Blogposts

Some doctrinal principles: It is a divinely revealed truth that sins bring punishments inflicted by God’s sanctity and justice. These must be expiated either on this earth through the sorrows, miseries, and trials of life, and above all through death, or else through purifying penalties in the life beyond. Moreover, they are to be expiated either by the sinner himself or also by others who make reparation, as far as possible, in his stead.

For he (Christ) must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 1 Corinthians 15:25-26

What is meant by the social reign of Christ the King? It means: 1) Christ is God, the Creator of the universe and hence wields a supreme power over all things – “All things were created by Him”; 2) Christ is our Redeemer, He purchased us by His precious Blood and made us His property and possession; 3) Christ is Head of the Church, “holding in all things the primacy” 4) God bestowed upon Christ the nations of the world as His special possession and dominion. The principal doctrine of the "social reign of Christ" means that the construction of human society will not be able to achieve its own natural ends without being ordained to Jesus Christ, Creator, and Savior.

Stepinac was the eighth of twelve children of wealthy farmers, Barbara Penic and Josip Stepinac. Upon graduation from the Gymnasium in Zagreb (1916), he was drafted into the Austrian army. As second lieutenant he fought on the Italian front (1917–18). Taken prisoner by the Italians (September 1918), he joined the South Slav volunteers to fight against the Hapsburg rulers. Returning to Croatia (1919), by then a part of Yugoslavia, he studied agriculture in Zagreb. In 1924 he enrolled in the German College, Rome, and attended classes at the Gregorian University. In 1930, he obtained doctorates in philosophy and theology and was ordained a priest in Rome (October 26).

It is for Thee that this dense host of countless princes engage in battle: but it is victorious Michael, the standard bearer of salvation, who unfurls the standard of the Cross. He casts the dreadful head of the dragon into lowest hell and lightning like he hurls from the heavenly ramparts the leader with his rebels.

May Gabriel the strong Angel come to put to flight our ancient enemies and revisit the temples dear to heaven which the Conqueror has established throughout the world.

As the physician of our salvation may the Angel Raphael come down from heaven, that he may heal all who are sick and give guidance in the uncertain affairs of life.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to which the entire month of June is consecrated, carries with it undoubtedly socio-political meanings which, although everything possible has been done in the last half century to condemn them to oblivion, are indelibly part of the history of this worship and are rooted in it. The worship of the Sacred Heart is a worship of adoration of the Lord Jesus with particular emphasis on his holy and true humanity, hence the hostility with which the Jansenists opposed it in the eighteenth century, considering it not very "spiritual" and even idolatrous.

Sad to say strange things, sometimes non-Catholic things, are increasingly said at Catholic funeral Masses today sometimes by clergy and sometimes by laity in a eulogy. Clergy proclaim that the deceased is in Heaven so that the funeral Mass is used as a canonization ceremony or a eulogy proclaims the whole Mass is a eulogy celebrating the life of the deceased. The funeral Mass, or for that matter, any Mass is not a human celebration of us but the supreme and perfect worship of God through Jesus Christ offering Himself on our behalf as Priest, Offering, and Altar.

Frank Furedi wrote a book called The Therapy Culture. He argues that in recent decades virtually every sphere of life has become subject to a new emotional culture. Increasing vulnerability is presented as the defining feature of people's psychology. Terms like people 'at risk', 'scarred for life' or 'emotional damage' evoke a unique sense of powerlessness. Through framing the problem of everyday life through the prism of emotions, therapeutic culture incites people to feel powerless and ill. He is on to something important.

These nineteen martyrs of Algeria, so dear to Pope Leo …Very few people know that May 8, the day of Pope Leo's election, was the day of the liturgical memory of these martyrs and that it was in Numidia, present-day Algeria, that (St) Augustine was born and lived, and Leo defined himself as his "son."… The martyrs of Algeria whose memory is celebrated are the nineteen people depicted on the icon reproduced above, painted by Sister Odile, a nun of the Little Sisters of Nazareth, all massacred between 1994 and 1996, at the height of the "black decade" of the civil war which left 150,000 dead in Algeria.

On November 1st, 1950, Venerable Pius XII proclaimed the Fourth Marian Dogma “We pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.”

Our Lady has always intervened to support her children throughout the centuries with various manifestations. We remember, for example, the interventions of Lepanto (1571) and Vienna (1683), where she saved European Christianity from Islamic military aggression. For several centuries, this infernal aggression has become more subtle and, we might say, increasingly "ideological." At the end of the Napoleonic adventure, having entered into "modernity", the anti-Christian revolution, while accentuating its violent fight against the Church, developed a whole current of thought that would justify the persecution of Christians and the construction of a society hostile to God and human nature.

Guest article by Elmar Lübbers-Paal kath.net (edited) https://kath.net/news/88005

In the Catholic Church, only an exorcist may perform a "major exorcism" if he receives the order from the diocesan bishop and has previously examined whether the person concerned is suffering from a mental illness. If this ecclesiastical service is performed, it is performed in secret, as it is often met with incomprehension.

The Mishnah or Mishna is the first written collection of the Jewish oral traditions that are known as the Oral Torah. Having been collected in the 3rd century A.D. it is the first work of rabbinic literature, written primarily in Hebrew but also partly in Aramaic. The oldest surviving physical fragments of it are from the 6th to 7th centuries. It is viewed as authoritative and binding revelation by most Orthodox Jews and some non-Orthodox Jews.

The bomb that fell the previous day on the Catholic Church of the Holy Family in Gaza (see photo), which knocked down part of the roof and killed three and wounded ten of the 550 worshipers who daily took refuge there, is only the latest sign of a growing wave of rejection of the Christian presence in the Holy Land by a significant segment of Judaism, with its fanatical parties and ministers, its settlers rampaging in the occupied territories, its soldiers intolerant of orders. It is that messianic extremism which Benjamin Netanyahu’s government supports in its acts and which makes any political solution to the war unrealistic, that of two states, Israeli and Palestinian, and that of a single state with two peoples with equal rights.