1. No other way.
The only kind of ‘love’ in the Catholic Church is what we call CHARITY. All the thousand other kinds of love is mere variations of ‘love of self,’ which is the sin of Lucifer and Eve. Yes, it is a mortal sin not so much because you love yourself, but more because to love yourself you have to hate God. This is St. Augustine’s ‘conversio ad creaturas’ entails ‘aversio a Deo.’ It is impossible to love God and one self at the same time unless the definitions of love as drastically changed as we had done in the previous posts.
What Christ said to St. Peter is for all of us, too, as is always the case. Christ was teaching a way of loving men never before imagined was possible. It is an imitation of God’s love for man. Man must now imitate God and love God, self and neighbour in the same way.
2. After Easter.
Note the scenario when this questionings occurred. It was after Easter. All the apostles have finished their training, all of them are almost perfect Christians.
We saw in the past post that the power to love one’s neighbour, a gift from God, was only given at the Second Sunday of Easter; that was past after their training period. And that was the only time they received the power to love their neighbour, which is humanly unattainable.
Notice that the power to love their neighbour was given at the same time that they were given the commission to go and preach. Both occurred on the Second Sunday on the Octave of Easter. That is how advanced the apostles were in their training.Yet most men think they can evangelise and love their neighbour at the very beginning of their training. No way.
Notice that the power to love God, which is a gift from God, too, was given only at the Third Sunday on the Octave of Easter; so even more advanced training is needed to be able to do so.
It was expected that Pope Francis would not be able to love God and follow the example of St. Peter at the beginning of his Pontificate. Knowing that the training of priests had been defective since the 10th century, never improved in the following centuries and even became worse before Vatican I and II he should have thought twice before speaking.
So in his first papal speech on ‘Love without dogma,’ he did not define love the Catholic way; he did not even define it psychologically. His definition was way down to the level of the psychotics.
3, St. Thomas wrote; ‘there is no way of showing love than for one to be a faithful shepherd to the flock of Christ and working under the supervision of the same Shepherd. This is the rule for parish priest, for superiors of orders, for parents and for the ordinary persons.
For bishops and priests, to ‘feed my lambs’ means to supply them constantly with food for the Faith in the form of morals and dogmas. These must be the morals and dogmas revealed by Christ. And St. Thomas wrote; that to teach the lambs one’s own personal teachings is to treat the lambs as one’s own and his action is definitely love of self.
The father of the family and ordinary people should ‘feed the lambs’ by teaching their wives, children, friends and neighbours the revealed dogmas and morals revealed by Christ.
To feed the lambs is directed towards one goal; to teach the dogmas and morals of Christ as found in Divine Revelation. Together with this teaching is to guide them to the observance of these teachings, to defend these teachings when under attack, to give good example by putting these teachings into one’s life, to correct those deviating from these doctrines, etc.
Charity has only one definition; whether it is directed to God, to husband and wife, to children, to neighbours…….and even to enemies. Love of enemies is teaching them the dogmas and morals taught by Christ
In Christianity, there is absolutely no other way to love than to ‘feed’ the lambs of Christ.
Pope Francis and his bureaucracy in the Vatican is treating the Catholic Church as if it is their own personal church running it the way they want. He wants the Church to join his own church which he established in Argentina called the church of Mercy. And the cardinals and bishops on his side are doing the same thing. The Bishops of the Philippines are, in fact, recruiting and advertising this new church as the substitute for the old, dicrepid, sickly Church of Christ and the apostles. And they are doing what they want with the Church in complete rebellion to the Shepherd under whom they should be subservient. They do not even mention the Shepherd under whose supervision they should be working under.
They have all taken over ownership of the Church showing their great love for themselves, not love for the Shepherd, Jesus Christ.
4. Pinpointing what is wrong with the Church.
Many have proposed what is wrong with the Church; from the crisis of Faith to the taking over of the church by the spirits of darkness. They are all correct; but if we point at the ultimate cause for all the problems in the Catholic church, we can sum it in this one thing………we do not love God or anybody. We only love ourselves which St. Thomas keeps on repeating is a mortal sin; because that was the sin of Lucifer and of Adam and Eve.
5. Charity is a personal work and the work of the Holy Spirit.
Charity is first a work of the intellect in that it desires the truth for the other; then it is, also, an act of the will wherein we should wish the good for the other. We should wish the highest good, salvation, for the Pope, he bishops and priest, the nuns and brothers, the husbands and wives, the children. But to love the lambs is an activity over and above the capabilities of both intellect and will. We need the grace of the Holy Spirit that we cannot attain humanly speaking. We just have to wait until he Holy Spirit gives it to us. Otherwise, we cannot feed the lambs. When we wish the good only for ourselves we love ourselves only.
The intellect must know what is right and what is good for the soul. Then the Holy Spirit should enter the picture because the Spirit is Charity itself. Charity is not man made. You cannot learn that from the seminary. It is a gift from the Holy Spirit.
It is given only to the Catholic Church; never to private churches. Today, a totally new church is being proposed to Catholics. And these new missionaries are being assigned by Pope Francis to all the important positions both in the Vatican and in
Bishop’s conferences for a grand schism. That is what happens when we say ‘join my church.’ It is the best church, all mercy and no punishments. We have stolen the lambs from the true Good Shepherd and made the lambs our own to be disposed the way we want with the motto; ‘Do whatever you want.’ Looks like the statue of Liberty. Don’t blame the Americans; the statue came from Europe.
6. Pope Francis should have thought of this before his first Papal speech. Let us see how the intellect and the free will works.
The intellect is a spiritual faculty. When it thinks of something below its level, like money, that item is taken from its lower level and raised to the level of the intellect which is a spiritual faculty. Thus the idea of money becomes spiritual in the intellect.
If the intellect thinks about a spiritual reality, since both are in the same level, both are spiritual, the spiritual idea remain spiritual.
here is no problem here.
But if the intellect thinks of a Divine idea that is in a higher level than the intellect, like the concept of God, it pulls down the Divine Idea to its spiritual but human level. The idea of God becomes a mere spiritual idea that is inferior to a Divine Reality.
Again, we may think of money and raise the idea of money to a higher level but we should never think of God because we will tend to drag the idea of God down to he level of our intellect.
While the intellect bring objects it thinks to its level, the free will adjust to the level of the objects it loves.
When we love money, the will descends and begin to look like money. When we love God, the will ascends and we begin to look like God.
So summarising, think of lower things but love higher things. Things cannot go higher than the mind; but it can go higher than the will. The mind cannot think of the Divinity of God but the will can love the Divinity of God.
7. The mistake of Pope Francis in his first speech on Love without dogmas. He loved without thinking. You should know whom you are loving. To love something without thinking is a disaster. And so Pope Francis love the idea of ‘love’ without first thinking theologically what is love.
So his intellectually defective concept of ‘ID’ from Sigmund Freud was not raised higher to the level of Ego or super ego, the latter being more in the level of the spiritual mind; and he loved that idea of love. Instead of the mind raising the idea to the spiritual level, his free will’s love of his own idea dragged him down to the lowest level of the dark unconscious where the devils dwell.
Instead of thinking and raising his thoughts to the level of the spiritual, he used his will and as expected, was dragged down to the level of the unconscious.
8. The whole world.
Pope Francis is the son of the world. Like everybody else he is emotional, moved more by concupiscence. And this emotion guides and dictates on the rest of the body. But the whole world with most of the cardinals, bishops and priests are like this. As Hilaire Belloc had noticed during his time; the world had stopped thinking. And yet to be a good Catholic needs a lot of good thinking.
Gilbert Chesterton, on the other hand wrote, if everybody just sits down and think, the world would become Catholic. Hmmm..’ isn’t that the description of monasticism? Hermit monks just sit down and think.