Smoky Mountains Sunrise

Saturday, December 2, 2017

Father Rutler: The Expectation of Advent

Fr. George W. Rutler 
The explanation for your sense of expectation is that you have an imagination. Unlike animals guided by instinct, we can imagine past and future. Advent is the time of expectation. Since Christ is not limited by time, he can be born again in our lives at every Christmas.
 
Expectation requires thinking about the four most important matters of existence: Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell. These are the primary mysteries that arrest the attention of minds awake, more compelling than holiday shopping and attempts at partying before Christmas begins.
 
To look at death at the start of Advent is what we do on a small scale when we look at the end of anything, whether it be the end of the day or the end of some project we have been working on, or even the end of a movie or a song. The question is: Does the end of life have a purpose? C.S. Lewis answered that in a typically lucid way: “It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for a bird to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.”
 
Along with the sense of expectation is the intuition that what is expected is more vital than what we now have. On the day after Christmas in 1941, Winston Churchill stood before the joint houses of Congress and spoke of “. . . my life, which is already long, and has not been entirely uneventful.” Then a full twenty-four years later, his dying words were: “I’m bored with it all.” That was really wonderful because, though skeptical about the Gospel, he knew that things as they are, are not enough. He was a bit like Benjamin Franklin who, while far from an orthodox Christian, playfully wrote his own epitaph as a printer, comparing himself to a worn old book: “For it will, as he believ’d, appear once more, In a new and more perfect Edition, Corrected and amended, By the Author.”
 
There is a worthy movement now to rebuild the lamented old Pennsylvania Station, constructed on the site of our original church. That church was destroyed in 1963, in the arrogant period when many classical churches were wrecked by misguided liturgical experts who shared the modern contempt for anything old. The restoration of the old station would cost about $3.5 billion, an immense amount but small change compared to the $20 billion of innocuous glass boxes rising around us in the Hudson Yards development.
 
Jesus spoke of rebuilding the Herodian Temple in three days (John 2:19). That was at the price of his own blood, for he was speaking of his body. He did raise it. And he can do the same for us.

Friday, December 1, 2017

Book Review: “The Dictator Pope”

Mysterious New Book Looks “Behind the Mask” of Francis

A remarkable new book about the Francis papacy is set to be released in English this coming Monday, December 4th, after an Italian debut earlier this month that is rumored to have made quite a splash in Rome. Entitled, The Dictator Pope, it is described on the Amazon pre-order page as “The inside story of the most tyrannical and unprincipled papacy of modern times.”

The book promises a look “behind the mask” of Francis, the alleged “genial man of the people,” revealing how he “consolidated his position as a dictator who rules by fear and has allied himself with the most corrupt elements in the Vatican to prevent and reverse the reforms that were expected of him.”

Read more at OnePeterFive >> 

 

Thursday, November 30, 2017

"Highland Cathedral" - Royal Scots Dragoon Guards


Wishing all of our Scots visitors and friends a very happy Saint Andrew's Day.  Gun cuireadh do chupa thairis le slainte agus sonas. 


Tuesday, November 28, 2017

"Pope" Francis, Subversive Agent -- Priest Calls for Resistance


Pope Francis recently released his Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia. Here a Priest speaks up and condemns the text and calls for Catholics to resist. 

The audio in this video is taken from a sermon entitled "Peter has No Need of Our Lies or Flattery" uploaded to Regina Prophetarum (http://reginaprophetarum.org) on April 24, 2016. 

We encourage you to listen to the entire homily, but here are some quotes from the video related to Pope Francis:

 "With his latest document, namely Amoris Laetitia, The Joy of Married Love, our Pope has largely joined in the sexual revolution, embracing worldly ways, being a sign of compromise as opposed to the sign of contradiction and the world is applauding." 

"It is time to recognize a threat and to resist." 

"No matter what anyone tells you, Pope Francis does put forth the notion of Sacraments being available for those Catholics involved with public habitual adultery. One can now outwardly violate the Divine Law itself, yet find acceptance and even communion without need for change or purpose of amendment." 

"Pope Francis not only embraced dangerous revolutionary ideas, but he has become a subversive agent of radical change." 

"On at least three occasions the Holy Father purposefully misquotes, misuses, and abuses previous Church texts in order to mislead and push forward his agenda. He has become a sign of contradiction not to the world, but to the Church and to Tradition." 

"Instead of embracing his Petrine vocation to build up the Church, Pope Francis seems to be working towards the goal of tearing down and destroying. In such a situation the Holy Father does not need our applause and flattery, but rather - resistance." 

Who Is the Priest Speaking? Though the name of this Priest is now known to us, we respect the policy of Regina Prophetarum to purposefully withhold the name and here will do the same. Note - The imagery of the video is of our choosing and was not part of the original audio file. It consists primarily of news clippings related to Pope Francis which are relevant to the Priest's words. 

Please also see - THE RIGHT & DUTY TO RESIST A POPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFBrN... 

SAINT BASIL THE GREAT - "Unbelievers laugh at what they see, and the weak are unsettled; faith is doubtful, ignorance is poured over their souls, because the adulterators of the word in wickedness imitate the truth. Religious people keep silence, but every blaspheming tongue is let loose. Sacred things are profaned; those of the laity who are sound in faith avoid the places of worship, as schools of impiety, and raise their hands in solitude with groans and tears to the Lord in heaven."

Lord, in Your mercy, send us a conclave!

Sunday, November 26, 2017

Father Rutler: The Feast of Christ the King

Fr. George W. Rutler
A professor told me of two experiences he had when civilization was picking up its pieces after World War II. He was in the crowd when King George VI visited Cambridge University and was greeted with loud cheers. Then, as a U. S. soldier in occupied Japan, he watched as a vast throng became stone silent when the Emperor alighted from the imperial train, all heads bowed and eyes downcast. Hirohito no longer had divine pretensions, but the customary reverence was palpable. The one king embodied the familial aspect of a monarch as father, and the other was a reminder of a ruler transcending the ordinary commerce of life.
On the Feast of Christ the King, the Church proposes a sovereignty both human and divine: the Holy One who walked the roads of this world as a man among men was at the same time of Heaven, the Supreme Being.
This mystery stretches the limited intellect, as in the case of Pontius Pilate, who remains a fascinating psychological study, as he tried to figure out if Jesus was a king. Why he posed the question is not clear, and Jesus asked if the question was his own or a reaction to the cynicism of the mob. Pilate was a paramount cynic himself, not a skeptic who doubts whether something is true, but a man who doubts that truth exists at all. That is why Nietzsche, whose only god was selfish power, considered Pilate the only powerful character in the Gospel. But then, it was Nietzsche who said, “I am no man, I am dynamite.” Consistent with his claim, he ended up insane.
Because Pilate was too vindictive even for the Roman imperium, the governor of Syria, Lucius Vitellius, removed him from the prefecture of Judea. One theory is that Pilate committed suicide in what is now Vienne in modern France. As for his birth, there is more confusion: possibly Tarragona in Spain, or more implausibly in the Perthshire Highlands of Scotland, or Forchheim in Germany, or most likely in the Abruzzi of Italy. You might say that he was born wherever men refuse to recognize truth when they see it, and destroy themselves when they have walked away from it. The moral chaos is more widespread now than in the academic groves of the classical world, and we see its effect in the campus riots of today and the mental floss of such philosophers as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.
This much can be said for Pontius Pilate: He inscribed that sign “King of the Jews” and would not remove it. It may have been sheer irony, the cynicism of a cynic. Or perhaps when he began to roam the hills of exile, he sensed that the ultimate and only choice in life is holiness or madness: “And they will go away to eternal punishment, but the virtuous to eternal life” (Matthew 25:46).


 

The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo 2017


Bill Paterson narrates highlights from the 2017 Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, which features talent from around the world, all performing on the magnificent location of the esplanade of Edinburgh Castle, with the theme being a Splash of Tartan. 

Performers include the internationally acclaimed Massed Bands of Her Majesty's Royal Marines, the Queen's Colour Squadron and the Band of the Royal Air Force Regiment, which celebrates 75 years of the regiment and working with the Royal Navy. 

Reflecting the now international flavour of the show are military musical groups visiting from many countries. Tattoo first-timers the Japan Ground Self-Defence Force Band bring a spectacular display to Edinburgh. The Indian Naval Band bring bangra to the battlements, marking the seventieth anniversary of the independence of India, and the Fanfare Band of the 9th French Marine Infantry Brigade visit from Poitiers. 

The United States Naval Forces Europe Band, based in Naples, join the show, as do the Shetland Fiddlers, who this year celebrate their distinctive Viking heritage. The Tattoo Highland Dancers provide their usual high standard of massed dancing and also show their versatility by seamlessly changing from Highland to hornpipe and from ballet to Bollywood as they support the international contingents. 

As usual, the massed pipes and drums and lone piper on the battlements of Edinburgh Castle round off the event. 






Thursday, November 23, 2017

Don Minutella and the "Pope Francis" Regime


Don Minutella is an Italian Catholic Priest from Sicily who has become nationally known for his open righteous criticism of Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia, and the False Church of modernism.

Because of his outspoken defense of the Catholic faith, Father Minutella was officially removed from his parish and forbidden to celebrate Mass, administer the Sacraments, and preach. He was ordered to remain silent for a period of nine months. He obeyed. Father Minutella has been, and continues to be, unjustly and viciously attacked by the Italian media, including a mean-spirited exposé program called "The Hyenas", a satirical TV show based on Argentinian telecast "Caiga Quien Caiga" and well known for its underhanded and devious journalistic practices. 

After the Curia informed him that he would receive a "double excommunication" if he did not make public acts of fidelity to Pope Francis on social networks, Father Minutella recorded the video above as a response. 

TRANSCRIPT OF ENGLISH TRANSLATION AT: https://thewildvoice.org/minutella-pope-francis-regime/