Just Another Jolly Thug
by Thomas A. Droleskey
The conciliar "archbishop" of New York, Timothy Michael Dolan, is back in the news again. This time, though, the headlines show him to be what he really is: just another jolly old conciliar thug, a man more eager to "protect the assets" of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee than to admit that his false church has systematically recruited, promoted and protected homosexual man into its presbyteral ranks.
Indeed, the counterfeit church of concilairism is reeling even inside of the walls of the Vatican and in the Diocese of Rome itself at this time as a result of inevitable decay that must occur in any ecclesiastical body that dares to corrupt Faith and Worship and whose officials around in almost every corner of the world have sought to cover-up, excuse or minimize the gravity of heinous moral crimes committed by clergymen, both those validly ordained and those who have not been validly ordained, while at the same time engaging in a systematic intimidation of victims and their families.
Numerous articles on this site have covered this worldwide tragedy that has devastated the life of the Holy Faith in countless numbers of souls and that has led some victims to commit suicide (see, among many others, Of Worldwide Scope, Always Evading Root Causes, Swinging Clubs To Protect The Club, Surely He Jests, "Canonizing" A Man Who Protected Moral Derelicts, More Than A Matter of Legality, Audio Presentation: Scandal In a Church of Apostasy.WMA, "Fall Guys" Aren't Usually "Stand-Up Guys", Apologizing to Everyone Save For God Himself, Not Going Down With the Conciliar Ship, Touchy, Touchy, Chastisements Under Which We Must Save Our Souls, part two, Not So "Deplorable" After All, and Future Home of the "Reform of the Reform", Ratzinger's Revolution Unravels, part two, Nearly A Decade After Law Was Broken).
As has been noted so many times before on this website, one of the most little discussed
effects of the doctrinal and conciliar revolutions has been the almost
total destruction of the sensus Catholicus within the souls of a
large percentage of Catholics alive today. Having been convinced by the
blitzkrieg of liturgical changes that burst upon them in the 1950s
and 1960s, culminating in that perpetual spawner of sacrileges and
outrages that is the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service,
that ceaseless change was now an ordinary and expected part of what
they believed to be the Catholic Faith, so many Catholics lost almost
all sense of decency and honor, starting with honor for the Most Blessed
Trinity, as they plunged themselves headlong into attitudes that were
either indifferent of the horror of personal sin. Many of these
Catholics, having had their souls deformed in supposedly Catholic
schools and colleges and universities and institutions of professional
learning (law schools, medical schools, etc.) and from the very pulpits
in the church buildings where stagings of the "new Mass" took place,
began to justify aberrant personal behavior in the name of "human
rights," "diversity," "choice," "freedom," "tolerance," "understanding,"
"compassion" and, among so many others, "conscience."
The loss of this sensus Catholicus, on the part of ordinary Catholics, began with the loss of the sensus fidei (the sense of the Faith) by the leaders of the doctrinal and liturgical
revolutions, each of whom fell from the Faith by adhering to, no less
publicly promoting, propositions that had been condemned by the teaching
authority of the Catholic Church and are thus completely
irreformable.
The revolutionaries of the counterfeit church of
conciliarism understood that the only contact that most Catholics had
with their holy religion was when they went to what they thought was
Holy Mass on Sundays (or, in the un-Catholic world of conciliarism, on
Saturday afternoon or evening to get the Sunday "obligation out of the
way"). It was necessary, therefore, to change the Sacred Liturgy into a
singular vessel of perdition into which could be poured the elements of
doctrinal corruption that would pave the way to the ready acceptance and
embrace of moral corruption as being not in the least offensive to a
"loving" God or in any way harmful to their eternal salvation.
A ready acceptance of even perverse sins against
nature has become commonplace in the lives of so many Catholics, most of
whom do not have the benefit of having true Sacraments are are
thus more ready to embrace the false currents of the world that are at
the foundation of the the false representations made to them by the
conciliar revolutionaries. Need we be reminded that such conciliar
revolutionaries as Rembert George Weakland, (see Weak In Mind, Weakest Yet In Faith and Just A Matter of Forgiveness?) and Roger "Cardinal" Mahony (see The Six Hundred Million Dollar Man and His Friends, Yes, Sir, Master Scribe and Apostasy Is His Field),
and, among so many others Howard Hubbard, whose scoffing at New York
Governor Andrew Cuomo's concubinage and support for chemical and
surgical baby-killing and "marriage" for people of the same gender was
discussed in Memo To Howard Hubbard: Public Scandal Is Never A Private Matter,
have helped to promote the "lavender" agenda in so many ways? It is
such a promotion of the what Mrs. Randy Engel calls the "homosexaulist
collective" that has made it more and more possible for ordinary
Catholics, accustomed to doctrinal and liturgical aberrations as
perfectly consonant with the Holy Faith, to cheer at the "advances"
being made by "society" in behalf of "loving couples."
Propagandizing in behalf of perversity is common
throughout the conciliar structures. Such propagandizing begins even in
Kindergarten with the rot that is explicit classroom instruction in matters
pertaining the Sixth and Ninth Commandments, right through Twelfth
Grade. Religious education programs and theological seminars and
"updating" programs are staffed in many instances by open practitioners
of perversity and/or by those who are "sympathetic" to "gays" in the
name of "compassion" and "tolerance" and "diversity." Countless numbers
of alleged liturgies have been held to "celebrate" the "rainbow agenda,"
including very notoriously at Most Holy Redeemer Church in San
Francisco, California, Saint Francis Xavier Church in the Borough of
Manhattan in the City of New York, New York, and Saint Joan of Arc
Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Countless also are the formerly
Catholic colleges that promote this sin that cries out to Heaven for
vengeance, doing so with plays and "readings" and entire courses and by
permitting those who are engaged in unrepentant sins of perversity to
identify themselves publicly and to form clubs and groups and
associations that recruit members.
The very language of the conciliar liturgy, yes, even in the Latin editio typica,
is meant to reflect a "new theology" that discards any kind of emphasis
on the need for outward acts of penance as belonging to a "different
age in the history of the Church:"
The same awareness of the present state of the
world also influenced the use of texts from very ancient tradition. It
seemed that this cherished treasure would not be harmed if some phrases
were changed so that the style of language would be more in accord with
the language of modern theology and would faithfully reflect the actual
state of the Church's discipline. Thus there have been changes
of some expressions bearing on the evaluation and use of the good things
of the earth and of allusions to a particular form of outward penance
belonging to another age in the history of the Church. (Paragraph 15, General Instruction to the Roman Missal, 1997; please see As the Conciliar Fowler Lays More Snares, part two.)
Liturgical art, architecture
and music have been influenced by the lavender agenda in so many
parishes in so many archdioceses and dioceses and religious communities
that are in "full communion" with Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI as to
defy an accurate count. Even "conservative" websites carry news of the
scandalous goings-on in Europe that have continued for decades and seem
to get worse and worse over the course of time. This is only natural, of
course, as that which is founded in a rebellion against Our Blessed
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and the binding precepts of the Divine
Positive Law and the Natural Law must degenerate more and more over the
course of time. This is what happened as the revolt led by Martin Luther
resulted in a corruption of morals among his own "evangelicals" that
shocked him but which he could see or accept as having been caused by
leading them out of the true Church and the infallible teaching
and sacramental helps that she, Holy Mother Church, gave them to
overcome their sins and to grow in the pursuit of personal sanctity.
(See the Appendix below.)
A like manner of events have unfolded at lightning
speed in our own days. Sacramentally-barren liturgical rites designed
and implemented, to one extent or another, by men steeped in theological
error and personal vice have created. Men must fall into the depths of
moral depravity when they are deprived of the fullness of the Sacred
Deposit of Faith and when they are deprived of the Sanctifying Graces
that they need to resist sin and to recognize that no one but no one is
ever free to identify himself, no less doing so proudly, as one is who
is inclined to, if not actually engaged in, the commission of sins that
cry out to Heaven for vengeance.
The truth about the proliferation of scandals in the
counterfeit church of conciliarism is indeed quite simple, something
that I have tried to point out any number of times in various articles
and in an audio presentation last year (Scandal In a Church of Apostasy.WMA).
Parents and victims have been victimized by "bishops"
and "priests" once they brought their legitimate complaints to them,
who they believed to be shepherds of the Catholic Church.
Parents and victims have been victimized and bullied
and browbeaten by attorneys employed by archdioceses and dioceses and
religious communities.
Parents and victims have been victimized and bullied and browbeaten by attorneys employed by insurance companies.
The conciliar "popes" have refused in most, although
not all, instances, to impose ecclesiastical sanctions on "bishops" and
"priests" guilty of immoral activity and/or of treating the sheep with
cruelty and bitter vindictiveness for daring to come forth with their
true stories of suffering beyond all imagining.
A vast network of those engaged in perverse acts
against nature and/or supportive of such acts has been created in the
conciliar hierarchy of the United States of America and elsewhere in the
world. This network exists in seminaries and religious communities and
parishes and diocesan/archdiocesan chancery offices and schools and
universities and colleges. It is all pervasive.
"Bishops" and "priests" and chancery factotums have
lied openly and repeatedly to parents and victims and to the general
public, Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
The jolly old conciliar thug from New York by way of Saint Louis, Missouri, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is just the latest conciliar official who turns out to have lied to the press about his efforts to "convince" accused priests and presbyters not to fight the conciliar process of laicization:
Files released by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee on Monday
reveal that in 2007, Cardinal Timothy F. Dolan, then the archbishop
there, requested permission from the Vatican to move nearly $57 million
into a cemetery trust fund to protect the assets from victims of clergy
sexual abuse who were demanding compensation.
Cardinal Dolan, now the archbishop of New York, has emphatically denied
seeking to shield church funds as the archbishop of Milwaukee from 2002
to 2009. He reiterated in a statement Monday that these were “old and
discredited attacks.”
However, the files contain a 2007 letter to the Vatican in which he
explains that by transferring the assets, “I foresee an improved
protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability.” The
Vatican approved the request in five weeks, the files show.
The release of more than 6,000 pages of documents on Monday was hailed
by victims and their advocates as a vindication and a historic step
toward transparency and accountability. They were well aware that the
archives would bring unusually intense scrutiny to the country’s most
high-profile prelate, Cardinal Dolan, who as president of the United
States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the archbishop of New York has
sought to help the church turn the corner on the era of scandal.
Cardinal Dolan has been regarded by many Catholics as part of the
solution. In public appearances, he has expressed personal outrage at
the harm done to children, apologized profusely and pledged to help the
church and the victims heal.
But the documents lift the curtain on his role as a workaday church
functionary concerned with safeguarding assets, persuading abusive
priests to leave voluntarily in exchange for continued stipends and
benefits, and complying with Rome’s sluggish canonical procedures for
dismissing uncooperative priests who he had long concluded were
remorseless and a serious risk to children. In one case, the Vatican
took five years to remove a convicted sex offender from the priesthood.
“As victims organize and become more public, the potential for true
scandal is very real,” he wrote in such a request in 2003 to Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Vatican office charged with handling
abuse cases until he became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.
Victims on Monday called for a federal investigation into the actions of
Cardinal Dolan and his predecessors, but the cardinal sought to deflect
criticism by saying in a statement Monday that he welcomed the release of the documents.
The current archbishop of Milwaukee, Jerome E. Listecki, had announced
his decision to release the documents in April, one day before a
judicial hearing. Lawyers for abuse victims had asked a judge to compel
their release.
Archbishop Listecki released a letter last week warning Catholics in his archdiocese that the documents could
shake their faith, and trying to explain the actions of church leaders
while offering apologies to victims.
“Prepare to be shocked,” he wrote. “There are some graphic descriptions
about the behavior of some of these priest offenders.”
The files include documents from the personnel files of 42 clergy
offenders with “substantiated” allegations, going back 80 years. (The
names and identifying features of victims were redacted.) Also included
are the legal depositions of Cardinal Dolan and another former Milwaukee
archbishop, Rembert Weakland, and a retired auxiliary bishop, Richard
J. Sklba.
Milwaukee harbored some of the nation’s most notorious priest
pedophiles, including the Rev. Lawrence Murphy, whom a church therapist
assessed as having molested as many as 200 boys during his two and a
half decades teaching and leading St. John’s School for the Deaf in St.
Francis, Wis., and Sigfried Widera, who faced 42 counts of child abuse
in Wisconsin and California. Father Murphy died in 1998, and Father
Widera committed suicide in Mexico in 2003.
In his letter, Archbishop Listecki said the documents showed that 22
priests were “reassigned to parish work after concerns about their
behavior were known to the archdiocese,” and that 8 of those “reoffended
after being reassigned.”
Advocates for abuse victims objected that the archdiocese did not
release the files of many others accused of abuse, including priests,
deacons, nuns, schoolteachers and choir directors. The files do not
include any known priest offenders who were members of religious orders
(like the Capuchins or Jesuits) who served in the Milwaukee Archdiocese.
“It’s still less than a complete disclosure, but it’s a giant step in the right direction,” said Jeff Anderson, a lawyer for many of the alleged victims. The documents were posted on both his Web site and the archdiocese’s, but they were arranged differently to buttress each argument.
Cardinal Dolan was deposed about his handling of abuse cases and the assets of the archdiocese in February, just before he left for Rome for the conclave to elect a new pope. The release of the documents is the byproduct of a bitter standoff in bankruptcy court between the Milwaukee Archdiocese and 575 men and women who have filed claims against it alleging that priests or other church employees had sexually abused them.
The archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in 2011, saying it was the best way to compensate the victims and resolve the controversy. It became the eighth Catholic diocese in the United States to do so. Since then, negotiations between the two sides in Milwaukee have broken down: the church has argued that about 400 of the 575 cases are invalid, while lawyers for the victims have accused the church of hiding assets.
In January, the archdiocese said it had spent about $9 million in legal and other fees in the bankruptcy process and was going broke.
In 2007, the year Cardinal Dolan asked to transfer the funds, the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued a decision that in effect lifted an unusual law that had long shielded the church from sexual abuse lawsuits. When he was later accused of trying to shield church funds, Cardinal Dolan said on his blog in New York that it was “malarkey” and “groundless gossip.” Archbishop Listecki and former Auxiliary Bishop Sklba invoked a theme that many other church officials have used in the past to explain their conduct: that their missteps reflected a broader lack of awareness about child sexual abuse in society.
Archbishop Listecki wrote that he did not want to make excuses, but that church officials had relied on the advice of doctors and therapists who were “seemingly more concerned about ‘Father’ than about the children.” He said the documents would reveal “the progression and evolution of thinking on this topic.”
However, the Rev. James O’Connell, a priest in the Milwaukee Archdiocese who helped to form a group called Catholic Whistleblowers, said in an interview that he did not find this claim credible.
“I was in high school in the 1950s,” he said, “and I learned about statutory rape in high school. An adult having sexual activity with a minor is a crime. We knew about it then, so you can’t claim that social thought changed.” (Dolan Sought to Protect Church Assets, Files Show.)
Where would conciliar revolutionaries be without making recourse to their belief in "progression and evolution of thinking"?
Indeed, it is the belief of the conciliar revolutionaries in the Modernist concept of evolution of dogma that predisposes them to the acceptance of the disproved, discredited ideology of biological evolutionism whose widespread acceptance has helped to make possible the devolution of moral behavior on a worldwide scale.
As Father James O'Connell noted, however, moral truth remains the same. It is only the rationalizations to excuse cronies in their sins and to protect "assets" that keep "evolving" over the course of time, which is one of the reasons there is such a kinship between many conciliar revolutionaries and the lords of Modernity in the world, men and women whose stories on this or that scandal "evolve" over time (for contemporary examples of such "evolution of thought" in the world, think of Benghazi-gate or Fast-and-Furious-gate or IRS-gate or Justice Department monitoring of journalists-gate, etc.).
After all, the very Marxism that links so many of the ultra-progressive revolutionaries with naturalists of the statist bent in the world is itself based in a Hegelian notion of "evolution" of history that will, it is alleged, result one day in "highest stage" of human development, "perfect communism," a stage where human conflict ceases to exist because all of the capitalists have been killed (or converted) and their property assets distributed equitably among the masses so as to eliminate the the clash of economic classes. It is pretty easy, you see, for one to believe in a "progression and evolution of thinking" on any topic once one concedes that any kind of evolution is consonant with the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law as they have been entrusted to and taught infallibly by Holy Mother Church.
If anything, of course, there has been a regression and devolution of thinking, if you will, on the part of the conciliar revolutionaries concerning perverse sins against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments, which is why so many of them have come to accept the concept of "civil union" status for those engaged in such. It is also why so many conciliar "archbishops" and "bishops" simply look the other way as their lavender-friendly parishes march proudly as possible future residents of Hell on the final Sunday in June, the month devoted to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, in cities across the United States of America and the world.
It is precisely this regression and devolution of thinking that has resulted in the devastation of the Faith of so many thousands upon thousands of innocent victims of clergy abuse throughout the world as the conciliar thugs sought to protect themselves, their reputations and their "assets" while showing themselves very sympathetic to, if not fully supportive of, clergy who suffer from disorder of perverse attractions and actions.
Far, far from the mind of such men as the Jolly Thug who has been ensconced as the "happy" conciliar "archbishop" of New York since April 15, 2009, Timothy Michael Dolan, are admonitions such as this one issued by Pope Saint Pius V:
That horrible crime, on account of which corrupt and obscene
cities were destroyed by fire through divine condemnation, causes us
most bitter sorrow and shocks our mind, impelling us to repress such a
crime with the greatest possible zeal.
Quite opportunely the Fifth Lateran Council [1512-1517] issued this
decree: "Let any member of the clergy caught in that vice against nature
. . . be removed from the clerical order or forced to do penance in a monastery"
(chap. 4, X, V, 31). So that the contagion of such a grave offense may
not advance with greater audacity by taking advantage of impunity, which
is the greatest incitement to sin, and so as to more severely punish
the clerics who are guilty of this nefarious crime and who are not
frightened by the death of their souls, we determine that they should be
handed over to the severity of the secular authority, which enforces
civil law.
Therefore, wishing to pursue with the greatest rigor that which we have
decreed since the beginning of our pontificate, we establish that any
priest or member of the clergy, either secular or regular, who commits
such an execrable crime, by force of the present law be deprived of
every clerical privilege, of every post, dignity and ecclesiastical
benefit, and having been degraded by an ecclesiastical judge,
let him be immediately delivered to the secular authority to be put to
death, as mandated by law as the fitting punishment for laymen who have
sunk into this abyss. (Pope Saint Pius V, Horrendum illud scelus, August 30, 1568)
The approaches taken by the lies of the conciliar revolutionaries, including Jerome Listecki, Richard Sklba and Timothy Michael Dolan, have been just a little different than that of Pope Saint Pius V. This is because the latter was a Catholic who understood the horror of personal sin, especially the horror of the sin of Sodom that cries to Heaven for vengeance. The conciliar revolutionaries are, at least for the most part, "gay-friendly." Indeed, even Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis was said by Justin Welby to reject "homophobia," which is another way of saying that "respect" should be given to persons on the basis of their self-identification as unrepentant sinners whose very actions can lead them into Hell for all eternity.
For his part, Timothy Michael Dolan, protested last year that he was trying to show "charity" for clergy abusers by giving them their golden parachutes.
Ah, where was the "charity" for the victims and their families, "Cardinal" Dolan? (In case you have forgotten who he is, please review (see Timmy's In The Well (Of Americanism, That Is), Making Everyone Happy Except God, Unhappy Is The "Happy" "Bishop", Whatever You Want, Ominous Offenders Offending Ominously, Memo To David Axelrod And Other Social Engineers, John Carroll's Caesar, Victims of Compromise, Taking A Figure Of Antichrist At His Worthless Words, Prisoners Of Their Own Apostasy, Timothy Dolan, Meet Timothy Dolan (And Friends), Still Celebrating Half A Century Of Apostasy, Candidate For Man Of The Year?, From John Carroll To James Gibbons To Timothy Dolan, To Help The Children, Fake, Phony, Sanctimonious Fraud, Happy As A Stuffed Clam With Himself, Impossible To Fight Moral Evils With Blasphemy And Error, Still Trying to Make Everyone Happy Except God Himself, Just Another Ordinary Outrage Permitted by a Conciliar "Ordinary", Forty Years of Emboldening, Appeasing, and Enabling Killers, part two, Fortnight Of Fraud Update and Ever Faithful To Their False Religion).
Why have you never denounced your morally corrupt predecessor in Milwaukee, Rembert George Weakland, O.S.B.?
Monthly pensions and regular stipends for morally corrupt clergymen?
This is charity?
Then again, what's the big deal about the president of the so-called United States Conference of Catholic Bishops being exposed as a liar when the entire fabric of conciliarism is itself a lie from beginning to end?
Credibility is almost always on the side of the victims, not that of those accused of predatory behavior. Victims must suffer shame and humiliation by coming forth with their stories, which is why so many of them refuse to speak out at first, sometimes refusing to so for decades and only then with reluctance and misgivings. Predators seek to claw back at their accusers. Father Carlos Urrutigoity of the Society of Saint John accused me of doing the "devil's work" by submitting a special report to the Diocese of Scranton eleven years ago now on several other aspects of his morally corrupt community's operations. Defenders of Daniel Leo Ryan protested vigorously that Stephen Brady and others, including me, were "destroying the Church" by bringing forth such allegations. And on and on and on as almost no one cared for the next victim. It cannot and it must not be that with us at any time in any situation. Only a false "peace" can be purchased by silence on these matters.
To be sure, an examination of our own consciences
will reveal that at least some of us (my hand is raised right now) have
given scandal to others by our public words and actions. The mind does
not want fathom the horrible truth that one or more souls might have
lost the Faith or have been turned away from any real consideration of
converting to It by things we may have said or done to them or in their
presence, which is why we need to pray to Saint Mary Magdalene and Saint
Augustine and Saint Camillus de Lellis, Saint Mary of Egypt and Saint
Margaret of Cortona and even Saint John of God, who had a rough patch in
his life, that our prayers and penances and mortifications and
sacrifices offered to God through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of
Mary will help to win back the souls who we may have scandalized.
It is a terrible, terrible thing to reckon with the
fact that one might be responsible for the loss of a single soul. It is
thus the case that that while decry the insensitivity to the loss of
souls demonstrated by the conciliar "bishops," we must never
lose sight of how we might have demonstrated this insensitivity in our
own lives. The loss of the Faith in a single soul is indeed very much a
matter of the Faith!
Sinners though we may be, we must never surrender to hopelessness or despair. Never. Not for one moment. We must persevere in our own individual lives against the forces of the world, the flesh and the devil as we cling to Our Lady's coattails. And we must come to persevere in the truths of the Holy Faith, realizing the truths of the Holy Faith must defended with
prophetic courage as we trust in the Holy Providence of God.
Then again, why should Catholics know this today? The
Americanist bishops of yore didn't teach it. Neither have their
successors in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, some of whom have
been very busy driving Catholics into the waiting arms of
Protestant sects and their snake-oil salesmen "ministers" who chortle
heartily every time they snatch a baptized Catholic to become a tithing
member of their congregation and participants in the false worship that
they render unto the devil himself even though they do not realize that
this is what it is they are doing.
The conciliar, which is a marriage of
Modernity and Modernism, has imploded to such an extent that those who
have been baptized and confirmed to defend the Faith as soldiers in the
Army of Christ lay down their arms in a surrender of hopelessness at the
first signs of difficulty that might cause them to suffer a little
personal anguish and difficulty. Some well-meaning Catholics have told me things pretty much along the lines of "What? Openly say that Benedict XVI is not the pope? Not me. No, no, no. I'm not going to be criticized by my relatives and friends. No way."
The Cross? That's for the other guy. It's not for me.
Not now. Maybe if "they" do something else that's very terrible at some
time in the future. Not now.
If it's not now, however, it will be never as those
who learn to believe that refraining from a solid witness to the
Catholic truth is offensive in the sight of the Most Blessed Trinity
will always make a virtue out of cowardice no matter how many times they
convince themselves that they are only making a "mental reservation." The moral corruption of the conciliar hierarchy is just a manifestation of its doctrinal and liturgical corruption.
Saint Anthony Mary Claret explained that each of us must have a holy
indifference to our own personal suffering as we accept whatever
situation that befalls us as occurring within the Providence of God, Who
means to bring good out of each of the circumstances that occur,
whether in our own lives or in the larger life of the world:
God's Providence demands that I have a heart of holy indifference--As
it is arduous and difficult to gain one's last End without complete and
holy indifference, it is likewise so much the easier to gain this End
with it. To thoroughly convince yourself of this, weigh this truth:
(1) God is Infinite Wisdom and Knowledge. He knows
and understands the means that lead with all security to the attainment
of your last End. There are all kinds of means serviceable for the
gaining of your last End--health and sickness, honor and dishonor, an
honored calling to a lowly occupation--provided they are put to good
use.
Now if you know the answer, tell me: What will lead
you most securely to your last End? Is it the enjoyment of robust
health, or is it a sickly condition? Is it a state of being honored and
loved, or one of being insulted and hated? Is it holding a high post, or
having a humble employment? This something that you do not know, nor do
I, nor does anybody else in the world. All those things are mysteries
that no perception can penetrate except only the perception of Him Who
is Almighty.
(2) God is Infinite Love, Who always arranged for
souls the surest means for reaching their last End--surest, provided
they always keep themselves in holy indifference and proper balance. God
deals with souls as a mother who fondly loves her tender child.
As a true mother is incapable of giving poison to
her beloved child, even more so is God incapable of providing anything
harmful for a soul that surrenders itself to Him with complete
indifference. O my soul, become for once fully convinced that if God
visits you with illness, that this is the surest way for leading you to
reach your last End; when He allows you to be despised and belittled,
when He placed you in darkness, in desolation, in trials, that is the
surest way for you to advance to your last End.
3) God is Infinite Power,
and He helps infallibly to its last End the soul constant in holy
indifference and proper balance. And who will be so bold and so daring
that he can put an obstacle before God? And what will be the result? A
heap of misfortune for which you cannot weep enough. Reflect well on
this and what follows.
It is quite certain that such a soul must of necessity suffer in
this world more than another soul. You greatly deceive yourself, my
soul, if you imagine that you can escape the troubles which God's Love
holds in store for you as means to your last End. You will never be able
to do so. You will suffer, and you will necessarily have to suffer the
pains and ailments, the contempt and mistreatments which from eternity
God has assigned for you to suffer.
"You will either fulfill what God wants, or you will suffer what you do not want." Saint Augustine.
If you maintain an indifferent heart and bear
everything with patience, you will give God pleasure and He will
fortify you with an inflow of His graces. He will give you a continual
peace and calm and will make the way of the cross something easy and
sweet for you. If you neglect this holy indifference and bear troubles
impatiently, you will displease God and He will deny you all His
strengthening, supporting help and every kind of peace and consolation,
letting you fall under the weight of your cross.
If tis very certain that for all eternity you will
lose that high degree of glory unless you adopt the means God has
appointed. If your heart is not indifferent and you do not use such
means, adopting them willingly, you will weary yourself in vain and will
lost your last End. It is certain that you are in danger of not gaining
your eternal salvation, not even a lower grade of glory.
A soul that has not this holy indifference, falls out
of (moral) necessity into many grave temptations. In such
circumstances, who is not drawn downward by anger, by resentment, by
faintheartedness and melancholy, by pride and fear of contempt? And who
is not moved by impulsiveness and self-will, b interior upsets and
disorder, and by the rebellion of uncontrolled passions?
Ah, to overcome these problems requires a particular
help of God. Now will He give it to a soul unwilling to submit to His
plans, to a soul who, full of anger, rejects the means which God has
provided, a soul unwilling to serve except in its own way, unwilling to
acknowledge Him as Master and Lord, and who insolently resists God's
designs? Let a man place his hopes in the One Whom he can trust, for the
struggle is quite dangerous. (Saint Anthony Mary Claret, The Golden Key
to Heaven, Immaculate Heart Publications, pp. 36-39.)
In other words, God has known from all eternity that we would be living in this time of apostasy and betrayal.
Each of us is a sinner. We must suffer for
our sins. There is no escape from this suffering, and living in this
particular time of apostasy and betrayal is part of the plan in the
economy of God's salvation to effect effect our own salvation as we
suffer and suffer well for our sins and those of the whole world. The
graces won for us by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ on the
wood of the Holy Cross that flow into our hearts and souls through the
loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces, are
sufficient this moment. They are sufficient for every moment and every
need. Why do we worry so?
Each of us has an obligation to do our own duty
before God by making reparation for our own many sins that have worsened
the state of the Church Militant on earth and of the world-at-large in
many ways that we may understand fully only in eternity. We must live
more and more penitentially as the consecrated slaves of the Most Sacred
Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary,
praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits,
especially during this month of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
This era of apostasy and betrayal will pass. The true sensus Catholicus will be restored. Catholics will once again have a true sense of the
horror of personal sin and they will seek voluntarily to make reparation
for their own sins and those of the whole world as the slaves of the
Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. Men and their nations will
submit themselves to the Social Reign of Christ the King as It must be
exercised by Holy Mother Church.
Yes, there will be the Triumph of the Immaculate
Heart of Mary when her Fatima Message is fulfilled. We may not live to
see this with our own eyes. Moses was given a glimpse of the Promised
Land, but died before entering there. The Apostles and the martyrs of
the first centuries of Holy Mother Church did not live to see the glory
of Christendom that resulted from their fidelity and their
sacrifices. We must not look for "results" in our own lifetimes.
May the Rosaries we pray each day help to bring about the restoration of the Church Militant on earth and of Christendom in the world.
Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?
