (Jn 1:10-11).

Two thousand years ago many expected a great Messiah in grand splendor who would liberate them from their oppressors; the great majority did not recognize this poor baby born in a cold stable for animals WHO CAME RATHER TO LIBERATE US FROM THE DOMINION OF SATAN and from our sins which are not even recognized or acknowledge by the great majority of people today. As Pope Pius XII and Pope John Paul II indicated to us, our greatest sin today is that WE HAVE LOST THE SENSE OF SIN and thus we have no need of a Redeemer; so many have willingly embraced relativism so as to live in practice as if they were gods as Adam and Eve did, deciding good and evil for themselves (Gen 3:4-5). Thus who needs Christmas except for perhaps a childhood nostalgia or a longing for a wholesome family environment which was more common 50 or 60 years ago. When this nostalgia no longer suits our fancies, any Christmas manifestations will be OUTLAWED IN THE “LAND OF THE FREE”! It is interesting that Christians tolerate and even love sinners (but hate the sin), as Christ did, but hardened sinners do not tolerate Christians in public and soon will not even tolerate Christians in private as history has so often shown us. What have Christians (those who truly live their faith even to the point of following Christ to Calvary and the crucifixion) done to deserve this intolerance by those who hypocritically cry for tolerance? “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, THEREFORE THE WORLD HATES YOU” (Jn 15:18-21).

The infinite God became incarnate in meekness and humility (Mt 11:29) so as to respect our free will and not force us to love Him; forced or manipulated love is not love at all! This Baby invites us to imitate Him. “And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted” (Mt 23:12; Lk 14:11; 18:14). IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO MAINTAIN THESE TWO EXTREMES: adoration, awe and HUMILITY before the infinite God, in particular before Baby Jesus under the form of consecrated Bread and Wine, and at the same time, CHILDLIKE TRUST AND CONFIDENCE. If we loose one or the other of these two essential elements of our faith, we loose so many graces and perhaps even eternal life itself.

THE DIVINE WISDOM CONTINUES THE SAME STRATEGY TODAY hiding behind and truly identifying Himself with the “little ones” (Mt 25:40) in the poor, outcast, unwanted babies in the womb (Jesus spent 9 months in Mary’s womb!), in non self-sufficient senior citizens, the rejected ones, under the appearance of consecrated Bread and Wine… “I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes” (Mt 11:25)! So too as it was 2000 years ago, few recognize the various Presences of Baby Jesus in our world today.

This Baby did not come to be only in a manger but to SEEK RECEPTIVE AND PREPARED HEARTS OF LOVE AND HUMILITY. The lack of reception of the hotel keepers to receive Joseph and Mary with child is symbolic of the great lack of reception of so many human hearts. Thank God that there was one IMMACULATE HEART totally ready to receive the infinite God into her heart and into her womb; otherwise there would have been no redemption or salvation. So many baptized Catholics do not even have one hour a week to thank the One Who gave them everything in the Eucharist (which means thanksgiving) after a good sincere sacramental confession. IF SOMETHING IS IMPORTANT TO US WE FIND TIME FOR THAT; if something is not so important to us, we just do not seem to get around to it.

We tend to think that Baby Jesus is all happy and blessed in heaven so it really does not matter what we do. But THE MORE ONE LOVES, THE GREATER THE SUFFERING DUE TO THE INDIFFERENCE of the one loved, just as a loving wife suffers greatly due to the indifference of her husband, and vise versa. God loves each of us immensely. For God there is only the eternal present and thus my indifference today puts a nail into Jesus’ hand on the cross today! Jesus said to Saint Faustina: “If My death has not convinced you of My love, what will?” (Diary, 580).

“IF THE ANGELS WERE CAPABLE OF ENVY, they would envy us for two things: one is the receiving of Holy Communion, and the other is suffering” (Saint Faustina; Diary, 1804). Instead we avoid suffering at all costs and do not have time to receive Jesus in the Eucharist each Sunday!

THIS DIVINE BABY WAS THE ONLY ONE EVER BORN TO DIE, as is seen in the Franciscan Christmas images with a cross behind the crib scene. This Baby asks us to follow Him to Calvary and to the crucifixion so as to rise with Him for all eternity!

“I SISTER FAUSTINA, BY THE ORDER OF GOD, HAVE VISITED THE ABYSSES OF HELL so that I might tell souls about it and testify to its existence. … What I have written is but a pale shadow of the things I saw. But I noticed one thing: that MOST SOULS THERE ARE THOSE WHO DISBELIEVED THAT THERE IS A HELL” (Diary, 741). Most people today have willing accepted the big lie of the father of lies, Satan, that the devil and hell do not exist, so that there are no consequences of how we live! But God, Who is Love, respects our free will and thus our choices; if we choose to reject the Truth (big T”) during our whole life, when we die, we discover that the Truth is God (Jn 14:6) and there are only two places for all eternity!

I SAY ALL THESE THINGS TO YOU BECAUSE I WANT WELL FOR YOU. I do not make the rules, or the Ten Commandments. But if I do not seek to understand these commandments, not according to myself or the world’s comfortable relativistic way, but according to God explained by the lawful authority that Jesus left us here on earth, the Catholic Church with the living Pope as the head, and then transmit these teachings to those I am obligated to do so according to my God-given vocation, I will be severely and eternally judged by the One Who called me to be a Christian and a Priest. Unfortunately there are many priests and bishops today who offer only the comfortable truth but not the uncomfortable truth. WE MUST PROCLAIM THE WHOLE TRUTH, otherwise our proclamation is not true and leads many astray leading to grave and eternal consequences. Our Lady has often asked us to pray for priests and bishops and the Pope so that they do not succumb to human respect and other seductive and subtle temptations of the enemy, Satan, who is far more intelligent than we are.

I hope that you have a Merry and Blessed Christmas not just for now or for this very short life time, but FOR ALL ETERNITY!

Father Joseph Dwight

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P.s. THERE IS ALWAYS HOPE while we are still alive and willing to humbly respond to the graces and inspirations of God to make a good confession. After death our eternal destiny will be fixed for all eternity as it was for the angels in one instant after their creation.

In Saint Faustina’s diary, she recorded that Jesus also indicated that HE HIMSELF IS RIGHT THERE IN THE CONFESSIONAL. Jesus told her, “When you approach the confessional, know this, that I Myself am waiting there for you. I am only hidden by the priest, but I Myself act in your soul. Here the misery of the soul meets the God of mercy. Tell souls that from this fount of mercy souls draw graces solely with the vessel of trust. If their trust is great, there is no limit to My generosity." (1602)

Jesus knew that PEOPLE WOULD REALLY NEED TO HEAR THESE WORDS OF RE-ASSURANCE today, so He went on to say “Come with faith to the feet of My representative...and make your confession before Me. The person of the priest is, for Me, only a screen. Never analyze what sort of a priest that I am making use of; open your soul in confession as you would to Me, and I will fill it with My light." (1725) "Here the misery of the soul meets the God of mercy.” (1602)

MANY FEEL THAT THEIR SINS ARE UNFORGIVABLE BUT, JESUS SAID, “Were a soul like a decaying corpse, so that from a human standpoint, there would be no hope of restoration and everything would already be lost, it is not so with God. The miracle of Divine Mercy restores that soul in full. In the Tribunal of Mercy (the great sacrament of Confession) ...the greatest miracles take place and are incessantly repeated." (1448) "Here the misery of the soul meets the God of mercy.” (1602) Every sin imaginable could be forgiven by Him!

So many people are weighed down by sin and THEIR PRIDEFUL NATURE KEEPS THEM AWAY FROM THE CONFESSION OF THEIR SINS. They are living in misery. Jesus said, “Oh, how miserable are those who do not take advantage of the miracle of God’s mercy! You will call out in vain, but it will be too late." (1448) "Tell aching mankind to snuggle close to My merciful Heart, and I will fill it with peace." (1074) "There is no misery that could be a match for My mercy.” (1273) Jesus came to restore sinners and one would be foolish to turn away from His merciful love.

Regarding this closure of divine mercy, we find in the DIARY OF ST. FAUSTINA: “Oh, what great graces I will grant to souls who say this chaplet; the very depths of My tender mercy are stirred for the sake of those who say the chaplet. Write down these words, My daughter. Speak to the world about My mercy; let all mankind recognize My unfathomable mercy. IT IS A SIGN FOR THE END TIMES; AFTER IT WILL COME THE DAY OF JUSTICE. While there is still time, let them have recourse to the fount of My mercy; let them profit from the Blood and Water which gushed forth for them” (848). “Souls perish in spite of My bitter Passion. I am giving them the last hope of salvation; that is, the Feast of My Mercy. If they will not adore My mercy, they will perish for all eternity. Secretary of My mercy, write, tell souls about this great mercy of Mine, BECAUSE THE AWFUL DAY, THE DAY OF MY JUSTICE, IS NEAR” (965). “These words are for you. Do all you possibly can for this work of My mercy. I desire that My mercy be worshiped, and I AM GIVING MANKIND THE LAST HOPE OF SALVATION; that is, recourse to My mercy. My heart rejoices in this feast” (998). “Let the greatest sinners place their trust in My mercy. They have the right before others to trust in the abyss of My mercy. My daughter, write about My mercy towards tormented souls. Souls that make an appeal to My mercy delight Me. To such souls I grant even more graces than they ask. I cannot punish even the greatest sinner if he makes an appeal to My compassion, but on the contrary, I justify him in My unfathomable and inscrutable mercy. Write: BEFORE I COME AS JUST JUDGE, I FIRST OPEN WIDE THE DOOR OF MY MERCY. HE WHO REFUSES TO PASS THROUGH THE DOOR OF MY MERCY MUST PASS THROUGH THE DOOR OF MY JUSTICE…” (1146). “Oh, how miserable are those who do not take advantage of the miracle of God’s mercy! You will call out in vain, but IT WILL BE TOO LATE” (1448). “In the Old Covenant I sent prophets wielding thunderbolts to My people. Today I am sending you with My mercy to the people of the whole world. I do not want to punish aching mankind, but I desire to heal it, pressing it to My merciful heart. I use punishment when they themselves force Me to do so; My hand is reluctant to take hold of the sword of justice. BEFORE THE DAY OF JUSTICE I AM SENDING THE DAY OF MERCY” (1588).

Letter To Sister

The following letter was sent to “my Sister”.

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Dear “my Sister”,

Thank you very much for putting on the web the pictures of the family last November. I finally got around to downloading them. It took a while because there were over 500 pictures!

On our last phone call for your birthday, I told you that I do not heat my apartment next to the church in the winter so as to give my savings to Jesus who is dying of hunger in Brazil and Africa. Did you know that 100,000 die every day of hunger? 20,000 of them are children. Jesus does not exaggerate! Read chapter 25:31-46 of the Gospel of Matthew; this represents the FINAL EXAM for each of us, not just for Saint Francis or Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta or some other “saint”. Blessed Mother Teresa’s motto was: “You did it to Me”, “the least of these my brethren” (Mt 25:40). The Gospels are for everyone. THIS LIFE IS EXTREMELY SHORT COMPARED TO ETERNITY!

Many Catholics and Christians today say that a God who is love would not send anyone to hell, if they still believe that such a place exists. Recently there was a study done in which it was discovered that ONLY HALF OF THE PEOPLE WHO GO TO CHURCH REGULARLY BELIEVE THAT THERE IS A PERSONAL RESURRECTION AFTER DEATH. The old saying goes: If you do not live as you believe, you end up believing as you live.

POPE BENEDICT HAS INDICATED MANY TIMES THAT ONE OF THE GREATEST TRAPS OF THE DEVIL TODAY IS RELATIVISM. Everyone makes up their own rules (the truth with a small “t”) as if they were God without seeking to discover the rules according the Creator of the entire universe who sent only His Son Jesus and Who left us a Church with the Pope until the end of time so that those of good will and with humility could find the truth which leads to eternal life.

WHO DECIDES WHAT IS RIGHT AND WRONG, GOOD AND EVIL, TRUTH AND REALITY? One has to work hard every day to stamp out the imprint of the Creator in his heart and to reject the many inspirations and graces from God in order to convince himself that God does not exist! Thus when such a person dies, even if he says he does not believe in God, it will be revealed to him in an instant his whole life, including how hard he worked to deny and run from the truth stamped in his heart; this will be his judgment for all eternity! Whether one likes it or not, or believes it or not, man is made in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27). NO ONE GOES TO HELL OR TO HEAVEN FOR ALL ETERNITY BY CHANCE! God, because He is Love, will always respect our great gift of our free will and thus will never force anyone to spend eternity with Him in heaven or eternity without Him in hell! “God created you without you, but He will not save you without you” (St. Augustine). The puppets of Satan, the proud modern philosophers, would make us to believe that each person becomes a god so we, by ourselves, decide what is reality and what is truth! The so-called “Age of Reason” actually turned reason on its head. There is very little enlightenment found in the “Period of the Enlightenment”! Secular humanism is bankrupt! For a believer in God-Love, René Descartes’ famous supposition “I think therefore I am” should read “I LOVE THEREFORE I AM”!

But MOST PEOPLE DO NOT WANT TO TAKE THE RISK OF HAVING TO CHANGE THEIR LIFE AND SUFFER, so they remain in their convenient relativism. Most people have swallowed the absurdity of many modern philosophers that if I decide that hell or the devil do not exist, then they do not exist! Even though there is one God, one Jesus Christ, and one Bible, Jesus knew there would be tremendous confusion about the Truth and the true path to heaven after He ascended to Heaven, so He left us his Church with the Pope as the head for those who have the humility to listen and conform their lives to the teachings of His Church on earth with His Vicar as the head. There are thousands of independent protestant groups which interpret the one Bible in their own way, often in contradictory ways. Christ promised to Peter and to all of his successors: “You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail” (Mt 16:18). This promise was made only to Peter and his successors, not to the bishops or priests. Most of the bishops were against the Pope in the forth century during the Arian heresy. Most bishops, priests and laymen and laywomen were against Pope Paul VI’s encyclical, Humanae Vitae; we see now the disastrous results of ignoring or rebelling against the Vicar of Christ. (Visit: “Prophecies of Humanae Vitae”; http://pop.org/201003231196/prophecies-of-humanae-vitae).

“How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking… The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves – thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. Every day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf. Eph 4,14). Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, RELATIVISM, WHICH IS LETTING ONESELF BE TOSSED AND “SWEPT ALONG BY EVERY WIND OF TEACHING”, LOOKS LIKE THE ONLY ATTITUDE ACCEPTABLE TO TODAY’S STANDARDS. WE ARE MOVING TOWARDS A DICTATORSHIP OF RELATIVISM WHICH DOES NOT RECOGNIZE ANYTHING AS FOR CERTAIN AND WHICH HAS AS ITS HIGHEST GOAL ONE’S OWN EGO AND ONE’S OWN DESIRES.” (Then Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), Homily for the Pro Eligendo Summo Pontifice Mass, 18 April 2005. ; http://endtimeslion.com/?p=188).

Pope John Paul II (among many other occasions) spoke firmly against this “PICK AND CHOOSE SMORGASBORG TYPE CATHOLICISM” in LA in his September 1987 visit: “It is sometimes reported that a large number of Catholics today do not adhere to the teaching of the Church on a number of questions, notably sexual and conjugal morality, divorce and remarriage. Some are reported as not accepting the Church’s clear position on abortion. It has also been noted that there is a tendency on the part of some Catholics to be selective in their adherence to the Church’s moral teachings. It is sometimes claimed that dissent from the Magisterium is totally compatible with being a "good Catholic" and poses no obstacle to the reception of the sacraments. This is a grave error that challenges the teaching office of the bishops of the United States and elsewhere. I wish to encourage you in the love of Christ to address this situation courageously in your pastoral ministry, relying on the power of God’s truth to attract assent and on the grace of the Holy Spirit which is given both to those who proclaim the message and to those to whom it is addressed.” (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/1987/september/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19870916_vescovi-stati-uniti_en.html).

So many Christians today convince themselves that they are good and holy because they live 7 or 8 of the 10 commandments so as to feel they are saved or good, or live the commandments ACCORDING TO THEIR OWN CONVENIENT CRITERIA without seeking to discover how the One Who loves them immensely intended His commandments to be lived for their own true good. How many of us TRUST OURSELVES AND GIVE LIP-SERVICE TO THE GOD WHO WE SAY IS LOVE. Today, most Catholics want a CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT THE CROSS AND WITHOUT HUMILITY, in particular, before the Most Blessed Sacrament, and before the inconvenient teachings of the Church approved by the Pope. “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 18:3).

SINCE SO FEW PEOPLE PRAY TODAY, the forces of evil have taken control of the motors of the culture (mass media, schools, religious institutions, the governments) to manipulate our minds anyway they decide. We are drunk in our egoism; thus having swallowed the lies over the years that we have been bombarded with, we have become totally blind to our real personal situation and the situation of the society and world around us. By now after years of patient preparation of destroying the moral fiber of the American people, these people, who feel they are so much more intelligent than us expendable and dim-witted creatures, can manipulate us and play with us anyway they want to, like a bird that plays with a wounded bird meant to fly high in the sky. This acquired power and money of the militant secularists, nihilists, and relativists in key positions of power and influence is recycled into accelerating their diabolical agenda even more; we are quickly approaching a spiritual, cultural and thus a social and economic avalanche. It is amazing that these powerful people, so close to their hidden leader, Satan (the ones higher up in the Freemasons regularly adore Satan!), and who claim there is no God, know better than the great majority of Catholics the source of our great strength. These poor puppets of Satan have succeeded in destroying the faith and reverence of the great majority of Catholics before our greatest source of strength, the Eucharist; when they take full control of the societies and nations of the world, the celebration of the Holy Mass will be totally outlawed as past dictatorships have done in the past.

How many people in groups such as the “Tea Party” put so much energy and time into problems regarding their pocketbook but do not see that the coming economic crash is a result of not resisting the undermining and onslaughts of the godless world leaders in the past few decades to destroy the moral fabric of our society. The first priority of our new world dictators is not to bring the USA totally under the New World Order but to promote the “culture of death”; the rest follows as a natural consequence. These proud and shrewd world manipulators pretend to serve the people but are manipulating and forcing their hidden agenda “by stealth”, by going forward three steps and then one or two steps back incrementally. We were promised at the time of the manipulated passage of the healthcare bill that there would be protection of conscience; now we see we were deceived. OUR FOUNDING FATHERS FLED ENGLAND TO BE ABLE TO WORSHIP FREELY without government harassment or persecution; the US government is already more pervasive into our lives and into our religious liberties than the English government was several centuries ago.

“YOU ARE OF YOUR FATHER the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (Jn 8:44). After these puppets of Satan succeed in taking full power, they will no longer have to take one or two steps back! “For the sons of this world are wiser in their own generation than the sons of light” (Lk 16:8). Most people today are content to swallow the well thought out rhetoric and nice words of our leaders and mass media instead of remembering the admonition of our Savior: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. YOU WILL KNOW THEM BY THEIR FRUITS” (Mt 7:15-16). Planned Parenthood (the world’s largest abortion provider), supported by the manipulation of millions of American tax dollars, is waging a battle of epic proportions, with the most advance marketing techniques, to overturn the antiabortion laws in the Philippines (RealCatholicTV.com: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EI0vNdV4FA).

THE GREAT MAJORITY OF CATHOLICS DO NOT EVEN HAVE ONE HOUR A WEEK TO THANK THEIR LORD IN THE EUCHARIST (after a good, sincere confession with a well-formed conscience), Who gave them everything they have! These ruthless “angels of light” (2Cor 11:14), who declare that there is no God, realize that our greatest source of strength to defend ourselves from their onslaughts is the Eucharist! They even steal Consecrated Hosts to desecrate the Body of Christ in their Black Masses! And they call themselves atheists! Satan knows all to well that God exists!

WE CATHOLICS, WHO WERE GIVEN MORE GRACES (“talents” (Mt 25:14-30)), ARE FAR MORE RESPONSIBLE for having given the militant secularists, nihilists, and relativists, these anti-God slaves of sin and pride, the power and control that they enjoy today. If we would have persevered in daily prayer and living the Gospel and the 10 Commandments according to God’s revelation and not according to our convenient and hidden egotistical standards, many of these poor anti-God slaves of sin and pride would not have fallen into Satan’s subtle but very powerful traps, or at least would not have the incredible power and influence that they have today. As an example of this sophisticated brainwashing and POWERFUL MANIPULATION OF THE PUBLIC WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE PUBLIC, you might check out the book “After the Ball” (1989). The authors, Kirk and Madsen, tell us straight out the bottom line of their master plan: "The campaign we outline in this book, though complex, depends centrally upon a program of unabashed propaganda, firmly grounded in long-established principles of psychology and advertising." (http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=32898). Kirk and Madsen's "war goal," explains marketing expert Paul E. Rondeau of Regent University, was to "force acceptance of homosexual culture into the mainstream, to silence opposition, and ultimately to convert American society." Visit: “Selling Homosexuality To America”, by Paul E. Rondeau, at http://theshepherdsvoice.org/politics/selling_homosexuality_to_america.pdf. Visit also: “Political Correctness: How They Market Homosexuality”; (http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=7368).

Pope John Paul II was asked a few years before his death if he could give just one scripture quote for the people of God. He responded without hesitation: “THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE” (Jn 8:32)! It is not at all easy to persevere everyday in seeking the truth when we are surrounded by so many people who follow only the easy momentary fad and are manipulated and greatly pressured to be “politically correct”. THIS GREAT DANGER IS ESPECIALLY AUGMENTED and gone unrecognized when the ones who we should be able to trust - such as those who have been given by God a special vocation and grace to recognize the deceits of Satan (with fatigue and diligence) so as to lead and warn those people under their care of the numerous and subtle and powerful ensnarements of Satan today - do not correspond to their calling and inspirations from God: the BISHOPS AND PRIESTS.

Satan has laid more subtle and powerful traps today than ever before. Those who seek the truth and express their findings openly are more and more ridiculed and pushed and maneuvered, in the most sophisticated ways, out of the public square. Soon the true Truth seekers, and above all those who truly live the Truth, will be eliminated all together so as to create a utopia on earth with “total” freedom completely detached and separated from the Truth (big “T”)! “Wiki Answers” responds to the question: WHY IS THE DEVIL CALLED THE FATHER OF LIES? Because he functions on deception. He has to deceive people from the Truth in order to get them on his side. The devil is an angel that turned from God. Jesus came into the world to shine a light in the darkness and expose the devil for what he is - a liar. All lies come from the devil. (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_is_the_devil_called_the_father_of_lies). These liberals offer beautiful words like “Freedom of Choice (Act)”, “Pro Choice”, “The Common Good”, “Social Justice”, “Women’s reproductive rights!” which is one of their code words for contraception and abortion, but in reality these things greatly hurts women and all of society. But is not behind these slogans of “freedom” and “rights” A GREAT, DECEPTIVE LIE? The devil is “a liar and the father of lies” (Jn 8:44)! Only the Creator offers true and lasting freedom (Jn 8:32) which is always accompanied by suffering with Christ crucified! “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (Jn 8:36). These lies, under the guise of appealing slogans and promises of eliminating suffering, lead to the most horrible slavery not only here on earth but for all eternity!

Our grandparents of our traditional “old time religion” remembered the words of Jesus Christ: “Truly, I say to you, it shall be MORE TOLERABLE on the day of judgment for the land of SODOM AND GOMORRAH than for that town” (Mt 10:15). If this is the promise of Christ for one town, what will happen when homosexual acts and homosexual lifestyle are promoted, protected and encouraged by the law in the WHOLE WORLD?!? Christians, as their Savior Jesus Christ, love the sinner and those with homosexual tendencies, but hate the sin, the act of homosexuality. Of course Gay activists do not make this distinction and thus accuse Christians of hating homosexually oriented people. Gay activists have willing destroyed the consciousness of what sin is according to the one true God, Who imprinted His law into nature itself; thus how can they possibly make or understand this vital and fundamental distinction?

HUMAN RIGHTS COME FROM GOD! The quickly developing socialistic dictatorial state is telling us that our rights come from the State and therefore the State can take away these rights when the State decides to do so. We have allowed the State to legally kill a whole category of unwanted human beings in the womb of their mothers, a true genocide! Tomorrow the State will change the category of unwanted human beings and we will be killed for whatever reason the State decides. Read “First They Came” (the Nazis) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came...). The Gospel tells us that the strong must help the weak: “You did it to Me!” (Mt 25:40). But today we are moving quickly toward a relativistic culture which leads to a “religion” of the strong taking advantage of and eliminating the weak.

THE U.S. BECAME THE RICHEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD BECAUSE our founding fathers did their best to write a constitution to protect people from a future bad government. “POWER CORRUPTS; ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY!” Our founding fathers, from experience, knew that history shows that the greatest thief and tyrant in the end is the government which has no authority above it and which no longer responds to the desires of the people. Thus these founders tried their best to write a constitution with checks and balances so that each of the three branches of the government would help to check the human tendency to accrue power and control over the other two branches. Upon his farewell address to the nation, GEORGE WASHINGTON tried to impress upon his fellow countrymen that it was “RELIGION AND MORALITY” that served as the foundation for our young nation. Without the foundation of Religion and Morality that George Washington and the other founding fathers provided for us, there is simply no real hope for the future of the United States of America.

If the majority of the citizens THROW OUT ABSOLUTE NORMS AND TRUTH FROM GOD and take the easy and egotistical way of relativism, why should the citizens be upset when the elected government officials and the appointed judges do the same? When we begin to understand what is going on here, we can see more clearly that positivism and relativism leads precisely to what Pope Benedict called the “tyranny of relativism” or the dictatorship of relativism. Having thrown out the inconvenient absolute Truth from God, which is always united to self sacrifice for others, we are heading quickly to “MIGHT MAKES RIGHT”, since we have taken the easy egotistical and prideful way of living and legislating. WE ARE GOING MORE AND MORE TOWARD STANDING TRUTH ON ITS HEAD AND EXALTING UNTRUTH! If we do not seek and do the will of God, we will end up doing the will of Satan in the many forms of egoism.

Whether we believe it or not, this short life is only to give each of us the opportunity to choose where we will spend eternity, in heaven with the absolute Truth, or in Hell, with the father of lies and all the relativists who fooled themselves and accepted and embraced the lie of believing that they are the absolute Truth. WE TRULY ARE ALREADY UNDER A DICTATORSHIP. Who is spending tremendous amounts of money to spray, without the knowledge or consent of the people below, all the populated areas of the earth with the “chemtrails”, and for what reason? It is only a matter of time that we will experience the horrific consequences of what we all have contributed to by our sins and lack of prayer. What would Hitler have done if he had the technology and surveillance systems that are available today?

Jesus tells us: "ENTER BY THE NARROW GATE; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Mt 7:13). SAINT FAUSTINA wrote in her diary (no. 153): “One day, I SAW TWO ROADS. One was broad, covered with sand and flowers, full of joy, music and all sorts of pleasures. People walked along it, dancing and enjoying themselves. They reached the end without realizing it. And at the end of the road there was a horrible precipice; that is, the abyss of hell. The souls fell blindly into it; as they walked, so they fell. And their number was so great that it was impossible to count them. And I saw the other road, or rather, a path, for it was narrow and strewn with thorns and rocks; and the people who walked along it had tears in their eyes, and all kinds of suffering befell them. Some fell down upon the rocks, but stood up immediately and went on. At the end of the road there was a magnificent garden filled with all sorts of happiness, and all these souls entered there. At the very first instant they forgot all their sufferings.”

The devil wants us to be “full of joy, music and all sorts of pleasures” SO THAT WE MIGHT NOT WAKE UP TO THE REAL STATE OF OUR SOULS, otherwise he might lose many souls before they die. The philosophy of life for most people today has become: “IGNORANCE IS BLISS!”; bliss today, but tomorrow, and after death?!? After death, our choice is confirmed eternally by God, just as it was for the angels who made their choice in one instant immediately after their creation. “Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world - he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him” (Ap 12:7-9). The word “Michael” means: Who is like God? The dragon, who became Satan, continues to tempt us with the same sin that caused him to fall. “But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil”.” (Gen 3:4-5; ORIGINAL SIN).

I regularly bring HOLY COMMUNION TO THE SICK AND THE ELDERLY who are not able to arrive to the Church for Sunday Mass. There was one lady, Rita, about 80 years old, that I was not sure if she wanted to receive Holy Communion since 3 or 4 years ago when her health was better, she often did not come to Mass in the Church where I celebrated which was only 10 yards from her house. Two weeks ago when I came to visit her and her husband Roberto, she asked me, in a very decided way, if she could receive Holy Communion. She made a good confession, received Holy Communion, and expressed her gratitude to me in a very heartfelt way. She then asked me if it might be possible that Roberto might make his confession. I told her that would be fine but I do not think he is willing to confess his sins at least according to the teachings of the Church, but rather according to his own personal criteria, which would render the confession invalid and even a sacrilege. Roberto never went to Sunday Mass except perhaps on Christmas. He was not willing to confess these sins even though the maid from Romania, a woman of faith, pleaded with him. I told her that the sacrament of confession is not magic. Pardon for sins is not automatic because God, due to His authentic love, totally respects our choice. If we freely choose to not make this act of humility to confess our sins to an instrument of God, a validly ordained priest, our sins with imperfect contrition (who can be sure of having perfect contrition?) are not forgiven. When she could not understand the great stubbornness of Roberto, who undergoes dialysis three times a week, I reminded her of the saying: “AS YOU LIVE SO SHALL YOU DIE.” The maid told me that Roberto had begun to complain in the last few months of seeing devils during the night, but even so, he refused to confess his sins. Even though Rita’s health was much better than that of her husband, Rita died a week later a holy death.

What the world does not tell us, as well as so many leaders in the Church due to human respect, is that true love means respecting our great dignity, being created in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27) and thus RESPECTING OUR CHOICE, OUR FREE WILL. The TV communicates to us in all kinds of subliminal and even blunt ways that our dignity is at the level of our dog which freely has sex in the middle of the road. If I choose freely to not try to live the 10 commandments with God’s help (prayer) according to God’s criteria (not the world’s or my own comfortable and conveniently formed conscience) during my whole life, when I die, for love, due to my great God-given dignity, God confirms my choice and I go to the place where the One and only God is totally absent. If God showed us even a tiny instant of heaven or a tiny glimpse of hell, we would no longer be free to say NO to God. Love means respecting this primordial gift of our great dignity (Ps 8:5), and thus respecting our freedom which is also accompanied with a tremendous responsibility for ourselves and for those over whom we have been given responsibility as parents, priests, bishops, civil authorities, etc. Here on earth we are surrounded by God, even those who do not want the Truth (big “T”). But if a person rejects the Truth all his life, when he dies, he discovers that the Truth is God. The greatest pain in hell is the total absence of God which is a pain far worse than all the fires put together. The greatest joy in heaven is to see God face to face! “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him” (1Cor 2:9)!

Pope John Paul II said two years before he was elected Pope: “We are now standing in the face of the GREATEST HISTORICAL CONFRONTATION humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the FINAL CONFRONTATION between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel.” (Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, "Notable & Quotable," "Wall Street Journal" (Nov. 9, 1978); http://www.ewtn.com/library/scriptur/flfire.txt). This message was repeated by Cardinal Ivan Dias at Lourdes on December 13, 2007. These strong words of Blessed Pope John Paul II, “final confrontation”, indicate clearly that we are the “generation” in which Jesus referred to in Matthew 24. “For then there will be GREAT TRIBULATION, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be” (Mt 24:21). The more we pray and offer our sacrifices to God, as our Lady of Fatima asked us to do, the less the forces of evil can take control of the motors of the culture to lead us away from God and toward temporal and eternal destruction. We so easily and so willingly forget that life is a battle, a “DOUR COMBAT with the powers of evil” (CCC 409)!

TO FIGHT IN A BATTLE, is it not prudent and necessary to know not only your own weapons, tactics and strategy, but also the weapons, tactics and strategy of the enemy? It was recounted to Pope John Paul II that the Vatican's chief exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth, “knows too many bishops who do not believe in the Devil”. The Pope replied bluntly: “ANYONE WHO DOES NOT BELIEVE IN THE DEVIL DOES NOT BELIEVE IN THE GOSPEL”. When Amorth was asked “What do you see as Satan’s greatest success?”, he replied: “The fact that he has managed to convince people that he does not exist. He has almost managed it, even within the Church. We have a clergy and an Episcopate who no longer believe in the Devil, in exorcism, in the exceptional evil the Devil can instill, or even in the power that Jesus bestowed to cast out demons. … And they no longer believe in the Devil. We have entire Episcopates trying to counter exorcism. We have countries completely devoid of exorcists, such as Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain and Portugal. This is a shameful shortfall.”; (http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=2879). We go on the spiritual battlefield with a bow and arrow and the enemy has a machine gun or a canon, because so MANY GENERALS (THE BISHOPS) AND CAPTAINS (THE PRIESTS) TELL US TODAY THAT THE ENEMY DOES NOT EVEN EXIST!

Precisely because we priests and bishops are far more WORRIED ABOUT HUMAN RESPECT than what God wants, at Fatima the three children were shown the horrible sufferings in hell of the eternally damned and the thousands who fall into hell everyday likes sparks into a huge flaming fire.

POPE PAUL VI STATED: “We have the impression that through some cracks in the wall the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God.” “Apostasy, the loss of the faith, is spreading throughout the world and into the highest levels within the Church.” As with his encyclical Humanae Vitae, his teaching was ignored as well as ridiculed (http://endtimeslion.com/?p=203).

SIXTY YEARS AGO it was even against the civil law in the USA and in most countries of Europe to buy or sell artificial birth control because the civil governments wanted to protect the common good, knowing that artificial birth control greatly harms the relationship between a husband and a wife and thus poisons the fundamental cell of society, the family. Sixty years ago it was still part of the cultural conscience to make individual SACRIFICES FOR THE COMMON GOOD. Now there is no more concern for the common good but only for self satisfaction and self indulgence; if an unwanted baby or an unwanted old person gets in the way, eliminate them! We have quickly slid down the slippery slope to abortion, euthanasia, experimentation on human embryos, homosexual marriages, resulting in what Pope John Paul II called the “culture of death”! This is the strategy of Satan, to put the frog in a pot of cold water and slowly heat it up until the frog is cooked. If you throw the frog in boiling water (sin openly revealed for what it truly is and what the true effects of sin are) it jumps out immediately. VERY FEW PEOPLE ARE JUMPING OUT OF THE BOILING WATER OF THE CULTURE OF DEATH TODAY IN ORDER TO SAVE THEIR IMMORTAL SOULS! Even for the majority of church goers today, religion exists to serve themselves, for what they want and can get out of it or to feel saved or holy or good or to impress their neighbors, instead of for the motive of helping them to discover the will of God and to help them to do the will of God, as they profess in the “Our Father”: “THY WILL BE DONE”! God’s will is to love God and neighbor at the expense of oneself, as Jesus did on the cross. The same words that Jesus uses to give life to the world are used by some to take life. Jesus says at every Holy Mass through His instrument the priest, “THIS IS MY BODY” given up for you (on the cross) that you may have life! There is a great spiritual conflict going on here. These same words are spoken from opposite ends of eternity with totally opposite results! Let us live those words as Jesus did and give ourselves “to the least of these my brethren” (Mt 25:40) so that we too might hear the words at the end of our life: “enter into the joy of your master” (Mt 25:23; Jn 3:15-16)!

Sister Lucia of Fatima said to Father Agostino Fuentes, the postulator of the cause of beatification of Giacinta and Francesco (December 26, 1957): “Our Lady is very displeased because it is not taken into account her message of 1917. Neither the good nor the bad have held them in consideration. Believe me my Father, the Lord will punish the world very soon; THE PUNISHMENT IS IMMANENT! Many nations will disappear from the face of the earth, many nations will be annihilated. The devil knows that the religious and priests, living less their beautiful vocation, drag many souls to hell. It is now the time to halt the punishment of Heaven. We have at our disposition TWO EFFICACIOUS MEANS: Prayer and Sacrifice. She said that, the other means exhausted and despised by men, HE WILL GIVE, WITH TREMBLING, THE LAST ANCHOR OF SALVATION WHICH IS THE MOST HOLY VIRGIN IN PERSON, signs of tears, messages of several seers spread in all the parts of the earth. Our Lady said that if we do not listen and if we still offend we will not be pardoned. Father, it is urgent that we realize this terrible reality. We do not want to frighten the souls, but it is an urgent appeal to reality. From the time when the Virgin gave such a great efficaciousness to the Rosary, there does not exist any material, spiritual, national or international problem that cannot be resolved BY WAY OF THE HOLY ROSARY AND BY OUR SACRIFICES. To recite the Holy Rosary with devotion will be to consol Mary and to wipe away so many tears from her Immaculate Heart.” Our Lady expressly said: “We are nearing the end times”.

Have you ever read “THE DREAM OF THE TWO COLUMNS of St. John Bosco, with a ship (the Church) in the middle of a great storm, with the Pope at the helm, being attacked by many small boats from all sides, being guided between the two pillars with the Eucharist and Mary at the top of the two pillars? Let us cling to Jesus in the Eucharist as long as It will be possible, and Mary our mother with our “weapon” (as Saint Padre Pio called the Holy Rosary) in hand (http://thereedofgod.blogspot.com/2010/04/don-boscos-prophecy-of-two-columns.html). The Servant of God, Archbishop Fulton Sheen, used to say to priests and bishops to make a holy hour everyday before Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament; he said that IF YOU WISH TO OFFER TO OTHERS DIVINE SPARKS, SPEND MORE TIME IN FRONT OF THE DIVINE FIRE, THE EUCHARIST! Only in this way will we be ready and able to give our lives to Jesus and to Jesus hidden in each of our neighbors as Jesus gave His life for us! Without this consistent priority on prayer, WE FALL SO EASILY TODAY INTO ACTIVISM, especially we priests; when this happens, we become instruments of ourselves but not instruments of God, and in the end, there are no true and lasting fruits.

TWO ARMIES ARE QUICKLY BEING FORMED TODAY. In the first book of the Bible, Genesis 3:15, we find the “Protoevangelium” or "First Gospel" in which the woman “will crush the head of the serpent”. In the last book of the Bible we find the woman, along with St. Michael the Archangel, in battle against the dragon. The 13th of May 1917 Our Lady appeared at Fatima as the Woman clothed with the sun: “According to the divine design, she came from Heaven to this earth, seeking the little ones privileged by the Father, “a Woman clothed with the sun” (Ap 12, 1). She, because she is little, will form the army array with the smallest ones from all parts of the world. The woman clothed with the sun appears next to the dragon. THE DRAGON FORMS HIS ARMY ARRAY with the most powerful, the strongest, the greatest, and the wisest, with those who have the highest places. He despises the least ones because they are not worth anything. He values the first ones, the strongest, because he believes he will win with this stronger army array – strong and intelligent spirit, but proud” (Fr. Stefano Gobbi). These “proud” are not only the mighty and rich and powerful, but all those who have freely embraced the convenience and egoism of relativism so as to decide good and evil by themselves, the criteria of salvation on their own as if they were gods. The problem is that in heaven there is room for only one God, not two; in hell everyone believes that they are god, just like the one they willing followed, Lucifer, who became Satan.

ST. LOUIS DE MONTFORT WRITES IN THE TREATISE ON TRUE DEVOTION (#49): “In the second coming of Jesus Christ, Mary must be known and openly revealed by the Holy Spirit so that Jesus may be known, loved and served through her. … As she was the way by which Jesus first came to us, she will again be the way by which He will come to us the second time, though not in the same manner”. (TD 50) Montfort continues: "Mary is the sure means, the direct and immaculate way to Jesus and the perfect guide to Him, it is through her that souls who are to shine forth in sanctity must find Him. He who finds Mary finds life, that is, Jesus Christ who is the way, the truth and the life. … But Mary's power over the evil spirits will especially shine forth in the latter times, when Satan will lie in wait for her heel, that is, for her humble servants and her poor children whom she will rouse to fight against him. IN THE EYES OF THE WORLD THEY WILL BE LITTLE AND POOR AND, LIKE THE HEEL, lowly in the eyes of all, down-trodden and crushed as is the heel by the other parts of the body. But in compensation for this they will be rich in God's graces, which will be abundantly bestowed on them by Mary. They will be great and exalted before God in holiness. They will be superior to all creatures by their great zeal and so strongly will they be supported by divine assistance that, in union with Mary, they will crush the head of Satan with their heel, that is, their humility, and bring victory to Jesus Christ" (TD 54) (http://spir-food.blogspot.com/2011/07/funeral-stefano-gobbi.html).

Christ used the word “learn” only one time in the four Gospels: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I AM GENTLE AND LOWLY IN HEART, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Mt 11:29-30). His “yoke is easy” for those who are in love with Jesus!

WE ARE ALL SINNERS! Those who have the humility to confess their sins according to the criteria of God which He reveals through Jesus and His One true Church, and then, with the help of God to live accordingly, will be saved. Those who do not have this humility and refuse to confess their sins according to the criteria given to each person through the revelation of God that each has received from God (for Catholics, the teachings of the Church), will loose their souls for all eternity, even if they, as little gods, do not believe that hell exists! After death, there are only two places which will remain for all eternity: heaven and hell. Purgatory is temporal and will no longer exist after the end of the world.

DO WE BELIEVE THAT GOD LOVES EACH OF US IMMENSELY? Then do we trust Him; do we believe and trust that His holy will for each of us is the best for each of us even if it entail suffering and self-sacrifice for other? Do we believe that God has a beautiful design for each of us that can be fully realized and enjoyed if we only do not wilfully reject or ignore these beautiful graces and inspirations that God offers to us for our own good and true happiness? Or do we believe that we are more intelligent and wise than His voice on earth, the Pope? At that time Jesus declared, “I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes” (Mt 11:25).

JESUS COULD HAVE FOUNDED HIS CHURCH WITH 12 PERFECT ANGELS FROM HEAVEN. But Jesus, who is God and infinitely wise, founded the Church with 12 men who were sinners. One of the fundamental tests for all of us is to not throw out the incredible treasures of the fullness of truth and sanctification within His Church despite the fact that there are numerous sinners and scandals within His Church especially today! Countering the Donatist sect of the fifth century, who felt they were the only group that would be saved, St. Augustine even exclaimed: “How many sheep there are outside the Church and how many wolves are inside!” Precisely for this reason Our Lady does not tell us to abandon the Church and her ministers but to pray for them; their responsibility before God and man is very great!

THE FINAL MESSAGE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN, October 13, 1973, to Sr. Agnes Sasagawa at AKITA, JAPAN: "As I told you, if men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the deluge, such as one will never have seen before. Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor faithful. The survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead. The only arms that will remain for you will be the Rosary and the Sign left by My Son. Each day recite the prayers of the Rosary. WITH THE ROSARY, PRAY FOR THE POPE, THE BISHOPS, AND THE PRIESTS. … The work of the devil will infiltrate even the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against other bishops. The priests who venerate Me will be scorned and opposed by their conferees…churches and altars sacked, the Church will be full of those who accept compromise and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord. The demon will be especially implacable against souls consecrated to God. The thought of the loss of so many souls is the cause of My sadness. If sins increase in number and gravity, there will be no longer pardon for them." (http://www.miraclerosarymission.org/akita.htm).

“MY SISTER”, I WANT TO SPEND ETERNITY WITH YOU! No cross, no crown, no pain no gain, no matter what the culture of death tells us today, with all of its powerful and refined techniques and bombardment of lies and brain washing. There is no Resurrection without the Crucifixion; there is no Easter without Good Friday! Satan tells us that we can avoid the cross at all costs and then afterwards all goes well; most people have willingly and happily swallowed this lie. Jesus instead tells us: “He who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it” (Mt 10:38-39). Let us seek what our loving God wants for each of us and not fall into relativism; let us listen to His Vicar on earth and all those bishops and priests who are in union with the living Pope in this “final confrontation” in the history of the world and in the history of the Body of Christ, Holy Mother Church!

Your brother,
Fr. Joe

P.s. You might find rather interesting the book “Lord of the World” by Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson (1871–1914) who was the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury and whose conversion to Catholicism caused a stir. Even though the book was published over 100 years ago, it gives an imaginative foretelling of the end of the world. Benedict XVI, as Cardinal Ratzinger before his election to the papacy, made positive references to the novel in some of his talks. You can download the book at: http://www.authorama.com/book/lord-of-the-world.html.