BRICK HOUSES

See the source image   Do you know the story of the 3 little pigs?

It’s a cute  children’s tale that teaches an important moral lesson. The story is this: 3 little pigs go out and build their homes to guard against the “big bad wolf” who wants to destroy them, to eat them.

“Little pig, little pig, let me come in,” the wolf bellows to the first little pig, who built his house with straw.  “Not by the hair of my chinny, chin, chin,” the pig says. “Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll BLOW your house down!” cried the wolf.

So he huffed and he puffed and —because the first house was made of straw—he BLEW the house down —and had ham for dinner.

The wolf came to the second little pig’s house. That little pig had built his house with twigs. The huffing and puffing was again successful, and the wolf had ham for 2 nights in a row.

Not satisfied—he went to the house of the third little pig.  But he could not blow the house down because this little pig was smart and had built his house out of bricks. The wolf  huffed and puffed until he was out of breath, and then tried to get in through the chimney. But the pig had a plan there too.  The little pig  put a boiling pot of water on the fire in the fireplace and, to make a long story short, ended up having wolf for dinner.

So the moral of the story is that we need to build our houses with something strong enough to withstand the storms of life, the wolf at the door, the terror of the night,  and the arrow that flies by day.

And that lesson is important for us today as we see what is going on in the world.

We need to build a house of bricks to prepare for the gathering storm. We need bricks of courage, to stand for the Truth no matter the cost. We need bricks of Faith and Prayer, to be committed to Jesus no matter the consequences. We need bricks of preparedness, to gather together and pray, to form and strengthen communities of believers who do God’s will and present His message of hope with determination and fearlessness. We need bricks of community to gather people together to support and help each other –and others in need— to get us all  through these storms.  We need a Missionary Spirit, the Spirit of Saint Juniperro Serra, who despite infirmities and hardships tirelessly brought the Love of Christ to the people of the Southwest.

And we need a cornerstone. Our cornerstone—the cornerstone of our house of bricks– is Jesus Christ.  He is our Rock and our Redeemer, the source of our strength.  We need to make a firm commitment to Him and  to Truth, no matter the cost.

And sadly, it appears that there will be a cost for the true followers of Christ, even in America, which began as a country founded upon Judeo-Christian principles and prospered exponentially as a result of its foundation. “America is great because America is good,” wrote Alexis de Tocqueville.  “And when America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

As the Communist goals of the last century have been achieved one by one, especially #’s 27 and 28—eliminate prayer in schools, in the towns, and infiltrate the churches—America’s goodness has been on the decline.  And as God is shoved out of every corner, what replaces Him is corruption and the poverty, crime, and utter chaos that every Godless society experiences.  As we’ve tolerated evil and have now codified evil in American law, the next progression is not far behind.  Those who oppose evil will, in an insane irony, be looked  at as the ones who are evil, who are the ones to be destroyed, who are the ones targeted for persecution.

Christians and those of all denominations are being persecuted in every country now.  As we see the destruction of our culture, of our heritage, our symbols of greatness and holiness destroyed—our churches burned, our statues defaced, our people attacked by self-described Marxist groups, we need to understand that what they are doing to symbols of Mary and Jesus and our churches may soon be done to us. They hate our churches because they hate us. They hate us because they hate Christ.  And they are now beginning to express that hatred with violence.

John 15:18 “If the world hates you, remember that it hated Me first.”

John 15:19 “If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. that is why the world hates you. 20 Remember what I told you, ” a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.”

A wise pastor once said the power of our faith is in the gathering—the power of Christ is in the gathering together of His people to pray.

Jesus said, “Whenever 2 or more are gathered in My name, there I am in the midst of them.”

We need to be praying together like never before and gathering together like never before. We need to be going to Mass and receiving the Eucharist more, not less.  And yet we can’t.

Some of the shepherds in the hierarchy of the Catholic church do not wait for persecution by civil authorities  to  persecute their own sheep. They close churches proactively, folding before the slightest whiff of  discrimination against Christians by local authorities.

Archbishop  Fulton Sheen once said that the clergy will fold and fail at some point in the future and that it is up to the laity to revive the church.  Apparently, that point is now.  We need to SPEAK.

When we speak up we are not detracting our church leaders, we are encouraging them to have the fortitude to face this challenge with bravery and prayer and to lead and feed their flocks as they are meant to do, as is their vocation.

Do not be afraid to respectfully criticize those who fold like a cheap suit at the first sight of government infringement on the rights of believers. Your time is now to stand up for what is right and to encourage those who are too timid to speak out against injustice to begin to find their voice.

I was puzzled by the lack of response from the Catholic Bishops about all that is going on until I saw this wonderful sermon by Fr. Altman. * “What did they ever do to you in the seminary that made you all so afraid to speak up?”

Now I understand. The reason why many priests and Bishops are afraid to speak the truth is because if they were the type of people who spoke the truth, they would not — in many dioceses—have been made priests.  This is also the reason why unfathomable crimes were covered up and shrouded in silence in the church hierarchy during the last century or so. Everyone was afraid to speak up because those who did lost everything.

But Father Altman is one of few who does have the courage to speak the truth.  And others—the many other good priests and bishops who were cowed by corrupt superiors into silence and have not lost the desire to “fly under the radar”  during crises—can be convinced  by us, the laity, to find their courage and begin to speak up for the people; to regain their passion for ministry and begin to be true shepherds and saints, unafraid of the hardships that will come from truly following Christ.

There are of course others who can be counted among the persecutors, unfortunately even within our own church.  Read Bella Dodd’s “School of Darkness” and  Dr. Taylor Marshall’s  “Infiltration” to see the history of how the infiltration of our country is unfortunately true for our church as well. The Catholic church, the church that Christ founded, His Bride, has always been a great threat to evil, a great enemy to satan, and conquering it from within thereby neutralizing it as a force against evil was a necessary goal in order for the father of lies to destroy the good.

In any case, the time is now to speak up—respectfully but bravely—so that the good but timid priests and bishops come out of hiding and join the fight against evil.  Courage is contagious. Spread it around.

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P.S. I once saw a funny video depicting a man who absent-mindedly used hand sanitizer to bless himself as he entered a grocery store. Various people wrote funny captions for the gaffe. But it got me to thinking. If grocery stores are allowed to open but churches are not, why not gather to pray at the store? Today we are permitted to  feed the body but not the soul, which makes no sense. But if we are already at a location in order to feed the body, why not feed the soul too? Why not get creative as we move into the catacomb-Christian phase of persecution?

I am certainly not saying that it is a good substitute. But maybe it’s time to find creative ways to gather for the most essential activity we have as human beings—worshipping God.

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*https://youtu.be/1xM6-N0NfjY God bless Fr. Altman!

 

 

 

 

GREAT NEWS SITES

It is getting increasingly difficult to find quality news.    Newspapers DSC_0206and media outlets that used to be credible, that presented the news for the most part fairly and impartially  no longer do this.  Their slant is so bad, the bias so pronounced that it’s difficult to trust anything they say.   And so where do you go to find news that matters—to find the truth?

Here are a few sites I’ve found that have been worthwhile and seem to offer the news that matters most to me.   I’d love any suggestions that you might have on other sites that I might have missed.  Also, all of these sites are wonderful, even the ones I don’t comment upon.

Just cut and paste the dotcom  links below to go to the sites:

Lifesitenews   lifesitenews.com   Extremely well-researched, world-class reporting on multiple issues by seasoned, talented reporters who are sometimes acclaimed experts on the topics that they write about. Many of them speak multiple languages and are therefore able to do in-depth reporting using native documents and sources of the countries upon which they are reporting. Thus they provide important insights into the news and events coming from those countries .  Lifesite is a wonderful and informative source of relevant news from around the world, especially news pertaining to faith and life  issues.

American Thinker     Americanthinker.com  Excellent, extremely well-written articles and editorials about all kinds of issues, especially political issues.

OANN– One America News Network — Oann.com– Wonderful news source

The Washington Times  washingtontimes.com

The New York Post        www.nypost.com

Zerohedge        zerohedge.com

The Federalist         Thefederalist.com

American Greatness        amgreatness.com

The Epoch Times        theepochtimes.com   Excellent variety of news articles from around the world. Great overviews  of the  breaking news of the day.

News from the Whitehouse       Whitehouse.gov   Undiluted news about the President and updates on the country from the President and his staff.

The Liberty Daily    thelibertydaily.com   An aggregate news site with multiple links, much like the DrudgeReport used to be before Matt Drudge sold it.

PragerU      PragerU.com  Excellent and highly informative resource on politics and the important issues of the day.   Host Dennis Prager often has incredibly talented, intelligent, entertaining guest hosts, such as the beautiful  Candace Owens. Short educational clips are very instructive, enlightening and entertaining. As my father used to say, “this guy has his head screwed on right.”

Fox News   Foxnews.com

Daily Wire    dailywire.com   The brilliant Ben Shapiro on topics of the day.

(Any suggestions to add to this list would be appreciated, as I know I’ve missed many )

Faith-based news (especially for Catholics)

OnePeterFive    onepeterfive.com

Firstthings   firstthings.com

EWTN    ewtn.com

Classes on important topics

Hillsdale College   Hillsdale.edu

 

cropped-DSC_0118.jpgPolitical News

Turning Point USA     www.tpusa.com

Judicial Watch    Judicialwatch.org

 

Breitbart   Breitbart.com

P J Media    pjmedia.com

Babylon Bee   Babylonbee.com

The Gateway Pundit     thegatewaypundit.com

Redstate      redstate.com

More to come……

 

Why Free Speech?

Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.

Benjamin Franklin

The truth, like cream, tends to rise to the top in a free marketplace of ideas. Healthy people have a natural hunger for truth, they seek it out and generally recognize it when they find it.

A lie has to work very hard to overcome the truth and ultimately can not compete with truth.  Even after an extreme effort to promote false propaganda, a lie is often dissolved when the truth emerges.

This is exactly why free speech is so important. It is essential for anyone who truly cares about the truth.

The problem—that truth wins out over lie—is often discovered in Communist or other totalitarian governments with severely restricted public access to information.  In such governments, propaganda (false information) has to be propped up by invoking fear or censoring information that might be contrary to government power.  In WW2 Germany,  the government had to go further than that to crush wisdom, and incarcerated teachers and other professionals who might have  lead people out of the darkness of fascism.

They say that the light shines brightest in the darkness, and the light of truth shines brilliantly in the midst of evil.  When the Light of Truth involves Christianity,  persecution only fans the flame of truth and makes it grow.

“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Faith,” writes Tertullian, a first century philosopher.  He observed even back then that evil’s attempts to destroy Christianity just resulted in its exponential growth,

And so lately, evil has taken a different tack.

Today, the evil do not try to crush Christianity from the outside, but do it from within.  Antonio Gramsci, a Communist propagandist described it this way:

“Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity….In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, Universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society,”

An infiltration is when anti-Christian forces invade or buy out Christian organizations, countries, even churches and subsequently pretend to BE Christian.  As the new “Christianity,” it implements the anti-Christian agenda as if Christians are the ones promoting it.   The “changes” are couched in euphemisms—for example, when disregarding the Constitution, one describes it as a “living document”  (that one may interpret any way one feels like it).  And fundamental changes to 2,000 years of church doctrine and tradition, the Bible and the words of Jesus are explained away with the adage, “tradition is not static, it is dynamic.” (“Dynamically” changed by ME, that is.)

In each one of these examples, what the proponent is really saying is that he is going to do whatever the he__  he wants, whether you like it or not, whether it is within the rules, whether it is true or not, whether it is what a true American or Catholic or Christian would do or not.

One example of evil disguised as good  is a Communist government that creates a “Catholic church” that worships the Communist leadership, forbids Christmas, burns Catholic churches, rips children from their terrified mothers’ wombs in forced abortions and persecutes Catholics.  By calling itself Catholic, it pretends to be the same church — but the only one  “allowed” by the government.  The appeal is, here is a church that you can belong to and not be tortured. What a deal!

But it is an imposter.  Recently “legitimized,” by Communist clerics outside of the country,  it has redoubled its persecution of true Catholics and has increased its reign of terror within its borders.

But evil’s technique has gone much further than one country or even one church.   It has used the same kind of deception to try to bring down Western civilization, including whole countries and Christian churches, most notably, the Catholic church.

This has been done recently simply by anti-Christian (sometimes virulently anti-Christian) purchases of solidly Christian publications or sometimes, solidly Christian organizations or administrations.

There is so much more to say about this, but for now the most important thing to know is that propaganda’s most powerful weapon is deception.  The propagandist uses the trust that people have in him against them, to destroy them, by deceit.

How do you recognize when you are being deceived? Hopefully this blog will help.  There’s a pattern, categories of lies with very recognizable buzz words that will tip you off to what they are doing.

So, let’s get started!!