INSPIRATIONS

The IL [Instrumentum Laboris = working document of the synod] opens with a proclamation: “The People of God have been on the move since Pope Francis convened the whole Church in Synod in October 2021.” Really? Meetings have certainly been held. Long and windy and vague texts produced. All this, it’s said, better to preach the Gospel.  But what is that Gospel? The human alienation from God due to sin and God’s unmerited grace in redeeming us in Jesus Christ. — Robert Royal

You absolutely must schedule a regular time for prayer, whether you are a “scheduler” with other things in your life or not. “Catch as catch can” simply won’t work for prayer; it will mean less and less prayer, or none at all. — Dr. Peter Kreeft

… we must “tolerate” the sinner, we must forgive all of the offenses committed against us, instructing and admonishing all who have erred—with love, according to the teachings of the Church and the Gospel Truth]—that she “welcome” back into the treasury of her souls, those who were lost in error. While, at the same time, remaining always vigilant in the refusal to accept—the error into the treasury of [the Church’s] wisdom. —  Rev. Kenneth M. Dos Santos, M.I.C.

Monstrosities of such conscious design do not emerge from the calculations of a few degenerate men or of small groups of men; they come from processes of agitation and poisoning which had been long at work. What we call moral standards – responsibility, honor, sensitivity of conscience – do not vanish from humanity at large if men have not already been long debilitated. These degradations could never have happened if its culture had been as supreme as the modern world thought. — Romano Guardini

Humility! is not quite as effective a battle cry as Pride! Humility is hard to embrace because it always carries the stinging reminder of our created and fallen nature – that we neither create nor save ourselves. Pride presumes the power to define ourselves and to brush off the creaturely limits of male and female. In so doing, it closes itself off from – it becomes intolerant of – a Savior. — Fr. Paul Scalia

Humility opens us to the Savior who has opened his Heart to us. “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.” (Matthew 11:29) The feast of the Sacred Heart bids us open our hearts in humility to the One who has opened his Heart in humility to us. It is a fitting feast to turn away from the pride that divides and toward the humility that saves. Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto thine! — Fr. Paul Scalia

For enemies and the unfaithful, pray thusly: Lord, frustrate their evil designs and convert their hearts as you convert mine.

Those who live without God in their lives are also spiritually poor. As with material poverty, spiritual poverty has a range: those who do not know God or have forsaken Him are the most destitute; those who have God but not Christ are a rung up; those who have Christ but not the Catholic Church are less poor but still suffer from not having their needs completely met; those who are Catholic but do not attend Mass are blind to their poverty. — David G. Bonagura, Jr.

Beware of paying any attention to the wisdom, skill, or intelligence of a superior; if not, you will exchange divine obedience for human; for you will be led to obey for the sake of the qualities you perceive in him, and not for the sake of God imperceptibly present in his person.  Oh what great havoc the devil works in the hearts of religious, when he succeeds in making them regard the qualifications of superiors. – St. John of the Cross

When once I shall be united to you with my whole being, I shall at last be free of sorrow and toil. Then my life will be alive, filled entirely with you. When you fill someone, you relieve him of his burden, but because I am not yet filled with you, I am a burden to myself. My joy when I should be weeping struggles with my sorrows when I should be rejoicing. I know not where victory lies. Woe is me! Lord, have mercy on me! My evil sorrows and good joys are at war with one another. I know not where victory lies. Woe is me! Lord, have mercy! Woe is me! I make no effort to conceal my wounds. You are my physician, I your patient. You are merciful; I stand in need of mercy. — St. Augustine

The liturgical seasons preceding it (Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter) tell the miraculous story of our redemption. The Time After Pentecost sheds new light on various dogmas of faith and the furtherance of the Christian life (see The Liturgical Year). In other words, this season invites us to root ourselves in the Catholic faith and to allow Christ to shape every aspect of our lives. It gives us opportunities to practice what we proclaim.  “Now, it is during the period called, by the Liturgy, The Time after Pentecost, that there is signified and expressed this regenerated life, which is to be spent on the model of Christ’s, and under the direction of his Spirit.” (The Liturgical Year). —Sarah Damm

“Now, why is this distinction important? Because the temporal power, a purely natural power, bereft of grace, is not capable of leading people to God,” he continued. “It’s just not. It needs the spiritual power in the sense that our minds… need grace… to discern what God requires. The same thing with the temporal power. The temporal power requires the spiritual power to lead it in the right direction.”  — Joshua Charles

“With the Enlightenment … we started looking at nature as something to be manipulated and control for the purpose of power, whereas… in… the medieval Christian mindset… nature was sacramental, meaning you looked at something in nature and you automatically associated it with the divine. How does this natural thing point to that which is higher than itself? That really changed with the Enlightenment.” — Joshua Charles

Lord, heal our hearts and purify our minds so that we may always love our enemies. Keep us always in the Faith of our Fathers and in the love of our neighbors. — Joseph Pearce

1 Jn 4:5-6 They belong to the world; accordingly, their teaching belongs to the world, and the world listens to them. We belong to God, and anyone who knows God listens to us, while anyone who does not belong to God refuses to hear us. This is how we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of deceit.

The Catechism quotes St. Augustine:  The Eucharist is our daily bread,” and St. Peter Chrysologus, “The Father in heaven urges us, as children of heaven, to ask for the bread of heaven. [Christ] himself is the bread who, sown in the Virgin, raised up in the flesh, kneaded in the Passion, baked in the oven of the tomb, reserved in churches, brought to altars, furnishes the faithful each day with food from heaven. — Michael Pakaluk

“Take man away from the supernatural, and he is not left with the natural but with the unnatural.” Apart from God, man does not die. Much worse. He becomes a monster. Oh, he looks the same; but his soul, like Dorian Gray’s attic portrait, becomes disfigured, twisted, and grotesque.” — G.K.Chesterton

“Christian culture,” writes Christopher Dawson in The Crisis of Western Education (1961), “is the embodiment of Christianity in social institutions and patterns of life and behavior.” Hence, for most Catholics, this culture was caught, rather than taught, and it served as the cement foundation for Catholics’ beliefs. In Dawson’s telling, “[a]rchitecture and painting and sculpture, music and poetry were all enlisted in [Christian culture’s] service, and no one was too poor or too uneducated to share in its mysteries.”— David G. Bonagura, Jr.

The Church deteriorates, as it is doing today, when it becomes in effect an administrative bureaucracy, and men cling to it only for the sake of their careers. It becomes a Church that actually discourages martyrdom (“witnessing”), and like all political and “materialist” agencies it makes its mission health, comfort, and convenience. For these are the things of this world, which never did require heavenly promotion. — David Warren

The Devil has no goods of his own to sell, so to speak. He can only use the goods created by the Creator to try to make us disordered. One of the hard tasks assigned to Christians in the present generation is to resist and name disordered virtues. To withstand slurs about bias and hate, by affirming the fullness of truth – and love. No small or easy task. But the one to which Divine Providence has decreed we are called. —  Robert Royal

He gave the sacrament of Holy Orders to his Church when he gave his disciples the power to forgive sins: “Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; whose sins you retain, they are retained” (Jn 20:23). It is all the actions performed by Our Lord that constitute the sacrament of Holy Orders, above all the words of the Upper Room. — Bishop Huonder

To remember today these actions of Our Lord and the power associated with them is anything but clerical: it is to fulfill a duty towards an anticlerical society, or rather a society that wants to eliminate the clergy. In this context, to insult clerics by using the term clericalism is abusive, is wrong. On the contrary, we must encourage anyone who follows the Lord’s call and accepts to be one of his disciples [in this way], thus becoming a cleric: a deacon, a priest, even a bishop. — Bishop Huonder

The word cleric is derived from the Greek word κλῆρος, which means lot, participation, share of inheritance. The cleric is a man who takes part in the Lord’s inheritance, who gives himself totally to the Lord, who goes with the Lord, who goes with him to the cross, remembering his words, “If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mt 16:24)….   The cleric is a man, as Jesus said on other occasions, who drinks from the same chalice as the Lord (cf. Mt 20:22). In this context, the chalice is a symbol of κλῆρος, of share of inheritance. This is what it means to be a cleric, to be a priest: to drink the very chalice of the Lord! To share in the same share that the Lord has received. — Bishop Huonder

The one who has received the priesthood, the presbyterate, is consecrated specifically in view of the priestly task, which is to offer the reenactment of the sacrifice of the cross and to exercise the ministry of the remission of sins. This is the heart of the priesthood, the first task and duty of the priest, which defines him. — Bishop Huonder

There are so many painful examples of this slavery to human respect today. The clergy fail to teach and affirm the ageless Christian faith and morals because they are afraid of being labelled rigid or homophobes. We pretend we do not see the evil that is destroying our loved ones because we do not want to be called judgmental. We remain silent in the face of scandals because we are afraid of being called bigots. — Father Nnamdi Momene, OMV

Our thoughts in this present life should turn on the praise of God, because it is in praising God that we shall rejoice for ever in the life to come; and no one can be ready for the next life unless he trains himself for it now. So we praise God during our earthly life, and at the same time we make our petitions to him. — St. Augustine

Monsignor Pozzo from Ecclesia Dei asked Bishop Fellay from the Society of St. Pius X, “Pope Francis asked me, ‘Where do they have so much money?’And I answered him, ‘All these buildings which we purchase which we build they do not come from so much money they come from faithful who have the faith, these are works of the faith when people are convinced, convinced of their faith of this duty to glorify God, this faith removes mountains.Here you can touch that truth.— Bishop Fellay.

It is by the soul, enclosed within the body, that the body is held together, and similarly, it is by the Christians, detained in the world as in a prison, that the world is held together. The soul, though immortal, has a mortal dwelling place; and Christians also live for a time amidst perishable things, while awaiting the freedom from change and decay that will be theirs in heaven. As the soul benefits from the deprivation of food and drink, so Christians flourish under persecution. Such is the Christian’s lofty and divinely appointed function, from which he is not permitted to excuse himself. — From a Letter to Diognetus

Christians love all men, but all men persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many; they are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything. They suffer dishonor, but that is their glory. They are defamed, but vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult. For the good they do they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life. — From a Letter to Diognetus

… common-sense people will always anchor themselves to the truth wherever they can find it.  Truth prevailing, sooner or later, is indeed the “iron law of the universe.” — Will Alexander

“I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold, and what they do not, who know their creed so well, that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it. I want an intelligent, well-instructed laity. — Cardinal Newman from Fr. Peter M.J. Stravinskas

And what will such a “well-instructed laity” accomplish?  It will be: your gaining that proper confidence in self which is so necessary for you. You will then not even have the temptation to rely on others, to court political parties or particular men; they will rather have to court you. You will no longer be dispirited or irritated. . . , at finding difficulties in your way, in being called names, in not being believed, in being treated with injustice. You will fall back upon yourselves; you will be calm, you will be patient. Ignorance is the root of all littleness. — Cardinal Newman from Fr. Peter M.J. Stravinskas

Synod language is packed with terms like inclusivity, accompaniment, listening, participation (especially of women, young people), the “marginalized,” even LGBTQs. In other words, with contemporary political categories. But the heart of the Faith – crucial realities like sin, redemption, grace, repentance, judgment, Heaven, Hell – is nowhere in evidence. The political and social have all but replaced the moral and spiritual. — Robert Royal

“Diversity, equity, and inclusion” are the new “self-evident truths” governing the nation and the hollowed-out moral shells of many religious denominations (and too many senior members of the Catholic hierarchy). — Fr. Jerry Pokorsky

BORN AGAIN MEANS: “in baptism two ends were proposed: on the one hand, the destroying of the body of sin, that it may never ripen into death; on the other hand, our coming to life in the Spirit, ripening and having our fruit in holiness. Like a tomb, the water receives the body, symbolizing death; while the Spirit pours in the quickening power, renewing our souls from the deadness of sin into their original life. This then is what it is to be born again of water and of the Spirit, the water bringing the necessary death while the Spirit creates life within us.” — St. Basil

Behind the subtleties and complexities of Aristotle and Aquinas lie what Chesterton called “sanity,” deeply rooted in reality, not “socially constructed” as the sophists in every age claim, but the framework of the world in which we live and the truth about our own being as well. — Robert Royal

If we spend enough time in the Bible, the supernatural realm becomes more natural to us, because we realize that much of what God accomplished in the natural realm actually began in the supernatural (spiritual) realm. It’s hard to read the account of Creation in Genesis and arrive at any other conclusion. — Craige McMillan

Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles.— Dostoievski

All who justify their sin will want the company that misery desires; but that desire is perhaps sharpest in those whose sin assumes the character of love.  The murderer says he wanted justice, the miser wanted security, but they who sin sexually have love itself as their defense, or what they wish love were … I am attracted to some good, and I desire it, but I choose against the desire, subjecting it to judgment.  It is not only that I decline to pursue that good.  I decline to affirm the desire.  I may go further.  I may condemn the desire, using my reason, and calling into battle other desires – for honor or purity or integrity of life.— Anthony Esolen

The best way for the person to keep the demonic out is to live out a committed relationship with God.As Catholics we would say, you go to Mass, pray, you receive the Sacraments, continue to read the Bible.With these 4 things the devil is already on the run.Again we don’t have to do anything extraordinary to defeat the devil.It is the ordinary aspects of our faith that will always keep the devil at bay.— Fr. Vincent Lampert, exorcist

The most evident mark of God’s anger and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world are manifested when He permits His people to fall into the hands of clerics who are priests more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds. — St. John Eudes

Politics involves the use of power.  And power always has a moral dimension.  Thus, political engagement is a Christian duty.  We have the obligation to make this world as good as we can. . .without ever deluding ourselves that it’s our final home.  Because – as history teaches – when we try to create heaven on earth, we build a pretty good copy of hell instead. — Francis X. Maier

Now is not the time, therefore, for the Church to abandon the robust moral and spiritual vision of the Church’s moral tradition in general or of Pope John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor, in particular. Because its vindication is at hand if we but had the eyes to see it and the courage to teach it. And now is certainly not the time to give heed to those who have apparently lost their prophetic edge and their ecclesial nerve. — Dr. Larry Chapp

At the end of the day, there are two alternatives: faith or nihilism. For the thinking man, it comes down to these two, and the only goal in life is to become a saint or to die trying. —  Peter Kwasnewski, Ph.D.

Catholicism isn’t primarily about “the Church”—that is, the Church on earth in her structures, laws, works, affairs. It’s about union with Christ, which is the Church’s reason for existing. In baptism I died and rose with Him; in the Eucharist I receive Him. There is no other reason to belong to the Church except to guarantee life from the Life, light from the Light. The Church gives me access to Him by divine guarantee, and that’s why I’m a Catholic. I’m not a Catholic in order to have access to clergy or even to glorious liturgies; I welcome the (good) clergy and the (good) liturgies because they lead me closer to Him, Who is my life and my light. He is the measure, the meaning, the goal, of all of it. — Peter Kwasnewski, Ph.D.

If God is our happiness, then what makes us happy in this life?  Whatever brings us closer to God and makes ultimate union with him possible.  And thus the “science of happiness” is exactly the same as the “science” of holiness.  Avoid mortal sin.  Have frequent recourse to the sacraments.  Pray daily and often. Do all things for God.  Live in his presence.  Follow his law not your own will.  Aim to live the virtues heroically.  Learn the life of Christ and pattern your life on his. — Michael Pakaluk

To count one’s blessings is perhaps the most basic religious exercise of all. In our weakness, we all tend to focus on our struggles and sorrows, but it is much more fruitful for us to focus instead on our blessings and literally start counting them. One simple thing to do is to get out a rosary, go through the beads one by one, and on every bead name a blessing and make a quick act of thanksgiving to God for it. When we count all the blessings God has poured forth upon us, the memory of his blessings gives birth to gratitude and thanksgiving — the original meaning of the word “eucharist.” — Fr. James Brent, OP

In his passion, as well as in his heavenly worship now, the Lord Jesus adores the Father. To adore someone is to acknowledge with love the outstanding qualities of the person. Adoration connotes being in awe over some special goodness we are beholding.— Fr. James Brent, OP

One of the most basic functions of Christians in the world is to plead with God and call down graces upon people, and the best place to do so is together in the celebration of the Eucharist.— Fr.  James Brent, OP

“Climate Change,” once known as “Global Cooling” and later as “Global Warming, is recognized by most of humanity as “the weather.” As a political agenda, however, it has always been a moving target. — Katarina Carranco

Experience needs to be interpreted. It needs a “hermeneutic” [interpretation] to ascertain whether that experience is leading is in the direction of weal or woe. To make experience the hermeneutic [interpreter] of experience is something like a puppy chasing its tail: it gets wound up in circles but it’s a very closed system. So, what is going to be your “hermeneutic”? Catholics should answer: the received teaching of the Church. That’s because of what the Church is: the continued presence of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit with man until the end of time. The Church is not just (or even first of all) an institution. She is first and foremost the vehicle of making God’s saving work present here and now. —John Grondelski, Ph.D.

Brothers, look at the humility of God, and ‘pour out your hearts before Him’ [Ps 62:9]! Humble yourselves that you may be exalted by Him! Hold back nothing of yourselves for yourselves, that He Who gives Himself totally to you may receive you totally. — St. Francis of Assisi

“Behold, each day He humbles Himself as when He came from the royal throne into the Virgin’s womb; each day He Himself comes to us, appearing humbly; each day He comes down from the bosom of the Father upon the altar in the hands of a priest” — St. Francis of Assisi

The inner life of a committed Catholic – one who has heroically acquiesced in the adventure of sanctification – is a non-stop, action-packed thrill ride of the soul.In contrast, the hedonistic life, in which there is nothing to do but satisfy the self, seems empty and sad. More like an illusion than a life. — Peter Laffin

To any young person who is searching for true freedom with ears to hear, may your Catholic elders speak in one voice: To feel free, find someone to love with all your heart who is capable of loving you in return. And once you have, pour yourself out recklessly, give everything to marriage and family, or to a vocation, and miraculously, your cup will forever overflow.It doesn’t make sense, but it’s not supposed to. It’s only supposed to be true. It is. And it will set you free.— Peter Laffin

With the rambunctious and common-sensical Hilaire Belloc as our guide, then, we can enumerate a short list of important manly activities: 1.Hunting, .2 Shooting, 3. Drinking, 4. Boating, 5. Dancing, 6. Singing, 7. Hand crafts, 8. Hearing Mass —Julian Kwasnewski

“If we are going to be people of dialogue, we have to first have a dialogue with God; synodality needs to be based on a dialogue with Scripture and the Lord.” — Canadian and U.S. Bishops Report

“Those who control language control thought, and eventually semantic corruption leads to the adulteration of thought itself.” — William Brennan, Ph.D., Professor of Social Work in the Saint Louis University School of Social Work.

“Original sin is the only thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it.”  (Reinhold Niebuhr).Once we think of ourselves as gods, we can no longer think of ourselves as God’s.  And there pride lurks – the beginning of all sin. — Deacon James Toner

A church is not just another “group” and, religious illiteracy notwithstanding, people who poke their head into a church are generally not unaware of the Christian message about sin and redemption, at least in its broad strokes. And make no mistake about it: that message is Gospel, εὐαγγέλιον, “good news.” A diagnosis of illness is not good news. The possibility of its cure is.  A church which confuses diagnosis with cure, dissembling about the latter so as not to address the former, shouldn’t “welcome” anybody. It should close its doors to avoid spiritual malpractice. — John Grondelski, Ph.D.

The reset, the new creation, the new Passover, is fulfilled in Christ, the unique, indispensable, eternal truth, the living and true Word of the Eternal Father. The true reset is returning to the truth of Christ, of the one who said of Himself: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” A Truth that is, while error in contrast has no existence. A Truth that demands sincerity on our part – in azymis sinceritatis [unleavened sincerity]– as a necessary response to light of truth – et veritatis [truth]. — Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò

Purging the old leaven means starting over from the beginning, accomplishing a true “great reset” of each individual soul and of the social body, cancelling the ferment of malice and perversity, and starting afresh with unleavened bread, a figure of the Holy Eucharist and Blessed Sacrament of the new and eternal covenant made by Christ with His Church, made new in grace and not subject to the changes of time, fashion, and circumstances.— Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò

If instead we choose not to fight for the truth, or even to allow error to be proclaimed or to spread it ourselves, we align ourselves on the side of Satan, the prince of lies, on the side of the one who makes promises and does not keep them, for the sole purpose of dragging us into that abyss of damnation into which he chose to sink when, committing the sin of pride, he believed he could put himself in the place of God and decide what is and what is not, that is, what is true and what is false, what is good and what is evil, what is beautiful and what is ugly. And in fact, the infernal world we are rushing headlong into today is composed of lies, malice, and ugliness. Nor could it be otherwise.— Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò

The feminine diaconate is a lie, which with the alibi of giving a role to women attacks the Mass and the sacraments and tampers with the Holy Orders instituted by Our Lord. The possibility of divorced and cohabitating couples receiving Holy Communion is a lie, the blessing of homosexual unions is a lie, the entrance of transsexuals into the seminary is a lie: morality does not follow the fashions of the day, … — Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò

The acceptance of sodomy is a lie, which too often seems to want to legitimize the conduct of many prelates and clergy rather than saving the souls of poor sinners.These lies have the effrontery to manifest themselves as obvious falsehoods, deprived of any rational or credible arguments. They are not the lies with which one clumsily tries to hide something: they are the arrogant affirmation of falsification, of the subversion of logic, of the negation of the truth.— Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò

But why do so many people voluntarily choose to renounce their own critical judgment and accept blatant lies as rational and true? Because adherence to error is the price that the world asks of its adorers, of those who do not want to be marginalized, criminalized, and persecuted. And who is the prince of lies if not Satan, the father of lies, he who was a murderer from the very beginning?— Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò

Even with the most sophistical twisting of words, contemporary exegetes cannot conceal the revealed truth that the denial of God results in the lie about the right relationship of man and woman and that consequently the sexual intercourse of people of the same sex contradicts the two-sex natural disposition of man and thus constitutes a grave sin (cf. Rom 1:18-32; 1 Cor 6:9f). — Cardinal Gerhard Müller

The resolutions of the “Synodal Way” rob faithful Catholics of the “truth of the Gospel” (Gal 2:5), only to replace it with the cheap lentil mash of a sex-fixated ideology, the true center of gravity of the German “Synodal Way”, a kind of nihilistic materialism that is a mockery of God who created man in His image and likeness as male and female. — Cardinal Gerhard Müller

the sacraments are valid even if they are administered by a schismatic or heretical bishop – but only if he merely intends to do what the Church understands by these sacraments. But one should also avoid these persons who lead so many of the sheep of Christ entrusted to them on the wrong path. Incidentally, many Fathers of the Church have also been severely persecuted by heretics, e.g. Athanasius the Great, John Chrysostom, Pope Martin I, and others.— Cardinal Gerhard Müller

The so-called blessing of same-sex couples is a labeling fraud. The appearance of the gesture of blessing does not correspond to any reality of the helping grace communicated by God. It is a grave sin to invoke the name of God in order to justify the frivolous transgression of God’s commandments (which always save us from the calamity of sin) with the love of God. “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith.” (1Jn 5, 3-4)— Cardinal Gerhard Müller

As a priest in an age of failing faith, the Curé [St. John Vianney] set his face like flint pursuing souls and crucifying himself with Christ. Driven out of bed each morning out of burning love for Christ, he knew the proper response to bringing an uncatechized generation to God was preaching the furnace of the Gospel, tirelessly praying, and taking up severe penances for souls. He dared to love his little flock as Christ loved from the cross.  — Kevin Wells [I see it as the same challenge for us priests today: need for a burning love for Jesus, preaching truth to an uncatechized generation, prayer and penance — rp]

Real Transformation from the gospel of John, the plan for man’s salvation

Unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God. (3:3)
Unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. (3:5)
Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. (6:53)
Unless you believe that ‘I AM,’ you will die in your sins. (8:24)
Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. (12:24)
Unless I wash you, you have no part in me. (13:8)
As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. (15:4) — Dr. Leroy Huizenga

Basis for Holy Orders  The question, then, concerns why the rubrics for the ritual command that viri selecti—“chosen males”—have their feet washed, and not women. The answer is that the footwashing scene in the Gospel of John is not only meant to be an example of humble service, but primarily a record of the institution of the Christian priesthood and thus the Scriptural root of the sacrament of holy orders. … Fr. Jerome Neyrey, SJ, longtime professor of New Testament at Notre Dame, demonstrated that the footwashing scene in John 13 is a “status transformation ritual” in which the disciples are made priests of the new covenant. — Dr. Leroy Huizenga

Ratzinger also observed this historical fact:  To many, this demand for the ordination of women, this possibility of having Catholic priestesses, appears not only justified but obvious: a simple and inevitable adaptation of the Church to a new social situation that has come into being. — Dr. Leroy Huizenga [this error of “adaptation to new social situation” is the red herring used by ideologues to impose their will upon the church: acceptance of lgbtq rights, women voting in bishops’ meetings, women clergy, and the list goes on.What God has revealed must yield to what man desires, i.e. the Original Sin —rp]

The more intellectually shallow pretend the logic of non-contradiction can be ignored; the more arrogant insist that even more foundational principles of theological anthropology (sexual differentiation as the divine plan, procreation as blessing and vocation, etc.), and even received understandings of the Bible, should then be readjusted.“Profound rather than casual sex” lets us run anywhere one likes on the dogmatic football field. The problem is that yesterday’s theologians and today’s churchmen pretend they can pull theological threads but keep the “central truths” of the faith from unravelling.That’s another game some theologians play. — John Grondelski, PhD

For the poor are like the rest of us, the same as us—not a class apart. Our Lord does not see rich or poor, privileged or unfortunate, low class or high. He sees only fallen men and women whom He loves.Christ’s only preference is for poor sinners. Who dares improve upon that?Fr. John A. Perricone

ideologues insist that all “the poor” must ever see is their misfortune. Misfortune defines them. Their lack of what others have becomes their identity. Their humanity is eviscerated as ideologues entomb them perpetually as “the poor.” This is the capital sin of Envy writ large.  This is the problem with any ideology/heresy: it forgets its place in the natural and supernatural order of things. Rather than liberate the human person, it smothers him. —Fr. John Perricone

In fact, from the ’60s to this very day, a Catholic would be hard put to find mention of “saving souls” in any sermon or part of the voluminous Catholic mainstream academic literature (used in Catholic colleges, universities, seminaries and various houses of formation) accumulated since Vatican II. So thorough was the revolution that the mere mention of the phrase “saving souls” today in well-heeled circles is met with arched eyebrows or awkward embarrassment. —Fr. John Perricone

In the raucous wake of the ending of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) a significant number of the theological bien pensant executed a doctrinal coup d’état. Under the banner of aggiornamento, they masterminded a tectonic shift in the raison d’être of the Roman Catholic Church. No longer was the Church’s mission “saving souls”; respectable Catholics now spoke of “social justice.”   The goal of the society was not to help the poor, this was only a means. Our object was by the practice of Charity to strengthen ourselves in the Faith, and to win others for it…. Personal perfection and not the eradication of poverty per se is the primary goal of the Society. —Fr. John Perricone

The preferential option for the poor ideologues design a manipulable tribe called “the poor,” who are forbidden to thirst for the truth and beauty which is the patrimony and comfort of all human beings. These ideologues insist that all “the poor” must ever see is their misfortune. Misfortune defines them. Their lack of what others have becomes their identity. Their humanity is eviscerated as ideologues entomb them perpetually as “the poor.” This is the capital sin of Envy writ large. — Fr. John Perricone

The more intellectually shallow pretend the logic of non-contradiction can be ignored; the more arrogant insist that even more foundational principles of theological anthropology (sexual differentiation as the divine plan, procreation as blessing and vocation, etc.), and even received understandings of the Bible, should then be readjusted.“Profound rather than casual sex” lets us run anywhere one likes on the dogmatic football field. The problem is that yesterday’s theologians and today’s churchmen pretend they can pull theological threads but keep the “central truths” of the faith from unravelling.That’s another game some theologians play. — John Grondelski, PhD

Woman’s destiny is love. When she is loved, she is most completely herself, able to expand and unfold the riches of her being as a flower opens its full beauty only in sunlight. When she loves, she is exercising her great mission in life. And if love is the life work of all women, it is the particular vocation of the contemplative religious woman. — MOTHER MARY FRANCIS OF OUR LADY, P.C.C.

I am yours, God. Not, “I must loosen the collar of this regulation-shirt so that I can really do something for You, God.” What mental strutting about we do when we talk of doing something for God! What can we do for Him but love Him? And how can we love Him more profoundly or comprehensively than simply by being His? — MOTHER MARY FRANCIS OF OUR LADY, P.C.C.

The present moves forward in exactly the measure in which it gathers wisdom from the past. If ancient usages continue to be conducive to humility, charity, and patience, then they are as modern as they are ancient. If they are not, then it is time to think about updating or maybe even abolishing them. But we shall first want to make sure that something is really wrong with the usage and not instead something wrong with the nun. — — MOTHER MARY FRANCIS OF OUR LADY, P.C.C.

This means that if you’re not working on someone’s salvation, it isn’t love. Call it what you will. However intensely you may feel it, with whatever part of you may feel it —it doesn’t matter if it’s not helping a person progress in holiness. It is not love. And no dialogue, no encounter, no listening session, not even listening to the “lived experience of people at the peripheries now pulled into the center” can change that. — Fr. Robert McTeigue, SJ

This “hate speech” weapon is being used to silence Catholic objections to homosexuality.  And used with a high degree of success.  When is the last time you heard a priest denounce homosexuality?  Every parish priest knows that if he does so, he will provoke the ire of more than a few parishioners.  They will leave his parish, or they will reduce their financial contributions, or they will write to the bishop complaining of his “hatred” and “bigotry.”  And he knows that many a bishop, instead of complimenting him on his courageous defense of the faith, will advise him to be “prudent.” —  David Carlin

It is not mercy to lie about sin, much less is it to leave the faithful in a state of sin because of the confessor’s fearfulness in speaking to the faithful as an authoritative father and caring physician. Only a misunderstood mercy, devoid of Christian realism, can abdicate the very serious task of judge and physician that Christ entrusts to the Apostles and their successors. Which Christ entrusts to every confessor!… “It is neither doctrinally nor pastorally to be believed that equivocation about the judgment of sinful acts and their clear identification can bear any positive fruit—Cardinal Mauro Piacenza

Using all the means of fraternal dialogue, authentic spiritual paternity and helping the faithful to perceive the infinite goodness of God and the Lord’s permanent readiness to cover and destroy, with the fire of His Mercy, every sin, the individual priest has the grave duty to admonish the sinner about the seriousness of his condition and, if he did not do so, he himself would answer for it before God. —Cardinal Mauro Piacenza

And if even this term – ‘pastoral’ – has been and is widely abused, attributing to it every possible unjustified subjective creativity, in the name of an alleged, as much as ineffective closeness to people, we well know that all that is pastoral can only refer back to the one Good Shepherd.—Cardinal Mauro Piacenza

A common disease among even good Catholics, cardinals, bishops and priests included, is that a command or law imposed by one’s superior is necessarily always good, just and, therefore, must be obeyed. This is sheer legal positivism at work. It is a practical manifestation of “might makes right,” that the lawgiver by merely enacting a law makes the object of his law a good and virtuous thing aligned with justice and the common good of his subjects.… deeds done under the false cloak of authority must be denounced and rejected. The faithful, bound by the First Commandment of God and their baptismal promises, must defend and maintain their Catholic life and refuse to be treated as pariahs in their own churches and parishes.— Anonymous Priest, article by Fr. Maike Hickson

Flannery O’Connor, the southern muse, explained this in a letter to someone who criticized the Church, in his generation: “All your dissatisfaction with the Church seems to me to come from an incomplete understanding of sin. This will perhaps surprise you because you are very conscious of the sins of Catholics.” On priests, she expounds, “the hidden love that makes a man, in spite of his intellectual limitations, his neuroticism, his own lack of strength, give up his life to the service of God’s people, however bumblingly he may go about it.”— David Warren

It is easy enough to find things that are big and need some change, in our humble opinion, but which cannot be changed, from our humble station…. And it easily becomes a form of lust, as the complainer derives a perverse pleasure from enumerating the many faults throughout Church, priests, and lay Catholics, eagerly piling them into a very human commination. It becomes an “expense of spirit in a waste of shame.”— David Warren

“It’s our business to try to change the external faults of the Church – the vulgarity, the lack of scholarship, the lack of honesty – wherever we find them and however we can,” Miss O’Connor declared. We carry these faults with our pain, our suffering; and this is what we were after all called to do. Our Founder is crucified by all Catholics.— David Warren

He did not carry the banner of reform and revolution, however. His detestation was restricted to sin, and his scheme for amendment restricted to holiness.— David Warren

O’Connor: “To expect too much is a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness. Charity is hard and endures.” — David Warren

These days, the idea of the development of doctrine is often reduced to a species of casuistry, a means for justifying any manner of deviations from what has been handed down to us. Development of doctrine is a corollary to the profound unity of the faith across time and space. Authentic doctrinal development is not a technique for manipulating Tradition, a means for bending Tradition to our purposes or to the world’s. But we are not masters of the Word of God. Not even the bishops are. — Stephen P.White

in Dei Verbum: [T]he task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed. — Stephen P. White

The teaching office of the Church, exercised in the name of Jesus Christ, is not above the word of God, whether written or handed on – that is, as concerns both Scripture and Tradition! – but rather serves it. The unity of the Church is not extraneous to the revealed word of God as found in the Scriptures and Tradition but is utterly inseparable from it. — Stephen P. White

What’s key is to distinguish firmly between “forgiveness” and “reconciliation.” If by “forgive” you mean “letting go” and not clinging to wrongs and craving vengeance, then, yes, that’s a good idea. It’s spiritually and even psychologically healthy. … I still have a duty, when necessary, to warn people who might come into danger of suffering at such villains’ hands.— John Zmirak

Who spends a lot of time worrying about their sexual psychology?  Or about women in the priesthood?  Or navel-gazing about “governing structures” in the Church?Not the poor.  They’re busy just keeping body and soul together, trying to eke out another day’s living to support their families.  No, these are the obsessions of a class of bourgeois intellectuals who elbow aside everyone else in order to maximize their self-interest and to ensure the self-created identities of people who share their lifestyle. They see themselves as governing by divine right, and they are not especially tolerant of those who defy them. — Randall Smith

Joseph lived as a kind of proto-model of the evangelical counsels: poverty – materialism held no sway over him; chastity – his sexuality was under control; obedience – to God’s way, not his own. St. Joseph is the preeminent model of manhood and fatherhood, so desperately needed in our current crisis of masculinity. He offers an especially powerful witness for men today as no lust, no unbridled passion, no turning of persons into objects for personal gratification ever clouded his relationship to his holy spouse. — Rev. Peter M. J. Stravinskas

Whereas in the past people derived meaning in life from their religion — their religious community, their house of worship, from Bible study — religious sources of meaning have begun to disappear from our secular society.… And where do people look? To career and political activism — and ideally, the merger of the two. — Dennis Prager[The church in Germany and some Catholic clergy no longer derive meaning from the traditional faith and worship.Now they seek meaning in their careers and for political activism rather than in transformation into the image of Jesus Christ. — Fr. Perozich.

We must understand that Satan is not just a liar and the father of lies; we must understand that means every fiber of his being is based upon lies and the promotion of lies.  His every purpose is to lead the inattentive, unsuspecting and unaware astray in order to destroy them physically and spiritually.  It’s no less important for us to understand that Christians comprise membership in these groups – the inattentive, unsuspecting and the unaware. — Mykal Massie   Fr. Perozich: They inhabit synods, dioceses, and Catholic media.

Still, what we do, we do, and our actions become what we are.  … The sin ate into the soul and assimilated it to itself, and to such an intimate depth that …he … no longer felt any shame … but he set it down as a positive good. — Anthony Esolen

I make no judgment as to his eternal disposition.  God is the judge.  But what we do see, we may declare.  Sin deforms, and sinning with what you feel is a clear conscience, …will deform you all the worse.  Thus the prostitute who wept before Jesus was healthier than was Simon the leper, sinning in his pride, with a conscience as clear as day. — Anthony Esolen

Sin is to the soul as disease is to the body, but with a crucial difference that makes the sin more insidious.  The body may fight off disease by its own resources.  The soul cannot fight off sin that way.  That is, again, because the sin is more than an invader.  “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” cries Saint Paul, when he describes the plight of one who knows what the good is, and who even wishes to choose the good, but chooses the bad instead. — Anthony Esolen

The plight of someone who no longer recognizes the good is worse still.  It should be clear that no effort of the soul can avail, because the dross of the sin is thoroughly mixed up with the ore.  There is no vantage from which the ore can drive out the dross; it is, for the soul, all one.  Only the operation of grace can avail, with the word of God that cleaves between the marrow and the bone. — Anthony Esolen

Hence also the dire need to preach the truth. …  We are all sinners, and all have fallen short of the glory of God.We must turn to God and say, “A clean heart create in me,” a bold thing to ask, for the re-creation of one soul is a greater wonder than was the creation of the world.  We must not say, “Judge what I might have been,” but, “Forgive what I am, and make me new.” — Anthony Esolen

We are not judged by conscience detached from truth; rather, we are judged by truth and our sincere efforts to live by it. Insofar as one is not morally justified by following a culpably ill-formed conscience, it does not have the privileged place in moral decision making. Rather, in this respect it is truth, which is discoverable by the proper exercise of reason and humble recourse to Church teaching, that holds the privileged place in moral decision making by enabling one to come to an objectively true judgment of conscience. — E Christian Brugger

The presumption should be that if a person knows the Church teaches that a kind of chosen behavior is gravely immoral, and he continues to choose that behavior, that he should sacramentally confess every instance of that behavior and leave the question of the certainty of culpability to divine judgment.— E Christian Brugger

“The real scandal,” he points out, “is not the existence of sinners, for mercy and forgiveness always exist precisely for them, but rather the confusion between good and evil caused by the tergiversations [conflicting, evasive, equivocating statements] of Catholic shepherds.  If men who are consecrated to God are no longer capable of understanding the radical nature of the Gospel message and seek to anesthetize it, we will be going the wrong way.” —Cardinal Robert Sarah quoted by James Toner

“Betrayal Trauma: The phrase “betrayal trauma” can be used to refer to a kind of trauma independent of the reaction to the trauma. From Freyd (2008): Betrayal trauma occurs when the people or institutions on which a person depends for survival significantly violate that person’ s trust or well-being.” — Jennifer J. Freyd. Ph.D. 

Bishops and priests, please stop calling us backward, rigid.Please stop promoting your opinions as pastoral care.Please give us back our worship styles.Please stop oppressing our Catholic Traditions.You do not know better than Jesus or than we do.  — rp

The controversy involving the 1962 rite of Mass, sometimes known as the Tridentine rite, serves, among other things, as a study in Catholic toleration. Most people, Catholic or otherwise, believe that ours is a more tolerant age than those that preceded it. Modern toleration is a selective thing, however, as it is applied to only certain issues (these days, often involving sexual behaviors) — Robert Shaffern

Even if a member of the laity never personally hears the bishop speak, he or she should experience the effects of the bishop’s guidance and supervision of the priests in the diocese, and his careful response to egregious examples of false preaching, poor example, moral laxity, error in expounding Catholic theology, or a dangerous and destructive permissiveness in tolerating within the members of God’s Mystical Body unwholesome lifestyles and scandalous behavior.Clarity in teaching the Gospel, faithfulness in living it, and courage in speaking the truth in season and out of season should be the hallmarks of all bishops. This is achieved both by proclaiming truth and denouncing falsehood. — Fr. C. John McCloskey (d. 2023)

Whatever you are having yourself, à la carte Catholicism is leading to less conversions, less baptisms, marriages and religious vocations. — Hermann Kelly

… clerical “forgiveness” seems to have degenerated into some magic concept that imagines forgiveness can be proclaimed even when repentance seems unclear, even absent. — John. M. Grondelski

Where do you see hope for Church? Hope for the world? Christ crucified is Christ risen is Christ reigning is Christ returning. Christ will share His victory with His faithful. — Fr. Robert McTeigue, SJ

Do not lie in bed beyond the due time of rising; give your first thoughts to God; make a good visit to the Blessed Sacrament; say the Angelus devoutly; eat and drink to God’s glory; say the Rosary well; be recollected; keep out bad thoughts; make your evening meditation well; examine yourself daily; go to bed in good time, and you are already perfect. — St John Henry Newman

The remedy to a Church ridden with dissent is a Church that understands what are the unchanging teachings of Christ and what are matters of prudence. But more than understanding, both bishops and laity must also live those teachings {the unchanging teachings of Christ] in their entirety and debate matters of prudence with humility and charity. — Erika Ahern

“I don’t gossip; I just explain the faults of others.” — Mother Angelica

it [fasting] but increases the excitability and susceptibility of our hearts; in all cases it is therefore to be viewed, chiefly as an approach to God – an approach to the powers of heaven – yes, and to the powers of hell.” — St. JH Newman

John Paul II spoke of the “fundamental questions” that “have their common source in the quest for meaning which has always compelled the human heart.”  The answers people give to these questions, he says, will “decide the direction they seek to give to their lives.”… if a person has never considered these questions … it’s likely that his life is being determined by the implicit, unreflected-upon-answers given to him by others. He’s likely “living out a script written by someone else.” … For Christians, the ultimate touchstone for such a critique would come from divine revelation and the truths of faith.  This is what it means to scrutinize the signs of the times – not merely be subject to them, but scrutinize them – “and interpret them in the light of the Gospel,” as a famous passage from Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes goes on to say. —Randall Smith

What is the first thing an enemy does to you, once you are captured?  1—He disarms you; 2- He shackles you; 3— He renders you powerless to do your own will.Even when we have fallen into sin, we retain free will, but our will is already weakened due to original and actual sin.  We can become so mired in sin that we can’t rule ourselves. The Sacrament of Penance is a great gift.  It frees us from our self-inflicted chains. We must strive to live without mortal sin. But we fall.  In mortal sin we divest ourselves, as it were, of our spiritual armor. We make ourselves prisoners. — Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

We offer “Mass for the repose of the soul of X” because the Eucharist is a sacrifice, a re-presentation of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, an offering of the Most Precious Gift that Jesus Christ, true God and true man, offered in and with His Real Body and Blood which is really made present here and now in this sacrament and really part of His one great offering of Himself “for us and for our salvation.”  — John  M. Grondelski

The “Old Testament,” or Tanakh, is the foundation for our faith as Christians. Without it, we cannot fully appreciate, or explain, or comprehend the work of Jesus, the very Jewish God-Man, who came to atone for the sins of the world and build His kingdom here in Earth. — Joseph Farah

If you pray every day, read a little every day from the Word of God, and stay close to the sacraments, you’re definitely on the Way. We need to learn how to ignore the noise and conflict in the world, at least for a few hours. They’re distractions; invitations to confusion and anger. We’re responsible for our own actions and the people we love. If we focus on doing those things well, we’re living in the Truth. — Archbishop Charles Chaput

what are the greatest areas of reform needed to renew the Church?   Familiar cleric [Archbishop Charles Chaput]: Us; all of us. We’re the problem. Structures and policies are important, but people are decisive. In a sense, the focus of real Church reform is always the same: you and me. It’s that simple, and also that difficult. No one really likes to change, because it’s hard. And the essence of conversion is a sea change in the way we think and live. In its Hebrew root, “holy” doesn’t mean “good,” although holy people are always good. Holy means “different from” and “other than.” Christians are meant to be different from and other than the ways of the world. So if we want to reform the Church, we first need to reform ourselves. — Francis X. Maier

The New Moralists, on the other hand, permit people to remain in their mitigated guilt by treating it as mere veniality. They falsely reassure with words like “conscience,” “affirmation,” and “inclusion.” They’re silent about the damage done or the malice that eats at the heart of all who sin (even without full culpability). Thus, they cozily misdirect admitted sinners’ attention away from Christ and his freedom by not repeating his call to metanoia, fidelity to the Gospel, and the observance of all his commands. That’s not the Gospel. And it’s not new. It’s the very stratagem the Serpent used in tempting our first parents. May God protect and deliver his sinful flock from such “affirming” shepherds. — Fr. Timothy Vaverek

There are three ways for wisdom or prudence to abound in you: if you confess your sins, if you give thanks and praise, and if your speech is edifying. Man believes with his heart and so he is justified. He confesses with his lips and so he is saved. In the beginning of his speech the just man is his own accuser, next he gives glory to God and thirdly, if his wisdom extends that far, he edifies his neighbor. — St. Bernard, abbot

“Politeness and consideration for others is like investing pennies and getting dollars back.” —THOMAS SOWELL

One of the great gifts of conversion to Catholicism was that it liberated me from the tedious and futile project of self-invention. — Peter Laffin

Rom. 12:16; 1 Cor. 3:18-19; 1:23, 24 Never allow yourself to be self-satisfied; if you pride yourself on your worldly wisdom, you will have to unlearn it all before you are truly wise; – worldly wisdom is foolishness in the eyes of God. We preach a crucified Christ, and he is the power of God and the wisdom of God. – Worldly wisdom is foolishness in the eyes of God.

I think the best way to understand demons is by analogy to intellectuals. You may deal with them; listen to their advice; imagine the consequences. But you would be a fool to actually do what you have been told by an intellectual.Note, that this is not because the intellectual is stupid. The truth is, he may actually have a higher IQ than the average, or have mastered vocabulary that will make him shine. … For that “smart” characteristic is all mere display, and the more one tries to display it, the more its absence is revealed. — David Warren

Warmly Welcomed, But Not Continuing to be Comfortable in Sin On a practical level, that means that the young, drug-addicted, non-believing couple living together out of wedlock should feel welcomed and loved when they walk into one of our services. They should encounter people who have joy, who are thrilled to see new faces, and who treat them as if they were family.   At the same time, if the gospel is being preached and the Holy Spirit is moving, at some point they will become conscious of their sin and will be called to repent and receive mercy and grace through the cross. — Michael Brown

You cannot have a healthy Church unless you have strong Catholic families, and you cannot have those families unless you have many traditions (such as those proms once were) that assume that men and women are for one another. And you cannot have those traditions unless you protect them with the moral rules that strengthen us when temptations are strong and our resolve is weak, and that guard us from our worst selves. And you cannot have those moral rules if you accept sodomy, fornication, divorce, adultery, and the production and consumption of pornography. — Anthony Esolen

Speaking With Clarity is About Being Responsible to God for People.This is about people, not just issues, about people for whom Jesus died. And when God has entrusted us with leadership positions in the Body, it is imperative that we speak with clarity. … Pastors and leaders, your people need guidance and help. What do the Scriptures teach? What is the will of God in these difficult matters? How should we respond and how should we live? To fail to give wise, Word-based guidance is to be a spiritually negligent shepherd. Did Jesus leave us any doubt about where He stood on the essential issues? — MichaelBrown

Once abandon the idea that chastity is a great Catholic virtue, and sooner or later you (or your children or grandchildren) will abandon the remainder of your Catholicism. — David Carlin [but isn’t that precisely what the synod on synodality is proposing for the new church?—rp]

The essence of America is self-rule under God. Leave out either part, and we end up with tyranny. Without God as the secure source of our rights, from whence come those rights? … Thomas Jefferson said, and you can see this quote in the Jefferson Memorial: “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?” — Jerry Newcombe.  [And to Synod on Synodality leaders, novel impositions on the faithful without God as the source  from Scripture and Tradition give us tyranny not faith.  — Richard Perozich]

The Church excludes no one who professes the Faith.  The faithful often exclude themselves to a greater or lesser extent by what they say & do.  We never impose, but only propose.  Rejection of Catholic propositions does however have consequences.  Anything short of repentance and an honest effort at conversion is at best “cheap grace”  or at worst an “eating & drinking of condemnation upon themselves”.  Their nonsense can not stand.  — A faithful priest of the diocese of San Diego

“By being in the state of grace, we can more easily see God’s will for us as pro-life warriors, for the salvation of all souls. If we’re not in the state of grace. It’s like our lens are smudged, they’re dirty. And that’s where we make a mad dash to confession and ask for absolution from our Lord through persona Christi,” said Sister Deirdre, referring to the priest acting in the Person of Christ. — Sister Dierdre Byrne, M.D.

What none of us is allowed to do – Cardinals, bishops, priests, or laity – is to substitute conscience for the Gospel lived, proclaimed, and handed down by Christ in His Church. Jesus, not our sincere judgment, is the authentic source and measure of every person’s identity and life. No other accompaniment can heal and save us. — Fr. Timothy Vaverek

Everyone has “values.” Christians, however, have been entrusted with the revealed Word of God. There is a big difference between “values” and “truth.” Values are a part of ever-changing cultures and people groups. Truth is eternal and unchanging. Scholars define truth “that which corresponds to reality.” — Alex McFarland

The most important thing of all to him [St. Paul], however, was that he knew himself to be loved by Christ. Enjoying this love, he considered himself happier than anyone else; were he without it, it would be no satisfaction to be the friend of principalities and powers. He preferred to be thus loved and be the least of all, or even to be among the damned, than to be without that love and be among the great and honored. — St. John Chrysostom

Every work of the Church – her teachings, sacraments, and governance – is ultimately intended for this purpose, to make her members better followers of Christ. To view the Church as having any other purpose (social justice, political advocacy, environmental activism, etc.) is to misunderstand and misrepresent her. — Fr. Paul Scalia

Christ doesn’t need to save a planet; He is given for an inheritance. But as for the souls of men, they must decide if they want Christ. The invitation to salvation is universal—no one is refused. But the decision is always up to each and every individual that hears the gospel.The self-appointed saviors of the planet cannot save the planet, themselves, or any other person in this present world.“But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” (Jn 1:12)It is not our carbon footprint, but it is our guilty stains that we must deal with, before the final curtain comes down.   —  There is a fountain filled with blood — Drawn from Immanuel’s veins; —And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, — Lose all their guilty stains. — Michael Bresciani

The world mounts a double attack on the soldiers of Christ. It offers temptations in order to lead them astray; but it also terrifies, in order to break them. Let us not be held fast by our own pleasures, let us not be terrified by someone else’s cruelty, and the world has been vanquished.   At each attack, Christ comes running to the defence, and the Christian is not vanquished. — St. Augustine

The Greek word for church – ekklesia – comes from the verb to call. Members of the Church have been “called” – out of sin, out of the world, into communion with God.  — Fr. Paul Scalia

These weeks between Baptism of the Lord and Ash Wednesday belong to Ordinary Time on the Church calendar.  They’re a kind of Great Plains on the Christian wagon train to our real home.  They’re where everyday life happens; where the choices are made and the directions are set for our final destination.  In other words, they matter. — Francis X. Maier

God uses imperfect people. But there’s a simple reason for that. Imperfect people are the only kind of people that exist. Who can else can God use? … … heaven will be at one and the same time a great eye opener and a great mouth closer.You will be shocked to see certain people there, and they will be shocked to see you. — Michael Brown

Pope Paul VI would promulgate his encyclical Humanae Vitae in which he rightly prophesied that some of the consequences of artificial contraception would be: “This course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. Man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.” — David Gray from Martin Luther King and Planned Parenthood

To hear the voice of Jesus is, then, to hear the very voice of the Father – the Father’s Word.  Moreover, as we were created in the image of the Son, so the Word incarnate re-creates us into his likeness.  Having died for our sin and vanquished death, our risen Lord and Savior re-creates us by pouring out the Holy Spirit upon all who believe in him.  The Word’s Spirit of Truth transforms us into the truth-filled image of the Father’s Son.  Being so transformed, Christians are commissioned to be Spirit-filled proclaimers of the Word. — Fr. Tomas G. Weinandy, OFM. Cap

Of Joseph Ratzinger, “There are men whose gaze is a sign of God” …There are men whose look is a sign of God. It is part of it…”“The Church must regain its doctrinal solidity and firmness” — Bishop André Léonard

A human mind can grasp an intelligible story, which the Bible tells. It gets lost in the world of theory, where principles are at stake. It can understand the Trinity – three Persons, abstract except to serious contemplation. This one “Godhead,” of three, and the three in one, are manifest in prayer as they are through the universe. Over a lifetime, they become familiar to him who sincerely prays, notwithstanding he is lost when he turns away. A lifetime seems necessary to grasp them. — David Warren

Let us reform society, let us discard much of old-fashioned morality, and let us reform the moral and psychological education of our children – all this in order that you, poor suffering ones, will no longer feel pain.” But this “compassion” – to speak plainly – is empty sentimentality. It is not the fullness of Christianity but its last, dying ember. — David Carlin

The entire reason God made man was to have rightly ordered worship. — Fr. Chad Ripperger

The Church’s social teaching argues on the basis of reason and natural law, namely, on the basis of what is in accord with the nature of every human being. It recognizes that it is not the Church’s responsibility to make this teaching prevail in political life. Rather, the Church wishes to help form consciences in political life and to stimulate greater insight into the authentic requirements of justice as well as greater readiness to act accordingly. And finally: “The Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. She cannot and must not replace the State.”  — Benedict XVI “Deus Caritas Est”

1990 encyclical, Redemptoris Missio, on the Church’s perennial missionary mandate, in which he [John Paul II) goes to great lengths to demonstrate several things: 1. Christ as the only source of salvation for the human race. 2. The Church as the necessary sign and instrument of that salvation. 3. The theological and inner stimulus toward evangelization on the part of all believers from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit 4 The primary focus of the Catholic mission to the world. 5. The ways dialogue should be conducted with those not in full communion with the one true Church of Christ, with non-Christians, and with non-believers. 6.The mutually supportive roles of all Catholics toward the total missionary movement. And: 7. The meaning of a missionary spirituality for all. — Fr. Peter Stravinskas

“We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God.”… “Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed. Each of us is loved. Each of us is necessary.” ― Pope Benedict XVI

The Christian faith is based on solid truth, and Christian doctrines are developed to help us better understand truth — not change it. In the current relativistic climate, it is vital to our faith that we understand and hold fast to the unchanging truth and reject that which pretends to be so, even if the latter appears to be more relevant to our transitory times. — David Harrison on John Henry Newman

Exaggerating man’s foreknowledge and discounting the mystery of Divine Providence, worldly wisdom holds that man alone determines the outcome of events. Worldly wisdom, despite all its claims to higher knowledge of the dark secrets that lead to victory, amounts to false prudence — Mark Kalpakgian

I miss Benedict XVI, as a someone who makes easier it to believe. — Fr. Mario Azevedo

The infant Christ cries out for a response. In his littleness and poverty, he has proportioned himself to us, fallen creatures. May we not deny him access to our weakness and wounds. — Fr. Paul D. Scalia