Catholic Voice 8th October 2021 Issue 327

CatholicVoice Omnia possum in eo, qui me confortat 8 October - 21 October 2021

Only 50 Ire land/ NI £2 U K

€/£1.

Issue 327

Behold this Heart Which has so loved men That it has spared nothing, Even to exhausting and consuming itself, In order to testify its love.

Vision of St Margaret Mary Alacoque - Feast Day 17th October

Keep up to date with CatholicVoice news and articles via The Lumen Fidei Website www.lumenfidei.ie

2 EMPTY PROMISES

Catholic Voice

8th October 2021

The Lies Of The Devil And The Empty Promises Of The World Msgr. Charles Pope One of the great illusions under which we labour is that if we only get just one more thing from this world, then we will be happy.

Perhaps we think that if we just had a little more money, or a better job, or the latest iPhone, or if we were married to so-and-so, or if we lived in a better neighbourhood, then we would be satisfied and content at last. But “at last” never seems to come even if we do get some of the things on our list. As Ecclesiastes puts it, The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing (Ecc 1:8). Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income (Ecc. 5:8).

Although we realise this deep down, we continue to fall for the lie again and again. We think that just one more thing will do the trick. So we lay out the money and spend the time. And then the delight lasts twenty minutes at most! The world just can’t close the deal.

There is a joke (a parable, in my mind) that illustrates the endless treadmill the world has us on and how it continually seduces us into wanting just one more thing. In the end, this leads us to neglect the one thing most necessary.

There was a lonely man who thought that perhaps buying pet would ease his loneliness. So he went to the pet store and looked at many animals.

CatholicVoice

Editor: Anthony Murphy editor@catholicvoice.ie Telephone: 059 8627268 ROI 00353 59 8627268 Outside ROI Keep up to date with news and articles via The Lumen Fidei website www.lumenfidei.ie

He found himself drawn to one in particular. The sign over the cage said, “Talking Parrot: Guaranteed to talk.” Thinking that this would surely solve his problem, the man brought the cage up to the merchant at the counter.

“That’ll be $250, please.”

A week later the man returned, disappointed.

“This parrot isn’t talking!”

“You mean to say that he didn’t climb the ladder and talk?”

“Ladder? You didn’t tell me about a ladder!”

“Oh, sorry. The ladder is $10.”

So the man bought the ladder, brought it home, and put it in the cage. Another week went by and the man returned to the pet store.

“This parrot still isn’t talking!”

“You mean to say that he didn’t climb the ladder, look in the mirror, and talk?”

“Mirror? You didn’t mention anything about a mirror!”

“Oh, sorry. It’ll be $10 for the mirror.”

So the man bought the mirror, brought it home, and put it in the cage along with the ladder. Another week went by and the man returned to the pet store again.

“This parrot still isn’t talking!”

“You mean to say that he didn’t climb the ladder, look in the mirror, peck the bell, and talk?”

“Bell? You didn’t say anything about a bell!”

“Oh, sorry. The bell is $10.”

So the man bought the bell, brought it home, and put it in the cage along with the ladder and the mirror. Yet another week went by and the man returned to the pet store.

“This parrot still isn’t talking!”

“You mean to say that he didn’t

climb the ladder, look in the mirror, peck the bell, jump on the swing, and talk?”

“Swing? You didn’t tell me about a swing!”

“Oh, sorry. It’ll be $10 for the swing.”

So the man bought the swing, brought it home, and put it in the cage along with the ladder, the mirror, and the bell. One more week went by and the man returned to the pet store again.

“How’s your parrot?”

“He’s dead!”

“Dead? Did he ever talk before he died?”

“Yes, he did finally talk.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Don’t they sell any birdseed at that store?’”

Lesson 1: Promises, Promises The world and the “prince of this world” are always promising

Christian Counsellor

Face to Face Qualified, Experienced, Confidential Dublin Southside J. Jordan Bsc(Hons), M.A. 01 - 2312918

8th October 2021 Catholic Voice

EMPTY PROMISES 3

results, yet when those results aren’t forthcoming there are only more demands. First the bird, then the ladder, the bell, the mirror, and the swing. There is always just one more thing that’s needed before the perfect result comes! But it’s a lie. The lie comes in many forms: you just need one more accessory, or the upgraded version of the app, or just one more drink, or a newer car, or a bigger house, or a face lift, or bariatric surgery. Yes, you just need one more thing and then you’ll be there.

Happiness is always just past the next purchase.

that are passing, while neglecting eternal and lasting realities. We seem to find time for TV, sports, shopping, etc., but neglect or completely forget about prayer, Scripture, the Sacraments, the Liturgy, worship, and the development of any kind of relationship with the Lord.

We are staring into the mirror focused on our own self.

The enticements of this world summon us to endless things, mostly trivial in the long run. We are climbing the ladder of success without regard as to what is at the top of that ladder.

In speaking to the woman at the well, Jesus said, Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again (John 4:13). And that is the sober truth about this world: it cannot finally quench our thirst, which is a thirst for God and Heaven. But time and time again we go back to the world and listen to the same lie, thinking that this time it will be different.

All of these less important matters divert us from the one thing necessary: feeding our souls on the Lord.

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him…the one who feeds on me will live because of me (John 6:56-58).

Surely it is sensible to make use of the things of this world to aid us in accomplishing our basic duties, but they are not the answer to our deeper needs. The big lie is that they are the answer. And when they fail to satisfy us, the lie just gets bigger, declaring that just a little more of it will surely close the deal.

Lesson 2: The One Thing Most Necessary In buying the ladder, mirror, bell, and swing, the man neglected the most important thing: food. So, too, for us. We seek to accumulate worldly toys and trinkets

Ah, but there’s no time for all that. Getting to Mass, praying, receiving Holy Communion? No time! I hear a bell summoning me to just one more diversion, one more meeting. I’m too busy climbing the ladder of success. I’m too busy looking at myself in the mirror to make sure that I fit in, and that everyone likes me.

“Dead? Did he ever talk before he died?”

“Yes, he did finally talk.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Don’t they sell any birdseed at that store?’”

Just a little parable on the lies of the devil and the empty promises of this world.

Catholic Voice Update Dear Reader, We still continue to be adversely affected by the inconsistent covid restrictions.

Events that would usually be advertised in Catholic Voice are not taking place and some parishes have not yet resumed the sale of Catholic newspapers.

We are therefore most grateful for your prayerful and financial support.

HOW TO DONATE: 1. Online - Visit www. catholicvoice.ie and click Donate.

2. By Telephone call 059 8627268 - (00353 59 8627268 outside ROI) to pay by credit/debit card please leave your phone number and name and we shall return your call.

3. Send a cheque or postal order (made payable to Catholic Voice) with the reply coupon to Catholic Voice, St Michael’s House, Castlemitchell South, Athy, County Kildare, Eire.

Yours in Christ Anthony Murphy

I/ We would like to donate towards the ongoing publication of Catholic Voice.

Donation enclosed. Please tick box or enter an individual amount

 €10 €25 €100 €250 €500 Other € _________ Name: ________________________________________ Address: ________________________________________ ________________________________________ ________________________________________ Phone: ________________________________________ Cheques & postal orders made payable to Catholic Voice Please send your cheque or postal order to Catholic Voice, St. Michael’s House, Castlemitchell South, Athy ,Co Kildare

4 THE NATION IN SCRIPTURE

Catholic Voice

8th October 2021

The Nation in the Scriptures Canon de Martin - Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest Gentiles; nations; foreigners; heathens; pagans...

Depending on the translation of your Bible or missal, you will find all these names used alternately. Jesus asks to convert the nations, but in the next translation he asks to convert the Gentiles. What is the correct translation? Who are we talking about?

Everyone has a homeland. Abraham’s is Ur, in Chaldea, the land and people from which he came. And in creating a new people, he needs a new land. Our Lord’s homeland is considered, in a narrow sense, to be Galilean, where he came from. But in a broader sense, his nation is Israel.

The answer is: they are exactly the same thing. Hence the difficulty for the translators to find the word that will be clearest.

The fatherland must be loved, and Our Lord weeps at the thought of the evils with which his earthly fatherland would be punished because of ingratitude. (Lk 19, 4144). St. Paul loves tenderly those of his earthly nation, and he would have wished to be sacrificed and cursed for them (Rom 9:2-5). But it is precisely St. Paul who explains this detachment, this separation between carnal homeland and spiritual homeland. He tells us that the patriarchs sought “a better country, a heavenly country” (Heb 6:13-16).

In the mentality of the ancient peoples, and therefore particularly in the Old Testament, a nation corresponds to a people, and to a land, and to concrete customs and culture, and to particular gods. In the Old Testament, humanity is divided into two. There are the Jews, and the foreigners (goyim). The Jewish people worship the true God, and the Gentiles worship demons (Psalm 96:5), whom they call gods, and are worshipped as idols. Therefore, the Hebrew word ‘foreigner’ also means ‘pagan’, ‘idolater’, and ‘heathen’. Cultural, geographical, ethnic and religious notions are merged in the same concept. But among foreign nations, each is a different people, with a whole unity. The Egyptian people live in the land of Egypt, have the “ways of the Egyptians”, speak the language of the Egyptians and have their own gods. The people of Israel, on the other hand, have their own God, their own customs, their own language and, in time, their own land. The same goes for all the others.

A second interesting aspect comes from the meaning of the word ‘land’. Latin and Greek have a different word for ‘land’, and another for ‘homeland’ or ‘fatherland’.

But not in Hebrew, which is the same word: “eretz”.

This is why, in the Old Testament, the notions of country, people and nation are deeply linked.

The land, the homeland, is the place of birth, the land of our ancestors, the land where we were raised. The portion of land where the men of such a people live and act. The other countries, not being our country, are only a land of passage, or a land of exile.

NEW FILM

The Marian Movement of Priests To The Priests Our Lady’s Beloved Sons  The film will encourage Bishops, Priests, Religious, Families and Youth to understand what Our Lady wants.

AVAILABLE FREE ONLINE at www.thecalltofatima.com

The New Testament also comes to separate the notions of people, land to which one belongs and religion. But if the Greek words are more suitable to explain these different notions, the Hebrew words do not express such a difference. This is the language in which the Jews think, and so it is difficult for them to understand that the chosen people will henceforth include persons from other peoples. St. Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, spends his entire preaching explaining this separation of ideas, which even the apostles find difficult to assimilate at first.

A sect was created, the Judaizers, refusing to understand.

For them, if Jesus was the Messiah, he was the Messiah of Israel. And if one wanted to be saved, one had to be part of Israel, that is, of the people, the nation.

Yet the Old Testament suggests that there will be a new state of affairs, the messianic kingdom, which will be a new land (Is 66:22). The entry of the Gentiles/ pagans/foreigners into the spiritual kingdom founded by the Messiah had very formally been announced by the prophets. (Ps. 2:8; 21:28; Is 60:3-5; Mal 1:11). This new Kingdom is a new people, composed of Jews and foreigners, and there is no distinction between them (I Cor 12:13; Eph 2:14; Gal 3:28).

This reminds us of our dual membership. We belong to an earthly nation with its language, its traditions and customs, its land and its history. But we also belong to a heavenly Kingdom, called the Church, which has members from every country and people on earth.

Let us love our homeland, keep and cherish all that is proper to it, but above all, let us be faithful and missionary members of our beloved Church. This Kingdom of God must include as many peoples as possible.

“Going therefore, teach ye all nations! (Matthew 28:19)

8th October 2021

Catholic Voice

MONT SAINT MICHEL 5

Mont Saint Michel: An Angelic Island on Earth John Horvat II The incredible island of Mont Saint Michel is a sublime example of angelic influence in Christian Civilisation.

The small patch of land lies in a bay off the coast of Normandy, France, and has held a Catholic presence since the eighth century when Saint Michael the Archangel appeared and requested that a church be erected there in his honour.

Over the centuries, the small church was expanded to an abbey hosting a community of Benedictine monks, then to a monastery with crypts and cloisters, and eventually, to a strategic military position with defensive fortifications and a medieval village.

The mount’s surreal beauty provokes great joy and awe.

From the coast, the tower is visible miles away, and at that hazy distance appears like a fantastic mirage more than a solid stronghold. This idyllic view invites marvelling souls to turn beyond worldly considerations, and contemplate higher ideals.

The harmony of the military fortifications and the religious abbey perfectly honour Saint Michael in his different attributes. He is the one who rallied the angelic hosts with the cry of, “Who is like unto God?” and cast the rebellious angels along with Satan out of heaven. According to tradition he is also one of the angels who stand before the throne of God singing eternal praise.

In a word, Mont Saint Michel’s transcendent beauty is an example of divine grace. Grace is the created participation in the uncreated life of God. When men correspond to the grace of God, the great marvels of history are worked and angelic edifices such as Mont Saint Michel are built.

Could you consider leaving a bequest for CatholicVoice?

As a not for profit registered organisation we rely on the generosity of our benefactors for financial and prayerful support.

A bequest from you in your Last Will and Testament would help us to continue growing the publication of Catholic Voice and the dissemination of Catholic Truth If you are in a position to leave a bequest, however large or small, you are assured that it will be used to promote and strengthen Catholic teaching.

May God bless you for your generosity.

6 IN WEAKNESS LIES STRENGTH

Catholic Voice

8th October 2021

Strength In Vulnerability John Edwards So many men today walk around as if they have it all figured out and they don’t have a problem in the world.

The “strong” silent type, if you will. I know this for a fact. I used to do the same thing.

In fact, in 2 Corinthians 12:9 God tells Paul, “My power is made perfect in weakness.” You see, to God, strength is found in admitting your weaknesses. It’s in our vulnerability that we find strength.

So much of my life was spent walking like a one-man army, convincing myself that I didn’t need anybody or anything. That’s what the world, the flesh, and the devil would have you believe. They fill your head full of lies and trick you into thinking that it is weak to have feelings, problems, or to admit that you need other people in your life.

We become truly vulnerable when we admit our shortcomings in three ways. We must become vulnerable to ourselves, to God, and to those around us. This is the pathway of true biblical strength that God calls us all to.

This plays right into the devil’s hands because it allows him to keep men on the sidelines and out of the game.

Instead of being the men that we were created to be, we waste away in idleness, isolation, and addictions. We remain immature selfish boys, who fill our time trying to avoid our issues by drinking to deal with work stress, watching porn to deal with loneliness, experimenting with drugs and countless other things, all the while withdrawing further and further from our faith, family, and friends.

Does this sound like strength to you? Not to me. I know it doesn’t to God.

The first step is to become vulnerable with yourself. We have to start speaking truth to ourselves. Many men know deep down that they have a certain problem or sin that is taking hold in their life. The problem is, many never really admit it. They sweep the thought under the rug before they have any time to really deal with it. This is usually done with the lies the enemy is spinning in a man’s head. If he can make you believe you don’t have an issue, then you will never break free from it. This is why it is crucial for a man to become vulnerable with himself and the reality of his situation. We can never begin to move forward if we aren’t truthful about our sins and the hold they have over us.

The second step in finding strength in vulnerability is to become vulnerable with God. We cannot fix the issues in our lives on our own. Most of the time we have found ourselves with a bigger problem strictly because we are trying to deal with it alone. When God told Paul that His power was made perfect in weakness, he was trying to get him to understand that it is through humility that we find our strength. You see when we come to know how weak we are on our own, we come to the realisation that we need God. When we are humbled by our own lack of strength we begin to understand that our strength has to come to from God. It is that dependence on God and the power of the Holy Spirit that he has placed within us that gives us true strength.

God has even given us the perfect sacrament in which to become vulnerable. We need to meet God in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. That’s right. We need to become vulnerable to God in the confessional. It is there that we can admit our faults and the need for His help. It is there that we can receive absolution and the grace to be able to move forward. We cannot get past our sins, our mistakes, and our failures without become vulnerable with Him. The last step in finding strength in vulnerability is to become vulnerable with others. Now, I am not saying you need to shout all your sins from the roof tops for everyone to hear. That would be foolish. No, we need to find trustworthy men that are walking in virtue and holiness and confide in them. There was a reason that Jesus sent the disciples out two by two. He knew if one fell there was another to pick him up. There is strength in numbers and

8th October 2021

Catholic Voice

IN WEAKNESS LIES STRENGTH 7

there is nothing like being held accountable by a brother who cares about you. When you become vulnerable with a brother, it forms a bond that is very hard for the devil to break. It also allows that brother to become vulnerable himself.

Vulnerability is where change begins to happen. When we admit to God, ourselves, and our peers what we are struggling with in life, we take away all power and hold the devil has over us. No longer can he whisper in our ear that we aren’t good enough, that people will hate us, or that we will lose everything. He can no longer scare us with lies about what being vulnerable will cost us. It’s in our total vulnerability that the devil becomes weak. That virtual prison cell that he has built around us begins to crumble. He can no longer threaten us with the idea that others will find out because we have told everyone that matters already. We render him powerless over us. We once again become clay, that in the hands of the great Potter, can begin to be moulded into His original grand design. We become free. We can finally experience the peace that God desires for us. We can truly begin to live.

So take a good look at what’s holding you back. Make the decision to become vulnerable with yourself and God in the confessional. Find a group of brothers to become weak with. Follow in St. Paul’s footsteps and become “content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when you are weak, then you are strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).

The devotion to the Cord of St. Joseph took its rise in Belgium, in 1637, in consequence of a miraculous cure effected by the wearing of this precious girdle. During this year of Saint Joseph you may wish to wear the cord to avail of the GRACES ATTACHED TO THE WEARING OF THE CORD. Graces precious to the piety of St. Joseph’s servants are attached to the wearing of this cord. They are: 1. St. Joseph’s special protection 2. Purity of soul; 3. The grace of chastity; The Cord 4. Final perseverance; 5. Particular assistance at the hour of death.

Of Saint Joseph

The pack containing a St. Joseph’s Cord, a prayer card, St. Joseph’s medal and an information leaflet is available now for €/£10 (inc. p&p).

To order your cord/s please complete the form below.

Please send me ___ (insert number required) St Joseph’s cord/s Name: _________________________________________________________________ Address: _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ Telephone: _________________________________________________________________ Eircode ____________________ Credit/Debit Card No:__________________________________ Expiry Date:_________ C.V.V. ____________ Please send completed form with cheque or postal order made payable to Catholic Voice to; Catholic Voice, Castlemitchell South, Athy, County Kildare ***PLEASE ALLOW UP TO 21 DAYS FOR DELIVERY ***

8 REIGN OF ERROR

Catholic Voice

8th October 2021

Reign Of Error Steve McGarry

Over forty years ago Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote: “All of us are standing on the brink of a great historical cataclysm, a flood that swallows up civilisations and changes whole epochs. The present world situation is complicated still more by the fact that several hours have struck simultaneously on the clock of history.”

It is clear that in the meantime, many more hours have struck on that same clock. There are several different and even opposing interpretations of these events, but one overriding factor is quite clear and Solzhenitsyn has put his finger on it. Quoting the old people of Russia he said: “The reason why all this has happened to us is that we have forgotten God”. Since God is the source of all good, the further society moves away from Him the more does evil triumph.

The Abbe Courtois,(A famous French Abbot and spiritual director) put it like this: “The cataclysms of history are but the projection upon the surface of the globe, of the state of conscience of mankind.” As a backdrop to the natural disasters of recent times the spiritual eye can discern hurricanes

“The reason why all this has happened to us is that we have forgotten God”.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, West Germany, 1974

of demons, floods of greed and wildfires of lust.

So as we view with varying degrees of dismay, a world sinking ever deeper into a Godless crisis, the dire warnings issued by The Mother of God at Fatima in July 1917, come to mind. “If you do what I tell you, Russia will be converted and there will be peace. If not, Russia will spread her errors throughout the world, promoting wars and persecution of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer and various nations will be annihilated.”

are obliged to ask ourselves what can we do? In fact the question would be more correctly stated as: What must we do?

Yes, the word she used was “annihilated”. That particular hour has not struck on the clock of history. Not yet.

Not all of us are called to be preachers, but we are all called by virtue of our Baptism and Confirmation to be temples of the Holy Spirit and soldiers of Jesus Christ. As soldiers we are expected to arm ourselves properly, with the spiritual weapons that we have been given, the sacraments, the gospels and the rosary and to fight every day against the ever growing army of those who seek to eradicate the Catholic Church from the face of the Earth. We should make our own the words spoken by Churchill during WWII.

Again, in August Mary said: “Many souls go to hell because there is no one to pray and make sacrifices for them”. Conscious of such an unimaginable disaster for so many souls and of the horrendous suffering which Jesus Christ underwent in order to save them, we who claim fellowship with Him

“We shall defend our (Island), faith, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

8th October 2021

Catholic Voice

The most urgent requirement for those who have remained true to the faith is to live more intense spiritual lives, in order to atone for the Godlessness of others. How do we do that? By imitating Christ.

Jesus Christ the saviour of the world, spent three years going about preaching the Gospel and working miracles. The other 30 He spent proclaiming the vital importance of the ordinary chores of everyday life.

St. Joseph is the greatest saint in Heaven after Our Lady. The Gospels do not record a single word spoken by him. All that we know is that he always did what he was told. Other than that, he seems to have gone about his business just like his neighbours.

However there was one enormous difference which went unnoticed.

When he became betrothed to Mary she brought Jesus into his life and from then on he lived every day with Jesus and Mary. One could argue that Joseph had the huge advantage over the rest of us, in that he was actually living in the presence of Jesus and Mary every day. We do not have that privilege.

Or do we? Remember what Jesus said to doubting Thomas: “Blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe.”

Sister Josefa Menèndez, a victim soul, died a holy death at her convent in France at the age of thirty-three. This is what Jesus said to her in 1922: “The soul who constantly unites her life with Mine, glorifies Me and does a great work for souls. Thus, if engaged on work of no value in itself, if she bathes it in My Blood and unites it to the work I Myself did during My mortal life, it will greatly profit souls… I so much want souls to understand this! It is not the action in itself that is of value; it is the intention with which it is done. When I swept and laboured in the workshop of

Nazareth, I gave as much glory to My Father as when I preached during My Public Life… My love goes so far that My souls can draw great treasure out of mere nothing.

When as soon as they awake they unite themselves to Me and offer their whole day with a burning desire that My Heart may use it for the profit of souls, when with love they perform their duties, hour by hour and moment by moment, how great is the treasure they amass in a single day!”... But I desire souls to unite themselves to Me not only in a general way. I long for this union to be constant and intimate as it is between friends who live together; for even if they are not talking all the time, at least they look at each other, and their mutual affectionate little kindnesses are the fruit of their love”. (The way of Divine Love. Sr. Josefa Menendez) The Holy Sacrifice Of The Mass The enemies of mankind may have the most sophisticated weapons.

They may have endless wealth and control over social structures and the major means of communication, but they do not have the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass or the rosary.

We Catholics do, and if we have not succeeded in conquering the world for Christ, it can be due solely to

REIGN OF ERROR 9 our failure to activate the awesome power that is at our disposal.

The Mass is the supreme means by which we can be united to Christ and so share in his divine life and power.

We say this prayer at the offertory: “By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity” The drop of water that the priest puts into the chalice represents our individual offering. That drop mixes inextricably with the wine, and at the consecration is changed into the blood of Christ. So as we place our morning offering in the chalice at Mass, that which was of little value at the offertory, becomes of infinite value at the consecration, when it is changed into the blood of Christ. When we receive Holy Communion we become one body, one spirit in Christ.

We should emerge from every Mass therefore, buoyed up by the words of St. Paul: “ If Christ is with us, who can be against us”?

LET NO DAY PASS WITHOUT GOING TO MASS.

10 THE ABORTION ROAD

Catholic Voice

8th October 2021

Ireland Take Note - This Is Where We Are Headed Case - 588 U.S. - 2019 Judgement of Justice Clarence Thomas

Editors note: case references have been removed for ease of readibility.

In 2016, Alabama adopted a law prohibiting “dismemberment abortion[s].” The law does not prohibit women from obtaining an abortion, but it does prevent abortion providers from purposefully “dismembering a living unborn child and extracting him or her one piece at a time from the uterus through use of clamps, grasping forceps, tongs, scissors, or similar instruments” that “slice, crush, or grasp . . . a portion of the unborn child’s body to cut or rip it off.”

As the Court of Appeals explained, this method of abortion is particularly gruesome: “In this type of abortion the unborn child dies the way anyone else would if dismembered alive. It bleeds to death as it is torn limb from limb. It can, however, survive for a time while its limbs are being torn off.

At the end of the abortion — after the larger pieces of the unborn child have been torn off with forceps and the remaining pieces sucked out with a vacuum — the abortionist is left with a tray full of pieces.”

Dismembering a child alive is — in respondents’ words — “the most commonly used second-trimester abortion method,” and it “accounts for 99% of abortions in the state from 15 weeks onward.” Put differently, the more developed the child, the more likely an abortion will involve dismembering it.

The notion that anything in the Constitution prevents States from passing laws prohibiting the dismembering of a living child is implausible. But under the “undue burden” standard adopted by this Court, a restriction on abortion — even one limited to prohibiting gruesome methods — is unconstitutional if “the ‘purpose or effect’ of the provision ‘is to place a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability.’”

Here, abortion providers persuaded the District Court — despite mixed medical evidence — that other abortion methods were too risky, and the lower courts therefore held that Alabama’s law had the effect of burdening abortions even though it did not prevent

Ecclesiastical Art Restorations

by Dr.Nicholas von Kerckhoff Special Church Statues Repair and Repaint Nationwide www.atelier-nicholas.com

Mobile 087 2203898

Justice Clarence Thomas Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

them. Ordinarily, balancing moral concerns against the risks and costs of alternatives is a quintessentially legislative function. But as the Court of Appeals suggested, the undue-burden standard is an “aberration of constitutional law” explaining that the standard “was constructed by its authors out of whole cloth”).

This case serves as a stark reminder that our abortion jurisprudence has spiralled out of control. Earlier this Term, we were confronted with lower court decisions requiring States to allow abortions based solely on the race, sex, or disability of the child.

Today, we are confronted with decisions requiring States to allow abortion via live dismemberment.

None of these decisions is supported by the text of the Constitution.

Although this case does not present the opportunity to address our demonstrably erroneous “undue burden” standard, we cannot continue blinking the reality of what this Court has wrought.

8th October 2021

Catholic Voice

GET BEHIND ME SATAN 11

Get Thee Behind Me, Satan.

Fr. Michael P. Orsi

As a preacher, it’s always gratifying when you can draw a connection between the week’s readings and current events.

Last month we remembered the horror of that terrible day known as 9/11, when Islamist terrorists used hijacked airliners to attack America.

Shocking as it was, many people, both at the time and today (20 years later), have tended to view the incident politically, dismissing it merely as an expression of contrast between the world-view of radical Islam and our Western mindset.

Certainly, the contrast is sharp.

Radical Islam places severe limits on human rights and individual freedom, while our Western view — inspired by the Judeo-Christian moral tradition — emphasises liberty and the essential dignity of each person.

In the Gospel passage proclaimed as we remembered 9/11, Jesus criticises Peter for objecting to the Lord’s prediction that he will be persecuted by religious leaders and killed. The criticism isn’t mild; Jesus refers to Peter as “Satan.”

Why would he have spoken so harshly to the man who had been his loyal assistant throughout a three-year ministry? Because the Lord knew that Satan is always at work, and that his most formidable weapon is deception.

Clearly, Peter was deceived. He was so blinded to the ultimate good in what Jesus foretold that he failed to understand Christ would rise again, even though the Lord had said it plainly.

There’s a strong element of deception in how we often think about 9/11. That incident wasn’t just a murderous expression of conflicting political views, cultural precepts, or religious philosophies, it was a manifestation of evil. It reflected the fundamentally false idea that God’s will can be done

in violence and murder, an idea concocted by the Father of Lies, the Prince of Darkness.

Christ’s submission to the murderous intentions of those who feared and opposed him on religious grounds would demonstrate the falseness of their position in the end. His rising from the dead would cut through all deception.

And so he told Peter, “Get thee behind me, Satan.”

We are living in a time when there is tremendous confusion. Deception is everywhere. Indeed, the Prince of Darkness continues to reign. And it’s important to understand that he works in extremely subtle ways, even as he did in the man who was closest to Jesus.

We’ve recently been shocked to witness the fall of Afghanistan.

We’ve seen one of the most disgracefully botched endings of a military campaign in history. But more shockingly, 20 years almost to the day after 9/11, we’ve seen the Taliban return to power.

These are the very men who abetted Al Qaeda in preparing the horrible attack on our homeland. But more importantly, their previous history is entirely one of blood and oppression.

There are those who believe we can negotiate with this regime, that we can guide them toward a more humane approach to governance.

The USA State Department has expressed disappointment that women weren’t included in the circle of influence and authority, but hopes for greater inclusiveness.

This too is deception. The Taliban are men who do not know Christ, and who therefore do not recognise the dignity accorded to individual human beings, especially female human beings. They are terrorists whose understanding of doing God’s will elevates violence,

murder, and the total domination of women and girls.

Unfortunately, in this confusing time, false understanding of human dignity is a problem in our country as well. It’s at the root of our abortion crisis. And it’s on obvious display in Joe Biden’s current push to make COVID vaccinations mandatory.

In his recent address, Biden insisted that forcing people into vaccination “is not about freedom or personal choice. It’s about protecting yourself and those around you — the people you work with, the people you care about, the people you love.”

But this is not true. The issue is precisely about personal freedom and choice, the freedom to choose what we will accept into our bodies, a freedom protected by the Constitution, a freedom acknowledged and defended by the Church.

The government does not own our bodies. They are given us by God to use in glorifying him. We are not to be coerced or pressured into compromising them.

Biden’s forced vaccine initiative contradicts this truth. As such, it’s a violation of human dignity. And no amount of syrupy, guilt-laden appeals to conscience, to protecting “people you love,” can mask the fact that it too is deception.

Such things are the work of the Father of Lies, the Prince of Darkness.

We must draw a lesson from the experience of Peter, and not allow ourselves to be deceived. We must be willing to seek — and speak — the truth, to cut through the confusion, to defeat deception by insisting on what is real.

We must be willing to say: Get thee behind me, Satan.

12 PROMOTE YOUNG MARRIAGES

Catholic Voice

8th October 2021

No Man Can Serve Two Masters John Lacken “No man can serve two masters.

For either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

(Matthew 6:24) Being in the service of mammon seems to me to be one of the core problems with our modern society and it is a delusion which leads many into thinking that having enough possessions will make them free and independent. Those who think this way tend to ignore the reality of death.

The problem is not something new and Our Lord highlights the reality of our existence in the parable of Lazarus told in St Luke’s Gospel.

“There was a certain rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen; and feasted sumptuously every day.

And there was a certain beggar, named Lazarus, who lay at his gate, full of sores, desiring to be filled with the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table, and no one did give him; moreover the dogs came, and licked his sores.

And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. And the rich man also died: and he was buried in hell.

And lifting up his eyes when he was in torments, he saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom: And he cried, and said: Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, to cool my tongue: for I am tormented in this flame.

And Abraham said to him: Son, remember that thou didst receive

The Rich Man and Lazarus - Fyodor Bronnikov (1827 - 1902) good things in thy lifetime, and likewise Lazarus evil things, but now he is comforted; and thou art tormented.

And besides all this, between us and you, there is fixed a great chaos: so that they who would pass from hence to you, cannot, nor from thence come hither.

And he said: Then, father, I beseech thee, that thou wouldst send him to my father’s house, for I have five

brethren, that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torments.

And Abraham said to him: They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.

But he said: No, father Abraham: but if one went to them from the dead, they will do penance.

And he said to him: If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither

8th October 2021 Catholic Voice PROMOTE YOUNG MARRIAGES 13 will they believe, if one rise again from the dead.” (Luke 16:19-31) We humans are creatures. We did not bring ourselves into existence and, whilst our parents gave us certain biological characteristics, they are not our creators for they too depend for their existence on others. The chain can be followed right back to the first man and the first woman, Adam & Eve. The book of Genesis teaches us about our creation.

“And God said: Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moves upon the earth.

And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them.

And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth.” (Genesis 1:26-28) Because we are creatures, we are not the ultimate masters of our own destiny. Our final destiny is determined by our creator. God, being a good and sentient being, did not create us on a mere whim.

Far from it. God created us for a specific purpose. He commanded us to increase and multiply and fill the earth. Therein lies our destiny.

The history of mankind as related to us in Sacred Scripture, slowly and progressively reveals the deeper My God, I believe, I adore, I hope and I love Thee. I beg pardon of Thee for all those that do not believe, do not adore, do not hope and do not love Thee. Amen.

Angel to the Children of Fatima 1916

meaning of our existence and the life that God has in store for us.

Unfortunately, many people look upon Sacred Scripture and try to interpret it and read it as one would read any other book.

We hear people speak of the wrathful God of the old testament as opposed to the more merciful God of the new testament. The simple error that is made here is that Sacred Scripture was not written for God it was written for man.

God does not and cannot change.

God does not alter His plans based on human developments and advancement, because God foresaw all of these. The change that we witness in Sacred Scripture shows us the changes and development of mankind.

After the fall of man in the garden of Eden through original sin, God sent Adam and Eve out of the garden to fulfill their destiny. They were sent forth to increase and multiply and fill the earth.

The chosen people were promised a Saviour and they were destined to reject that Saviour when He came. This led to the establishment of the Catholic Church by Jesus Christ which came to life at the first Pentecost.

Everything that God has done in relation to man, was done to help us to live out the reason for our creation based on the two great commandments: “Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment.

And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

On these two commandments depend the whole law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40) God created us and God, throughout history, and in particular since

the time of the foundation of the Catholic Church, has given us directions for our lives which will lead us eventually to be with Him in the eternal Kingdom in Heaven.

However, God also gave us free will, because without free will we are not capable of loving. The danger of free will is that we may choose ourselves as the object of our love rather than loving God and neighbour.

The whole history of creation tells us of those who rejected God and of those who accepted Him. We have Lucifer and the fallen angels.

We have St Michael and the good angels. We have Adam & Eve, who rejected God in favour of the lies of the devil. They desired to be equal to God and were fooled into thinking that this was possible.

Throughout Sacred Scripture we read of men and women just like us and of how they behaved. We learn of those who pleased God and of those who rejected Him. Characters like John the Baptist, Moses, Abraham, the woman caught in adultery, St Peter, St Paul, St Matthew, St Mary Magdalen, chose to follow God. They had their struggles, just like us, but they rejected serving mammon in favour of serving the One True God. Characters like some of the Pharisees, and High Priests, and Judas, chose to reject God in favour of their own concepts of what God should do. They formed a God in their own image and likeness and when they discovered that God did not conform to their ideas, they rejected Him in favour of an illusion.

Christ rebuked St Peter severely when St Peter tried to tell Him that going to Jerusalem and being crucified was a bad idea.

“But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men.””

(Matthew 16:23)

14 PROMOTE YOUNG MARRIAGES

Catholic Voice

8th October 2021

Many Catholics are dismayed by what they see happening in the Catholic Church today. Consider that all of the main heresies were promoted by Catholics, and most, if not all of these heretics were ordained. It is a constant danger that we face which leads to the question, ‘whom do you serve’.

Men are constantly trying to reinterpret God’s message in order to allow them to live comfortable lives without having to sacrifice or to suffer too much. As the desire for wealth and comfort grows, men will often behave in ways that have serious negative consequences for mankind.

Many of the heretics instead of admitting their errors and repenting, broke away from the Catholic Church and founded new religions.

All of these rejections of God and of His Catholic Church lead to the growth of evil in our societies and to the further separation of man from God and from God’s plan for our lives.

growth of covid vaccine mandates and the active discrimination against those who choose not to take abortion tainted vaccines.

In Canada, one Archdiocese has even gone so far as to ban those who refuse covid vaccines from access to the sacraments of the Catholic Church.

God commanded us to increase and multiply and fill the earth. He desires us to do this through the sacrament of Holy Matrimony.

The rejection of God leads to the rejection and the corruption of the very concept of Holy Matrimony.

We see this with the introduction of divorce and contraception into society which have now become normal.

These vaccine mandates and discrimination contradict what it means to be man. They represent an unjust imposition on our basic freedom as human beings and if they are not resisted, they will eventually lead to mandatory euthanasia of the elderly, the unfit, the handicapped, and others who will be deemed unworthy of partaking in human society.

Once these concepts become normal a further degradation occurs which leads to abortion and the exaltation of homosexual relationships to the same legal standing as sacramental marriage. The bodies of the aborted babies are then used for scientific and other research purposes including the development of cosmetics.

We are on the cusp of a global totalitarian tyranny the likes of which has never been seen in the world before now. Christ warns us of such a time in Chapter 24 of St Matthew’s Gospel.

We are now entering the final phase of this degradation of what it means to be man, and we see this with the

“For there shall be then great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, neither shall be.

And unless those days had been shortened, no flesh should be saved:

but for the sake of the elect those days shall be shortened.” (Matthew 24:21-22) Whether or not we are in the specific times mentioned by Our Lord in Matthew 24, one cannot say, but these unprecedented times of global totalitarian dominance must certainly be at least a precursor.

No man can serve two masters and Christ tells us that “He that is not with me, is against me: and he that gathers not with me, scatters.”

(Matthew 12:30) We are not dealing with an economic crisis, or a health crisis, or a climate crisis, we are dealing with the societal rejection of God for the service of mammon; a faith crisis.

The so-called covid crisis is a big earner for both governments and pharmaceutical companies.

The primary motivation of these companies is not health, it is profit.

The housing crisis, which places the cost of a home beyond the reach of young married couples, is there because our politicians are intent on benefiting from the creation of a new landlord class at the expense of our young people. This places unnecessary obstacles in the way of young people getting married

8th October 2021 Catholic Voice PROMOTE YOUNG MARRIAGES 15 that, we are called to increase and multiply. We must strive to restore in our young people’s minds, the great dignity of the sacrament of Holy Matrimony. We must fight against the corruption of the idea of marriage and human sexuality that prevails in our Catholic schools, but we must first of all strive to protect our children from these false and dangerous notions.

on serving God and co-operating with Him in bringing new saints to life.

We must support Catholic parents in raising their children with a proper understanding of Catholic marriage and help them to train their children so that they will be ready for marriage from a young age.

Apart from Divine intervention, over which we have no control, there is no short term solution to the current problems that beset the world. The long term solution is to fill our society with healthy, wholesome, young married couples who are open to God’s command to increase and multiply and to fill the earth with saints destined for Heaven.

So let us take stock of where the world is headed and of the darkness that approaches on the horizon, and then, let us get to work ever more earnestly and without fear, teaching others how to live fulfilled lives by serving our Triune God, — Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — as He desires us to serve Him.

God calls certain men to serve Him as Catholic priests and He calls other men and women to serve Him in the religious life, but apart from

Let us never fail to encourage our young people to have hope in the future and to anticipate and desire child filled Holy marriages intent

because, in conjunction with the spiralling cost of houses, the rental market has shrunk and many young people cannot afford to rent a home in the bigger cities and towns.

As Catholics, we must promote the Gospel of life from its source which is Catholic Marriage. We must promote our destiny which is to increase and multiply and fill the earth so that Heaven can be filled.

We must encourage our young people to get married while they are young and to stop delaying marriage until they are in their thirties.

God is magnanimous and superabundant in His dealings with us if only we are open to Him and learn to completely trust in Him. God will not deny those who seek to fulfil His desires to have many more saints in His heavenly Kingdom.

God will not be outdone in generosity. We must have courage and offer great support to our young married couples and those contemplating marriage. In these Godly marriages lies the future and the hope of all mankind.

There’s A Place For Us

Homosexuality in the Divine Plan of Redemption There’s A Place For Us: This testimony does not shirk away from difficult Catholic teachings but shows with piercing clarity why the Church teaches as she does in the area of human sexuality. In our lives we are called to a lot more than sexual satisfaction. Rather, we are granted the privilege of living life on the highest possible plane in responding to the call of the greatness of being the Sons and Daughters of God.

There’s a Place for Us Homosexuality in the Divine Plan of Redemption Jesus said to those who would stone her: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

John Cassidy - Bio Ex-homosexual and New Man John Cassidy has been serving the Catholic Church as a full-time Lay-Man since his conversion in 2014. John has founded the Association of Believing Catholics which is a lay initiative to promote and defend the fullness of Catholic truth.

Paperback €/£6.00 inc p&p in Ireland €/£9.40 inc p&p outside Ireland

Jesus said to the woman: “Woman, where are they that accused thee? Hath no man condemned thee?

Who said: No man, Lord. And Jesus said: Neither will I condemn thee.”

“Go, And Now Sin No More.”

By John Cassidy

To Order please telephone 085 1208779 ROI 00353 851208779 Outside ROI Alternatively, Order Online @ www.lumenfidei.ie/shop

16 WHAT CAN WE DO?

Catholic Voice

8th October 2021

What Can We Do About It? - Part 1 Anthony Hofler

‘What can we do?’ is a natural, rational question when faced with an undesirable situation or prospect.

It can be asked in a constructive spirit or in a fatalistic one. Fatalism is the ‘Commissionaire’ at the door of the ‘House of Defeat’; often he is ‘Laziness’ in uniform. Events may have proved him right many times, but he is of no use – except, perhaps, to people who feel that the ‘House’ is a refuge where they belong.

Those who, despite formidable adverse odds, wonder constructively what can be done need to decide whether they want only to express their beliefs or to take practical action to reverse or avert what they dislike.

A recurrently-stated objective during the multi-form revolution in recent decades has been to make the country ‘modern,’ especially by means of catering for various forms of ‘choice’.

Whereas Our Lord said “woe to him by whom temptations come!” (Matt.

18:7; Luke 17:1), many Catholics seem to be relaxed about this secular agenda, and consequently to be untroubled that a generous attitude to grave sin is cloaked as ‘tolerance’.

We are experiencing not only a transformation of ideas, but also a crisis of identity. Ideas are what we believe, and identity is what we are.

Our beliefs are signs of what we are. To the extent that our beliefs contradict the established teachings of the Church, our claim to be Catholic is untenable.

Just as St. Paul wrote that a real Jew is one who conforms inwardly, not merely outwardly (Rom. 2:28-29), so a real Catholic is one who is in the Church not merely outwardly but also in his heart (“Catechism of the Catholic church,” paragraph 837), and, said Our Lord, “from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt. 12:34; Lk. 6:45), and “you will know them by their fruits” (Matt. 7:16, 20; Lk. 6:44).

Some Catholics recognise, and are distressed, that the beliefs – and consequences of those beliefs – which used to prevail have been overthrown. Such Catholics feel that their identity is in practice excluded from the modern list of ‘hate crimes’.

Measured by reference to the frenzied vitriol which is poured on overt signs of the faith, the position of Catholics seems to be similar to that of Jews in 1930s Germany.

In his essay about Edith Stein, the future St. Teresa Benedicta (in “The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century;” The Crossroad Publishing Company, New York; 2000, p.169), Robert Royal wrote that her strongly-Jewish family in early20th-century Germany “remained Jewish, but constantly had to guard themselves against a loss of identity by assimilation and intermarriage.”

How many Catholics today wish to guard themselves likewise? Contrast (a) the Stein family’s aversion to identity-endangering assimilation in an increasingly-hostile society with (b) the common phenomenon of Catholics who look benignly on, or even jump on, today’s bandwagon of hostility.

The question for opponents of firmlyentrenched realities is ‘What can we do about it?’

Probably the simplest answer is ‘Complain,’ to which a predictable response (often supported by experience) is ‘It won’t do any good.’

Nor will any good be done by not even trying.

‘Consumer-experts’ give advice on ‘how to complain effectively,’ but even the most sensible of advice is useless unless there is willingness to act on it. In commerce and secular matters generally, the idea of complaining is taken for granted as legitimate, and often encouraged actively by the Government and

its agencies and within particular industries.

That is very far from the situation in regard to the connection between religion and the law and public policy.

Whereas buyers of goods and services are acknowledged to be entitled to complain if prescribed principles are not maintained, anyone who complains that religious principles are being breached in matters such as law or entertainment can expect to be dismissed as an oddity or rebuked for wanting to impose standards which other people dispute, especially when the standards are recognisably Catholic.

Fidelity to such standards cannot be expected even in previously-reliable places, such is the extent to which a sense of identity has been weakened and words have been ‘re-interpreted’.

The ‘shock to the system’ of the vanquished is increased by the inadequacy or absence of resistance.

Catholic journalist and broadcaster Caroline Farrow wrote (“The Universe,” 1st June 2018, p.6) that many had asked why bishops seemed “to play a relatively backseat role” in trying to prevent mass murder by abortion in Ireland.

8th October 2021

Catholic Voice

They were, she suggested, in a dilemma between (i) their duty to lead, teach, and inform, and (ii) a risk that too “hard” an attitude would be counter-productive. She wrote that the “relatively backseat role” for the bishops was “a deliberate strategic decision taken by the layled campaigners” to ensure that they could maximise support and focus attention on unborn children and crisis pregnancies rather than the Church’s record of child-abuse.

For the failure of that strategy she blamed the fact that Ireland “has moved very far away from its Catholic roots,” and, more specifically, misnomers such as ‘reproductive justice’, maximum exploitation of “tragic and hard cases,” and a liberalDublin-based media campaign which was “hugely biased and did everything it could to minimise the pro-life voice.” She deduced that because the ‘no’ campaign was “so secular” its emphatic rejection by the Irish voters cannot sensibly be attributed to “an anti-Catholic backlash… People weren’t voting,” she wrote, “as a conscious rejection of the Catholic Church or in order to punish her…”

This (seemingly-uncharacteristic) nonsense suggested that she was affected by what American bishop Robert Barron called “our extraordinary capacity for wishful thinking and self-deception” (“The Catholic Herald,” 8th December 2017, p.33), commonly displayed by always-look-on-the-brightside bishops and priests. ‘Yes’ campaigners from Ireland told interviewers candidly that the objective, exemplified by “women’s rights,” “abortion rights,” “gay rights,” “transgender rights,” is to make Ireland “modern” and “get rid of the Church.” Those were their words.

Before suggesting practical ways by which to fight back, it should be realised that, regrettably, the institutional Church (almost wherever Catholic principles are defied) is

unlikely to lead or even to encourage retaliatory action, and the greater the recognisably-retaliatory element the greater the probable unwillingness of the Church to support it by word or deed.

Reported comments by Church ‘leaders’ in Ireland after the abortion referendum followed a familiar pattern of weak calls for ‘love,’ ‘compassion,’ ‘healing,’ ‘proclaiming joyfully’ in this ‘time for mission and new evangelisation,’ and alwayssafe-and-popular appeals for multiform social-welfare policies; similar notes were struck in comment from England – “we must…ensure that [abortion] is not an option that anyone would choose,” ‘success is less important than fidelity,’ and ‘every mind changed and life saved is how we must measure success’ (on which basis there has been very little, because in the past fifty years nine million have chosen abortion) (“The Universe, 1st June 2018, p.2-3).

WHAT CAN WE DO? 17 Action can be taken independently of anyone else or (if you can find anyone who cares enough) in collaboration with other people.

Vatican II encouraged collaboration (“Apostolicam Actuositatem,” paragraphs 17 and 18). Many years ago, at least some types of such “smaller groups” were known as ‘cells’.

The Irish bishops’ “Council for Life,” established because “it is essential… to seek better ways of responding to this new and very challenging reality” evidenced by the referendum, is intended “to advise and advocate for the Catholic Church in Ireland on a consistent ethic of life and care for those most at risk” (“The Catholic Times,” 22nd June 2018, p.2). Good advice and advocacy are, of course, necessary, but will have negligible effect unless they are supplemented by organised action to remove from office the politicians who facilitate legal mass murder.

It was not only the Church who used to encourage them. The Communists encouraged their members to form them, although in that case they had a wider purpose. Donal Anthony Foley summarised it in his review of a book entitled “Perseverance Through Faith,” written by Father Aedan McGrath, an Irish missionary who seems to have been largely responsible for establishing the Legion of Mary in China in the late 1940s and early 1950s, before being arrested, imprisoned, and eventually expelled from the country. According to Mr. Foley, “Informers were the backbone of the communist system of complete control” (as was standard practice wherever they came to power). “Those who did inform received special privileges, and it was impossible for anyone to escape from the effects of the communist “cell system”. Everybody had to be in a local cell, and cell members were obliged to inform against any other member who thought, spoke or acted against the “People’s” government – even if it was a close family member.

The result was that the whole country was like a gigantic prison camp where nobody could be certain that anyone they dealt with could be trusted” (“The Catholic Herald,” 19th January 2018, p.36).

That is one context in which committed Catholics can oppose in practice the defiance of what the Church opposes in theory.

So what can be done by such groups, cells, or (probably more likely) by isolated individuals? Suggestions will be offered in Part 2.

“Offer up everything within your power as a sacrifice to the Lord in an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended; and of supplication for the conversion of sinners. Thus invoke peace upon your country. I am her Guardian Angel; the Angel of Portugal. Above all, accept and bear with submission the sufferings that the Lord may send you.”

(The Angel of Portugal to Fatima children 1915)

18 DON’T KNOCK THE CHURCH

Catholic Voice

8th October 2021

Don’t Knock The Church: Speak Up For Her From The Rooftops Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

Charlie Flanagan, the former Fine Gael Minister of Justice, has said what is all too rarely said these days.

He has spoken up for the Church and the blessings she bestows upon us.

He told his fellow politicians to resist the temptation to denigrate Catholic education now that it has become fashionable to criticise the Church: “Too often nowadays it’s popular – or almost fashionable – to knock the Catholic Church, to dismiss the Catholic Church.”

He said: “Undoubtedly, its role in the education in our country has been substantial. It still remains significant.

“The Church has over the years made an enormous contribution through its teachers – lay, religious and clerical – to education in our country. Our diocesan schools have many examples of staff members who went way beyond the call of duty in their care of their students.”

On this occasion Mr Flanagan is right. There has been too much whining about the Church’s faults, and far too little recognition of her virtues and her blessings.

First and foremost, the Church is the ministry of love, where the world has ministries of war. The two great commandments – love God and love thy neighbour – come to us from the Old Testament, but the focus on them by the Lord of Life in the New Testament is unique.

As Sir Thomas Browne once wrote, “No religion so magnifieth goodness as the Christian religion doth.” The religion of love stands

Catholic School in Waterford Circa 1898 - National Library of Ireland

in stark contrast to the religions of hate – corporatism, Communism, Islamism – into which too many young people are indoctrinated in the secular schools and by the secular news media. Many young people say they have no time for religion, and yet they slavishly obey without question every dismal halfwitted commandment Communism, as long as it is prepackaged as “woke”.

The Church has become unfashionable because she will not compromise. She stands unwaveringly firm for the truth at a time when it is under relentless attack by the forces of Satan. Who stands for the family? The Church.

Who stands for marriage? The Church. Who stands for Mom and Pop rather than Mom and Mom or Pop and Pop? The Church.

Who stands for the children, when every legislator would give their mothers the right to kill them?

The Church. Who stands for the mothers of aborted children when, in their distress at what the State encouraged them to do, they need comfort and support? The Church. Who stands for freedom from the misery, disease and death that are often the consequences of homosexuality? The Church.

Who stands for generosity towards the poorest? The Church. It is no accident that nearly all charities are Christian, and that nearly all of those are Catholic.

Who stands for proper education, as opposed to the cheerless, canting indoctrination that has supplanted it even in once-Christian schools?

The Church.

Who deploys a dedicated, uncomplaining army of underpaid, under-appreciated bishops, priests, deacons and parish workers? The Church. Who provides missionaries to work in the world’s neediest places? The Church.

8th October 2021

Catholic Voice

Who visits the sick, the imprisoned, the dying? The Church. Who provides solace to families who have lost loved ones? The Church.

Who provides the rigorous, philosophical background of sound and secure theology that keeps the faith safe and hands it on undiluted to each new generation? The Church.

Of course all these and many other sheer goodnesses, all these manifestations of love, are an annoyance to the purveyors of hatred. They cannot stand the light.

In the traditional theology that is one of the jewels of the Church, the dividing line between good and evil, between right and wrong, is precisely the dividing line between the Truth that is the Church’s greatest gift to the world and the deliberate falsity that is the hallmark of the Devil, and of the totalitarian regimes of hate – corporatist in Russia, Islamist in Afghanistan, Iran and Syria, Communist in China and (for now) even in the Holy See, – whose malign policies have so thoroughly infected the schools and universities of the West.

No totalitarian dare even admit that there is such a thing as objective truth – truth that is true whether or not you or I or the regime wish it to be true or recognise it as true.

Instead, to them the Party Line, right or (nearly always) wrong is the only truth.

Try, for instance, suggesting to the unspeakable RTE or BBC that they should allow dissent from the Party Line on, say, the danger of disease from promiscuity, or the unlawful torture of little children in the womb of their mother as they are dismembered, or the question whether doing anything about warmer worldwide weather would actually change the weather to any

DON’T KNOCK THE CHURCH 19

sufficiently measurable degree to justify the immense cost in lives, in treasure and in the imminent collapse of the European electricity grid.

Yet it is upon the glorious idea that objective truth exists that the whole of Christian morality and of mathematics and thus of all the sciences is founded. The principle of the universality of truth is very seldom stated in these dark times.

But let it be stated here, for it is a thing of great beauty and light.

Here it is: Each proposition that is true stands consistent with every proposition that ever was or is or ever will be true, throughout the universe of time and space, from the beginning of the beginning to the end of the end and from here to the outermost stars; yet each proposition that is false, whether or not it stands consistent with any other propositions that are false, falls inconsistent with every proposition that ever was or is or ever will be true.

In all the history of human thought, it is the Judaeo-Christian tradition that has been clearest in its insistence upon the universality of

truth. In the Catholic Church, in particular, the insistence upon the clear distinction between truth and falsehood, and in particular between the honest search for the truth and the determination to look the other way and to deny that there is any such thing, has been paramount.

It is no accident that the Renaissance not only of the arts but also of the sciences began in Catholic Renaissance Italy. Yes, there had been great periods of civilisation before, but none that had placed so cheerfully determined an emphasis on the distinction between truth and untruth.

St John opens his inspirational Gospel with the words “In the beginning was the Word.” In the Greek of the New Testament, that is en arche en ho logos. It is from the word “logos” that we get the word “logic” – the formal study of the distinction that which is true and that which is not.

Let us praise Holy Mother Church from the rooftops. As totalitarianism rises once more, with death and destruction in its train, the world needs her still, small voice of calm more than ever.

The Boy Jesus in the Temple - Max Liebermann (1847 - 1935)

20 THE ALTAR OF GOD

Catholic Voice

8th October 2021

The Centre Of Worship Is The Altar Mary Kearns

Now that some restrictions are being relaxed and it is possible for most of us to return to the celebration of Mass, questions are being raised. Is it now an obligation on Sunday as it always was before the Covid-19 restrictions? Surely it might still be safer to stay home and watch online celebrations?

Are we forgetting that being present at Mass is not just a nice thing to do but that there are other matters to attend to?

The Covid-19 so-called safety measures affect both celebrant and congregation.

We have become accustomed to seeing the priest sanitising his hands and wearing a mask as he approaches us with Holy Communion. But this is just one consequence of Covid-19, the underlying assumption being that it is acceptable to adapt the sacred liturgy to accommodate government regulations. This is a thorny problem that is not easily addressed, never mind solved, particularly because many Catholic people do not recognise that there even is a problem. We can easily be led astray by concentrating too much on external signs while forgetting the real purpose of the holy sacrifice.

In response to the distressing fact of missing Mass, some people have given it deeper respect, believing that there is nothing else in the world that can compare to the reality of the holy sacrifice of the Mass.

Nevertheless, it is hard to avoid using a cliché but could it possibly be true to say that when it comes to understanding Mass, many Catholics have lost the plot? A plot is the central story of course, around which all contributing factors revolve. In relation to the holy sacrifice of the Mass, it often seems that the core, which is the

paschal mystery of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ suffers from lack of emphasis.

Consequently, it has become all too easy only to see the Mass as a commemoration of the Last Supper.

If that appears to be the central theme, the logical conclusion is that we are all guests at this meal, where we participate by receiving Holy Communion. Because we believe the meal to be a sacred one, we observe a certain ritualistic way of acting. However we have had to accept in the present times, that we cannot attend a wedding or funeral as we did previously, so why not Mass as well? This is just another kind of meal, albeit a sacred one.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen was very clear about not separating the Last Supper from the death of Jesus on Calvary. It is here that we have the central reason why the son of God became a human being. Jesus told us that he came to give his life as a ransom for many, that no-one could take away his life and that he himself would lay it down. If death was the supreme moment for which Jesus lived, it has to be the one thing he wished us to remember.

Archbishop Sheen explains that Jesus did not ask that his actual words be written down. In fact following the ascension of Jesus into heaven, over twenty years had passed before there was a written record. Neither did Jesus, as far as we know, ask that his miracles and his kindness be recorded in history. He did ask or rather he did command, that we would remember and re-enact for all time the first Mass which he celebrated in the upper room in Jerusalem in company with the men he ordained as priests. Here the Lord indicated the sacrifice that would take place the following day when his Body would be given up and his Blood poured out.

“Thus in an unbloody symbol of the parting of the Blood from the Body, by the separate consecration of bread and wine, did Christ pledge himself to death in the sight of God and men, and represent his death which was to come the next afternoon at three.” *(Calvary and the Mass*) Catholics are different from other Christians, because we believe

8th October 2021 we carry out the essence of what Jesus asked. Christians of other communities are assiduous in remembering the words of Jesus in scripture, and most committed Christians make an effort to imitate the charity of Jesus in their daily lives. Although this is important, it is not the greatest characteristic of Our Blessed Lord. The words Jesus used on the night before he died were explicit; they are not open to diverse interpretations and they must be used exactly as he said.

In ‘Calvary and the Mass’ Archbishop Sheen shows this to be the crowning act of Christian worship. It is the greatest event in the history of the human race - the only act that keeps the justified wrath of God from a sinful world.

In the Mass, the cross of Christ is held between heaven and earth.

As Catholics we have an obligation to attend Mass on Sunday but we are also obliged to understand Mass as the same sacrifice as Calvary.

While that is certainly true, the story does not end there, as we know. Calvary makes us remember our own sins, and this is a cause of deep sorrow, as is the continuing sin of the world.

But death does not have the final say. Fully realising the paschal mystery, we know we are also participating in the resurrection when Jesus overcame death and finally ascended to take his seat at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. So the joy we spiritually acknowledge is anything but shallow. It is a profound joy because it has been achieved due to the redemptive death of Christ.

We sometimes hear people remarking that they were at a “lovely Mass” or that Father soand-so is a “lovely priest.” Some well-intentioned priests claim that people are very much in need of spiritual nourishment and that by providing them with what they want, at least they will keep coming

Catholic Voice to Mass. What people want is often to feel uplifted in a way that they experience as “meaningful.”

Unfortunately this often means that the non-essential parts of the liturgy are emphasised to the detriment of the essential parts.

A celebrant who gives a lively and interesting homily which is not too challenging is a “lovely priest.”

If the choir is good and there is a sense of community afterwards it all contributes to a “lovely Mass.” It is not often acknowledged that the degree to which the priest is dynamic or inspiring or even genuinely holy, is actually irrelevant. In fact it detracts from the Lord, by putting the focus on an individual.

We need to pay more attention to the altar. Archbishop Sheen has this to say: “A pulpit in which the words of our Lord are repeated does not unite us to him; a choir in which sweet sentiments are sung brings us no closer to his cross than to his garments. A temple without an altar of sacrifice is non-existent among primitive peoples, and is meaningless among Christians.

And so in the Catholic Church the altar and not the pulpit or the choir or the organ, is the centre of

THE ALTAR OF GOD 21 worship, for there is re-enacted the memorial of his Passion. Its value does not depend on him who says it, or on him who hears it; it depends on him who is the one high priest and victim, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

With him we are united, in spite of our nothingness; in a certain sense, we lose our individuality for the time being; we unite our intellect and our will, our heart and our soul, our body and our blood, so intimately with Christ, that the Heavenly Father sees not so much us with our imperfections, but rather sees us in him, the beloved Son in whom he is well pleased.”

It is important that we also try to remember that spiritual things are not usually experienced emotionally. The grace we receive from participating in the liturgy and by receiving Holy Communion does not have to make us feel uplifted or edified.

If this does happen, it is something for which to thank the Lord because we cannot look into our souls and see what is happening supernaturally.

For catechesis and liturgical formation: marykeenankearns@gmail.com 087 7794787

22 PRAY THE ROSARY

Catholic Voice

8th October 2021

Why I Pray the Rosary Jeffrey Stevens Before getting started with this article, no, not all Catholics pray the rosary. In my opinion, this doesn’t make a person “more” or “less” of a Catholic. It simply means it is not a form of prayer they appreciate.

There is nothing wrong with that.

I first began to pray the rosary regularly back in 2012. At the time, not only was I not in full communion with the Church, I had no interest in being Catholic whatsoever. Even as a Protestant, I felt closer to Jesus while praying the rosary. Something about moving the beads through my fingers while praying Hail Marys and through the mysteries created an intimacy with God I could only experience with a rosary in my hands.

While I believe there isn’t a wrong way to pray the rosary, I still do this differently than many people.

Regardless if I was in the sand at the beach or sitting at my desk, I always have a Bible open, reading Scripture that corresponds with each mystery. Also, following the Our Father of each decade, I still pray my own petitions to Jesus from the heart. At times, one of these prayers will be short, only taking around 30 seconds or so. At other times, I might spend up to five minutes praying to Jesus before starting the next decade. It all depends on what is in my heart at the moment.

As a Protestant, I had more than one well-intentioned Catholic tell me what I was doing was wrong. The Rosary was a gift from Mary for those of the Catholic Church. As a Catholic, I still regularly hear from my Protestant friends that what I’m doing is wrong and that Catholics shouldn’t worship anyone other than God. The thing is, in all of my years praying the rosary, I’ve never worshipped Mary. To me, and maybe Catholics will say I’m wrong, I’m spending time with Jesus. His mother just happens to be involved.

I have spent some time the last few days contemplating exactly why I pray the rosary as much as I do.

As of sitting down and writing this, I am currently 17 days into a commitment of praying the rosary twice a day for three weeks. No, this isn’t a Catholic ritual. I just wanted to develop a more authentic prayer life. I needed to grow closer to Jesus while finishing up a book I have been writing. Here are three of the most important reasons why I regularly pray the rosary.

Praying the Rosary is Spiritual Defence I do the best that I can to strap on the whole armour of God every day.

Still, there are plenty of areas where I lack or fail altogether. During moments of weakness, I find the strength I’m lacking through praying the rosary.

These moments of weakness will generally happen when I either have a lot going on or am very tired.

As a writer, it’s not unusual for me to work 12, 13, even 14 hours a day for two or three consecutive weeks. While writing may not be physically demanding work, it can be mentally exhausting, especially writing fiction. It’s during times

like this when I can be a sucker for temptation and sin.

For me, the 30 - 40 minutes I spend praying the rosary is just as effective as taking a nap for a few hours.

Spending time with Jesus leads to me finding energy I didn’t know I had. This is more along the lines of preparing for spiritual warfare for me than just a quick coffee break.

The rosary doesn’t just give me energy. It regenerates my soul.

I’m a Bible nerd. I’m all for what the Bible tells us about the armour of God. I’m not saying the armour St. Paul describes isn’t enough for me. I’m saying that there are too many times when I fail to use it properly. The rosary will always provide additional protection for me against the enemy.

Intimacy with Jesus I’d like to say I have a healthy overall prayer life. I pray within the first half-hour or so of waking up and before going to sleep at night. I pray while walking my dog. Almost every day comes to an end with writing an entry in my prayer journal. I spend an hour at the adoration chapel a few times a week. I don’t bring this up as an attempt to sound more godly than

8th October 2021

Catholic Voice

others. If anything, I don’t pray enough, and even when I do pray, I’ll be the first to admit that I spend too much time praying for things in my own life instead of the situations and circumstances of others.

Church since converting, crying out to Jesus through the rosary just seems natural for me when things seem the most difficult. It’s the most sincere time of prayer I have ever experienced in my life.

Still, as much time as I spend praying, something happens in my heart with a rosary in my hand.

It’s like a connection to Jesus I only have through the rosary. The words of my prayers following each decade, when it’s just me emptying my heart to Jesus, have an authenticity and intimacy about them that I have no idea of how to produce. It just happens.

Praying the Rosary Requires Commitment I’ll be honest. Commitment has been an issue for me since my teens.

I’m not talking about relationship issues. I mean a commitment to anything that takes time in my schedule. I worked in the sports writing industry for over four years, where covering breaking news was a must if you wanted to make money. It was difficult to schedule anything and keep to it.

It is like layers of my heart are peeled back with a rosary in my hand, exposing more of who I am to God. This is something I experienced praying the rosary both as a Catholic and a Protestant.

Even during the few seasons of life when I have walked away from the

I’m not one of the people who are content praying the rosary once or twice a week. I’m not saying this is wrong. I just could never stick to that. Regardless of the day or time I picked for the weekly commitment,

PRAY THE ROSARY 23 I would have created a thousand reasons while I didn’t have time.

That being said, when I first started praying the rosary regularly back in 2012, I couldn’t get enough of how close this time brought me to Jesus. I’m a sucker for instant gratification. I had to have more. So praying the rosary was one of the first things I committed to every day other than reading the Bible.

Even now, when my schedule begins to get out of control, one of the first things I make sure there is time for is praying the rosary.

Sometimes, this means it is one of the first things I do every morning.

At other times, this time of prayer is one of the last things I do every night. Regardless of when I can make the time, I have learned the hard way that I’m simply not myself when I go a day without praying the rosary. As a result, it has become my favourite time of the day.

24 ST MARGARET MARY ALACOQUE

Catholic Voice

8th October 2021

St Margaret Mary Alacoque Pope Pius XI Extracts from the Decree of Beatification of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque - Pope Pius XI 1864 Who would not be excited to render the most ardent homages to this Sacred Heart, from whose wound flowed water and blood, the sources of our life and our salvation?

To establish this pious practice, at once so salutary and so legitimate, and to spread it among men, Our Lord designed to choose His venerable Servant, Margaret Mary Alacoque, a Religious of the Order of the Visitation of St. Mary, who, by the innocence of her life, and the continual exercise of all virtues, by the grace of God showed herself worthy of so high a ministry and employment. Born of a respectable family in the village of Lauthecourt, in the diocese of Autun, in France, she evinced from her childhood so much docility, a virtue and regularity so far in advance of her age, that her parents could then presage in a certain manner what she was one day to become.

While yet a child, she cared not for the diversions so common at that

tender age, and sought in the house some retired place where she could in profound recollection offer to God her loving adorations and her homages. Arrived at adolescence, she avoided much society, and delighted to frequent the church and pass there long hours in prayer. From her early years, being consecrated to God by the vow of virginity, she afflicted her body by fasting, disciplines, and all sorts of austerities, that she might in some manner hedge in with thorns the flower of her virginity. She was also an illustrious model of meekness and humility; for her father dying, and her mother succumbing beneath the weight of age and sickness, she was treated with so much severity and harshness by the persons charged with governing the house, that she was nearly always in want of the necessary food and clothing.

At the age of nine years, she was for the first time admitted to the eucharistic banquet, and drew, in this celestial aliment, such ardent charity, that this divine fire seemed to radiate from her lips and from her eyes. Equally inf1amed with

charity for her neighbour, she bitterly deplored the misery of many children, all but abandoned by their parents, growing up in vice, and ignorance of the things most necessary for salvation; she patiently taught them the mysteries of faith, formed them to virtue, and habitually deprived herself of a considerable part of her daily bread to nourish them.

After long and serious deliberations, after having in prayer consulted the divine will, she was received, at the age of twenty-three years, among the Religious of the Visitation of St. Mary, in the monastery of Parayle-Monial, in the diocese of Autun.

Having shown during her novitiate all that was to be hoped from her beautiful dispositions, from the virtue and innocence of her life, she was admitted to pronounce her solemn vows. After her profession she was seen to advance rapidly in perfection, offering to her companions consecrated to God a shining example of all virtues.

In meditating on the sufferings of Our Lord Jesus Christ, she

8th October 2021 experienced such lively pain, and was so inflamed with divine love, that she often fainted away and remained nearly lifeless. The eminence of her virtues having fixed on her the admiration of all her companions, she was charged with forming the young novices to the religious life, a charge for which none was more competent than the venerable Margaret Mary, who by her example encouraged the young girls, whose guardian and mistress she became, to enter the ways of perfection and pursue them resolutely.

One day, while she prayed with unusual fervour before the Blessed Sacrament, Our Lord Jesus Christ made known to her that it would be very pleasing to Him to see established the worship of His Sacred Heart, so inflamed with love for men, and that He wished to confide to her this mission. Humble as she was, the Servant of God was terrified, esteeming herself unworthy of so high a ministry; yet to obey the Divine will, and satisfy the desire she had to see kindled in all hearts the fire of Divine love, she used all her influence, both with the Sisters of the monastery and her friends outside it, that this Sacred Heart might receive from them all sorts of honours and adorations.

The venerable Servant of God had for this purpose to endure great pains, to surmount numerous difficulties; yet she never lost courage, but, counting on succours from on high, she applied with as much activity as constancy to establish this devotion, which she soon saw extended by the aid of Divine grace to the great profit of souls, and propagated afar through the Church.

At length, desiring to see her bonds broken, that she might fly to the celestial nuptials of the Lamb, for which she so ardently sighed, consumed less by sickness than by the flames of charity, she reached the term of her mortal life, on the seventeenth day of October, 1690.

Catholic Voice

ST MARGARET MARY ALACOQUE 25

The opinion already held of her sanctity was increased after her death by the prodigies attributed to the Venerable Servant of God. Hence, in the year 1115, the Bishop of Autun, in an opportune time, took regular information on her life and manners. But the revolutions which at the end of the eighteenth century convulsed nearly all Europe, did not permit the cause to be deferred to the judgment of the Holy See. The dreadful tempest once appeased, the judgment of the Apostolic See was invoked, and the process of the virtues by which Margaret Mary became so illustrious was introduced in the Sacred Congregatioa of Rites.

Finally, after a long and serious examination, we have pronounced, by a decree promulgated August 23, 1846, that she practised these virtues in an heroic degree.

Afterward in the same congregation was proposed the discussion of the miracles which established the belief that heaven had rendered testimony to the sanctity or the Venerable Margaret Mary, and at the close of a severe examination, the Consultors and Cardinals having given a favourable opinion, we ourselves, having invoked light from above, have rendered our affirmative sentence concerning the truth or the same miracles, this fourteenth day of May, 1864.

Referring to the same Cardinals a last question, namely: if the beatification of the Venerable Margaret Mary might be securely proceeded with: reunited in our presence on the twenty-fourth of June in the current year, they replied in the affirmative.

We then, after having implored for so important an act the succour or Heaven, on the twenty-fourth day of June in the same year, we have decreed that, when we should judge proper, we might with security accord to the Venerable Servant of God all the honours and

privileges reserved to the beatified, till the celebration of her solemn canonization.

Therefore, moved by the prayers of nearly all the bishops of France, and those of the Sisters of the Visitation of St. Mary, with the advice and concurrence of our Venerable Brethren, the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, members of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, in virtue of our Apostolic authority, we permit that the Venerable Servant of God, Margaret Mary Alacoque, should receive henceforth the appellation of Blessed, and that her body and her relics may be publicly exposed to the veneration of the faithful.

Moreover, in virtue of the same authority, we permit to be said in her honour the Office and Mass of the Common of Virgins, with the proper prayers approved by us, conformable to the Rubrics of the Missal and of the Roman Breviary.

Yet we accord this permission only in the Diocese of Autun, and in all the churches of Visitation Convents, wherever they may be situated, and on the seventeenth day of October, to all the faithful, regular and secular, bound to the recital of the canonical hours, and, as regards the Mass, to all priests who celebrate in the same churches on the day of the feast.

In fine, we permit that, in the current year, from the date of the present letter, the solemnity of the beatification of the Venerable Servant of God, Margaret Mary Alacoque, in the Diocese of Autun and in the above-mentioned churches, with Office and Mass of double major rite, on the day indicated by the Ordinary of each place, and only after this solemnity shall have been celebrated in the Vatican basilica St Margaret Mary Alacoque was canonized on the 13th May 1920,

by Pope Benedict XV

26 ORDER V CHAOS

Catholic Voice

8th October 2021

The Cross Amid The Crisis Mary Eberstadt

The following is adapted from a speech given on September 15th to the Society of Catholic Social Scientists upon reception of their annual Pius XI Award for Building Up a True Social Science. The event was co-sponsored by the Catholic University of America’s Sociology Department and the CUA Institute for Human Ecology.

Thinking about what to share today, one sentence kept coming to mind by novelist extraordinaire Evelyn Waugh. It appeared in a disarmingly casual account that he gave to a newspaper in 1930, about the reasons for his conversion to the Catholic Church.

Waugh summarised that momentous decision in twenty-eight neat words.

He said, “In the present phase of European history the essential issue is no longer between Catholicism, on one side, and Protestantism, on the other, but between Christianity and Chaos.”

Christianity, or Chaos: In a sense, the choice between the two has been perpetual since the Resurrection.

But to say that it’s ever thus, and to throw up our hands before the world, is a dodge – especially for Catholics, especially now, in a moment when many are tempted to do just that. We’re called to read the signs of the times, not to whine about them. So let’s start by staring this thing in the face, and setting out the distinctive characteristics of Chaos in this moment — our moment. What can we see?

The first thing we see is that we continue to live in the age spied O Jesus, it is for the love of Thee, in reparation for the offenses committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and for the conversion of poor sinners [that I do this]. Amen.

Our Lady of Fatima - June 13th, 1917.

by Matthew Arnold and Henri de Lubac and Alexander Solzhenitsyn and other religious clairvoyants, the modern age, whose drama consists of successive waves of secularisation, encroaching ever more insistently on territories previously thought to be God’s, and God’s alone.

The second certainty, equally conspicuous, is that the forms of Chaos characteristic of our time are unlike those that preceded us in modern history. Compare this era, for example, with Evelyn Waugh’s.

In 1930, the year he entered the Church, one World War was already behind humanity, even as another impended. In the lifetime of people like him, spanning roughly the first half of the twentieth century, Chaos had a different signature. It resided in war, dislocation, and stupendous carnage.

Despite that carnage, though, many social pillars still stood firm.

Individual families were ravaged by the wars, but the institution of the family was not. Demonic Nazi anthropology had its day, as Communist anthropology would, too; but outside those malignant

precincts, a Christian understanding of Creation and redemption and meaning still prevailed across the West, and within the Captive Nations of the East, and elsewhere on the globe.

The Catholic Church was steadfast as well. In 1930, Pius XI, the visionary for whom this award is named, was pope. He would go on to found Vatican Radio the very next year, “to proclaim the Gospel in the world,” as he said with jubilance.

Though Chaos was starting to insinuate itself in novel forms into some Protestant churches, the Catholic Church appeared exempt – as Evelyn Waugh pointed out when he cited the “coherent and consistent” nature of Catholic teaching as the predominant reason for his conversion.

As even that short summary shows, although we are only 91 years removed from 1930, it feels more like 91 light-years. Consider a quick checklist of the scene today.

First, there is compounding family Chaos, brought on by a radical social experiment now six-plus decades in the making. Elemental human bonds have been frayed and cut, and the institution of the family

8th October 2021 has been weakened, on a scale never seen before.

Second, and symbiotic, there is also compounding psychic Chaos of all kinds. For decades, the rise in mental illness has been documented beyond dispute. Anxiety, depression, and other afflictions resulting from disconnection and loneliness have become endemic, especially among the youngest, and most frail. Irrationalism has come unbound.

Third, there is political chaos.

Though its causes are many, the dissolution of clan and community leave their marks here, too. To put it rhetorically: how could the unattached and dispossessed people of our time produce anything but a disordered public language?

Fourth, there is anthropological chaos of a wholly new order. The Western world is gripped by an identity crisis. In its latest form,

ORDER V CHAOS 27

Catholic Voice magical thinking about gender has escaped from the academy and now transforms society and law – magical thinking so preposterous that little children could call it out.

In a shocking descent unlike any in recorded history, many people today no longer even know what little children know – namely, who they are. Once more, irrationalism is unbound.

Fifth, there is intellectual Chaos. Outside a few faithful institutions, education, especially elite education, has been hiding in a postmodern cuckoo’s nest for decades. People who do not believe in truth now run institutions charged with discerning it. A little while ago, an atheist was elected Chief Chaplain at Harvard. Why not? If there is no truth, there are no contradictions. In much of the academy, irrationalism is not only unbound. It rules.

Sixth, and most consequential: there is Chaos of a new order

LIBERALISM IS A SIN

Don Félix Sardà y Salvany: – was

and significance among Catholics across the Western world. It arises from people who want to transform Church teaching – and their animus against other people who hold to the truth of that teaching. It is excruciatingly visible in public life, as leaders proudly brandishing the Catholic label just as proudly defy the Catechism and key points of canon law, day in and day out.

Magical thinking drives this kind of chaos, too.

The label “pro-abortion Catholic” makes as much logical sense as “atheist chaplain” or “former man.”

All participate in the same signature irrationalism. All demand that we cancel Aristotle – that we believe “A” and “Not-A” at once.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God With thy whole heart, And with thy whole soul, And with thy whole mind.

This is the greatest And the first commandment.

CATECHISM ON MODERNISM

Holiness Pope Pius X, issued the Encyclical ‘Pascendi Dominici Gregis’ which translates as “Feeding the Lord’s Flock”. Pope Pius X was aware that the Catholic Church had been infiltrated by modernists who were seeking to undermine her doctrines from within.

born on May 21, 1844 in Sabadell, Catalonia, Spain. He was a Catholic priest and writer who wrote against Liberalism which he considered a grave sin. He was the editor of the weekly Spanish Catholic magazine

Father J. B. Lemius, produced this ‘Catechism on years. He died on January 2, 1916 at Modernism’ in the familiar the age of 71. This book, Liberalism question and answer format is a Sin, is particularly relevant to of the time, in order to make the teachings of the the times we live in today where Liberalism permeates every Encyclical more accessible to ordinary Catholics and aspect of our society and has deeply infiltrated the thinking of by way of explaining in a clear and concise manner the many of the Catholic hierarchy. reasons why the Encyclical was published.

‘La Revista Popular’ for over forty

Paperback €/£13.50 inc p&p Published by Lumen Fidei Press

Paperback €/£13.50 inc p&p Published by Lumen Fidei Press

To Order please telephone 059 8627268 ROI 00353 598627268 Outside ROI Alternatively, Order Online @ www.lumenfidei.ie/shop

28 ORDER V CHAOS

Catholic Voice

Now, what can we discern today by staring into this void – the void whose existence has become an inescapable fact of everyday life and public life alike; the void that makes many anxious for our descendants, as Catholics have never been anxious before?

We discern a truth that should stiffen our spines. In every one of these cases, Chaos has been whipped into catastrophic strength by secularisation itself. In the time to come, however long the reckoning may take, this spells trouble for the secularised order – and capital-V vindication for the Church.

The rise in mental distress and the decline of organised religion, for example, are not randomly occurring phenomena. Social science confirms that people who have robust social bonds are more likely to thrive than people who don’t. Religious faith confers those bonds.

Social science also shows that the fractured family and other forms of isolation increase the risks of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, loneliness, and other vexations. All have been exacerbated by the Western flight from God. Consider once more that the most un-churched generation, the “Nones,” is also the most mentally afflicted. Again, the loss of the capital-F Father, and the contemporary loss of so many earthly fathers, are joined at the root.

HANDS OFF OUR KIDS

PROTECTING PARENTAL CHOICE IN THE CLASSROOM

This CD of the compelling talk given by Charlotte McQuaid-Bruen at Catholic Voice annual conference 2019, sums up the proposed sex education to be taught across schools in Ireland in 2020. Parents, grandparents, friends, family members and clergy need to be informed about what their children are going to be subjected to.

Please help spread this talk TODAY. 4 CDs inc p&p €20 1 CD inc p&p €7.50 Complete coupon and return with cheque/postal order to John Lacken, Ballinlough, Claremorris, Co Mayo F12 TN23 Name: ...........................................................................................

Address: ........................................................................................ ....................................................................................................... .......................................................................................................

Phone No: .....................................................................................

Please send me ______copies of the CD - ‘Hands off our Kids’ Total Enclosed: € ________ To pay by post with credit/debit card please complete: Card number: ______________________________________ Expiry Date: _________________ C.V.V._______________

8th October 2021

Secularisation is also behind today’s family Chaos.

In embracing divorce, fatherlessness, and abortion, humanity has inflicted wounds on itself whose measure has only begun to be taken. We are only beginning to grasp that what starts at home doesn’t stay at home.

The feral children of family Chaos now pour into the streets, frantically trying to substitute identity politics for the primordial bonds of which they’ve been deprived. Identity politics is a pitiful attempt at emotional alchemy by souls desperate for connection.

It signals tacit vindication for the Magisterium’s uncompromising teachings about why we really are here, and what really is best for us.

As for the Chaos besetting the Church, this, too, has roots in secularisation. It has become standard to speak of “conservative” Catholics and “liberal” Catholics.

But political labels deceive.

The real Catholic divide in our time is between people who try to stand as signs of contradiction in this world, and people who capitulate. It is between Catholics who want powerful secular trends to influence and transform the Church, and Catholics who don’t. It is between souls who believe the Catechism is true – and souls who want to edit it with a red pen, supplied by a disapproving secularism. The real divide is between Catholics who want temporal demands to trump the Cross – and Catholics who know that the Cross cannot be trumped.

The point here is not religious triumphalism. It’s that secularisation is exacting costs in one realm after another – and secularised taste-makers, inside or outside the Church, refuse to acknowledge that fact.

And so it falls to others, including the scholars present today, to illuminate that record instead. Your work is vital in this moment for two reasons: first, because today’s Chaos causes multiple forms of suffering that might be ameliorated, if only we can understand their true origins. Second, because today’s Chaos amounts to inadvertent proof that Christianity, and the Judaism from which it drank, get humanity right.

There is a truth amid today’s confusions that has gone too long unsaid. Our secularising culture is not just any culture. No, our secularising culture is an inferior culture. It is small of heart. It defines suffering down.

It regards the victims of its social experiments not as victims, but as acceptable collateral damage justified by those experiments.

This is secularism’s unspoken secret. It is also secularism’s greatest vulnerability.

This mission to define suffering down can be seen, for example, in efforts that would recast the horrors of prostitution as anodyne “sex work.” It drives the attempts to normalise pornography, ignoring the

8th October 2021

ORDER V CHAOS 29

Catholic Voice

calamitous costs to men and women and romance. It powers the push to shut down emergency pregnancy centres and adoption agencies, indifferent to whether babies and children and poor people need them.

It whitewashes data about suicide rates, eating disorders, substance abuse, and other indices of mental distress among the transgender population — and about other populations where acknowledging human damage might jeopardise political agendas.

Again: the Chaos unleashed on the West has spread acute forms of misery across society. But the architects and defenders of an increasingly anti-Christian, social order turn a blind eye. It falls to faithful scholars to tell the truth about the costs of secularisation – because scholars who are part of the Chaos can’t or won’t.

In closing, one more quotation helps to summarise the importance of your collective missions in academia. Historian Christopher Dawson opened an essay on “Christianity and Western Culture,” with this sentence: “The survival of a civilisation depends on the

And you shall know the truth, And the truth shall make you free.

(John 8:32)

continuity tradition.”

of

These cards are designed to help people to complete The Five First Saturdays Devotion of Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary Contact John Lacken 085-1208779 secretary@lumenfidei.ie

educational

This is where the Society of Catholic Social Scientists and the rest of the fellowship represented here today come in. The secularised academy has abdicated its vocation.

It repudiates continuity.

Scholars of tomorrow will look back in astonishment, and perhaps pity, at today’s magical thinking. They will need facts, figures, arguments,

Please Help Us To Promote The Five First Saturdays of Reparation Order Some of Our New Five First Saturday Devotions Cards

its

and evidence, especially about the human costs of today’s experiment in secularisation.

Someday, a re-evangelised civilisation will contemplate the beginning of the twenty-first century, and try to take the measure of its Chaos. Those people of the future will understand, as many today do not, that you are speaking truth into the void of this time, and giving voice to the voiceless in a defiant moment.

Fatima Prayer

Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifferences by which He Himself is offended, and through the infinite merits of His most Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary I beg of Thee the conversion of poor sinners. Amen.

“To forestall this [the second world war], I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays.

“If they heed My requests, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace. If not, she shall spread her errors throughout the world, promoting wars and persecutions of the Church; the good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated; in the end, My Immaculate Heart shall triumph.

(Our Lady - Fatima July 13th 1917)

30 BOOKS

Catholic Voice

8th October 2021

STRENGTHEN YOUR FAITH DURING THIS CRISIS BUY CATHOLIC BOOKS! DON’T GO TO HELL Catholic Church Teaching on Hell

THE CHURCH IN OUR TIMES

This book contains three essays, one in question & answer format, from a time when pastors were more direct and ‘plain speaking’ in presenting the Truth of Catholic doctrine to their flocks.

They were primarily concerned with the salvation of the souls entrusted to their care rather than being overly concerned about whether or not their flocks would find these Truths offensive or difficult.

They sought the Praise and Glory of God, and not the praise of men.

is a series of reflections on topical issues concerning the Catholic Church and the practice of the faith ranging from ‘Faith and Culture’, to ‘GLBT – New thinking’, to ‘Purgatory and Remembrance’. Fr Hahesy’s style is conversational and he weaves through the various topics all the while pointing to the soul’s need for God. “The daily prayers at the end of this book, will ensure the salvation of our soul and a happier life here. Please believe me. It does not seem much to ask for such a great reward. To know and love God is the ultimate good whether people know this or not, accept it or not.”

€/£7 inc p&p Ireland €/£8.50 inc p&p outside Ireland

€/£10 inc p&p Ireland €/£12 inc p&p outside Ireland

Purgatory - How to Avoid it

One rarely hears sermons preached on the four last things; death, judgement, Heaven & Hell, and this has led to a decline in belief concerning these matters.

SCIENCE SAYS NO

In this book, Dr. van den Aardweg debunks many of the myths created by the global homosexualist movement. The argument for gay “marriage” is exposed as a deception in this ground breaking book. For many years the public has been indoctrinated with unfounded assertions which in fact are no more than modern fairy tales sold as science. In other words, as regards homosexuality, people hear and read mostly lies. The book explains why the deception is possible and shows why no assertion of the gay ideology has been scientifically validated. €/£9 inc p&p Ireland €/£10.50 inc p&p outside Ireland

SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

This really is a fantastic book which presents Catholic teaching on sin in a simple, clear and precise way. You will learn about the nature of sin, about the different kinds of sin, mortal and venial, formal and material sins.

Reflections on the Abortion Issue in Ireland.

Those of us here on earth can help to shorten the time that Holy Souls must spend in Purgatory. This book teaches us how best to help the Holy Souls in purgatory

The book also teaches us about sins of omission. After discussing sin, the book then speaks of the great graces offered to us in the sacrament of confession, it teaches us about temptations, about Christ’s suffering and death on the cross, and then it finishes with a very hope filled chapter on the joys of the resurrection.

Many countries, including Ireland, have removed the right to life from the Constitution and given the legislature the power to legalise abortion, which by definition is the intentional killing of the unborn child.

The assumption is that unborn babies have no human rights. The essays in this monograph expose the fallacy that unborn babies do not have the right to life and may be ‘terminated’ if that is the ‘choice’ of the mother. In the New Ireland, human killing is now legal. It is estimated that 800 – 900 unwanted unborn babies are ‘terminated’ every month. Abortion has become the murder machine of our time.”

€/£7 inc p&p Ireland €/£8.50 inc p&p outside Ireland

€/£10 inc p&p Ireland €/£12 inc p&p outside Ireland

€/£13.50 inc p&p Ireland €/£15 inc p&p outside Ireland

The souls of most of those who die in a state of grace, will spend some time in Purgatory to be purified before they can enter the all holy realm of Heaven.

Book Title/s: ___________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________ Credit/Debit Card Number: __________________________________________________ Expiry Date: _______________________________ C.V.V. ________________ Total Enclosed: €/£__________________________ Name: _________________________________________________________________ Address: _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ Post Code: __________________________________ Daytime Tel: ________________________________

Send completed form with cheque/postal order made payable to Catholic Voice or with credit/debit card details to: Catholic Voice, St Michael’s House, Castlemitchell South, Athy, Co Kildare, Ireland or telephone 059 8627268 (00353 59862726 8 from outside Ireland) Please allow 14 working days for delivery.

CLASSIFIEDS 31

8th October 2021 Catholic Voice

CLASSIFIEDS Services

TELEPHONE 00353 59 8627268

REGULAR TRADITIONAL LATIN MASSES IN IRELAND

Welcome To Our New Lourdes Website saintbernadette.info Included are the following: The life and times of St Bernadette: The Importance of the Holy Rosary for our times: The Lourdes Apparitions: The Song of Bernadette Movie: Prayer cards on request and much much more. Contact via email morgansharpesenior@gmail.com

Next issue of

CatholicVoice On sale in churches, newsagents & bookshops from

10 September 2021

(LISTED BY DIOCESE) DAILY & WEEKLY Meath: Silverstream Priory (Benedictine monks) Armagh: New Mellifont Abbey, Collon, Co. Louth Stamullen: Sunday 10.00 preceded by Terce, other days 11.00.

Every Sunday 3pm.

Meath: Church of the Nativity, Johnstown, Navan, Co. Meath Cork & Ross: Ss Peter’s & Paul’s, Cork: Sundays 12.00 noon, Sundays 1pm; First Fridays 11am; Holydays as announced.

Mon - Sat 10.00.

Ossory: St. Patrick’s, College Rd, Kilkenny; Sun 17.00.

Cork & Ross: St Mary’s, Pope’s Quay, Cork. Sundays 8:00am Raphoe: St. Patrick’s, Drumkeen, Donegal Sun 11.00. in the Dominican Rite; Down & Connor: Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Waterford: (FSSP) St. John’s Church, Parnell Street, Waterford Sunday: 8 and 11am, Mon-Fri (ex Thurs), 19:00. Thurs: 8am, City – Every Sunday 1:30pm, Mon 1:00pm, Tues – Friday Sat: 8am, 11am.

Dromore: St.Mary’s, Newry: Sundays and Holydays 9.00am.

Dublin: St. Kevin’s, Harrington Street: Sundays & non working Holy Days: 9:00, 10:00 and 11:00; (Vespers Sun 3:30pm.) Mon - Fri 08.00; Sat 09.00.

Working Holidays & 1st Fridays; 08.00 and 19.00.

Dublin: St. Joseph’s, Newtownmountkennedy Co Wicklow Sat 11:00 Elphin: Church of the Sacred Heart and St Barry, Whitehall, Tarmonbarry, Co Roscommon. Every Sunday 5pm Ferns: (FSSP) St. Alphonsus, Barntown, Co Wexford: Every Sunday 17.00 (Sung Mass 1st and 3rd Sundays), Holy days as announced.

Galway: Chapel of St. Mary’s College, St. Mary’s Road (ICKSP) Sun 15:00 Limerick: Sacred Heart, The Crescent (ICKSP) Sun 8am, 10.30am, 6pm; Mon-Weds 08.00 and 18.00; Thurs 8:00, Friday 18.00; Saturday 08.00 & 10:30 (followed by 1st Saturday devotions)

19:30 (19:00 1st Fridays) Sat 11:00am, Holydays as announced.

TWICE MONTHLY Derry: St. Columba’s , Longtower: First and Third Sunday 14:00 MONTHLY Armagh: St. Patrick’s, Dungannon, Co Tyrone: First Saturday 14.00.

Cork & Ross: St. Francis, Liberty St. Cork : First Saturday 13.00.

Derry: St. Marys, Aughabrack, Co Tyrone: Fourth Sunday 12.45 Elphin: St. John’s, Carraoe, Co Sligo ; Last Sunday Killaloe: St. Joseph ‘s, Ennis, Co Clare: First Sunday 17:30 Tuam: St. John the Baptist, (Old Parish Knock, Co Mayo; Second Sunday 17.30.

Every effort has been made to ensure this list is up to date.

Please contact The Latin Mass Society of Ireland in the event of any changes or errors.

Email: adminmass@latinmassireland.com

Visit our all-new website today!

Mass Cards

Enrollment Books

All Occasion Gifts

It’s now easier than ever to have Mass cards, enrolment books & religious gifts delivered directly to your door.

Web: www.mscmissions.ie Email: info@mscmissions.ie Tel: +353 (0)21 4545704

32 ADVERT

Catholic Voice

8th October 2021

And the Lord said: Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren. (Luke 22: 31-33)

Published by: Catholic Voice Newspapers, St Michael’s House, Castlemitchell South, Athy, County Kildare. Tel 059-8627268 ROI / 00353 - 59 8627268 Publisher: Anthony Murphy.

Layout by: Lumen Fidei