Daily Prayer for Priest O my Jesus, I beg You on behalf of the whole Church ... give us holy priests. You yourself maintain them in holiness.
O Divine and Great High Priest, may the power of Your mercy accompany them everywhere and protect them from the devil's traps and snares, which are continually being set for the souls of priests.
May the power of Your Mercy, O Lord, shatter and bring the naught all that might tarnish the sanctity of priest, for You can do all things. - St. Faustina (Diary, 1052)
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“We Are A Nation Of Little Herod’s–Willing to Slaughter The Little One’s Who Threaten Our Prosperity And Power.”
By: Father Dwight Longenecker
gkupsidedownblogspot.com
Mark Steyn comments here about the left wing Mainstream Media being so crass and cruel as to mock the death of Rick Santorum’s newborn child. He says how the left are all big on “empathy” in order to defend abortion, but they are quite willing to mock Sarah Palin’s child who has Downs’ Syndrome and the behavior of the Santorum’s after the death of their child. I wonder if anyone else noticed how sneering they were toward Sarah Palin’s daughter being a teenage mom who kept her baby while at the same time they are full of ”empathy” for teenage moms who choose to kill their baby.
Robert Royal also comments over at The Catholic Thing. It reminds me of another feast in the Christmas Season which did not get enough attention. Each year we celebrate the Slaughter of the Innocents on December 28. This feast, it seems to me, ought to be used more by the Pro Life Movement as a national day of prayer and reparation for the crimes against the unborn in our land. We’re a nation of little Herods–willing to slaughter the little ones who threaten our prosperity and power.
Later this month I’ll be in Washington for the March for Life, and will join thousands of others in the campaign against the slaughter of the innocents in our land. I’ll be blogging and tweeting from the MFL, and hope you’ll follow me there and I hope to meet many of you if I get the chance.
In the meantime, ponder how the liberal media would have reacted to the news in Judea around 4BC: Todd Unctuous would have written something like, “Have you heard some snotty nosed farm workers came in from the hills to Bethlehem the other night? Geesh, what were they smoking? They come shuffling down with stories about “angelic hosts of heaven” appearing to them. Not likely. Haven’t they ever heard of group hallucination? Then they turn up at a little shed where a homeless couple are camping out for the night. The unwed mother is being looked after by this old guy, and that’s kind of creepy in itself. What’s he after??? She gives birth (the anti aborts would say she ‘chose life’) and all I can see is that there is another squawking mouth to feed, and who’s going to pay for that I ask you? The taxpayer as usual…Not only that, not long after these three aristocrats show up looking for ‘the King of the Jews’. Quite sensibly they go to Herod’s palace.
We have to admit that Herod is not everyone’s cup of tea, but hey, nobody’s perfect! At least he’s a strong ruler. He’s canny. He’s nobody’s fool. We can respect that in a ruler. He’s calm under fire. He has the backbone to make tough choices for the sake of peace. These three foreigners tell him a new king of the Jews has been born and Herod takes the tough, but sensible decision. There’s no room for two kings, so he weeds them out. You can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs, and if we can avoid a civil war or a rebellion a few years down the line–who’s complaining–anyhow, what about the famines we’ve been having? Those children were likely to grow up in poverty and misery. And the women? Why should those women be punished by having a child? They’ll look back on it in a few years and realize that Herod did them (and all of us) a favor.”
Why Violence? “Because The Decadent Are Never Satisfied!”
Father Dwight Longenecker-The dictatorship of relativism decrees that tolerance is the only virtue. Because there is no such thing as truth I must tolerate ‘your truth’ and you must tolerate mine. The problem with this is that tolerance must eventually end in decadence. It ends in decadence because if there is no truth, then there are also no moral standards, and if there are no moral standards, then anything goes, and if anything goes, then decadence is the result.
So we see our society not just drifting into decadence, but suddenly seemingly out of nowhere, we are seeing a full flowering of decadence. The decadence is at every level of society, and is exhibited in disgusting behaviors and beliefs in a multitude of different ways. Sexual immorality is everywhere–children are highly sexualized. Adultery and divorce are rampant. Homosexuality is flagrant. Promiscuity, co-habitation and pre-marital sex are everywhere accepted and open. Furthermore, it is not just among the underclass. Their rampant behaviors are more crude and disgusting, but whether you fornicate in the street drunk on cheap beer or in some high class penthouse with a glass of champagne by your side–it’s the same.
Nor is the decadence merely sexual. The materialism and greed and cut throat attitude is everywhere. Again, the underclass may take to the streets rioting and smashing and grabbing. They are only exhibiting in their way what they have seen the upper classes do–it’s just that the upper classes have done so on a much more massive scale by paying lobbyists to change the banking rules so they can sell shoddy financial products to rip people off and make millions. The underclass burn buildings and loot and burn as we saw in London this summer. The upper-class destroy an economy to take salaries of several million and bonuses paid for by the government bail outs.
Are we surprised that violence is the result? Why should we? The tolerance that results from relativism leads to decadence and decadence always leads to violence. Why violence? Because the decadent are never satisfied. Their decadent behavior leads to self loathing, envy and hatred of others. They become possessed with a seething hatred and project it on to others. Why did the mobs in Rome break into a church and desecrate the crucifix and the image of the Blessed Mother? Because the violent mobs will hate most of all those who never bought into their demonic creed of relativism and tolerance in the first place, and who (even silently by their purity) criticized the decadence that resulted from it.
I hate to be a pessimist, but unless there is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit to convert souls we should be prepared for an ever growing hatred of the Catholic Church. The tolerance time is over. The decadence stage is in full swing. Get ready for the violence.
On this day when we celebrate the feast of dear old St Ignatius of Antioch witness his example. His death was a symbol of everything I am talking about. The violent came to take him away and the gentle old man was torn to pieces by hungry lions. The lions are out there now, prowling about–seeking whom they may devour.
They Will Believe In Hell When They Get There!
Father Dwight Longenecker-Padre Pio was asked what he thought about modern people who didn’t believe in hell.
“They’ll believe in hell when they get there.” he replied.
There’s pretty much packed into that little riposte, and what I like most about it is that the last judgment will be a time when things are stood on their head.
I’m reminded of one of the great judgment carvings which is on the South portal at Chartres. It is one of those scenes with Christ enthroned in glory, St Michael weighing the souls in judgment and the demons taking some below and angels lifting others up above.
I was visiting there and the old Englishman who used to give tours said, “Notice that both the damned and the saved have expressions of surprise on their faces.
The damned are surprised to be going to hell because they were proud and self righteous (and didn’t think they were headed for hell) or scornful and unbelieving (and didn’t believe such a place existed) The saved are surprised because they were humble and didn’t think they would make it into heaven.
So as you read this, ask yourself where you think you might go when you die and then stand on your head and check again.
It’s troubling isn’t it?
Or Land Of The Enslaved And Home Of The Deceived?
Father Dwight Longenecker-What is emerging in the horrible case of abortion monster Kermit Gosnell in Philadelphia is how much the authorities covered up his crimes by looking the other way. The scale of the incompetence and admission that they did not regulate the abortion clinic for ‘political reasons’ is now emerging. It seems Gosnell was only caught because ordinary police turned up to investigate him on drugs charges and noticed the appalling conditions in the abortuary. Read about the bureaucratic crimes here.
Now the nation has to realize just how horrific the whole abortion industry is, and that it is not just the crimes of the greedy and gruesome Gosnell, but of every person who condones this horrible crime in any way. Gosnell had severed baby limbs kept in jars, killed newborn babies by putting a scissors in their neck and cutting their little spinal cord. He preyed on vulnerable, poor, minority and under aged women. At least one died at his hands. The only difference between this and the typical abortion is that the murder and dismemberment takes place in the mother’s womb and the dismembered child is sucked out by vacuum pump. If this went on in Philadelphia what other horrible practices continue uninvestigated for ‘political reasons’?
“Allow us to murder children” America says. “Just don’t make us look at it.”
Stop! Americans need to look at it, just like the Germans were forced to walk through the concentration camps, and what a cruel irony that all of this happens the week of the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and the week of Martin Luther King Day, and that the abortionist was an African American preying largely on the poor and vulnerable African American population. “I had a dream…in the land of the free and the home of the brave”
Some dream. Some Freedom. Some Bravery.
Every American should be ashamed.
How much longer O’ Lord will you allow this evil to flourish in our land and in our world?
Father Dwight Longenecker-Some days when celebrating Mass every word seems to surge into an extra dimension. It seems that the full depth of every word is somehow opening up to my mind and heart, and through the mystery of language we are transcending language. Then the loveliness of liturgy reveals its true power. These are not words I have made up. They are words that I have been given by my Holy Mother the Church. These words connect through me and past me to every priest everywhere today who has said Mass, and if this is so, then they connect me in an almost tangible cord to every priest everywhere down the ages who has said these words and been, through his ordination, configured to Christ.
It is as though the words are the leaves and the branches and that through them we have access through the trunk of history to the roots of all–to the ‘dearest, freshness, deep down things.’ You could say the specific is the key to the universal, the particular opens the door to the general. And this is the lesson of incarnation, that the Divine has become Man, that the Cosmic has entered the Chaos, that the General has become particular in one young girl, one pregnancy, one birth, one life, one death, one resurrection and because of this particular all has opened back out into the general so that through this Paschal and Eucharistic Mystery all shall live.
Father Dwight Longenecker-I really don’t think I’m being cynical, but I’ve decided that one of the biggest disasters is the Utopia instinct. This is the instinct in the human race (and part of our fallen condition) to create perfect little worlds. Someone comes along with an ideology which will solve all our problems and we go trooping off to join him and his mission from God.
We’re suckers for politicians who feed us a dreamy lie. We’re suckers for the advertising and media men who  sell us a dreamy lie to get us to buy a particular product or a particular way of life. We’re suckers for religious leaders who give us a dreamy lie about the new life and the wonderful community they have on offer.
Now this is tricky because if we follow Christ we really do believe in a new kind of life–a life that is abundant and free. However, any kind of political or religious leader or any kind of political or religious method or community who offer this to us is very often offering us some kind of easy way to the new life, and easiest is rarely best.
Utopias are ultimately disappointing. The hopes of the devotees are so high. The reality is so low. They find that the leader had feet of clay. They find that the charismatic priest is a stinker. They find that the other leaders of the group are seriously flawed and the whole thing collapses in a mess of confusion, fear and recrimination. The disappointment is high because the expectations were high.
Have you ever noticed that the gospel never promises any kind of utopia and Jesus never tells his disciples to go out and create a new community that will be a paradise on earth? No. he says his kingdom is not of this world. He founds a church but he does not found a utopian community. He promises a new kind of abundant life, but it comes with a cost, and the cost is a cross.
If you come across any church or religious community or action group or fellowship group or any such which seems too good to be true. Guess what? It’s too good to be true. Any group or community or movement in which everyone is overwhelmingly smilingly nice and sincere and warmly welcoming and flattering and smooth is something to beware. They’re promising too much and they can’t deliver.
This is why the most authentic religious communities are austere. They don’t promise the novice anything but blood, sweat and tears. They don’t promise bliss. They don’t promise happiness here. They don’t promise anything but a cross. But in that cross they do promise a new identification with Christ, and that is something that will last forever.
Just don’t try to make that heaven on earth because what you’ll end up making is hell on earth. This is because the person who wants so much to create the Utopia will impose his Utopia on everyone else. It has to be his beautiful dream and, in the end, you either buy into it and become a loyal devotee or you’re out. Thus cults are born and people are destroyed.
Instead live simply. Try to pray more. Don’t look for an earthly Messiah. You were never supposed to have a kingdom here anyway. Look to your own sins. Laugh at your pride. Plead that your sins will be overcome. Look to Jesus the author and finisher of the faith. Ask to be conformed more and more to his likeness, then live that love you’ve been given for others.
Then, maybe just maybe, you’ll begin to live a little bit of heaven on earth as you get yourself ready for your second home.
(edited by Jeff Gares)
Yes Perverts are Just A Symptom!
The Cancer is that There is No Real Belief
In the Supernatural!
Father Dwight Longenecker-What’s the real cancer at the heart of the church? Not pedophile priests…they’re a symptom of a much deeper problem. Gerald Warner at the Daily Telegraph let’s fly in this article about the real problem underlying the child abuse scandals. I think he’s on target in much of what he says.
The secular press are fond of saying that the child abuse problem is caused by the demand for priestly celibacy. There is an underlying cause, but it’s not that. The underlying cause is that too many Catholics have lost the plot completely. For the last forty years the church has been infected with modernism, and the key tenet of modernism is that there is no such thing as the supernatural. What you see is what you get.
This serious sickness at the very heart of the church swept through monasteries, convents and seminaries. The honest priests, nuns and religious lost their faith and got out. The lazy ones stayed put and enjoyed a meal ticket for life. No longer believing in the reality and power of the sacraments, they drifted into a no man’s land in which they were priests, bishops and religious without believing in religion. What were they supposed to do? They decided to re-create the church as a kind of dining club with a social conscience.
When it came to sexuality, well since the invention of the pill, everyone else was playing around with whoever they wanted. The apostate priests had no reason to insist on such an outmoded thing as chastity, and if no one else had to be chaste, why should they? If they no longer had to believe in heaven or hell (you make your own heaven or hell here on earth don’t you know?) then there was no real penalty if your sexual tastes were, errm, unconventional. Homosexuality was presented as natural, and sex wasn’t for procreation, and everybody was sexually active, so why not play around with whoever you liked?
A therapeutic culture swept in and suddenly nobody was a sinner. “I’m OK. You’re OK.” You don’t need punishment or banishment. You don’t even need forgiveness and a demand for reparation. You need therapy. No wonder they covered up. In their anthropology no one was a sinner. No one was bad. They were just wounded. They were just sick. They needed help.
G.K.Chesterton said that “Every argument is a theological argument.” and it is always and everywhere true that a moral crisis is linked with a theological crisis. Benedict XVI’s letter to the Irish church rightly calls for a spiritual and liturgical and theological renewal. The pedophile priest crisis is not just a crisis of morals, but a crisis of belief.
Finally, this crisis of belief is not just a crisis among a few twisted and evil perverts. It is a crisis of belief in our whole church. Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, Mother Superiors, Seminary Rectors, Theologians, Priests and people have all been swamped with something other than the red blooded Catholic faith of our Fathers. They’ve been tromping along like drug addled zombies following a feel good false religion that has been used to deceive millions.
We all need repentance in the face of this. We all need to turn again to the awareness that the devil is real, that sin is real, that nice people are capable of terrible evil. We must be on our guard. We must believe in the power and reality of the sacraments. We must be New Testament Christians with missionary zeal, the discipline of ascetical prayer and a warrior spirit.
Nothing else will do.
Discover 12 Practical Benefits of Going To Confession
Father Dwight Longenecker – I’ve always been befuddled by those who consider repentance to be a gloomy and unhealthy exercise because it seems to me that it is just the opposite. Admitting our sins and going to confession is actually one of the healthiest and happiest things we can do. Apart from the spiritual graces of the sacrament, here are the practical benefits:
- Penitence makes me realistic about myself. - As soon as I say, “Lord Jesus Christ Have Mercy on me a Sinner” all the self delusions fall away and I can begin to see myself as I really am.
- Penitence makes me realistic about other people. – Not only realistic, but compassionate. If I’m a struggling sinner, then so is everyone else. What’s the saying, “Be kind, everyone is fighting a great battle.”
- Penitence makes me realistic about God – If I’m a sinner and see myself clearly, then I suddenly see God clearly too. I cut through the sentimentality or the fear or whatever false image of God and should be able to see him as the loving and forgiving Father.
- Penitence makes me able to learn. – You can’t learn anything if you think you know it all. You can learn to be righteous is you think you already are. Saying you’re a sinner is the first step to enlightenment.
- Penitence makes me aware of my need for God – The cry “O Lord make haste to help me!” is the cry of a person in need. We can only be given what we need when we ask for what we need and we can only ask if we first realize we have a need.
- Penitence opens my heart – The hardened heart is a fearful thing, and no one who is truly penitent can have a hardened heart. Immediately we cry out in penitence we make a great soul jump forward. The opened heart is a heart that can sing.
- Penitence takes me to the heart of humanity – When I am penitent I see the whole human condition and therefore the whole of human culture, history and relationships from a new and amazing light. The whole world is crying out to God. Every aspect of human culture and accomplishment and learning is a desire for God, and now I can see it.
- Penitence makes the angels sing and the demons howl – This is in the gospel.
- Penitence makes me aware of death – and this is a good thing.
- Penitence makes me humble - humility and humorous and humus are all the same word: they’re linked with the earth. Penitence brings me down to earth. Down where I ought to be.
- Penitence gives me joy – Sorrow first, then joy. When I’ve come down to earth I’ve come down to myself, and that gives me joy and freedom and make me laugh.
- Penitence helps me to be myself. – At last I can be who I was created to be. This is who I am. I am good, but not perfect. I am a sinner but I am forgiven. I am a fallen Son of God, but I’ve been lifted up, put on my feet, brushed down and headed toward home.
O’ Immaculate Heart of Mary lead us to the Merciful Heart of your Son in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
To Protect Our Children’s Innocence
And to Help Restore Our Own!
It was my privilege today to visit the National Shrine of the Infant of Prague in Prague, Oklahoma. (They pronounce it Prage). This was a very interesting stop because the pastor of the parish is a convert from Episcopalianism. Also, it was intriguing because I have to admit that the devotion to the Infant of Prague is not something which is, errr, shall we say, immediately accessible to the male Evangelical convert to Catholicism.
In the end I bought an image of the Infant of Prague for my little chapel and learned to appreciate this not immediately winsome devotion. I felt happy about this: I like the Infant of Prague now! I guess that means I’m really a Catholic at last…
Here’s how it happened: Catholics should understand that the Infant of Prague is very alien to the typical Bob Jones graduate…The first impression is, “Good heavens! Why is baby Jesus dressed up like that? Is that some kind of fancy Catholic idol or what?” But putting my prejudice on one side and wanting to ‘affirm and not deny’ I learned about the history of the devotion and was given a very nice tour of the shrine including a look at a cupboard full of all the different outfits they had for him. It prompted a question on the drive back, “Can you get Infant of Prague kits? You know, buy the baby in diapers and then you buy the outfits separately? What does baby Jesus wear under the royal robes?”
Seriously, I wanted to try to understand this rather unusual devotion. Then I learned that the Infant of Prague actually started out with Saint Theresa of Avila. She had a devotion to the child Jesus. Bingo! A connection with my favorite Therese of Lisieux who also had a devotion to the child Jesus and spiritual childhood and spiritual innocence. I’m beginning to get it.
So after the tour I thought I’d kneel down and see if I could get hold of this a little bit more. As I’m kneeling I begin to understand the child dressed in royal robes and crown, for the whole image tells us that although he was a child born naked and squawking in a stable he was at the same time the royal prince of the house of David. He was a simple child, yet King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Furthermore, this is my destiny. I cannot enter the kingdom unless I become as a little child, but to enter the kingdom and be a royal adopted prince, a Son of God and a brother of Jesus is my ultimate destiny.
Then as I’m kneeling there I begin to see that this child is also the focus of our prayers for spiritual childhood and innocence for ourselves, but it should also be the one we turn to pleading for protection for our own children and for the innocence which is being lost every day to the corrupt morals of our day. Then thinking about innocence and children, lo and behold, I come home and check my emails only to find this horrible link: specially designed condoms for twelve year olds. Can you imagine? The world rightly bewails pedophilia and the sexualization of children, then turns around and offers pole dancing kits to little girls and condoms called ‘Hotshots’ for seventh graders.
So, may the Infant of Prague deliver us from such evils, protect our children and grant us the gift of spiritual childhood.
Father Dwight Longenecker
God’s Remedy For Natural And
Man-Made Disasters
Pat Robertson hit the headlines after the Haiti earthquake speculating that the disaster was a punishment for Haiti’s voodoo practices. Rationalists were quick to pooh pooh such an idea, and anyone who believes in a merciful God should have trouble with the idea that the Almighty is up there doling out natural disasters to sinners. More questions arise than are answered with such a scenario. If God is punishing sinners, why does he let so many off the hook? If he is interested in visiting disaster on people, why an earthquake or tsunami which must kill an awful lot of innocent people as well as the wicked. No, the simplistic idea of God meting out such arbitrary ‘justice’ doesn’t make sense.
However, what if there were other forces in play which do alter the equation somewhat? We know that sin causes stress. You hurt me. I get angry with you. I feel stressed. You feel stressed. Maybe I hurt you back. Perhaps that starts a spiral of revenge and violence and negativity. So far so bad. We also observe that the negativity spreads to other people. Our hatred and violence and revenge and rage touches other people too. I talk to my friends and they take my side. You talk to your friends. They all get caught up in our spiral of rage. Before long we have a war going on. The same spiral of ugliness and sin and suffering applies to any kind of sin. Lust breeds lust. Rage breeds rage. Killing breeds killing. So it goes on.
It goes further: what if all this ugliness actually spirals out of control in a society? So we see that lust or rage or violence or revenge sometimes erupts in mass murder, genocide, massacres, rape and abuse. Sometimes a whole nation can be overtaken by sin. It’s like the whole tribe or the whole nation is infected with a terrible virus of evil or infested with an evil spirit. A mood takes over. A dark Lord reigns. The light goes out and inexplicably a whole nation drifts into the dark side.
Here’s the jump: what if these negativities and this darkness actually move across into the rest of the created order? Can the whole earth somehow pick up that virus of evil and take on the darkness and turmoil the way a whole society can? What if the natural order picks up the negativities and starts to boil over itself as if it is sharing society’s sickness? There seem to be hints in Christian theology that this is exactly what happens. The doctrine of original sin includes the idea that the whole natural order has also fallen into a broken condition and St Paul speaks of the whole of creation “groaning for redemption as a woman giving birth” (Rom.8:22) What if this interaction and identification of the whole created order with human choices is a constantly dynamic relationship and not just a once and done event?
So, while God isn’t up there throwing a dice to decide which wicked people get an earthquake today, it could be that there are mysterious links between human behavior and the behavior of the created order. Too much greed and rage and lust and violence might just boil over and manifest in natural disasters–as if the created order is reflecting our own corporate disharmony, violence and broken-ness, and this stress and corporate negativity erupts at the weak points–tectonic plates, dormant volcanoes or volatile weather cycles.
If this is so, then the opposite must also be true. A cycle begins with every act of sacrifice we make. A wheel turns with every prayer, every action of love and forgiveness and every little kindness matters. Everything in God’s good world is connected, and the good I do has eternal consequences. A science teacher once told me that every beam of light goes out into the dark universe and continues to travel forever. It’s the same with every action of love and goodness.
If this is so, then holiness doesn’t simply transform me. It transforms the world.
Father Dwight Longenecker
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