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:
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.
