(I get many requests for a post about my conversion.  This is as close to that as I have written. It is from January of ARSH 2012.)

There is a YouTube video going around of a young man rapping a screed entitled, “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” that needs to be rebutted and shot down. I am an excellent candidate to do this because I used to be very firmly in that camp. The pseudo-church I was made to attend as a small child was so horrific and so false that it turned me off of “organized religion” for nearly 15 years. If you’re curious, that pseudo-church was the United Church of Christ, which is the most liberal schismatic sect on earth that dares to still call itself Christian. If you wanted to get any further off the reservation, you would have to go to a Unitarian Universalist group, and they aren’t Christian. In fact, they pride themselves on being absolutely nothing. Ah, nihilism: the answer to the yearning of every human heart . . . NOT.

The United Church of Christ is the same “denomination” as Jeremiah Wright’s Marxist Black Supremacist political outfit masquerading as a church in Chicago that Mrs. Reggie Love sat in for lo those twenty years, gaining his “black church Southside homie street-cred”, whilst Jeremiah Wright, who appears to be about fifteen-sixteenths Caucasian and one-sixteenth African himself, would scream down curses from the pulpit upon the then still-extant United States of America and “the white man”. Ah, sweet irony.

The church that I attended as a child was not a black church, naturally, but rather a combination of old low church Germans and New England Anglo-Congregationalists. In fact, that is pretty much my ethic composition in a nutshell. The church was demographically old, and the vestiges of Christianity that I did see were mostly among the older congregants of German extraction. Many of those men were veterans of one or both of the World Wars. Anyone younger than that was, pretty much across the board, atheist/agnostic and attended and were active in that church because it provided the cover or pose of Christianity without any awkward and discomforting talk about Jesus. No joke.

I remember being drug to a search committee meeting as a young child, probably aged six. One pastor had just left and there was a steady rotation of interim pastors every week. The search committee was discussing the pastor candidates around a table in the church basement hall and I was off several feet away sitting by the piano listening and occupying myself. The name of one of the pastors that I actually enjoyed came up. I enjoyed him because he would preach strongly and even raise his voice during the sermon, and he wore a pretty sky-blue robe, which I liked. At this, one of the search committee members said, and I’ll never forget this, that he didn’t like this pastor because “he talks about Jesus too much.” The committee agreed. That one sentence, spoken nearly 30 years ago while I was sitting and playing twenty feet away, was utterly critical in my Christian formation. At age SIX the seeds of contempt for pseudo-Christian hypocrisy were planted, fertilized and well-watered.

Then, at about age ten I was in Sunday School. The church was very small, a well-attended Sunday would have 50 people total, and thus the Sunday School class I was in was me (aged ten) and four junior high aged girls, aged 13-15. The teacher told us one Sunday that there wasn’t really a person named Jesus of Nazareth and that the Bible and all of Christianity was merely a fictional narrative authored in the Middle Ages in order to flesh out a philosophy. From the age of six I was already cynical. At that point, I just started calling hard-core bee-ess on the entire thing. Not Jesus, mind you. I never had any doubts about Him, and always knew that He was not just real, but Personal, which is quite amazing in retrospect. But, given the fact that I had been immersed in the worst of 20th century Christian heresy for my entire childhood, I called bee-ess on “church” and stopped going a couple of years later.

Hard-core Bible study began at age 17. Four times through, front to back, every word. I was pitched by every possible Christian and faux-Christian outfit in college, with the notable exception of one. The Mormons tried. The Jehovah’s Witnesses tried. The white non-denominational charismatic hand-wavers tried. The Lutherans tried. Even the black church tried. (The most frightened I have ever been in my life is when the leader of the black church ladies’ group that I was invited to pulled a bottle of Wesson Oil out of her purse. I was doing a tactical assessment of the exits at that point.  Seriously.) The only ones who never, ever tried were the Catholics. Typical.  Because, you know, the New Pentecost.

The reading of orthodox Christian apologetics began at age 22 with C.S. Lewis and “Mere Christianity” – a gift from my orthodontist, of all people. Lewis (Anglican) led to Chesterton (Catholic convert). Uh-oh. Chesterton led to Newman (Catholic convert). Then Hahn (Catholic convert). Uh-oh. Hahn led to Keating. Keating led to Ratzinger. (Uh-oh) Ratzinger led to Augustine. Augustine led to re-reading the Bible. John 6. Luke 24. Matthew 26. Ephesians 5. The entire book of Revelation. The entire book of Leviticus. UH-OH. Then, the coup de grace, the Church Fathers. Clement of Rome. Ignatius of Antioch. Justin Martyr. Irenaeus of Lyons. Cyprian of Carthage. UH-OH.

At this point, I am 26 or so, and the writing is spray-painted on the wall in neon orange. But here’s the problem, and I’m dead serious here. This is LITERALLY what went through my mind over and over again:

“BUT TED KENNEDY IS A CATHOLIC. I need to read some more.”

And so I did. For three more years.

At the top of the list of individuals who have done the most damage to the Church you have Martin Luther, King Henry VIII, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, Annibale Bugnini and the KENNEDY FAMILY. In the 20th and 21st centuries, Bugnini and the Kennedy family are personally responsible for driving away hundreds of millions of Catholics and potential converts worldwide, with the Kennedys’ damage being mainly focused in North America. The Kennedys merely contributed to DELAYING my conversion. But I’m still bitter.

And that brings us to the point. Like the guy in the “I hate religion but love Jesus” video, I was making the mistake of confusing Jesus with the people inside of the Church. And this is, in a nutshell, the main problem with post-Vatican II Catholicism AND Protestantism in all its forms. BOTH – because the Novus Ordo milieu and so-called “spirit of the Council” is simply the Protestantization of the Church and the Liturgy.  And since Protestantism is a heresy, and leads inevitably to atheism (Look around, kids.  What exactly do you think is happening?  You have a front-row seat to the five-centuries coming culmination of Luther’s heresy.), the Novus Ordo WILL die, if not by the Arm of Justice, then by its own built-in suicide mechanism.

What is going on in these liturgies and services is NOT the worship of God. What is going on is the WORSHIP OF THE GROUP. Christ is merely the meme, or excuse, that these people are using in order to get together and WORSHIP THEMSELVES. The focus is ENTIRELY on the people.

For you Catholics who aren’t attending a pre-Vatican II Tridentine Latin Mass, think about it. Who is the physical focus of the Mass? It is probably the priest, interspersed with lectors, a cantor, the choir and musicians (up front so everyone can SEE THEM while they PERFORM!) and Eucharistic ministers. Where does the priest sit? Probably with his back to the Tabernacle, if the Tabernacle hasn’t been moved off to the side or into a sacristy completely. Which direction is the priest facing? WHO is the priest addressing? Towards the PEOPLE. Everything is physically oriented not towards Christ, but towards the people. By setting up a second altar (in the case of an old church that has a high altar, sitting unused) or by having a table-style altar in a new-construction church, with the priest on one side and the people on the other, what has happened is that the people have literally turned their back to God and have instead formed a circle of self-absorbed, self-regarding self-worship. Don’t get me started on Catholic Churches that are built in the round. The only answer for that mess is a D-10 Caterpillar.

There will be much work to be done on the architectural front after the Counter-Revolution.

Now think about Protestant churches, if you can even call them that, especially the new super-fun rockband mega-churches. There isn’t even an altar. The vast majority of the ones I have seen don’t even have a Cross. Anywhere. It is just a stage for performance, entertainment and self-worship. “Look at us! Aren’t we great! Isn’t the band fabulous? Isn’t the video and light show amazing? Isn’t the preacher great? Oh my gosh you guys, we totally have cupholders in the seats for your Grande Mochachino from our Starbucks in the lobby!  It’s all about US and WHAT WE DO, and the more applause we get, and the more money we raise, the better we feel about ourselves. YAY US! YAY ME!”

Aside from the obvious problem of worshiping one’s self, there is a massive, massive problem here, and it is the very problem that the “I hate religion” guy has, and that I used to have myself.

If a religious group worships itself in any way, then it is positively doomed to failure. Why? Because every single person on earth is a horrific sinner. Everyone is flawed. Everyone is a personal failure to one degree or another. Therefore, at some point, a serious-minded person inside one of these churches will look around and begin to analyze the PEOPLE around him, and will inevitably find those people lacking if not outright frauds. Since these churches and parishes are essentially worshiping the PEOPLE and not Christ, the serious-minded person will be rightly repulsed by the fact that he is worshiping something which does not deserve to be worshiped.

The kid in the “I hate religion” video is RIGHT to be repulsed, but he doesn’t understand that the error is HIS in that he thinks that the self-worshiping paradigm is what the church is, has always been, and ever can be. He doesn’t understand that the thing that he has rightly identified as disordered is in fact a relatively modern heresy, and that true Christian worship in the form of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, properly said, is 100% focused on Christ, and His Sacrifice. Even the priest is supposed to be “liturgically transparent”, acting not as himself, but as a vicar of Christ, standing BOTH as an “alter Christus” AND as a representative of the people facing Christ in the Tabernacle and upon the altar with the people behind him (yes, the priest should have his BACK to the congregation as he LEADS THEM in the worship of God!!), who are in turn charged with uniting themselves in prayer with their liturgical representative at the altar of God, the priest.  Oooh!  A BOTH-AND situation requiring the tiniest smidgen of nuanced thought!  Can we handle this (extremely low) level of complexity, Marxist-contra-educated people?

The best image of the Church is the three crosses on Calvary.

Calvary. Andrea Mantegna. ARSH 1459.

In the middle is Christ, surrounded by criminals. On one side is the Good Thief who acknowledges his sin and throws himself upon Christ’s Mercy. On the other side is the Bad Thief who refuses to repent and mocks Christ to the end. Both of those men were criminals. Both were guilty. The only difference is how they related to Christ. And this is the Church. Christ is in the middle, and every single person there present is guilty. If you’re looking for that “perfect church” filled with all of those “perfect people”, you reject Calvary itself, because all you would ever be able to see are those two criminals. You would be so fixated and repulsed by the two criminals that you would reject Christ Crucified by association and proximity. And that is EXACTLY what satan wants you, and the kid in the video, and everyone else to do.

DON’T LOOK AT HIM. DON’T LOOK AT CHRIST. LOOK AT ONE ANOTHER. WORSHIP YOURSELVES, AND THEN LEAVE WHEN YOU REALIZE THAT EVERYONE AROUND YOU IS A CRIMINAL.

Furthermore, this feeds the heresy of moral relativism through the sin of pride. If we spend all of our time worshiping and fixated on the people, we start to feel superior to those around us. One of the seminal moments in my conversion was hearing a longtime friend and anti-Catholic say, “The reason I never go to church is because I have yet to find a church that is worthy of my presence.” Those were his EXACT words, at precisely the time I was reading everything I could get my hands on about the REAL PRESENCE of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.  Worthy. Of. My. Presence.

Hearing that abject arrogance and pride, and then realizing that that sentiment was actually my position too, only dared to be spoken aloud – was like getting punched in the stomach by Mike Tyson. Yeah, I’m cool with Ted Kennedy being Catholic, because at the end of the day, I’m Ted Kennedy too. No, I never raped anyone, and I never killed anyone like Ted Kennedy did, but my butt is just as guilty as Teddy’s, and if they’ll let me in the door, I’ll strive to be the Good Thief, because I’d rather die on Calvary with Christ than live without Him.

And now for a statement which will probably be posted all over message boards and forums all over the interwebs by those many, many people who hate me. Have at it, kids. I care not. Get ready to highlight, copy and paste, y’all! This is the answer to the scads and scads of emails I get from people saying, “Well, what about all of those pedophile priests?”

If you told me that every single person in the Catholic Church today, besides me, was secretly a child molester, I WOULD STILL BE CATHOLIC, because the Catholic Church is the pillar and bulwark of Truth (1 Tim 3:15). I don’t worship those people, I worship Christ, the same Christ who was crucified in the midst of criminals and FOR criminals, and Christ is the Head of the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church is the Bride of Christ. That is where Christ is – both spiritually and physically. He is among the sick and the guilty. If the Truth isn’t in that Tabernacle and on that Altar, then there is no truth.

To paraphrase Peter, where else would I go? Besides, if Christ is being surrounded and attacked by “bad thieves” within the Church, isn’t the onus upon me, an aspiring “good thief”, all the more to STAY WITH HIM? The only possible way I could ever leave is if I stopped worshiping Christ and started worshiping other people, or myself {SHUDDER}, and Dude, that ain’t NEVER gonna happen.

Finally, the argument that Christ didn’t establish or ordain ANY liturgical action at all. Well, aside from the entire Old Testament detailing architecture and extremely specific liturgical actions which Christ, the Church and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass fulfill and utterly perfect; and the contradiction that if God didn’t want liturgy, then God, who is eternal, transcendent and UNCHANGING, apparently CHANGED HIS MIND and hates the very thing He established and commanded throughout the Old Testament, we have the words and actions of Christ Himself at the Last Supper, which was the first Mass:

DO THIS IN COMMEMORATION OF ME.

Do this. 
Do this. 
Do this.

Don’t waste your time writing up some big, massive email explaining how “Do this” actually means “don’t do this” or “I really don’t want you to do this ever again.” And likewise spare yourself the timesuck of writing emails that try to argue that “This is My Body” actually means that “this isn’t My Body”, or “My Flesh is True Food and My Blood is True Drink” actually means “My Flesh is NOT true food and My Blood is NOT true drink.” And spare me the emails about how “You must eat My Flesh and drink My Blood” means, “You must never eat My Flesh or drink My Blood.” And finally, PLEASE abort plans now to email me explaining how “and upon this rock I will build My Church“ actually means that there is no Church at all.

Here’s a tip: if you find yourself bending yourself into a pretzel like a sideshow contortionist arguing EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of the plain, direct, clear and straighforward words of Christ, then you are wrong. Step back, stop worshiping yourself, reset, and get right. I did, by the Grace of God, which is just slightly more powerful than the entire Kennedy family put together.

I was sent a link to a blog in the aftermath of the posts regarding the female-driven culture of divorce and annulments that is quite a treasure, and I think will be appreciated by many of you, especially all of the men who are going through what this blog’s author, “Dalrock”, refers to as “frivorce” (frivolous divorce).  And may I say, my stars, there certainly are a bunch of you “frivorced” men out there.  I was shocked at the volume of anecdotal email this relatively small internet outpost generated.  I knew my readership was skewed heavily toward to over-55 male demographic, but it was shocking, even to jaded me, how many of you are recently abandoned by your wives.  We all like to think that we have been able to “control” and “stand apart” from the culture that we have all been immersed in.  We all like to think that, “Yeah, I know the filth on teevee is hideous and evil, but it won’t affect me or my family…”  Well, I suspect many of you men now realize that your wives were, in fact, poisoned by that very culture.  The endless teevee shows, commercials and movies that played up feminism, sexual libertinism, and rank materialism were a slow poison to your marriages.  Yes, fifty years ago your post-menopausal wife would have never, ever left you to go “recapture her stolen youth” or “sow her wild oats” because IT NEVER WOULD HAVE OCCURRED TO HER.  And that is a good thing, make no mistake.

Anyway, the particular post on this blog that I want you to read is about feminist philosophy of being miserly with love entitled, “Feminists Are Ugly”.  It is completely spot-on.  Women today are taught that it is a virtue to utterly resent performing any acts of loving care, most especially for their husbands and children, to the point that women now relish in their willingness to murder their own children in the womb.  But the concept maps to not just married women and mothers, but to pretty much everyone, including men.  But understand that the genesis of it is squarely in the lap of the feminist milieu.  Who can argue that men are now culturally conditioned to avoid acts of simple loving kindness, and to actively resent “taking care” of anyone or anything except themselves?  Why do you think there is such eagerness to embrace the Welfare State?  Why do you think men are so content to let Pimp Daddy Government raise their children, and so devoid of masculine dignity so as to be perfectly content with a life of suckling at the government teat?  Was their right-ordered desire to provide for and protect women browbeaten out of them?  Yes.  But they LET it be browbeaten out of them.  There is guilt in the  capitulation.

Simply put, we now live in a world where almost no one derives any joy, pleasure or satisfaction from performing any act of self-sacrificial loving care for someone else, whether in the context of marital or romantic love, filial love (friendship), parental love, or even simple charity toward strangers on the street.  Any act that is not totally self-serving is not only drained of all pleasure, but now actively, openly resented, and those who still hold out and refuse to conform to this post-Christian, feminist worldview are treated with suspicion at best, and with contempt and hostility at worst.

I cannot emphasize too strongly the need for the remnant of God-fearing people, most especially those with children, to unplug from and utterly reject the contemporary media and western culture as much as possible, because this satanic poison is everywhere, and no, you and your awesomeness do not provide some magic force-field that blocks it from infecting your wives, children, and even yourself.

The sinners in Sion are afraid, trembling hath seized upon the hypocrites. Which of you can dwell with devouring fire? which of you shall dwell with everlasting burnings? He that walketh in justices, and speaketh truth, that casteth away avarice by oppression, and shaketh his hands from all bribes, that stoppeth his ears lest he hear blood, and shutteth his eyes that he may see no evil.

He shall dwell on high, the fortifications of rocks shall be his highness: bread is given him, his waters are sure. His eyes shall see the king in his beauty, they shall see the land far off.  Thy heart shall meditate fear: where is the learned? where is he that pondereth the words of the law? where is the teacher of little ones? The shameless people thou shalt not see, the people of profound speech: so that thou canst not understand the eloquence of his tongue, in whom there is no wisdom.

Isaiah 33: 14-19

Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  Amen.

PATER NOSTER, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.

Here is the Kyrie from Haydn’s Mass for St. Nicholas’ Feast Day.  This has a decidedly more optimistic tone – which is good.  It is certainly tempting in these dark days to lose all optimism and despair of the world, and even of ourselves.

1.  I love smoked salmon.  What a delicious treat.  In fact, I have determined that I like things that are cooked by methods other than heat.  Pickling is a form of cooking with acid and/or salt.  Smoking.  Curing.  Dehydrating.

2.  The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was offered yesterday for all of my benefactors and supporters.  It was lovely.  The Feast was that of St. John Chrysostom, which was an extra-special bonus.

3.  Update on Ukraine:  the Prime Minister has resigned, and most importantly, the military is refusing to move against the protesters.  That’s the important part.  Once the military refuses orders, a given government is basically over barring massive outside intervention – which is still possible here from Putin.  But that seems unlikely at this point.

This is exactly what needs to happen in the U.S.  There needs to be a general strike demanding the total liquidation of the FEDGOV.  The FEDGOV needs to be forced to give the military orders to fire on U.S. citizens.  I know you don’t want to hear that, but it is the truth.  Now here is the big problem as I see it:  I think that the Flag Officer Corps and a majority of the Field Grade officers would go along with the regime, because those ranks have been almost totally purged of decent, God-fearing men who are loyal to the Constitution and the Rule of Law.  Flag and Field Grade officers are now almost entirely craven hacks who care only about their pensions and slithering up the chain of command in order to maximize their pensions and stroke their shriveled, flaccid, quivering egos.  Someday I might tell you what I REALLY think of them.

So, yes, I think the officers would give orders to fire.  I also think that most of the enlisted men would NOT follow those orders.  It would be one hell of a gamble, and there will be casualties, but sadly, it is clearly what needs to happen.  Enough of this garbage.  Enough of this lawless, despotic oligarchy.  The longer this goes on, the worse it is going to be when the poop hits the fan.  Each day magnifies the pain that WILL come later.  The former United States needs to take a lesson from Ukraine, do the right thing, and force FEDGOV’s hand.  Whenever something painful or unpleasant has to happen, it is always much better to lean into it and be in control of the situation, rather than cower, stall and flinch.

4.  Dinesh D’Souza.  As I understand it, the guy makes a documentary critical of Obama and now has been arrested and made to post a bond on a $500,000 bail because he bundled $20,000 for some congressional candidate and didn’t fill out the appropriate paperwork and document it properly.  Now, I don’t want to engage in relativism, but I MUST point out that Jon Corzine stole $1.6 billion dollars in customer funds and the only thing that happened to him was having to go to Washington whereupon he perjured himself without compunction before Congress while simultaneously being given a tongue-bath by said Congressional panel.  In other words, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.  That needs to be pointed out because it speaks to my main premise in all of my ranting and raving: The Rule of Law is DEAD.  There is no equal protection under the law because the iniquitous gutter republic formerly called the United States of America is no longer a nation of LAWS, but a nation of MEN.  All that matters is who you are and who you know.  Period.

Now to D’Souza.  I’m sorry, but I’m having trouble summoning much sympathy for him.  The United States has been overthrown.  The government is no longer legitimate.  The Congress is a den of thieves, a hive of scum and villainy, a neo-Stalinist mafia of psychopaths and drooling imbeciles-cum-pawns.  What in the hell is he doing participating in that wretched mess in the first place?  What is he doing raising and bundling money for ANYONE having ANYTHING to do with that satanic sharknado?  If you are so stupid that you think that a.) elections are fair and b.) this neo-Stalinist mafia can be somehow thwarted by JOINING THE MAFIA AND PLAYING THEIR GAME, you deserve what you get.  D’Souza shouldn’t have been playing patty-cake rah-rah for some totally unqualified and delusional soccer mom.  Remember Barnhardt Axiom #1:  seeking and/or holding office, especially national-level office, is, in and of itself, proof that a given person is psychologically and morally unfit to hold public office.  D’Souza should have been denouncing the entire festering mess and using his platform to call for both tax and general strikes.  If you’re going to go down, go down being USEFUL and setting a good example.  This is just stupid.

5.  One. More. Time. The stock market keeps going up because… the Federal Reserve is pumping at *bare minimum* $85 billion dollars per month into the markets.  There is no “there” there.  It is a bubble of such epic proportions that there is no historical analogue anywhere, ever.  And it isn’t just the U.S. central bank that is doing this.  Europe, Japan and China are the same story.  Oh, and apparently your Crack-addled Sodomite Leader is going to roll out “Tax-deferred Treasury Bond Retirement Accounts” in the big speech tonight.  In other words, the government will be stealing your wages DIRECTLY instead of going through the middleman ruse of 401(k) accounts, as many of you have learned of late.  Remember Barnhardt Axiom #2:  If you can’t roll around on top of it whilst wielding your assault rifle, then sweetie, you don’t really own it, and you never did.  #TOLDYA

Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  Amen.

PATER NOSTER, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.

Apparition of St. Peter to St. Peter Nolasco, Francisco de Zurbaran, ARSH 1629

Meet St. Peter Nolasco, whose feast it is today.  After being visited by the Blessed Virgin, at her instruction St. Peter Nolasco founded the Order of Our Lady of Mercy for the Redemption of Captives.  And by captives, we are talking about people who were captured and enslaved by musloids.  Now, get this:  The Order first used money to redeem slaves, but when their money ran out, the men in the order were bound by the Order’s rule to *offer themselves* in exchange for captives.

Do you understand how far Christian civilization has fallen, and how utterly impoverished the Church now is?  Men were signing up not only for a life of poverty, a life dedicated to prayer and liturgy, a life of celibacy and complete chastity, but were also willingly signing up to potentially offer themselves to musloid slavers in order to ransom other human beings.  And they had vocations.

The picture above is St. Peter the Apostle appearing to St. Peter Nolasco.  St. Peter Nolasco wanted to go to Rome to visit St. Peter’s tomb (I know the feeling), but it just wasn’t possible, so St. Peter the Apostle appeared to St. Peter Nolasco to console him and encourage him to continue his work in Spain.  St. Peter the Apostle and First Pope was, of course, crucified upside-down at his own request because he felt himself not worthy to die in the same way as Our Lord because he had denied Him during His Passion.  Tradition holds that St. Peter died repeating over and over again, “Agapo-se”, which means “I love you unconditionally” – something he could not say for the rest of his life until that moment, upside down in a Roman Circus, even after Our Lord had forgiven Peter for denying Him.  THAT is a truly humble Pope.

Both St. Peters, pray for us!

There is basically a media blackout on the counter-revolution in Ukraine, but y’all better pay close, close attention, because A.) decent human beings are being slaughtered in the streets for standing up to an illegitimate government and this ALWAYS merits attention as a function of simple charity and B.) I think the events in Ukraine are a foreshadowing or prototype of what will eventually play out in North America.  The two situations have many similarities.

Please note that I used the term “counter-revolution” with regards to Ukraine.  Remember, “revolution” refers to any movement that turns AWAY from God.  Without doubt or question, the tyrannical Ukrainian oligarchy executed a cold revolution in which it turned away from God and toward Moscow, Putin and their own personal enrichment.  The “revolution” is a fait accompli.  What the people of Ukraine have been and are now doing is COUNTER-REVOLUTION.  They are sick and tired of being used and abused by a cadre of oligarchs who are toadies of Putin.  They want to turn back toward justice, honesty in government and the rule of law.  Again, Putin is an evil, evil, evil man.  You people who are still falling for his garbage need to wise up.  He is playing you for a fool.  Just because he goes into a church and crosses himself and makes token gestures against sodomites doesn’t make him good.  It makes him politically savvy and nothing more.  If Obama learns to cross himself (assuming that the action wouldn’t cause him to burst into flames or melt), are you going to fall all over him too?  Guys, Putin and Obama are cut from the same cloth.  It is not impossible that Obama has explicit ties to Moscow, and may have even been in Moscow for a time during the missing two years in the early 80’s when he claims to have been at Columbia in NYC, but was almost certainly nowhere near that sulfuric hive of iniquity.

With Putin’s approval, the Kiev oligarchs are now murdering people in the street, and are HAPPILY ADMITTING IT.  Check out this quote from one of them who spoke at a memorial service for one of the first killed.  And remember, this was said AT THE MEMORIAL SERVICE:

A local legislator from the Luhansk region, who is a member of the ruling Party of Regions said, at a memorial service for those killed in Kyiv, “it is ‘correct’ that they were killed. In fact, more severe measures should be taken against the demonstrators.”

Okay.  When the oligarchs stop pretending and happily admit that they are murdering people and that they intend and desire to murder more people, you quit talking, suit up and boot up, and fight until you are either gloriously dead or gloriously victorious.  Remember the Lord of the Rings scene I posted last week of King Theoden at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields giving his speech before the charge?  Do you remember the battle cry of the Rohirim?  “DEATH!”  Were you taken aback by that?  It isn’t that the Rohirim were suicidal, because that would be a grave sin.  The battle cry “DEATH!” is simply a declaration that they did not fear death and were ready to lay down their lives in service to truth, justice and goodness – and many of them did.  And they understood that to die in that way was, in fact, glorious.  In any action involving a massive charge, there WILL be casualties.  Americans, it seems to me, only want to partake in a “charge” if they don’t have to A.) get up from their sofas, and B.) can be guaranteed that there will be zero risk of personal harm –  be it physical, financial or even mere harm to their reputation or social standing.  If those are your criteria, that’s fine, but understand you have ZERO chance of victory, and frankly, deserve to live under a tyranny for being utterly self-absorbed, cowardly and effeminate at that point.  Sow the wind – even through passivity, and you will still be made to reap the whirlwind.

Now, let me post a quote from a piece published today about Ukraine titled “Bloodlands”, and I will put in red brackets substitutions in the U.S. context and tell me that the two situations aren’t eerily similar:

…It is far more a criminal syndicate than a classic totalitarian regime. The tactics Yanukovych {the Obama regime} has employed as president — forging alliances with oligarchs (who have funded the president’s political party and also made him vastly wealthy personally); hiring gangs of brutes to cow potential opponents; assassinating opponents who didn’t get the message from the thugs or who refused to kowtow; aggregating power in the hands of a single party held together by greed, the lust for power, and the fear of retribution; the thoroughgoing corruption of the justice system and the courts; the eventual strangulation of parliament {Congress} — were all previewed in the late 1990s and the early years of the new century when Yanukovych was governor of the Donetsk oblast in eastern Ukraine {an Illinois state representative and then U.S. Senator}. There, Yanukovych {Obama} honed his capacity to acquire, and then hold on to, a form of power that is cemented together by personal loyalties, financial cupidity, and fear rather than by any common ideology. Call it clan politics; call it Mafia politics; call it whatever you like, only don’t call it “democratic.” Yanukovych {the Obama regime} may have come to power through the formal mechanisms of democracy (although the legitimacy of recent elections in Ukraine {the former United States} is certainly open to doubt). But as EuroMaidan leaders {screeching American harpies}  such as former world heavyweight champion Vitaliy Klychko {Ann Barnhardt} have long insisted, Yanukovych {the Obama regime} has destroyed constitutional governance in Ukraine {the former United States}, and Ukraine {the now-overthrown United States} can no longer be considered a democracy.

Sadly, the author of this piece is George Weigel, who is a dyed-in-the-wool American neo-con, and as a big-time fanboi of Cardinal Timothy Dolan, I suspect, would scarcely admit to the similarities outlined above, and if he did would be in total denial as to the root causes, much less the solution.  So many Americans today can see things that are happening on the other side of the planet, but simply cannot bring themselves to acknowledge the same evils within the context of their own country.  This isn’t merely a blindSPOT, it is a de facto blindFOLD.  Indifferent, cowardly, and willfully blind.  Forgive me for despairing of a solution that does not involve legions of angels with flaming swords.

The flag of the Ukrainian Counter-revolution: the Ukrainian flag with a black bar.  Pray for Ukraine and its people!

Mark your calendars!  Set an alarm on your phone!  At roughly 6:30pm EST the Holy Sacrifice of  the Mass will be offered for all of my benefactors and supporters.  Our Lord knows who all of you are and exactly what you need, and you and your intentions will be on the Paten with Our Lord’s Body and inside the Chalice immersed in His Precious Blood, carried by the angels to God the Father in heaven.

“See” you there and then!

This clip is from a 15-year old movie which I didn’t particularly like, and stars Jack Nicholson, who I really don’t like as an actor at all.  I don’t recommend this movie, but I remembered this scene which is a great secular example of the very, very first step toward filial fear.  Long story short, he is telling her that he loves her.  This line is the punchline of the entire movie.

“You make me want to be a better man.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THtv5VM5LSY

Our Lord should make you want to be a better man because of Who He is (God Almighty) and what He has done for You (the Incarnation and Passion).  The “Who He is” part is servile fear, the “what He did” part is filial fear.  The filial fear must be informed and magnified by the servile fear.

You must have both kinds of fear.  If you only have filiar fear towards Our Lord, and no servile fear, then Jesus is basically your boyfriend.  And not even your serious your boyfriend, but your totally shallow, thirteen-year-old-Tiger-Beat-Justin-Bieber-groupie imaginary “boyfriend”.  {{Shudder}}.

If you have all servile fear and no filial fear, then God is a thuggish, aloof slavemaster.  (Paradigm sound familiar?  Cough.  Non-existent pagan moon deity.  Cough.)

Michael Voris over at ChurchMilitant.TV recently had a Vortex episode in which he urged his listeners to pray to God to be made a saint.  This could also be phrased, “Father, You make me want to be a better man.  Please make me a better man.  Amen.”

“Never fear the final judgment, because Christ will always be at our side.”
-Antipope Bergoglio

I’m just going to let that quote sit up there, and after you are done reading this, you can go back and re-read what Pope Francis, South American Jesuit and Child of the late 1960s and early 1970s, said again and then ponder it all in your hearts.

-*-

Fear of the Lord is utterly, utterly essential.  If you do not fear God, then the odds are that you don’t actually love and worship God at all, but rather a mere idea, philosophy or imaginary friend that you call “god” or “jesus”, that you have made up out of whole cloth in your own head, which is to say when you boil it down to brass tacks, you are worshiping yourself.

There are two types of fear that need to be defined.  The two types of fear are SERVILE FEAR and FILIAL FEAR.  Let’s start with SERVILE FEAR.  Servile fear is the fear we must have of God because He is, well, GOD.  He is all-powerful.  He is all-knowing.  He made you, atom by atom.  He sustains you, and the entire universe.  He made it, and if He decided to do it, He could snuff the whole kit-and-caboodle out of existence whenever He felt like it.  The laws of physics are His to break whenever He feels like it.  He is perfectly good and perfectly just.  He is incomprehensible.  He is pure love, pure beauty, pure truth.  He is reality itself.  He is infinitely powerful, infinitely strong.  He knows all.  He sees all.  He contains all.  HE. IS. GOD.

He is God, and we are not.  He is infinite, and we are teeny, tiny, puny little finite specks.  Therefore, we stand, kneel and fall down on our faces trembling in awe before Him.  If you view God as a nebulous “life-force”, or a kindly, doddering old man in the sky, or an indifferent “watchmaker”, or your “buddy”, then you had better get your mind right post haste.  Fear Him because He could snuff you out of existence, or even more terrifying, give you exactly what you deserve and cast you into hell, eternally separated from Him and His loving goodness, to rot alone for all eternity.  If you do not have a servile fear of The Lord, then dollars to doughnuts says you don’t actually worship God, but rather yourself.

Now FILIAL FEAR.  Filial fear can best be described as the fear of breaking someone’s heart by disappointment.  God loves you.  Infinitely.  He knows your every thought, word and deed.  He knows you better than you know yourself, because He cuts through all of the lies and delusions that we saturate ourselves with, thus blinding us to our true selves.  This works in both directions.  Not only can God see how truly awful we are; how manipulative, how dishonest, how prideful, how narcissistic, and how selfish we are; He can also see how wonderful we are.  After all, He doesn’t make mistakes.  Every person He creates in His own likeness and image.  He sees you as He created you to be.  To make an analogy, let’s take a person that is universally agreed to be physically beautiful.  I dunno.  Brad Pitt in his prime.  Okay.  Go with that.  Let’s say that “Brad Pitt in his prime” is beautiful.  Now, take “Brad Pitt in his prime” and cover him in dirt and grease, unwashed, unkempt, smelly and dirty.  We know what Brad Pitt would look like if he was perfectly clean, and it is very, very good.  So, in a sense, no matter how dirty and nasty you make “Brad Pitt in his prime”, we can still see through the dirt and grease, and we still know how beautiful he is under all of the filth and disorder.  This is why God continues to love us no matter how much we sin, and thus why His mercy is always available and inexhaustible.  A parent does not stop loving a child when they are dirty or sick.  Parental love is likewise a reflection of God’s love for us.

So, knowing this, and knowing what God freely chose to do for us in His Incarnation, Passion and Death; knowing that God is Our Father, Brother and Divine Spouse, how can we not fear breaking His Most Sacred Heart?  How can we not fear disappointing Him?  How can we not fear nailing him to the Cross as He freely takes upon Himself all of our sins?  What kind of a psychopath would one have to be to delude one’s self into believing that since one is “saved” one can now sin without care or worry since God is now “contractually obliged” to forgive you and receive you into heaven?  Um, what about the Second Person of the Triune Godhead?  What about Jesus Christ, scourged, crucified and dying?  WHAT ABOUT THE FACT THAT EVERY ONE OF YOUR SINS BREAKS OUR LORD’S SACRED HEART?  Do you care?  Does that bother you?  Do you even think about it?  If you think salvation is a mere contract and that you need not worry about your sins, then you are completely lacking in FILIAL FEAR.

It is thought that at the Particular Judgment of every person, they are made to recount their entire lives and see how their thoughts, words and deeds conformed to God in his perfect goodness.  Terrifyingly, we will also have to see the agony and suffering that Our Lord endured in His Passion and Death for us.  We will somehow be made to know exactly how we made Him  suffer, and how we wounded Him.

Fear this.  Live every second of your life in fear of this.  This fear is what will keep you from sin, and when you do sin, will make you truly sorry and get you into the confessional to beg for God’s mercy and pardon. This fear is what will help you navigate your way through this fallen world, this outpost of hell, with all of hell’s spawn roaming free and seeking the ruin of your soul.  Fear the day when you will stand before Perfect Love, whipped until He is skinned and nailed to a tree FOR YOU.

Now, some might say that fearing God can only lead to a reduction in intimacy with Him.  This is wrong, Wrong, WRONG.  As intimacy with Our Lord increases, so does the filial fear.  The more you know Him, and the more you love Him, the more you desire to NOT disappoint Him, much less nail Him to the Cross.  We experience this dynamic amongst each other.  We essentially don’t care what a stranger on the street thinks of us, but we certainly care about what someone we love thinks of us, and care more yet about what someone we are in love with thinks of us.  The greater the love, the greater the filial fear.

Likewise, the more we ponder God’s enormousness, His vastness, His infinite depth and power, thus engendering a healthy and completely appropriate SERVILE FEAR, the more we then appreciate His Incarnation and the tenderness with which He loves us, which in turn leads us to greater filial fear.  If God is just a big Golden Retriever in the Sky, or a conglomeration of the laws of physics, or a mere subset of your consciousness, then really, what does it matter?  What does sin matter to a celestial pet, the laws of physics, or to you in the form of an imaginary friend?

Fear the Judgment.  Fear our Awesome God.  Fear the day when you are made to see and understand what exactly it is that you have done to Him.  And then, avail yourself of His Infinite Mercy and Love through His Holy Church.  Whining to your friends or a therapist, or to yourself in your head is NOT the Sacrament of Confession.  Going to a rock concert/motivational speaking event on Sunday mornings is NOT the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  “Fellowship” is NOT reception of the physical substance of Our Lord into your body and soul in the Eucharist.

 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. A good understanding to all that do it: His praise continueth for ever and ever.
-Psalm 110:10

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is prudence.
-Proverbs 9:10

Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  Amen.

PATER NOSTER, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.

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Here is the text in Latin and English of the troped Orbis Factor Kyrie posted yesterday that you all liked so much.  You’ll like it even more when you hear the beautiful words… Sigh.

Latin:

1. Orbis factor rex aeterne, eleison.  Kyrie, eleison.  Kyrie, eleison.
2. Pietatis fons immense, eleison.  Kyrie, eleison.  Kyrie, eleison.
3. Noxas omnes nostras pelle, eleison.  Kyrie, eleison.  Kyrie, eleison.
4. Christe qui lux es mundi dator vitae, eleison.  Christe, eleison.  Christe, eleison.
5. Arte laesos daemonis intuere, eleison.  Christe, eleison.  Christe, eleison.
6. Conservans te credentes confirmansque, eleison.  Christe, eleison.  Christe, eleison.
7. Deum scimus unum atque trinum esse, eleison.  Kyrie, eleison.  Kyrie, eleison.
8. Patrem tuum teque flamen utrorumque, eleison.  Kyrie, eleison.  Kyrie, eleison.
9. Clemens nobis adsis paraclite ut vivamus in te, eleison.  Kyrie, eleison.  Kyrie, eleison.

English:

1. Maker of the world, King eternal, have mercy upon us.  Lord, have mercy upon us.  Lord, have mercy upon us.
2. O immense source of pity, have mercy upon us.  Lord, have mercy upon us.  Lord, have mercy upon us.
3. Drive off all our evils, have mercy upon us.  Lord, have mercy upon us.  Lord, have mercy upon us.
4. Christ who art the light of the world and giver of life, have mercy upon us.  Christ, have mercy upon us.  Christ, have mercy upon us.
5. Consider the wounds produced by the devil’s art, have mercy upon us.  Christ, have mercy upon us.  Christ, have mercy upon us.
6. Keeping and confirming thy believers, have mercy upon us.  Christ, have mercy upon us.  Christ, have mercy upon us.
7. We know that God is one and three, have mercy upon us.  Lord, have mercy upon us.  Lord, have mercy upon us.
8. Thou and thy Father, an equal light, have mercy upon us.  Lord, have mercy upon us.  Lord, have mercy upon us.
9. Thou, merciful unto us, art present with the Holy Spirit that we might live in thee, have mercy upon us.  Lord, have mercy upon us.