Traditional Roman Catholic Thoughts

Traditional Roman Catholic Thoughts

Reintroducing Logic and Reason to the Age of Sentimentalism

Spot the Heresy: Reforming the Church

I’d like to begin a game in which I, your host, provide you with a quote. I will not tell you where the quote originated from, but you will be tasked with finding the heretical undertones of the quote. The purpose of this game is for you to learn to analyze what different individuals within the Catholic Church say, without the peskiness of knowing who said it, and determine if what is said is actually Catholic. Obviously, since the name of the game is “Spot the Heresy”, the statement will not be Catholic, but we can then analyze the reasons why it isn’t.

martin luther

Now that you know the rules, let us begin:

“[reforming the Church] means instead grafting yourself up and rooting yourself in Christ, leaving yourself to be guided by the Spirit – so that all will be possible with genius and creativity.”

So, where is the heresy? By my count, I see three heretical remarks nested within these 31 words. One heresy every ten words, that is quite the feat.

The first heresy is the implication that the Church is in need of reformation. While maybe not a heresy per se, it is most an error as the prelate who spoke these words believes that the Catholic Church as we know it today is in need of reforming everything, from the Liturgy to the priesthood, to the day to day lives of all Catholics. Whenever a prelate of the post-conciliar Church says that reformation is needed, it should never be assumed that they have the best intentions. Ever since the Second Vatican Council, we have heard of a supposed “need” for the Church to be reformed.

After seeing the poor implementation of the Council and the constant misinterpretations of what was actually called for, we can see that all of the reforms that have occurred since then have done nothing but harm to the Catholic Church. There are priest shortages in every diocese, the vast majority of the laity do not go to Mass weekly, over 70% of Catholics do not believe in the True Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, and 85% of Catholics who are confirmed leave the Church within five years.

The reforms of the Church over the last 50 years have been nothing but devastating and the only “reform” that we need is a return to the Truths and the Doctrines and Dogmas of the Catholic Church. Not a moving away from these because the laity and the world find them too hard. Jesus lost all of His followers when He told them that they did not have eternal life if they did not eat His Flesh and drink His Blood. If Our Lord didn’t back down, neither should we.

The second heresy is “rooting yourself in Christ, leaving yourself to be guided by the Spirit”. This implies that if we are to root ourselves in Christ (and ignore the Church because the two go hand in hand) that we are then able to allow the Holy Spirit to take control. The thing is, the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ are one in the same God. By obeying one you can not disobey the other. Both are God, along with the Father, but neither of them will lead you astray from the other. It is impossible, as it is a contradiction.

Whenever you read or hear anything from anybody, whether they be Catholic or Protestant, clergy or laymen, religious or not, and they imply that any one person of the Trinity is different and can lead you towards a different path than another person of the Trinity, you know that they are dabbling in the heresy of blasphemy. As the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three persons in one God, they will always point to one Truth, not three separate truths.

The third heresy is “so that all will be possible with genius and creativity.” If you are at all familiar with the Gospel of Luke, you will know that “through God, all things are possible”. While genius and creativity are all attributes we can apply to the Lord, it is not these attributes that will help make the Church “better”. It will not be through mere human actions that will make things better, but by the grace of God that all of the problems we are currently facing will go away. This also falls under the heresy of Modernism, as it implies that it is through the experience and the feelings of the individuals to define what the “genius” and “creativity” would be.

Now, did you get all of the heresies? Were there any that I missed? Would you like to take a gander as to who said the above quote?

It was Pope Francis speaking to the Italian Church. If you have agreed with me during the entire post and now find yourself in disagreement, you might need to start rethinking your position as a faithful Catholic. If you have put your Catholic faith in any person other than Christ and the scandal of a Pope saying something so obviously non-Catholic, as we have just walked through, leaves you to now ignore basic Catholic doctrine and thought, then you are not being a faithful Catholic by following the Pope’s every word and defending them, but rather, you are being traitorous to Christ and His Church, as you have abandoned His teachings for that of a mere man.

Jeff November 13, 2015 3 Comments Permalink

8 Sacramentals For You To Use

Sacramentals are very powerful items that can be used to help us with our faith. As the Concise Catholic Dictionary states that sacramentals are:

Certain pious practices or objects blessed by the Church. The blessing is attached that these may serve to increase the devotion of the faithful. Scapulars, holy water, etc, are widely used sacramentals.

Sacramentals

As sacramentals are beneficial to all of the faithful, I would like to leave you with a list of various sacramentals that are at your disposal.

Holy Water: Water in which salt has been mixed and which is exorcised or blessed by a priest. The holy water is a means of grace, a sacramental to promote the spiritual welfare of the faithful; it is one of the most frequently used sacramentals in Church and home.

When we bless ourselves with holy water, we are reminded of our baptismal vows. Holy water is also effective at keeping evil away from the home, assuming the family lives a holy life.

Medal: Disk or piece of metal on which has been impressed an emblem or picture representing a particular devotion or object of veneration. Medals are sacramentals of the Church.

As a couple of examples of medals, I will use the Holy Family and Guardian Angel medals as examples. The Holy Family is the image that each Catholic family strives to achieve. They are the role models for each family. Each and every person has a Guardian Angel, and it is important to remember how they watch over us. Additionally, at the moment of marriage, a husband and wife are given an extra Guardian Angel to watch over their marriage and their family.

Rosary: The chain and numerous beads which form a chaplet or endless chain for reciting prayers in a given sequence. The name applied to the prayer consisting of fifteen decades of “Hail Marys,” each decade having an “Our Father” preceding and a “Glory be to the Father” following. This chaplet usually has in addition three small beads for the “Hail Marys” and one bead for the “Our Father” which precede the prayer and to this short chain there is generally attached a crucifix. Mysteries are contemplated during the saying of each decade, which mysteries are the five joyful, the five sorrowful, and the five glorious.

Scapular: (1) A dresslike garment covering the shoulders and descending front and back, usually open at the sides, worn as an external part over the habit of certain monks. (2) The most common scapulars of today are made of two small squares of woolen cloth about two inches wide which are joined by two strings so that one small square may rest upon the back and the other on the breast when placed over one’s head; there are eighteen small scapulars now used among Catholics and they may be of various colors.

Scapular Medal: A small medallion of metal with a representation of our Lord and His Sacred Heart on one side and that of the Blessed Virgin on the other which is permitted to be worn instead of the small cloth scapular.

Blessed Salt: Common salt which is exorcised and blessed and used in administering Baptism and in the blessing of holy water.

Crucifixes: A representation of the cross of crucifixion together with the figure of Christ. The crucifix differs from the cross in that it has affixed to it the body or corpus or a representation of Christ.

Candles: A cylindrical wax stick or taper with a wick in the center used for illumination. Candles used in the church for liturgical purposes are of pure wax for the greater part and white in color except in Masses for the dead when they may be of yellow wax. The rubrics prescribe the usage of a specified number to be lighted during various ceremonies.

Jeff November 11, 2015 Leave A Comment Permalink

The Rise of Low Expectations Catholicism

Over the course of the last couple of decades, there has been a growing mentality in the Catholic Church that I would like to coin as “Low Expectations Catholicism”. By low expectations, I mean the average Catholic is willing to settle for far less when it comes to different aspects of the Catholic faith.

Low Bar

There are many examples in the Catholic Church today that demonstrates the laity’s acceptance of a crisis that has gone on for far too long.

The Catholic Church, especially the Catholic Church in America, has been witnessing a decline in the faith for the last 50 years or so. Moreover, the laity has become lukewarm to the crisis at hand that they celebrate what would have been red flags to the Church only a handful of decades prior.

As a Church, we have become acclimated to such low expectations that we have forgotten how high the bar is actually set. There are several instances where the faith has succumbed over these last few decades, that it is crucial we examine them and shed light on them. Several examples that come to the top of my head and I will elaborate further in follow-up posts would be specifically the attitude of the clergy, the sharp decline in vocations for both priests and especially nuns, and the removal of reverence in the Liturgy.

As an example to whet your appetite, when it comes to the clergy, we are so used to poor priests, bishops, and Cardinals, that when we find a prelate who is better and more “orthodox” than your average prelate, we rush to their defense and lift them up on a pedestal. Unfortunately, since they are only slightly better than their colleagues, when they err and their error is pointed out, those Catholics who have lifted him upon this pedestal will rush to his defense and accuse those who point out the error as being too traditional.

Likewise, when it comes to vocations, when a diocese has a “50-year record high of five new priests” there are posts of jubilee that everything is looking better. However, it wasn’t too long ago that five new priests were the expectation for every four or five parishes within a diocese of over a hundred.

Finally, the Novus Ordo has been celebrated so illicitly with all types of novelties that when a priest does celebrate the Novus Ordo with some respect to the GIRM and the rubrics, that we consider that a “very traditional” Mass, when in reality, it is still illicit, just not as much as the average Novus Ordo.

I will be going into further detail on each of the above examples in their own respective posts, as there is much to discuss in relation to each. In the meantime, if you can think of an example in which the Church has settled for low expectations in other areas of our Catholic faith, please feel free to drop a comment and I would be happy to comment on it.

Jeff November 9, 2015 Leave A Comment Permalink

We Need to Be Sorrowful For Our Sins

Some time ago, a reader asked what perfect contrition meant. I discussed in some detail about the differences between perfect and imperfect contrition. I heard a sermon that outlined the differences really well, and additionally a third type of “contrition” if you’d like to call it that.

The first type of “contrition” is related to embarrassment. Embarrassment is the type of contrition you demonstrate when you get caught doing something wrong and are only sorry because you got caught. Had you not been caught, you wouldn’t be sorry for your transgressions, regardless of how large or small they may be. Since this type of contrition is not focused on God, it is not forgivable and can be damning depending on the severity of the sin. We need to avoid this type of contrition and work on contrition that is more pleasing to God. At the very least, we should have imperfect contrition.

Imperfect contrition occurs when you are sorry because you know that your sins will lead you to Hell. The loss of Heaven moves you to be sorrowful for your sins, but it is only out of fear of Hell that you are truly sorry. You are not sorry because you have offended God and He is all-good and deserving of all your love, but because you fear the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell. While imperfect contrition is better than embarrassment, it is still disordered. Our sins will be forgiven though we still have the effects of sin and will have to spend more time in Purgatory to be cleansed of this disordered love. As Catholics, we should strive to have perfect contrition.

Perfect contrition is when we are sorry for our sins because we have offended God and He is all-good and deserving of all of our love. When we sin, we offend God. It is desirable to have perfect contrition because we have offended Him, not only because our sins are bad and will prevent us from entering Heaven. This is similar to when you offend a friend or family member and you want to apologize because you offended them, not because your action was wrong and there might be some consequence for that action. This is the type of contrition we should have when it comes to Our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Prodigal Son

When we do go to confession we confess all of our mortal sins in kind and number, along with venial sins we are struggling with. It is critical that when we say our Act of Contrition it has been given to us by the Church and has the necessary elements that outline perfect contrition. Sadly, like many of the prayers in the Church today, there are Acts of Contrition that do not meet all the necessary requirements to demonstrate perfect contrition. An example of a good Act of Contrition is as follows:

O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offending thee, and I detest all of my sins because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell, but most of all, because I have offended Thee, My God, Who art all good and deserving of all of my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more, and to avoid the near occasion of sin. Amen.

This Act of Contrition covers both imperfect and perfect contrition because you acknowledge that you do fear the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell (imperfect contrition), but because you have also offended God, Who is deserving of all of your love (perfect contrition).

How do we achieve perfect contrition? We should align our thoughts and actions and realize that every single time we sin, we both drive the nail into Jesus Christ on the cross and spit in His face. Every single sin we commit is deserving of an eternity in Hell. So we must align our hearts and intellect with God’s. Through daily prayer, daily recitation of the Rosary, and frequent use of confession, we can begin to have a loving relationship with Our Lord. It would also be beneficial to recall the sinner in scripture who said “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner!” and beat his chest three times. This practice, along with reciting the act of contrition, with the mindset that we are doing it out of love for God, will benefit us and allow us to begin to experience perfect contrition.

We are blessed as Catholics to be able to confess our sins to a priest, be absolved, and return to a state of grace. If you are in the state of mortal sin, go to confession, and keep near this wonderful sacrament. Live a holy life, and avoid the near occasion of sin.

Jeff November 4, 2015 Leave A Comment Permalink

Remember the Dead and Pray For Them

Today is the feast of All Souls. It is a day in which we remember those who have died before us and have gone to Purgatory. As the souls in Purgatory need to be cleansed before they can rejoice in the Kingdom of Heaven, it is our job here on Earth, to pray for them to better assist them in their purging.

Purgatory

Remember your deceased relatives and friends. Pray for them frequently. Have Masses said for them. As God has told us that we are not to judge, we must assume that all those who are deceased are in Purgatory. Unless the Church has stated otherwise, we can not assume anybody is in Heaven. We can not assume they are in Hell either. Therefore, we must pray for all the deceased.

Rest assured, if you pray for someone, and they are not in Purgatory for one reason or another, your prayers will be used for other souls in Purgatory. How blessed are we to be able to help and assist our brothers and sisters into getting to Heaven by the incredible power of our prayers.

Jeff November 2, 2015 Leave A Comment Permalink