Signs of the Times: Get Ready

I can't resist posting a few links...even as I struggle to focus more intently on Advent!

1. Check  this out from Rorate Caeli, as we see that liturgical abuse is still running rampant (more pictures at the link). Is there any question the Church is in a crisis?

Be sure to read the comments, too. One person noted, "Maybe he is bucking for the position of Balloon Cardinal. Shoenborn is not getting any younger, after all." He was referring to this photo from a few years ago:

 2. As you have probably heard, the National catholic Reporter has published an editorial calling for the women’s ordination to the priesthood. (It's been covered in a number of places; here's a story from CatholicCulture.) Usquequo, Domine? When will they get the "smackdown"?!

3. “An elderly Jesuit priest has been suspended from ministry in the Milwaukee archdiocese after he joined in a liturgical celebration with a woman who claims to be a Catholic priest,” reports CatholicCulture.

4. From LifeSiteNews yesterday:

Msgr. Pope, in his blog post, offered an overview of the five stages of persecution recognized by social scientists. He says it is important for Christians to become familiar with them because “it would seem that things are going to get more difficult for the Church in the years ahead.”

The five stages, as he lists them, are: (1) Stereotyping the targeted group; (2) Vilifying the targeted group for alleged crimes or misconduct; (3) Marginalizing the targeted group’s role in society; (4) Criminalizing the targeted group or its works; (5) Persecuting the targeted group outright.

…[I]in his view, the culture has now reached stage 4 with the state beginning to “criminalize” Christian beliefs. “Stages one through four are pretty well in place. One may wish to whistle past the graveyard but it looks like we’re pretty well set for Stage V,” he writes.

5. And then there’s the article mentioned on today’s Vortex – short and worth the read – in which Fr. Dwight Longenecker notes:

It’s Advent. Wake up and smell the catastrophe. Realize where this country is headed. Realize that already our hospitals have complicated “Do not resuscitate procedures” which are similar to England’s “Liverpool Care Pathway”. This euphemistically named procedure was first devised by caring and compassionate doctors to provide a way to care for terminally ill patients. Now it is being used to euthanize the old and even newborns with disabilities.

Wake up and smell the catastrophe. It is all much further along than you think. Remember the Nazis did not start out with thugs in leather boots with swastikas and skulls on their uniforms. They started with legislation by an elected government–legislation put in place by professionals in white coats who quietly began to weed out the mentally disabled, the infirm and the unfit.

6. And speaking of the Vortex, here it is:

Read the full script here.

Here’s an excerpt:

It’s a very simple formula. Our Blessed Lord established the Church to be the bulwark against evil. No other body, government, or nation enjoys the Divine protection and guarantee that the Church does that it will survive until the end of the world.

But this absolute guarantee from the mouth of GOD Himself was given with a purpose in mind: to go out and preach to and save the world. Too much of the world has come into the Church in the past 50 or so years. It’s time to clean up our own house and get on with the business of salvation.