Satan - Living Actor in History

Here's a catchy opening:

Some of you may know his work from your studies. (Leszek) Kolakowski was a former Marxist, a very gifted scholar, and a skeptic about many things – but not about the reality of evil or the nature of the devil. One of the disturbing things for Kolakowski's secular colleagues was that he talked about Satan not as a metaphor or legend or the figment of neurotic imaginations, but as a living actor in history. And that deserves some discussion. We'll get to that in a moment, but let's begin at the beginning. (Emphasis added)

Read more here.

Luciferian Naïveté, Expediancy

This is a manifestation of this. What riles and infuriates, however, is this. Why? Because it feeds into the fallacious and luciferian thinking of this.

Disbelief Beyond Magisterium

IT WOULD NOT BE TRUE, I think, to say that dogma is less preached today than it was a hundred years ago. The rise of Wesleyanism and the Evangelical Movement had, indeed, put and end by then to the long indifference of the latitudinarian age. But Wesleyanism and Evangelicism were interested in a handful of dogmas which concerned their own particular scheme of salvation. On the other hand, men did believe in the Bible, not as "given of God to convey to us in many parts and in divers manners the revelation of himself", but as inspired in an intelligible sense. And with the rise of the Oxford Movement this belief in Scripture was fortified by a confident appeal, unsound in its method but sincere in its purpose, to the deposit of Christian tradition. But during the last fifty years and more, the fundamental dogmas of the Christian religion have been subjected, more and more, to criticism, or interpretation, and to restatement. Would a(n Anglican) diocesan Bishop have dared in the middle of the nineteenth century, to express in a newspaper article his disbelief in eternal punishment? Would the rector of a much-frequented London church have preached, and afterwards published, a sermon in which he recommended the remarriage of divorced persons? Would the whole Bench of Bishops have been prepared to alter, in the Baptismal Service, the statement that every child is conceived and born in sin? Appraise the tendency as you will; welcome or regret its influence; but only disingenuity can deny that the tendency is there, and is apparently constant. You do not believe what your grandfathers believed, and have no reason to hope that your grandsons will believe what you do.

- Ronald A. Knox

Back to the Swamp

Why, do you suppose, this happened? From a mimetic theory viewpoint, it points to the expulsion of a designated and acceptable sacrificial victim - in this case the Christian faith in general and the Catholic Church in particular. Oddly, the latter alone comprises over a billion human beings, and yet the Gnostic EU overlords (so accurately depicted in C. S. Lewis's prescient book, That Hideous Strength) curiously believe that they can will out of existence belief in Jesus Christ - or, at least out of public discourse - by their hubris-filled chicanery.

It points again not only to human folly and pride; but to the deeply embedded roots of the primitive sacred in our fallen human condition.

Those EU ministers should listen, in my opinion, to a different sort of minister: Rene Girard, an Extraordinary Eucharistic Minister who also happens to be a member of the L'Académie française. His work in mimetic theory not only brings broad understanding to the cultural conflagration upon which the EU is throwing kindling, but is in full submission to the Magisterium of Mother Church.

The more "modern progressives" (sic.) try to out-distance Christian truth, the more their actions show a recrudescence and regression into the pagan swamp that our Lord and His Church succeeded in pulling us out of ... for a time.

Mammoth Hubris

File this one under: "We just wondered what would happen ... "

Gnosticism on Parade

This is a perfect example of the power of Gnosticism, alive and well even today. This is to say, the delusion that we as human beings can, through the power of our ability to imagine, create for ourselves ex nihilo our own realities.

None fall for this satanic ruse worse or more than those who "think" they hold the reins of political power, the purse-strings of mammon, or control public opinion.

But in the case of VP Biden, we see a case study of cafeteria Catholicism (sic.) that is foolish at best, doomed to perdition at worst.

Advent Reality Check

Conrad Black opines upon the slings and arrows shot at the prime target of the arbiters of progressivist relativism, the Catholic Church here.

They, of course, do not mind people being Catholic as long as it is fully admitted that the Catholic Church is merely one human institution among the many (it isn't), and that they are and ever shall be the true setters of the terms of public discourse and value (they aren't).

May all the accusers and other lost sheep be given the grace to wind their way this Advent and Christmas to the loving arms of Mother Church.

Or, better yet, become part of the growing number of Catholic engaged in prayer for the renewal, unity, and spread of Christendom, the restoration of all families, and support of our Holy Father in Marian chivalry.

Moloch and 'Choice'

The connection is obvious, both from the popular idea and from the profound depths of René Girard's mimetic theory: abortion and the satanic.

Spirituality vs. Faith

More evidence that once people stop believing in the revealed deposit of faith entrusted to the Church, they'll believe anything.

WaPo - Satanic Verses

Once again, the Washington Post, that organ of humanist progressivism, launches into the breech of teutonic battle with its arch foe, the Catholic Church. Today, the WaPo features this. The usual dredging of past sins of priests, dating usually to thirty or more years ago, offers the clinching quotation by a victim during an interview:

(He) frequently took a breath and choked back tears as he described the way Petrella had destroyed his life and his faith.

As a child, "I realized all that stuff about God living in the church, priests being God's representative, that your parents can protect you - I realized all those things weren't true," he said. Years later, he developed post-traumatic stress disorder, which he thinks helped kill his marriage.

Let's be clear and say that abusive priests, like any sexual predators, need to face the consequences of their actions.

But the Washington Post, at once crying to its godless heaven for the sake of speaking up for victims (and seeking verifiable victims to victimize, like Catholic priests), will turn right around and offer its sanction for the sexual behavior of such organizations as NAMBLA.

What is wrong with this picture? Extolling inter-generational "love" between men and boys, on the one hand; terrorizing Catholic priests on the other. Hmmm.

Now, you try to square the circle with that contradiction. The WaPo won't even try. Its soul is hollowed out with its luciferian logic.

Like Father Like Son

Let these words - "you're allowing five out of nine hotshot lawyers to run the country" - spoken by the father of this fellow, who we are blessed to have serving in the priesthood in our neck of the woods, sink in.

Hubris vs. Catholic Truth

How do you compare these personages? Easy - with great similarity and motive. The man on the left, Henry VIII, dissolved the monasteries of England to get lead for his cannon balls from their roofs and money and lands for his nouveau rich gentry flunkies. The man on the right - here receiving an honorary law degree from the University of Notre Dame - wants to dissolve the influence in terms of faith and morals of the Catholic Church with the help of such "royal" personages as the president of Notre Dame, Fr. John Jenkins.

Simple equations in luciferian logic and inference. We have much to learn from the so-called English "reformation".

The Curse

As Notre Dame got stomped by Navy (again), one sees with how much intensity Navy plays.

Notre Dame used to play with a chip on its shoulder; as though something set it apart from everybody else.

You don't suppose that as Notre Dame has whittled off the edges of its Catholic faith and morals, the intensity it once possessed - what made Notre Dame distinct, different, set apart - has dwindled on the playing field, do you?

They LOOK big, strong, well-fed, and well-funded. Too bad looks don't translate into wins.

Consequential Judgment - Nations

Not that I am advocating extremism that can lead deplorably to the dehumanization of scapegoating; rather, I am saying simply that abortion is - absolutely, categorically, magisterially - demonic. But this category has been cast out with the bathwater by materialists - along with the baby, I hasten to add. Abortion and its industry of easy, disposable human life has been swept clean even the possibility of personal evil. They have made their charnel house clinically-clean and sanitized; empty and awaiting that which they deny even exists.

The poor, besotted secularist atheists who live their cool and detached lives of quiet lack of charity need to read and digest Matthew 12, 43-45 vvery carefully.

And, as theologican Peter Kreeft points out here, abortion IS demonic.

I Love Cotton, But ...

Do we know enough about nanotechnology just to buy that "convenient" no-iron shirt?

Warnings from Yale

MacDonald - Lilith

MR. RAVEN, OTHERWISE KNOWN as Adam, explains the inexplicable - the rationale for abortion - in George MacDonald's book, Lilith:

She fears, therefore hates her child ... The birth of children is in her eyes the death of their parents, and every new generation the enemy of the last.

The Bleak Shall Inherit the Earth?

I see that our commander-in-chief has personally endorsed the building a mosque at Ground Zero.

It just goes to show that anyone is capable of using logic to argue his way into an incredibly bad idea.

Or Else

The WaPo puts forth on its front page an article no larger than a man's hand regarding the poor sufferers of "Islamophobia" in Kenya of all places. I certainly woke up this morning concerned about elections in Kenya. Didn't you?

When, o when, will the self-arrogating arbiters of topics of public discourse ever look at the actual level of "tolerance" practiced by those poor victims of "Islamophobia" and compare it with their own self-designated level of "tolerance" promulgated by the designated by the humanist drivel known as "multiculturalism"?

But that really is not the issue, is it? Ultimately, it goes back to appeasement of our petro-overlords. Always follow the Mammon. And always - always - give them what they want.

And Where Did That Get Them

At least someone is comparing with history in mind. This is a far cry from the usual back-pedaling as soon as one realizes one is getting close to the brink of allowing truth to break in upon one's consciousness: Roman Infanticide, Modern Abortion

Jos. Bottum - Signpost at the Crossroads

You head down the road of public life in America, and you run up against religion. From the conversations in the barber shops and the coffee klatches, through the aldermen’s offices and the town halls, the school boards and the zoning commissions, the campaigns and the columnists, and eventually to the state houses and even, perhaps, to that white-domed Capitol building, far off in Washington—somewhere along the line you come to the crossroads where religion cuts across your path.

You travel the long road of religion in America, and you find the Bible chapels, scattered along the prairie like tumbleweeds that have somehow grown white vinyl siding. You drive past the green-lawn suburban churches with cutesy messages on the brick-framed signs placed out near the street. You pass the exhaust-stained marble fronts of the old city congregations, the yellow taxis inching angrily by. You visit the grand cathedrals and synagogues, announcing their people’s success in America, this newfoundland, and you see the pulpits and the choir lofts and the pews and the Sunday schools—the church basement halls, with their dented aluminum coffeemakers and styrofoam cups, their book tables, their after-service conversations burbling away. And somewhere down that highway you come, again, to the crossroads where the public life of the nation confronts you.

There is a marker at that place, naming its many promises and dangers for travelers, with the word abortion at the top. Even now, abortion remains what it has been for more than thirty years: the signpost at the intersection of religion and American public life.

Of course, there are those who think this shouldn’t be so. Personally, I cannot see how abortion could not rank first. We eliminate 1.3 million unborn children in this country every year, a number that dwarfs, by far, the impact of every other activity with which the moral teachings of the churches might be concerned. For that matter, the story of abortion is a tale of blood and sex and power and law—I do not know what more anyone could need for public significance. The people who say they are uninterested in the issue of abortion have always seemed, to me, to be trying to suppress the imagination that most makes us human.

Nonetheless, even in the churches some do not see things this way, and they want the whole issue simply to go away. But the fact that they wish abortion didn’t matter shows that abortion does, in fact, matter. It’s proof that the social observation remains true, for good or for ill. Whether one approves or not, the issue of abortion is here in America—the signpost at the crossroads.

Read all of The Signpost at the Crossroads here.