Check out www.hopeafterabortion.org (Project Rachel) for help if you are suffering after an abortion. Moms are very often the secondary victims of abortion, and you may be one of them. Do not despair — God loves you so much and there are people who care and are there to help!!!
On Twitter, check out @projectrachel and @projectrachelmd
If you are pregnant and in need of help, please visit Abby Johnson’s website, https://abbyj.com/pregnant/
JANUARY 8, 2023 BY GOFORTHANDBLOG Pope Benedict’s Insightful Message in 1969, Back When He Was Cardinal Ratzinger Back in 1969 theologian Joseph Ratzinger made some comments about our Catholic future. They were included in his Faith and the Future published by Ignatius Press in 2009.
“The church will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning.
She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes . . . she will lose many of her social privileges. . . As a small society, [the Church] will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members….
It will be hard-going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek . . . The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain . . . But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.
And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.”
From http://www.knightsofdivinemercy.com/2012/03/15/cardinal-ratzinger-the-church-will-become-small-and-will-have-to-start-afresh-more-or-less-from-the-beginning/
This is the crisis that we are living right now. God will help us to weather the storm, and God will protect His beloved Church on earth!
Here’s another message from Pope Benedict’s predecessor, Pope John Paul II:
Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.
Pope John Paul II
Do Not Be Afraid….Jesus Christ is the Hope of the world…
Hearing the voice of our beloved Pope John Paul II and his beautiful words of truth makes me so happy. He speaks the true words that form the core of the Catholic faith. Jesus is at the center of the Catholic faith, and in this time when many may be deceived by false teachers, the one way to determine if one is on the right path is to stay very close to Jesus.
As our dear late Pope Benedict has said, we may come upon hard times in the near future. We may end up quite materially poor and lose everything that the world, the flesh and the devil can control, which is actually nothing of importance in the Kingdom of God.
“But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.”
That gives me great hope!
God bless you all and may God guide us through this difficult time to His own Heart, our Home, to the One “in Whom we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17:28.
Back in 1969 theologian Joseph Ratzinger made some comments about our Catholic future. They were included in his Faith and the Future published by Ignatius Press in 2009.
“The church will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning.
She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes . . . she will lose many of her social privileges. . . As a small society, [the Church] will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members….
It will be hard-going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek . . . The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain . . . But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.
And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.”
From http://www.knightsofdivinemercy.com/2012/03/15/cardinal-ratzinger-the-church-will-become-small-and-will-have-to-start-afresh-more-or-less-from-the-beginning/
2) The Catholic Catechism circa 1994. It is out of print, so you will need to buy a copy from Amazon (dot com) or Abebooks (dot com) or another used bookseller.
3) CCEL — Christian Classics Ethereal Library — Ccel.org
Home to a number of online Christian classics
4) I will come back with a bigger list, but here are ways to find and read Christian classics for free:
Project Gutenberg (Gutenberg dot org)
Librivox (Librivox dot org)
Catholic dot com
New Advent dot org (an online encyclopedia of Church teachings including the Catholic Encyclopedia, the Church Fathers, Summa Theologica (St. Thomas Aquinas) and more).
Come Pray the Rosary (Comepraytherosary.org) (A beautiful online rosary that allows you to pray with other people around the world and ask for prayers. A wonderful site! Although you must be on a computer to access this site, if you Google “come pray the rosary” and go to youtube, you can get the rosary for the day already recorded for you and can pray along).
“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, makng the world more human and more fraternal.”
This site is informational only. I will never, ever sell you anything or ask for money.
In “Why You Should Care About the Catholics,” I see a link to some “buy solar” ad—please do not click on it and especially, don’t buy anything from it. The link to the article is different and can be clicked on. But do not go anywhere that offers a product for sale. I sell nothing, and these people are utterly unscrupulous. That caveat goes for any part of this site that tries to sell you something. Don’t fall for it! :-)
These people are not related to my site in any way and most likely it will be a scam.
I am having a bit of trouble with scammers/ spammers right now. I’ve just learned that trying to publish something on the Internet is a little bit like living in a really bad neighborhood. Only this neighborhood is worldwide and involves experienced hackers (I’ve traced it to somewhere slightly west of China), so you have career criminals trying to hijack sites, looking for any weakness, crawling through whatever coding loopholes/portholes they can find to sell you solar–or rather, pretend to sell you solar or any ruse that they can conjure up to get access to your bank accounts.
Please watch this wonderful interview of our dear Bishop Schneider! This has warmed my heart as the faithful Bishops are speaking out and showing true leadership in our precious Catholic church!
We are the Body of Christ, and when there is an illness, an error, that threatens the survival of the church, it is necessary that the others, especially those in leadership positions, become the “white blood cells” that heal the church. Bishop Schneider, who has always been a faithful Shepherd of the Catholic flock, has done this.
His Holy Spirit guided solution is a relief to faithful Catholics, and it makes a lot of sense.
Watch the video and tell me if you feel the same. If you are unable to leave a comment, please email me at ispottedhim@gmail.com. **
I would propose that this principle not only applies to the problem of clerical error, but also to other glaring problems within the Church.
Here are two more situations in which this approach is necessary:
As our dear Cardinal Zen waits for his trial for charges that amount to being a true, faithful Catholic in a Communist country that hates Catholics and has tried every way possible to persecute and destroy them, he has received no answer nor support from the Vatican regarding the plight of his people. In fact, a deal was made early in PF’s papacy that involved the underground Catholic church (which was thriving) having to report to their CCP persecutors much of their activities. I will explain a little more on this later.
But I believe that Bishop Schneider’s approach fits like a glove to this situation. One does not have to obey a sinful order. The only benefit of this agreement, which requires submission to persecutors of the church, is to crush the Catholic church in China and subject faithful Catholics to severe persecution and perhaps even death. That is unequivocally a sin. And no one is obligated to obey an order to commit a sin. In fact, the opposite is required.
Here is a little bit of history in brief on the situation. Communist China had tried for years to destroy Christianity, which worships a different “god” than the state. There were many martyrs, many priests and bishops who went to prison and were tortured and killed because they were faithful to their flocks and to the church. I remember one of the imprisoned, Bishop Ma Daquin. But despite the effort to destroy Christianity, or perhaps as a result of it, as Tertullian said, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the faith,” and the torture and persecution just caused the church to grow exponentially.
So, the CCP took a different tack. Look, they said, you can legally be Catholic! There may be pictures of Xi on the walls of your church rather than the saints, and forced abortions, slavery and Communism will be perfectly acceptable to you, but we will offer you all of the trappings of your church without persecuting you and killing you. What a deal!
So, there were two churches in China: the underground, true Catholic church and the fake CCP one.
A decade or so ago, Bishop Ma Daquin was nominated to be the head of both in a large public ceremony in a beautiful Shanghai church filled with people. In what was supposed to be his acceptance speech, with his characteristic lighthearted humor, he said— essentially—“there’s a lot going on”—too much to be the head of both. So, he rejected being head of the CCP church and accepted being the head of the underground Catholic church.
There is a video long ago censored and probably gone by now that showed the incredible scene as the entire church erupted in cheers and applause! It was a bold, brave move, a move that he probably knew would subject him to persecution just like so many other faithful Catholic priests. And it was a pivotal moment in a church that broke through the persecution to flourish despite the cruelty of the Communists who tried to crush it. The moment brought tears to my eyes!
But like Herod when the Wise Men chose a different route to go, the CCP lashed out angrily. Daquin was whisked away that evening and the beautiful church was destroyed, razed to the ground. Throughout his persecution and imprisonment many followed his letters. In one he recounted a “little encounter with a centipede” that caused problems, most likely a torture that included unthinkable horror.
The official propaganda stated that he was sent away to think about his error. I imagine that he was significantly subject to “reeducation.” I am amazed that he was still alive years later.
But he suffered something much worse later on, when PF took over from our dear PB who had asked for prayers that he “not flee for fear of the wolves.”
One of the first projects of PF’s administration was to take alleged pe***phile, Cardinal McCarrick, off of the sidelines. Pope Benedict had responded to the credible allegations by keeping him from doing harm and setting him aside.
McCarrick’s first job was to make a deal with the CCP regarding the official relationship between the CCP “Catholic” church and the true Catholic underground church. Though the agreement was a secret, it basically gave the CCP church full control over the underground church. In order to follow the orders of the Vatican, the underground church must report its activities to the CCP church. The churches were officially combined.
I think PF called it unity or something like that. But what it did to Bishop Ma Daquin showed the true consequence of the decision.
Bishop Ma Daquin was brought out immediately afterwards and reversed his stance on the CCP church. Admitting his “error” he said that he just “misunderstood.”
It takes a special kind of evil to crush the spirit of a martyr.
Think about the implications of this. One suffers deeply for the faith and the church betrays him.
The beautiful Chinese Catholic church was thrown into turmoil after this and the CCP, now empowered, ramped up its cruelty against Catholics. The persecution continued as the CCP began attacking the Catholic Church in Hong Kong and its beloved Cardinal, Cardinal Zen.
Cardinal Zen has been trying to talk to PF for years about the unjust agreement and PF has ignored him. The only comment he made recently regarding Cardinal Zen’s recent arrest by the CCP was basically that it was a consequence of speaking out, of being a troublemaker for standing up for the welfare of his people.
“Cardinal Zen is going to trial these days, I think. And he says what he feels, and you can see that there are some limitations there,” PF said.
The betrayal was the first thing that PF did. He later crushed Saint Pope John Paul’s Pontifical Academy for Life and has replaced the members, some of them pro-abortionists. He has done much more, but in short, there is reason to suspect error. He needs to be treated with respect and prayed for, says Bishop Schneider. But he is not a king but a brother. It is important to preserve the good and to revive our precious church, even if that means speaking up and standing up for what is right in order to heal the damage done to Catholicism. Even if that means addressing the error and refusing to participate in it.
I mentioned two things where Bishop Schneider’s guidance should be followed. Not requiring the persecuted church to report to its persecutors was the first, now on to the second.
This is merely a hunch, a prediction that I hope does not come true, but in light of what happened with Covid, and with PF’s alignment with the wealthy WEF, and in light of the evil within the goals of new colonialists’ AKA WEF Globalists’ Great Reset/Agenda 2030, I’d like to recommend this.
If there is an order to cancel Masses and shut down due to “Climate Change,” that too does not have to be obeyed. I am not talking about a-local hurricane or forest fire or something like that, but using up too many “carbon credits” as allotted by the globalists once they have control–that is not a reason to shut down Masses or even to miss Mass. The right to worship does not require the permission of these people. And it is a sin to miss Mass.
Our cars and bank accounts may be shut down for a social credit score violations (I’ll provide links below), or for some such nonsense coming from the World Economic Forum. But there is no legitimate excuse to shut down Masses.
This too would be error, a sin, an order that should not be “obeyed.”
We are —as many people know — going through a very difficult time right now. This is not an accident, but results from an attack on our society and our church that we didn’t realize was happening for years. I’ll say more later on, but for now, Jesus is still Lord. The Catholic church is still the Church of Christ and consists not only of this moment but of 2000+ years of holiness, doctrine and wisdom. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, of saints and martyrs through the ages who are with us. God is in control, and His Kingship has not changed. We must follow Him, follow the truth, follow His Holy Spirit Who will guide us through this time.
He has put us here for a reason, in this place at this time and He knows what we are experiencing. Our duty may be to suffer for our Church, for Christianity. It may be to speak out and be the “troublemakers” who stand up for the oppressed, who restore and heal our church. The world will not like this. But God will give us the strength to do what is right. We just have to follow Him and pray to do His will.
Bishop Schneider and many others in the church are leading the way to healing. And I am very grateful for their guidance and holiness.
Here are a few great links to explain what the Great Reset really is and where we are headed if the New World Order globalists get their way:
*Below—In case the Wiki information changes, here is the part I am referring to on Bishop Ma Daquin:
St. Ignatius Cathedral, Xujiahui, Shanghai. Ma was ordained a bishop here on 7 July 2012, and thereafter was taken into custody.
In 1951, the Chinese government severed formal ties with the Vatican, and by Chinese law Catholic worship is only permitted in government-controlled churches. Many of China’s estimated 10 million Catholics are believed to have remained loyal to the Pope, gathering in underground churches.[4] The Chinese government claims the authority to approve and appoint bishops.
In 2012, Ma received the approval of both Beijing and the Holy See for appointment as an Auxiliary Bishop of Shanghai.[4] On 7 July 2012 was consecrated a bishop.[1] In Shanghai’s St. Ignatius Cathedral, in front of a congregation which included Communist Party officials, Ma used his ordination speech to announce his resignation from the Catholic Patriotic Association.[5]
Ordination as Auxiliary Bishop and House Arrest
Catholic priests and nuns had gathered outside the Cathedral in protest at the participation of Vincent Zhan Silu in the ceremony. Zhan had been appointed “bishop” without the approval of the Vatican, and was loyal to the Patriotic Association. Bishop Jin and two other Vatican affirmed bishops performed the “laying on of hands” ritual to invoke the Holy Spirit during the ceremony. Zhan and two other bishops were also supposed to perform the ritual, but, according to Reuters, Ma “prevented them from putting their hands on his head by rising from his knees and hugging the three bishops instead.”[6]
Speaking from the pulpit, Ma then acknowledged the presence of the priests and nuns outside the cathedral, before speaking of the need for him to now focus on the pastoral duties of bishop rather than the bureaucratic duties of a Patriotic Association bishop: “Therefore, starting from this day of consecration, I will no longer find it convenient to be a member of the Patriotic Association,” he said.[7] He also refused to share a chalice with a bishop who has been excommunicated by the Roman Church.[6]
Ma’s words drew loud applause from the 1,000-member congregation, but was seen by the government as a challenge to state control of Catholic churches and clergy.[8] According to Reuters, Ma soon disappeared from public view, “instructed by the late bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian to move to a mountainside seminary outside Shanghai, where he has been confined… He was stripped of his new title, questioned by officials for weeks and required to attend communist indoctrination classes.”[7]Appointment as Bishop of Shanghai
In December 2013, the BBC reported that Bishop Ma had not seen in public for almost 18 months and that during his confinement at Sheshan Seminary, he was being given “political lessons – communist indoctrination by any other name – three times a week”.[5]
Upon the death of Bishop Joseph Fan Zhongliang on 16 March 2014, the Holy See recognized Bishop Ma as the Bishop of the Diocese of Shanghai.[9] That month Reuters reported that Ma remained at the Sheshan Seminary, regularly posting blog items for the faithful: “mostly excerpts from scripture and greetings to his flock.” After the death of Nelson Mandela, Ma cited one of the anti-Apartheid leader’s most famous quotes: “Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all my people were the chains on me.”[7]
On commenting: **
I have been having problems with spam and have put some restrictions in the comment section. I always appreciate your opinion and the thoughts of anyone who is not merely writing to try to sell Viagra! :-)
“Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got til its gone…..”
I remember reading an article about Lawrence Lader, one of the architects of the diabolical pro-abortion movement which has killed over 60-million people since 1974, a death toll that is right up there with Communism in its genocidal impact. Lader may have loved killing small children, but the thing he hated most, his arch-enemy, was the Catholic church.
It made me proud to be a Catholic. The Catholic church is the most beautiful gift to mankind — continuity since Jesus Christ founded her thousands of years ago, the communion of the most incredible Saints, and most of all, Communion with Jesus Christ Himself at the Mass. The real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is a precious gift that I have always taken for granted, a gift that boggles my mind in its generosity, its beauty, in its lavish bestowal of Divine Love for humanity.
It stands to reason that the one institution that could stand up to the princes and principalities of darkness would be the Catholic church. It is a sign of real goodness to be hated by evil.
So it was, and so, I thought, it always would be. There were so many things to a kid growing up in America that seemed so solid, so unchangeable, so permanent. Yet one bioweapon assault later, the world seems to be standing on shifting sand, and everything appears to be falling apart.
It is not the fault of the church, nor did any of this happen overnight. And I will not go into the details of what is wrong, nor will I leave this beautiful church. I feel very sad that I didn’t see the infiltration into so many institutions through the years, nor was aware—or perhaps I should say, awake—to the subterfuge of so much good.
But I am aware now. And I know on the human level who to trust and who not to trust. The book of John is very instructive on “what Jesus would do” when confronted by false shepherds within the church.
People are human, and sometimes good countries have bad leaders, just as good churches have bad leaders. But that does not make the countries nor the churches bad themselves.
I expect much worse in the future. No one who could betray the poor martyrs for Christ in China, who could openly wield a stang and call it a cross, who could preach about the poor but align with the handful of super-rich who are attempting the ultimate colonialist coup, intending to impoverish and control the whole world, and the one who could turn a blind eye to the murders of little children by promoting those who openly and brazenly orchestrate their deaths could be up to any good.
I see where all of this is going, and I do not expect to like it. Nor do I expect to believe those who try to appear benign. Matt. 10:28. You may kill my body, but I will keep my soul, thank you very much. As the world is swimming in 1984-style propaganda, people are beginning to become propaganda weary. Those who love the truth still love the truth, and the more that it is being crushed by those at the top, the more precious the truth has become to the people who love her. The more that evil tries to crush truth, the more that the truth grows. Just as the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the faith, the proliferation of evil results in the triumph of good. The light shines best in the darkness
Just one more thought. God wins. Remember the moment that Satan thought he had destroyed Jesus—the moment he thought that he had finally conquered God once and for all? That was actually the moment that Satan lost it all, everything and death lost its sting forever. God wins. God always wins.
What is happening now, I don’t understand. But I do understand that Jesus Christ is Lord over all. I do understand that our future is in God’s hands and He always takes what is bad and brings good out of it. We were meant for this time, made for this time, and our only mission in life is to do the will of God—to follow Him completely. I trust in Jesus, I trust in God. And whatever else happens, all will be well in the end.