Author: Odon De Castro

1. We have seen Divine Providence providing man everything he needs for the salvation of his soul. That has been in place from the beginning of the world and will be up to the end. We have seen the damage God had allowed in His Church from the 8th century, through the 10th century and up to the present. We see today the state of the Church as if she is nowhere to be found. Let us now see how God intervened in these our days.

2. For the last 600 years most Catholic priests had both erroneous and true Catholic doctrines in their minds. This cannot foster a true act of Faith that will enable them to enter the Church and live a life of Faith, Hope and Charity. Priests should recognize error and separate it from the truth. After 600 years we just cannot imagine how this admixture of error and truth had affected the spiritual state of the Church. As Pope Benedict suspects the Church had been reduced to a ‘creative minority,’ words he himself use.

3. This erroneous state of mind was first isolated, analyzed and recognized by an international theological commission made up of expert theologians to advice the Fathers of Vatican II. This commission analyzed many truths being taught in the Catholic Church and had begun announcing some of their findings. The first was a clarification on the Limbo of unbaptized children. But a most significant announcement was made by then Cardinal Ratzinger in 1985 in a book entitled “Ratzinger Report” that the Church was undergoing a crisis of Faith. The implication of the statement is that few were entering the Catholic Church due to a problem in making an act of Faith. Then he described the problem of the priests (and bishops, I suppose) is that they were restless. The statement implies that most priest had the vice of restlessness.

There are eight vices and restlessness is the seventh. St. John Cassian states that if one has restlessness that means he has all the vices. He would be without the Theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity and, therefore, would be outside the Church. Tormented by this heresy for the last 600 years, most priests would, probably be outside the Church!

4. In 1993, Pope John Paul II with the obvious cooperation of Cardinal Ratzinger issued “Veritatis Splendor” where they laid down what could have happened from the year 1000 up to the present showing how the heresy corrupted the curriculum in seminaries and stated that the doctrines taught in seminaries and passed on to the lay faithful had been compromised. When an error enters a curriculum, the error gets worst as time goes. He who does not progress deteriorates, St. Thomas reminds us. It is unimaginable how bad an error can corrupt a church for 600 years.

5. ‘Veritatis Splendor’ explains how the Church had been invaded by Satan and how the Church today is trying to expel this evil spirit by the actions of the Church, herself.

6. After showing what had happened for the last 600 years in the Church in the ‘Ratzinger Report’, in 2000, Cardinal Ratzinger addressed a conference of Catechist and showed the defect in teaching Catechism in his ‘New Evangelization.’ He said, the defect was in the contents and in the method of teaching. That is like saying everything taught was wrong.

7. When Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope, like all Popes, he gave a review of the teachings of the Catholic Church in his first three encyclical on Faith, Hope and Charity. This should have given all priests the hint that they should check on their personal Faith, Hope and Charity. But this did not happen. So the Pope called for the Year of St. Paul, which was a further reminder to all to check on their Faith. The response was weak. So the Pope called on the Year of the Priest mildly suggesting to all priest to return to the seminary and review their theology, which no one seems to have done. Then from 2005 – 2011 the Holy Father issued the ‘Instrumentum Laboris’ where he advised all Bishops to sit down with their priest and give some pastoral suggestions based on ‘Veritatis Splendor.’ How many bishops responded is unknown but among my friend bishops no one responded to the ‘instrumentum.’ This was the Pope’s way of trying to find evidences on the spiritual state of the Church. And almost as a last resort the Holy Father announced next year,2012 as the Year of Faith.

8. The Church seems to be exerting great efforts for man to make an act of Faith. Repentance comes before Faith. And we have seen in Fatima that the world seems unable even to repent.

Faith is what brings us into the Catholic Church. It is what saves us. It is the gift that enable us to know and understand the teachings of the Catholic Church. It is the gift that enables us to know the way to God and our everlasting home. Is the Church saying nobody is inside the Church? That would be the blunt insinuation.

9. And now, the words ‘the New Evangelization’ is in everyone’s lips. But obviously nobody seems to know what is this. All we hear in conventions is the old defective evangelization already noted by the Pope.

10. To strengthen his effort in confirming his flock’s faith, Pope Benedict wrote his ‘compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church’ because the just finished Catechism of the Catholic Church is filled with the stench of this hydra that had corrupted the Church for the last 600 years. Yes why would the Pope write his own catechism when the New Catechism of the Catholic Church had just been distributed. And now we have the YOUCAT. Does this still have the defective content and method of teaching already mentioned by the Pope? Only those who have mastered ‘Veritatis Splendor’ can answer that because that document contains truths in its purity and errors that had plaqued Holy Mother the Church.

11. The Holy Father had already mentioned what went wrong with the Church for the last 600 years and what are the right teachings of Christ in both ‘Veritatis Splendor’ and ‘Instrumentum Laboris.’ The Holy Father had many times reminded us that the ‘New Evangelization’ is a call for priest and for all of us to be perfect as the heavenly Father is perfect because that is the image of the Catholic Church as the boat of the apostles in the Sea of Tiberias approached the shore where Christ was waiting that contained only seven disciples with their catch of 153 large fishes. Reading St. Thomas’ commentary on this last chapter of John’ Gospel…….this is the goal of the ‘New Evangelization.’

1. Everything in Catholic History can only be understood if we see things in the back drop of the great battle between good and evil within the soul of men; with God encouraging the good while the devil encouraging the evil. Man with his freedom is the factor who decides who will win. God, of course is unbeatable but having given man total freedom God had leveled the playing field.

2. The more man decides on God’s favor, the more powerful he becomes in his fight against the devil until such times when he is able to enter the fort of safety, the Catholic Church, where, unless he becomes extremely careless he is very safe.

3. On the other side, the more he decides in favor of the devil, he deteriorates. But God in His goodness gave man an enormous advantage over the the wiles of the devil. He gave man faculties designed to know and love Him. He has given man Divine Revelation and Tradition; and also the protection of a fort, he Church, wherewith he becomes safe because of the graces, virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit given him. And these advantages accompany man all his life and all through his history.

4. God gave all these advantages gradually at certain times in the history of man. He gave the natural law before the Old Testament; He gave the Ten Commandments during the Old Testament and gave graces, the virtues, the Beatitudes and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament.

5. After the New Testament, when the Master of the House went away for a journey, Satan entered the vineyard and corrupted the servants. Christ Himself, prophesied that He will certainly find many servants wicked.

6. Aside from the above helps, God gave mankind, after Pentecost, the guiding light of the office of the Holy Father and the saints He had raised to aid the Popes in leading mankind to the safe port of His kingdom.

7. All these helps had been present for mankind from the beginning of the world, now and up to the end of the world. God is faithful and these helps will always be there available and no effort on the part of the evil spirits can deny man of these helps. This is the safe way God had given man. The way is surrounded by countless danger but as long as man stays within the way he is safe.

8. But the evil spirits, true to their intelligent nature had devised an0ther parallel road, very similar to the True Way in all natural and physical aspects a perfect duplication. As St. John Chrysostom said, the devil waits for Christ to be born and then devised a false christ, he waits for the 12 apostles and devised 12 fake apostles, he waits for the Christian Church and devised a fake Christian community, he waits for the Pope and devised a fake pope, he waits for the Dogmatic and Moral theology of the Catholic Church and devised his own Dogmatic and Moral theology. The difference is so slight it takes supernatural light of the Theological Virtues to detect it.

9. The devil’s parallel road is an exact replica of the True Way …but it leads to hell.

10. The beginning of Christianity was like daylight for a trip. The way is clear even without sign posts. As Prophesied in Scriptures, and right on schedule, the devil only had to darken the sky with clouds and suddenly the two parallel roads are indistinguishable. How did the devil do that?
He understood the workings of human nature. He knew that man cannot think of two things at the same time specially if one thought is in the worldly level and the other is in the supernatural level. Man cannot think of worldly things and Godly things at the same time. If he thinks of worldly things he cannot think of divine things. And as he thinks of worldly things he becomes more and more incapable of Divine thoughts.

11. So if I were the devil all I have to do is to fill the minds of man with the things of the world. In no time he cannot see the road that leads to God, the parallel road that leads to hell becomes very clear, it even clearly appears as a road that leads to heaven. And the ‘Viator’ will confidently drive straight to hell believing he is going to heaven. What greater tragedy can happen to a soul? But God is faithful. All the aids He had given mankind is still there and will always be there. Man just have to find these helps. In part II we shall see how the devil darkened the sky. Then we shall see how God acted to save mankind in part III.

1. The devil had been destroying the human race since the time of Adam and Eve. In paradise, the devil started with a heresy. It was there that the head of the hydra was first created. It consisted in the heresy of freedom wherein man thought he was free to choose between good and evil, the symbol of the tree that was forbidden. And God reminded them; ‘you may not touch it.’ Man was not free to choose good from evil. He was in fact forbidden to choose between good and evil and this was the spirituality of the Old Testament. The Old Testament states that we must choose good and avoid evil, it is not that we may choose whatever we want from good and evil and freely choose evil. The New Testament will perfect the spirituality of the Old Testament. We are not free to chose between good and evil. We are obliged to choose good and avoid evil. The New testament tells us it is not enough to chose good and avoid evil, our choice is between what is good and what is best. We must chose not only what is good but what is better and best.

As the history of man proceeded, the devil tried to use other heresies to see to what sin man is attracted to. The devil must have tried thousands of heresies but because he lacks imagination in devising heresies all these errors can really be grouped into 5 to 10 major heresies. Alone, these heresies were easy to overcome but joined together they become a formidable spiritual foe.

2. We are all acquainted with some of these: Arianism, Pelagianism, Nominalism,….to mention a few. Put together they become a hydra with no visible recognizable shape, neither Arianism nor Pelagianism. It becomes a little of everything, a poisonous concoction of a hundred different poison. We cannot know what particular poison it is and so we couldn’t know the remedy. We cannot use the medicine used by St. Athanasius against Arianism because it also show signs of Nominalism.

3. This concoction of many heresies attacked the Church between the year 100 to 800. But it was effectively blocked by the Church. It returned around the 1000, Pope Urban with the help of St. Anselm did battle against it but like the hydra, every time a portion of the heresy was cut off, it grew new limbs. It was impossible to kill it completely. And so it continued to torment the Church after Pope Urban and St. Anselm at this era since this 10th century saw a decrease of great Catholic thinkers.

4. This hydra of a monster was so deceitful only Lucifer, himself, could have devised it. Instead of attacking the Church directly, the devil went on guerrilla warfare using germ warfare against the seminaries. These were heretical germs that had mutated into resistant Catholic medications. Essentially this heresy bogged down the Catholic Church into the Old Testament preventing her from crossing from the Old Testament into the realm of the New Testament. It camouflaged the Old Testament spirituality with beautiful New Testament words making it sound like New Testament. It encouraged the New Testament spirituality but stated that this spirituality is only for a few select chosen souls. Note that all the doctrines are right except for the statement that the New Testament, by now described as impossible for most Catholics and is only for a few chosen elite souls. The germ contaminated the whole Church, specially at the level of seminaries. The statement is more than enough to discourage souls from crossing from the Old Testament to the New Testament. This is in effect preventing souls from entering the Catholic Church, preventing souls from having the theological virtues…in short preventing souls from going to heaven. Those bitten by this bug will never know the way to heaven. Martin Luther, Zwingli and Calvin were a few among the terminal cases. The rest of the Catholic priesthood were in different stages of illness. Philosophies like Nazism, democracy, communism would come from this heresy through the philosophy of the enlightenment in France. Every evil today came from this hydra.

At this period it was impossible to find where the Catholic Church was. Seminaries were producing bishops and priest of doubtful orthodoxy. There were so few seminaries that were producing orthodox priest that you could count them, like the seminary of St. Sulpice. The rest were no where in the map of orthodoxy. The few holy priest and thinkers were directly raised by God. They were not products of seminaries.

5. From the 1000 to the 1500 and up to the present, the Church had been undergoing internal spiritual hemorrhage, she was bleeding to death. She looked healthy outside but she was dying inside. The visible Church knew there was something wrong inside so she calls the Council of Trent where all the right doctrinal medicines were prescribed. But the doctors lack the skill to heal. So the post Tridentine resolutions were not wisely implemented. The Moral theology of Trent had this hydra in its womb. So the disease continued. God, as usual raised Popes with the help of God-raised saints like Vincent de Paul and Francis de Sales immediately after Trent, precisely to cure the priesthood of this disease. It only caused a dent. The struggle of the Popes from the 15th century was Herculean. To my memory Pius IX, Pius X indefatigably condemned this heresy. It depleted the strength of Pope Pius the XII that he even thought of retiring as Pope, it disturbed the sleep of John 23 seeing the Church bleeding to death through her five wounds he hurriedly saummoned Vatican II, it opened the eyes of Paul VI that made him warn “Satan had entered the Church.” It was a challenged for the present Pope, Benedict XVI who, up to the present , had very visibly combated this hydra but he sadly knows that the medicine is being administered to a dying patient. The response is not encouraging because the disease is in its terminal stage. The Church could only apply cobalt to slow down the deterioration as shown in the dwindling list of saints and great thinkers of the Church, and the dwindling number of priests and nuns. The stench of the disease has begun enveloping the world in the form of the greatest sin, scandal by priests.

6. The virtue of Faith demands that a soul must know the complete doctrine of the Catholic Church in its purity. The doctrines cannot exist with errors. If the soul knows both the error and truths, he should know that the errors are errors and that the truth is the truth. But if the soul knows both the truth and the errors but cannot distinguish the errors from the truth that soul cannot make a true act of Faith and thus suffer its consequence. This is what happened to the souls from the 1000 up to the present year 2011. Most priests and most lay person do not know the spirituality of the New Testament and therefore, cannot enter the Catholic Church, do not have the virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity, thus cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. And the Church is filled with the signs of this sad state of affairs, signs enumerated in both the Dogmatic and Moral theology of the Catholic Church.
God comes back to the rescue. Part III.

1. The one and only true Church and the one and only true God.
Gilbert Chesterton once wrote that the whole world hates the Catholic Church because she claims that she is the only true Church and her God is the only true God. Yes, that’s enough to make the whole world hate her. The trouble is that she can prove it. That will all the more make the whole world rage at her which in fact is now happening. But she has not done anything wrong. Pope Benedict XVI explains this with that old-time classical response: her mere existence is more than ample proof that she is the only true Church and her God is the only true God and all the rest are false. This is why Catholics had been killed just for being Catholics. The proof for this truth is within each man.

2. When God created man He wanted to made sure this man can know Him and love Him. So God implanted into his soul a dormant seed that contains a desire to know and to love Him. The seed is dormant because God wants him to know and love Him with complete freedom. Man’s mind and free will must arouse this seed to life and to maturity. Man must have total freedom to make it grow. How can this happen when a man is alone in a dense forest amidst impassable mountains. Can he know that the Catholic Church is the true Church and the Blessed Trinity the true God? Yes!

3. Man has to be a little philosopher. He must use his highest faculty, the intellect, to study that seed to see what it contains. Seeing that it contains the desire to know and love God, the intellect will move and exert effort to, first, know God and afterwards to love God. He cannot love God unless he first knows Him. So he looks around for proofs on the existence of God to be able to know Him. His senses behold nature, the trees in the forest with the surrounding mountains, and his mind concludes that there must be someone who created all this. He continues to use his intellect to find out who could this be. Of course, the first conclusion his mind would make would be that this someone must be wise and good. Judging from what He had created God cannot be a killer. Man’s first knowledge would be simple from the first simple proofs he gets from nature. But as he continuous to view nature from the stars to the tiniest human cell these proofs further exhibit the wisdom and goodness of this Someone. While his knowledge grows, his attraction or love for this Someone likewise increases. The free will grows according to the growth of the intellect.

4. A point comes when he begins to think that this Someone who exhibits wisdom must have written something that is easier for man to study to know Him. He tries a few books and sees that most books do not confirm what the little seed tells him. Until one day he finds Scriptures wherein God reveals Himself to man and finds that Scriptures confirms what the little seed in his soul tells him. But his intellect believes not because Scriptures said so but because the little seed of innate desire said so. And this knowledge of who God is will continue to grow as long as the intellect thinks like a man. His knowledge will begin with a knowledge of the god of nature. And if he continues to think he will attain to the knowledge of a supernatural God and even a knowledge of the Blessed Trinity.

5. Even at the beginning of his quest on who is God, hid mind will suspect that this god had instituted a church which he could enter and further learn more about Him. And he will begin to wonder what is His Church. It must be a Church that should correspond to His nature as a wise and good God. It will slowly begin to be clear that only one church reflect the wisdom and goodness of God…the Catholic Church where reason and good works reign supreme.

6. This man alone in a forest in the middle of the many mountains has not attended a seminary, never read a book and never heard a homily. This man would know the true God and the true Church because he just acted according to God’s image and likeness, according to the human nature that his creator had given him. And even before he realizes it he has entered God’s Church without any human aid. Isn’t this what happened to Blessed John Newman. And he was not even alone in a forest amidst mountains. He was in the middle of an environment hostile to the Catholic Church. Yet he discovered the true God and the true Church.

7. Just by acting according to his created human nature using his intellect anyone can reach the knowledge of the true God and the true Church all by himself. God has enabled man to do this by creating him into His image and likeness. Man must only go inside himself to see the image and likeness and he will be beholding the god who created him. So all men can know the true Church, the Catholic Church and the true God, the God of the Catholics even if he were alone in a dense forest in the middle of mountain ranges. And this was the message of Pope Benedict at Regensburg :’If only we use our reason we would all be Catholics. And there will be peace in this world.’ Reason was made by God to think of spiritual realities. It becomes dull when used to think of natural realities. Dulled by the countless worldly concerns man had ceased to think.

8. We live in a world where thinking is nearly impossible because of TV, computers, radios, iPods,computer games………..etc…etc stimuli that bombard our senses glutting our minds with useless and forbidden knowledge. Faith is an act of the intellect. Is it any wonder why many do not believe in God? Even if man does not think, his ability to know the true God and the true religion remains within him. And he will suspect that it is always there. No matter how loud he blasphemes the Catholic Church and her God, deep down he knows He is yelling at the true Church and the true God. And this tiny seeds speaks loudest when a soul beholds a monastic community. Pope Benedict reminds us that when we behold a monastic community we see in concrete form the true religion and the true God in their midst. Sadly, however, most monasteries are too lax to project the image of God and of the Church. The ancients, like the Chinese, always looked for a king philosopher. Because this is the man who thinks and whose mind governs his whole personality. Hilaire Belloc however quipped, today we live in a society of beasts in coat and tie.

9. God had given man a mind that made him an image of God. The Holy Father is calling on all of us to use that mind so that we can all remain calm and sane. But nobody is listening because man have ceased to be man.

Without the mind man had ceased to be rational, unable to make an act of faith, unable to love God and neighbor, unable to save his soul.

Once upon a time there were three Gods who ruled the world. They were so happy among themselves when one of them made the suggestion:
‘We are so happy here in paradise. Let us create some creatures that they may share our happiness.’
‘Yes’, answered the second God. ‘Let us make them into our own image and likeness so they can have the power to enjoy our happiness.’
‘How can we make them like us?’ asked the third God?
‘Let us give them reason and a heart that will make them capable of loving and never desire the death of a sinner but that they should be converted and live,’ said the first God. ‘They will need a long life on earth because they will need much work to prepare themselves on the earth to be worthy of happiness here in our abode.’
‘They should be pro-life then?’
‘No, not really. Because if they have prepared themselves well they can die on the earth so they may come to our abode immediately. There is no use for them tarrying down on earth lest they die unprepared and become unworthy to come to our abode.’
‘Now, that is a good rule. If we see that children are going to be so evil that they would not come here to our abode we might as well get them sooner to assure their happiness.’
‘Indeed that is a good rule, let us write that down.’
‘But what rule shall we give everybody to make them deserving to be with us? You mentioned LOVE. How will they show that?’
‘We shall obliged them to love their souls and the souls of all their neighbors specially the souls of their enemies.’
‘ Hmmmm. So that means they should never desire the death of a sinner but that he should be converted and live.
‘ You are right. That way they will look like gods, like ourselves and, therefore, capable of living here with us. You really think like a god. Are we all set to create these creatures?’
‘Ok. But you (pointing to the second god) must schedule yourself to go down to earth to teach them how to love to the point that they should never desire the death of a sinner but that he should be converted and live.’
‘ Pointing at the second god he continued, ‘ You should allow these man-creatures to be your enemies, let them persecute and crucify you. Then show that you do not desire their death but that they should be converted and live.’
‘I don’t really like that persecution, crucifixion and dying part? But ok. I’ll do it,’ the second god said resignedly.

6000 years after.

‘Hey, have you seen what is going on down there among the men we created,’ the first god asked the two other gods.
‘Yes, the men we created are killing each other. Even at the beginning a brother desired the death of his own brother who was not even a sinner. They even killed me who was trying to bring them to paradise. This ‘I do not wish the death of a sinner but that he should be converted and live,’ seems not to be working. Have you seen how many men have entered our abode?’
‘A trickle.The rest are all killing good guys and wishing the death of sinners.’
‘And look! they are all celebrating, greeting one another and praising the death of sinners,’ added the third god. ‘Look at all those banners and news headlines.’
‘Maybe those sinners deserve it.’
‘ That is immaterial. The obligation we imposed on them is to love and show their love by ‘not desiring the death of a sinner but that they should be converted and live, just as we are doing.’
‘Ahhh. Man has ceased to be like us, like our image and likeness. He has become like the beast we have created for them to kill and eat. They do not deserve to abide with us. Are there a few who are at least obeying our requirement?’
‘ Well, there is a man in white who is trying hard to do it and teach others to do the same. But he is not succeeding very much.’
‘ Since man whom we wished to be like our image and likeness, like gods, now looks like beasts maybe we should call off this project of inviting mere creatures here to our abode.’
‘It has not shown good results since we started it 6,000 years ago. But ok, let’s give this last generation one last chance.’
‘Do you think they will change and improve?’
‘ No, I don’t think so. But at least they cannot say we did give them a last chance.’
‘ This sight is sickening,’ said the second god.’ I died for all of them so that they would not desire the death of sinners but that they should be converted and live……and they would not do it to one another. All heads of states, all news media, all men…..we created them to be like gods, and look at them!’

The first god sent his messengers to collect all the materials of the experiment using earthquakes, floods, famine, wars, pestilence to face him in judgment. Those who loved and prayed not for the death of the sinner but that they should be converted and live were brought to the abode of the gods. And those who did not were hurled into everlasting fire.
And the three gods congratulated themselves : ‘this is a good day for us that we have shown we are always one in mind and heart in all things…..as if we are one God.’

1. As a young seminarian I used to study moral theology. And I remember a small outline I had that gave a summary of moral theology. And I found nothing wrong with it because it was based on the 10 commandments of the Old Testament. Then as a young priest I remember attending sessions called “casus conscientiae” where we discussed certain acts to find out if they are moral or immoral. The basis of the discussion is again the 10 commandments of the Old Testament.

When I gave retreats and help prepare the retreatants for confession I tell them to read the examination of conscience in the Missal. They were descriptions of sins against the 10 commandments of the Old Testament.
And when they came for confession they confess: I told lies, I committed adultery, etc. which are violations of the 10 commandments of the Old Testament. And so the impression given me is that to go to heaven we must simply obey the 10 commandments of the Old Testament.

2. But these days things had gone worst. The 10 commandments were simply thrown away. Young couples lived together without marriage and man marry man, babies are aborted and woman practice family planning. Morality became confusing. If two pagans consent to live together as man and wife, moral theology states that they are married and the Church recognizes such marriages. Why is it immoral when two Catholics agree together with out the benefit of the Sacrament. Is there a natural law that governs the pagans and another that governs Catholics? And man marrying another man, there is no such prohibition in the 10 commandments. Aborting babies might be obviously sinful because it is against the command “Thou shalt not kill.” But family planning if we do not use abortifacient methods, is it immoral?

3. Then one thing became obvious. The commands in the Old Testament are commands in the natural level so even pagans can obey them. And these commands are guides to fulfilling the natural law. But the New Testament is the era of grace and belongs to the supernatural level so those outside the Church cannot even know them and much less obey them.

And while the commands in the Old Testament are commanded, the commands of the New Testament are counselled because those with Faith do not need to be commanded. They are made to be attracted to what is good like the Beatitudes. The spirituality of the New Testament is based on the Beatitudes. We cannot begin even with the first Beatitudes unless we have finished our repentance, obeyed the 10 Commandments and have the supernatural virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity. And the way God encourages us to grow in the virtues is not by commands but by counsels like the counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience.

4. In the New Testament confession must sound like this: I was not poor in spirit. Or I am rich in spirit. Now wait a minute. In the New Testament Catholics should not confess that way because they do not commit such sins. Their sins would largely be venial sins because they have entered into the life of grace and have received the virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity. So their confession should be something like this: I was drowsy during rosary. Or I lost my attention briefly during Mass.

When Catholics are against abortion because they are pro-life that is good and right. But that is Old Testament spirituality in obedience to the command Thou shalt not kill. And this is the same when Catholics are against family planning because it is often abortifacient. If Catholics would be acting according to New Testament spirituality they would say: they are against abortion because the guilty mother does not love herself properly, does not love her husband and children, does not love her neighbor and other children and does not love God …..and this will make her unhappy in this world and eternally unhappy in the next world. The same reasoning goes why we are against family planning.

5 In the New Testament morality is seen not in the physical acts of men but from his inner spiritual activities.

6. New Testament morality comes from the interior of man’s soul, from the virtues dwelling in his mind and free will and not merely from his actions. Today’s morality is focused on externals and not in internals.

7. Internal morality is the way St. Paul analyzes the morality of those he was correcting. Let us take an illustration. In 1Cor. St. Paul writes: If I speak in human an angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or clashing cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. Then St. Paul describes the virtue of Charity.

8. A New Testament confession should sound like this: I have been proud and pride had made all the things I did sinful. Or, I have no Charity and because of this everything I did was useless.
The basis of morality in the New Testament are the virtues and not the commandments. The virtues more specifically Faith, Hope and Charity.

9. If I am a great preacher, even if I can teach all the commandments of Christ in the New Testament and expound all the teachings of the Catholic Church, even if I have great Faith and walk over waters, even if I go home sell all I own like the young rich man and give everything away, even if I offer my body to martyrdom……..St. Paul did not say I would be canonized. He said I am nothing. . . if I do not have the virtue of Charity. So what made all those activities moral and deserving of heaven is if it is done with Charity. The deeds themselves are of no consequence. What counts is how it was done.

10. It is not the preaching that is the moral act that will save me but the virtue of Charity that moves me to preach. Charity is what makes our preaching a moral act.

11. The principle of Catholic morality is this: acts that are products of supernatural virtues are moral acts. Acts that are products of vices are immoral acts. So St. Paul, that great moralist writes in Colosians: Put to death then, the parts of you that are earthly, immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and the greed that is idolatry….put them all away, anger, fury, malice, slander. Then St. Paul shows the internal source of the vices then shows the external manifestations of the vices: stop lying.

12. Then St. Paul tells us to put on the virtues that dictates the morality of our actions: put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Then he gives external manifestations of these internal forces; wives, be subject to your husbands, slaves, obey your human masters, masters treat your slaves justly and fairly.

13. St. Paul in Ephesians enumerates two sources of immorality: impurity and greed, two vices that makes most of our actions immoral.

14. So what makes abortion, family planning and most economic practice immoral? The lack or complete absence of the virtue of Charity.

15. Grace, Faith, Hope and Charity are what makes a person good and what makes his acts good, St. Augustine states. With grace a person and his acts are moral. With the absence of these that makes the person and his acts good, the person and his acts are immoral or evil. Thus evil had been described as the absence of what makes it good.

1. Did you know? Of course not, otherwise you would have despaired. But anyway did you know that around the 14th century something horrible happened and nobody even knew it until now? That was around 600 years ago!

2. Well here it is. The Catholic Church had always known what was moral to attain happiness and beatitude that consists in union with God. It is written in the Old Testament, revealed in perfection in the New Testament, clearly explained by the Fathers of the Church and proposed to us by the Holy Father. And that was how things were from the early times in the Catholic Church up to the 14th century. And from his interior, a soul accomplished this, first; by an act of the intellect seeking the truth, secondly; by an act of the will desiring what is good, thirdly by an act of the free will in cooperation with the mind and the will that results into an act of choice. That is how a soul makes a morally good act that leads to Faith and Charity wherewith the soul believes and loves God.

From the beginning the evil one had tried many times to derail man’s quest for God but he was no match against the God and the saints that God had raised to guide the Church.

The human act necessary in the process of salvation may be described as a perfect human act showing the quality of true and complete freedom. That is how God wants us to go to heaven in complete freedom. Briefly this consist in an assent of the intellect to the truths, the consent of the free will to the same truths, a choice made through the cooperation between the mind and the free will ……the result is a perfect human act done with perfect freedom. This leads to the attainment of Beatitude, which is the first degree of happiness and holiness desired by all men. When a soul does this, he will attain grace with the three theological virtues of Faith, hope and charity. These three virtues will further grow to perfection with the aid of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And as these three virtues in with the aid of the seven gifts grow, the soul grows in the life of Beatitudes.

That was how things were from the time of Christ and up to the 14th century in spite of attempts from the devil to destroy the process. Again, the Church was guided by the writings of the Old Testament, the New Testament, the writings of the Fathers of the Church and the guidance of the Holy Father. The ark was unsinkable.

Then around the 14th century a philosophy altered the teachings of the Church that completely changed the concept of true Christian freedom. With this new heretical philosophy the intellect was left out and the free will was given free rein to control the body. This was total chaos. It is from this new concept of freedom that the reign of terror in France came from. This is where Democracy, communism, and all the evils in the world came from. This heresy has many faces but at that time it was called nominalism. Today it rules the whole world.

This heresy did not affect the Magisterium of the Church and neither did it affect the Holy Father, the Pope. It mainly affected the teaching of Moral theology in the seminaries. Suddenly what was moral and immoral became blurred. And the entire spirituality of the Catholic Church because it was based on Moral theology retreated back to the Old Testament, a spirituality of physical obligations. Remember that at this point the Church and the Pope were all right. The crisis was in the teaching of Moral theology in the seminaries.

Moral theology is based on Dogmatic theology and put into practice through Ascetical theology. Imagine how an error in Moral theology can do great damage in Ascetical Theology. The damage is unimaginable. Note how the number or saints dwindled from the 1400 to almost nothing by the 20th century. And religious houses who lived the ascetical life became spiritually stunted.

Of course, God was not remiss during all these times. He raised Popes, Holy bishops, holy priests and saints to correct this great defect. Every Pope with the help of saints corrected this error in every age. I see clearly Pope Pius IX, Pius X, Leo XIII and in my own time Pius XII up to Benedict XVI. And there are the saints, like the Cure of Ars, St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Francis de Sales, etc. But this was a very thin ‘Catena Aurea’ of Bishops and priests…..and ‘catholics’ seldom read their writings. This went on from the 14oo up to the present. Imagine the consequence of such a situation. Ignorant of the true concept of true freedom, most bishops and priests would not know the reasons why certain things were moral and immoral. If this state begun at the 1400, imagine the state of the Church by the year 2000 A.D. I will put it another way: if they did not know the spirituality of the New Testament how can they lead anyone inside the Catholic Church.

However, this is how the Holy Spirit began to act in these our days. Pope Pius XII (the Pope of my youth) saw in the world war the descend of man back to barbarism. He tried hard to raise the world to the level of the New Testament through the Liturgy (Mediator Dei) but by the end of his life he was praying to God to call him back home in dismay at the state of the world.

Pope John 23 saw the problem from a treatise written by Blessed Rosmini entitled ” The 5 wounds of the Church.” The Church was bleeding to death with total ignorance of the New Testament. The highest form of morality was based on the 10 commandments of the Old Testament and not on the Beatitudes of the New Testament. He called a Council. It was emergency. Pope Paul VI worked under insurmountable obstacle as he tried to propel the Church during Vatican II into the era of the New Testament. When he tried to raise the morality of family planning up to the level of the New Testament the Catholic world rebelled against it. Then an international council of theologians was put together to advise the ecumenical council. And in their deliberation they discovered that many textbooks for seminaries were bleeding with heresies. I got the impression that they examined all the books on Morals used in seminaries. Fortunately one of the theologian in the group was a priest named Joseph Ratzinger who was to head the Congregation for the Faith. He had the power to act on matters of Faith. And he saw the crisis of Faith that has gnawed on the Church. He saw that with such a crisis no one would be entering the Church and no one would be entering heaven. What a alarming thought for a churchman.

So he outlined in a book entitled the “Ratzinger Report” the disease that had gnawed in the Church for the last 600 years. Around 1980 he wrote the document “new Evangelization” where he gave instruction on evangelization and stated that the teaching of the Catholic Faith had been wrong in the way it was taught both in contents and method. It was a very general statement and the defect to be corrected was not stated in it.

Then somewhere around 1993 Pope John Paul II issued “Veritatis splendore.” It was obviously a work in collaboration with Ratzinger because it was an elaboration of his “New Evangelization.” Here it was very clear that majority in the Church for the last 600 years were teaching Old Testament spirituality or even something worst. And that hardly anyone today is teaching the New Testament spirituality. In other words, the men of the Church were teaching only the morality of the 10 commandments and not the morality of the Beatitudes. Or worst they were teaching neither the Old nor the the New Testament. And “Veritatis splendor” outlined what was the spirituality and morality of the New Testament. It was a lengthy encyclical. Like all encyclicals I expected it to be addressed to the entire Catholic world. To my surprise it was addressed only to the Episcopate. Understandably so because it contained a complete summary of the New Testament and how to teach it correctly in a language only Bishops can understand and so they will have to teach it to their priests and subjects. But because of its length few seems to have read it or it was read carelessly. The effects of “Veritatis Splendor” was nowhere to be felt.

This neglect was obvious to the next Pope, Benedict XVI who called on a year of St. Paul where the spirituality of the New Testament according to St. Paul was laid down… again to no effect. Then he called the year of the priest where he enjoined all bishops and priest to return to the seminary and study “Varitatis splendor.” I really don’t think any one did it. I did not. Though I personally studied it. Knowing full well that no one returned to the seminary the Holy Father issued the “Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church” which is a detailed explanation of “Veritatis Splendor.” At least, now, we can study privately.

While the Old Testament motivated us to reach the Promised Land, the New Testament motivated us to reach the kingdom of God through Faith, Hope and Charity. Seeing that the state of affairs has not changed since the 1400, the Pope had finally directed the evangelization of the Catholic cities of the world and called a year of Faith in the year 2012. This is a call to live the New Testament spirituality. It is a call for those who are still in the dim light of the Old Testament or even the darker era of pre- Old Testament. It is a call for those who are still outside the Church. It is a call to live the New Testament. But since very few know how the New Testament spirituality looks like he called it the “New Evangelization.” Pope Benedict himself clarified that this is not a new evengelization. It is the old, classical way of evangelization.

You cannot destroy the Church. But you can destroy those trying to enter the Church. And that is what the devil does. When a person is well inside the Church he is indestructible. But if he has just entered the Church, i.e. if he has little faith, he can still leave the Church and be destroyed. Those who are outside the Church….. you do not have to destroy because they are already destroyed. The fact that a person has entered the Church and left due to weak faith makes it easier for him, however, to re-enter the Church.

1. It was easy to find them before. In the early times of the Church just ask where the Catholics were and you get a hand and a straight finger pointing directly at a whole community of Catholics. They lived apart from the worldly people, they lived in community shared all things in common and they loved one another. They were usually found outside of towns and cities. Later on they were found in huge communities living in the desert, in cities carved out of volcanic mountains, on islands, on top of mountains….it was easy to find them and they can be pointed out apart from the rest.

2. At the beginning of the 19oo I had the impression that Catholics could specially be found in two organizations, the Catholic Action and the Legion of Mary. Of course, they were around but it was almost impossible to point them out. But the members of these two organizations looked different from the rest. Even Hitler feared them. And they were Catholics both in their behaviour and in their speech. Talking to them it is clear their doctrines are correct. These were laymen whose basic Catholic doctrines were right.

3. Today we have hundreds of so- called Catholic organizations of laymen founded by both laymen and the clergy. There are many quasi religious groups founded by nuns and priest. There are even clerical or priestly groups founded by Bishop’s conference. But the foundational doctrine of their way of life does not exhibit the purity of Catholic doctrine. It is even evident in their way of life and in their speech. . . which should cause us to raise our eyebrows.

4. Many laymen groups that are even approved by the Congregation of religious and secular life are founded by laymen who have no knowledge of Divine Revelation. They have held the bible briefly for the first time in their lives and before you know it they are founding huge secular followings. This is a danger the Council of Orange warned the Church: the danger of laymen getting hold of the bible and immediately starting a new sect. As St. Paul described it “unenlightened zeal”.

There are many nuns, probably discontented with their orders had left and founded new groups with themselves as superiors. Some nuns had left their orders to become hermits. St. Benedict warned us of religious who cannot live the community life and rushes into the heremitical life to avoid the burden of community living. And there are some clerical/ priestly groups organized by Bishop’s conference whose way of life is Pelagian heresy resurrected in that they think they can improve the world on their own as in the case of liberation theology. What is evident among them is the lack of a solid doctrinal foundation. In short, they do not know how to go to heaven. They just presume because they belong to this established catholic organization or community approved by the Bishop and even by Rome they will surely go to heaven. Even the vast numbers of converts entering the Church today do not realize they do not immediately become Catholics. There is still a long process before they can attained orthodox Catholic Faith.

5, So where have all the Catholics gone? Where is the Catholic Church? Can anyone raise his hand and point them out with their finger showing the Catholic apart from the rest? When I hold retreat for priests, seminarians or nuns I would tell them jokingly “show me the four signs that you are Catholics.” They would smile but none can show the four signs of the Church. And when the question and answer come all their complains show they have problems with the 4 visible signs of the Church. That’s why they cannot show them. Isn’t this sad?

6. The Church of Christ have four visible signs. If we cannot show them we must at least know what they are and explain them. This would at least show we have some inkling of the signs. But the true Church must not only have the four visible signs of One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. She must be able to explain the dynamics on how those signs are produced. This will be the explanation of the spirituality of the life of the Church that produces these signs.

7. In short, if we put together what Pope Benedict as Cardinal mentioned that the Church is undergoing a crisis of Faith, since the four visible signs of the Church are signs of Faith, Hope and Charity, the reason why we cannot point with certainty where that Church is is because we cannot find those marks anywhere. The Church must exist up to the end times. So where is the Church? Where have all the Catholics gone. The answer is in the Apocalypse. It says that the Church used to be in the world calling all souls to embark into the ark. But at the end times, God would give the Woman, the Church, two giant wings to fly into the desert in a place specially prepared by God to protect her. Where is that? St. John Chrysostom says that this is not a physical desert. It is the symbol of a way of life lived in the privacy of one’s soul. It is the way of life lived by Christ for 30 years at home and lived by John the Baptist for 30 years in the desert.
St. Grignon de Montfort tried to establish the Catholic Church with her four visible signs and with a Marian personality and Pope Benedict described it in his thesis on St. Bonaventure. Thank God we have a Pope who knows where all the Catholics have gone.

1. Lawlessness is a relative term to many people. But if we base all laws on the Divine law or even just on the natural law, most laws today would be against God’s laws. And this is what is happening today.

2. The world is stunned by the lawlessness of those who have appointed themselves as police of the world imposing laws against God’s laws. And this with the approval of courts and by world organizations who are also making their own laws. They call it mandate. Just because the mandate was made by a few tough guys does not it make it legal?

3. Sex education is now mandated in most schools, compulsory education in place of home schooling is also mandated. Family planning and abortion are laws in many countries just like same sex marriages. Nations are interfering in the sovereignty of other nations. Head of states are summarily ordered to resign or deposed. Foreign governments are changed at the pleasure of a few. And cities of other nations are being bombed as if they were objects in a video games. These may be the law of some cowboys but they are against the law of God. From the view point of Catholic morality, the world is in anarchy, the once upon a time French Revolution had become world wide. But how come no one is raising any cry?

4. We have entered the era of the rule of lawlessness. You don’t talk to lawless bandits. You just plead for mercy, pay a ransom for your life, plea for help and get killed just the same…..all without knowing why this is happening. A few, like the Pope, had chosen just to be silent. It is like when the Jews were undergoing their holocaust and hardly any one of them knowing why they were being herded into camps; it is like when the Armenians were being erased from the face of the earth and not knowing why the Turks were doing it; it is like when the Catholics of Vendees were being massacred by their fellow Catholics in France and they didn’t know why.

5. It, also, happened once upon a time on Good Friday. A God was crucified in accordance to the lawless law of men. Not one of the killer knew why they were doing it. But HE knew why.

6. The same is happening everywhere. A Christian was elected president and suddenly the Christians were being massacred everywhere. A head of state is quietly leading his country and suddenly some European nations are bombing him out of existence as ordered by a mandate. And another head was deposed and hanged for a non-existent crime by some other foreign power and no one had apologize. 200 hundred christian churches were burned. Why? What crime was committed? And when cries of un-constitutionality are raised, no one minds it. An RH Bill is being passed that goes contrary to the Catholic Faith of the nation and its own Constitution. Why is it gaining ground when the head of the nation is a Catholic trained by the Jesuits?

Original sin as introduced by the devil in the garden of paradise and introduced in many nations, thereafter, specially during the reign of terror in France is being imposed world wide by its originator and avid followers. Though the originators had been dead for centuries how come they still have avid followers today? Can he be a spirit who cannot die?

7. This is exactly what happened on Good Friday. The Law was killed by lawlessness. And the world was stunned into silence. Not a peep as the devil seems to hold sway. Has the devil won? He knew the answer. A similar complain was once heard from heaven: when, O when O Lord shall our death be avenged? And God’s answer was: Just a little while more. Then what? God’s answer was very clear……because He knew why.