Running Off At The Keyboard

MAKING PICTURES OUT OF SAND is something that parents usually encounter at craft shows where their kids get to try their hand at it, layering the colored sand into a glass container of some sort. In Tibet this is an artform. Mandala Sand Painting is a method of making intricate pictures out of sand which have spiritual meanings. When the picture is complete, it is swept up and deposited in a river where it carries its healing power all over the world. The process is described here. Here are some pictures of various designs. And here is a picture of a monk making a sand painting. The patience and diligence that goes into making sacred sand mandalas is truly admirable! CarrieTomko@aol.com

BAPTISM OF THE HOLY SPIRIT is usually thought to be evidenced by speaking in tongues. As the website indicates "Yes, we finally received Holy Spirit baptism with the laying on of hands and speaking in tongues." Fr. Cantalamessa recounts his experience of speaking in tongues in this essay from The Word Among Us, A Daily Approach to Prayer & Scripture. If this is to be evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit, then it should not be evidence of the work of some other spirit, right? Yet does the Holy Spirit come when He has not been summoned and shed His favors on those who do not believe in Him so as to deceive these others that the false spirit they invoke is truly evidence of the Trinitarian God? One would think not, but there is evidence that speaking in tongues comes from sources not Trinitarian. SPIRITUALISTS ALSO SPEAK IN TONGUES It won't copy and paste, but at this Spiritualist website is a description of speaking in tongues, along with the directions for a do-it-yourself session. Note there is no laying on of hands, no invocation of the Holy Spirit. No credit given to the Holy Spirit, though certainly "spirit" figures in the discussion. There is no Christian reference. How can it be a manifestation of the presence of the Holy Spirit under such circumstances? Yet Catholics who do this believe it is evidence of the special favor of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity and of their own personal holiness. POST ON A THEOSOPHICAL MESSAGE BOARD: The notion that one of the by-products of the spread of Theosophy, both popular and classical, would be to create a deeper spirtiual/religious underpinning seems to be supported by the ever changing face of traditional Christianity. Where is the single original St. James version of the bible that was the common study reference of most English speaking Christians even up thru the 50's and 60's? How many new, or significantly edited and revised versions of twentieth century bibles are there? When was the last Catholic Mass heard in its original Latin, instead of, liberally translated forms of English? How does Charismatic Catholicism accommodate speaking in tongues, when in traditional Catholicism it was a considered a form of possession? One could go on like this for a long time, pointing to the many changes in traditional Christianity that your post here indicates, as the expected observable phenomena that might attend any period of major dramatic transition. The Idea that we have been in the midst of a shifting spiritual awareness, as one of the goals, of the those that guide humanity on its evolutionary path, is filled with intuitive power and insight. Louis It's a perceptive question he asks. How indeed did we go from "sign of possession" to "sign of the working of the Holy Spirit"? THE CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA has this to say about speaking in tongues: The Corinthians, misled not by insincerity but by simplicity and ignorance (20), were actuated by an undisciplined religious spirit (pneuma), or rather by frenzied emotions and not by the understanding (nous) of the Spirit of God. What today purports to be the "gift of tongues" at certain Protestant revivals is a fair reproduction of Corinthian glossolaly, and shows the need there was in the primitive Church of the Apostle's counsel to do all things "decently, and according to order" (40). Faithful adherence to the text of Sacred Scripture makes it obligatory to reject those opinions which turn the charism of tongues into little more than infantile babbling (Eichhorn, Schmidt, Neander), incoherent exclamations (Meyer), pythonic utterances (Wiseler), or prophetic demonstrations of the archaic kind (see I King 19:20, 24). The unalloyed charism was as much an exercise of the intelligence as of the emotions. That certainly casts a shroud of apprehension over the phenomenon. Which leads me to wonder why the Pope would choose a chrismatic for the role of preacher of the pontifical household. CarrieTomko@aol.com

COMMON GROUND BETWEEN THEOSOPHY AND PENTECOSTALISM? A disturbing similarity between the words of Fr. Ramero Cantalamessa and the words of H. P. Blavatsky came up last evening. From Theosophist H. P. Blavatsky's book, THE SECRET DOCTRINE: THE SYNTHESIS OF SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 2, p. 566: The latter have passed entirely into Gnostic literature; and a Brahmin needs only to read Pistis Sophia* to recognize his forefathers' property, even to the phraseology and similes used. Compare: in Pistis Sophia the disciple says to Jesus: "Rabbi, reveal unto us the Mysteries of the Light (i.e., the "Fire of Knowledge or Enlightenment") . . . forasmuch as we have heard thee saying that there is another baptism of smoke, and another baptism of the Spirit of Holy Light," i.e., the Spirit of FIRE. "I baptize you with water, but . . . . he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire," says John of Jesus (Matt. iii. 2); meaning this esoterically. The real significance of this statement is very profound. It means that he, John, a non-initiated ascetic, can impart to his disciples no greater wisdom than the mysteries connected with the plane of matter (water being a symbol of it). His gnosis was that of exoteric and ritualistic dogma, of dead-letter orthodoxy; ** while the wisdom which Jesus, an Initiate of the higher mysteries, would reveal to them, was of a higher character, for it was the "FIRE" Wisdom of the true gnosis or the real spiritual enlightment. One was FIRE, the other the SMOKE. For Moses, the fire on Mount Sinai, and the spiritual wisdom imparted; for the multitudes of the "people" below, for the profane, Mount Sinai in (through) smoke, i.e., the exoteric husks of orthodox or sectarian ritualism. It's in the book. It can also be read online here: ------------------------------------------------------- The same phrasing and concept is contained in this teaching of Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, the Preacher to the Papal Household, where you will find him speaking on: Baptism in the Holy Spirit by Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFMCap He is speaking of the Charismatic movement. Which Balvatsky seems to identify as Gnostic in the above passage. ------------------------------------------------------ Turning to Albert Pike, MORALS AND DOGMA, p. 542-543, I find: Tertullian tells us that the Valentinians, the most celebrated of all the Gnostic schools, imitiated, or rather perverted, the Mysteries of Eleusis. Irenaeus informs us, in several curiour chapters, of the Mysteries practised by the Marcosians; and Origen gives much information as to the Mysteries of the Ophites; and there is no doubt that all the Gnostic sects had Mysteries and an initiation. They all claimed to possess a secret doctrine, coming to them directly from Jesus Christ, different from that of the Gospels and Epistles, and superior to those communications, which in their eyes, were merely exoteric. This secret doctrine they did not communicate to every one; and among the extensive sect of the Basilideans hardly one in a thousand knew it, as we learn from Irenaeus. We know the name of only the highest class of their Initiates. They were styled Elect or Elus, and Strangers to the World. They had at least three Degrees--the Material, the Intellectual, and the Spiritual, and the lesser and greater Mysteries; and the number of those who attained the highest Degree was quite small. Baptism was one of their most important ceremonies; and the Basilideans celebrated the 10th of January, as the anniversary of the day on which Christ was baptized in Jordan. They had the ceremony of laying on of hands, by way of purification; and that of the mystic banquet, emblem of that to which they believed the Heavenly Wisdom would one day admit them, in the fullness of things. How odd that the Preacher to the Papal Household, Theosophist H. P. Blavatsky, and 33 deg. Mason Albert Pike all seem to be saying the same thing. CarrieTomko@aol.com

PRIEST WITH WHIP DISCIPLINES LADIES Yup, I thought that would get your attention! Read the story at Patrick Rothwell's blog. CarrieTomko@aol.com

MAURICE STRONG IS IN THE NEWS AT THE LIFESITE WEBSITEAGAIN "Economic growth is not the cure; it is the disease." That is Maurice Strong's take on what is wrong with the world, today, and what is the greatest threat to the environment. Everything that is wrong can, in Strong's mind, be traced to three sources -- industrialization, wealth and free markets. I'd add a fourth -- Christianity -- except Strong never quite comes out and blames it for the world's ills. He merely hints at it with statements such as "We are all gods now, gods in charge of our own destiny," which he made in his autobiographical 2000 book Where on Earth are We Going? Actually, Strong's three sources of evil are really just one source -- Western civilization. Although he has reaped enormous personal profits from the Western ways of business and life, Strong has been a lifelong biter of the hands that feed him so well. In 1990, he even mused about a possible revolution against "industrialized civilizations." What if it were concluded, Strong romanticized, "that the principal risk to the earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? ... Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring this about?" Strong wasn't exactly speaking for himself in this daydream. His nightmarish scenario involved a "small group of ... world leaders," gathered together at a semi-private conference, who decide to overthrow the established political and financial orders "in order to save the planet." But he wasn't not speaking for himself, either. Strong revels in telling fawning audiences that he is "a socialist in ideology," but "a capitalist in methodology." His socialist core would explain his attraction to revolutions against rich, industrialized civilizations. And his membership on a dozen international business and environmental organizations would explain why he thinks such a revolution might spring from a small, semi-private gathering of world leaders. Those are the circles Strong runs in. They are the people he knows. This is the same Maurice Strong who is being courted as a top advisor to Paul Martin, the man set to become Canada's next Prime Minister, as Lifesite reported on July 8. CarrieTomko@aol.com

COMMENTS It isn't great. Sometimes you have to click the link twice before it will load. It takes forever to load, at least in my computer. But for today at least it will have to do. CarrieTomko@aol.com

ROBERTO CALVI WAS MURDERED according to the Times Online. CarrieTomko@aol.com

JOHN VENNARI AND THE INTEGRISTS I've spent some time reading and listening to John Vennari's materials in the last few days, since I've been labeled an "integrist" by some. His position is an extreme one on today's Catholic landscape. My own research matches his with regard to the infiltration of Masonry into the Church. Whether we label it "Freemasonry," "enlightenment," "Rosicrucianism," "Theosophy," "New Age," or "liberalism," the roots of our present confusion go back to the rise of Esoteric Freemasonry in the late 1800s. It can be seen today in the feminist rhetoric that is rampant in the Church, such as the so-called "Wiccan" feminist liturgy; in the movement to ordain women priests; in the desire to have diplomatic government in the Church. It can be seen in those who support URI and the Earth Charter, and in some environmental movements in the Church. It can be seen in syncretistic ecumenical efforts. And it can be specifically identified in Leonard Swidler's involvement with the New Group of World Servers via his Center for Global Ethics, an offshoot of his Global Dialogue Institute, since Swidler is one of the founders of the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church. The in-your-face push among some Catholics who wish to change Church teaching is a product of the ideas expressed in Masonry. This can also be seen in some of our ecumenical activities which place the Church on an equal playing field with other Christian religions, contrary to our doctrines. I share Vennari�s objections to the charismatic movement, based on Msgr. Ronald Knox�s book Enthusiasm, and on Vinson Synan�s history of the movement, The Century of the Holy Spirit: 100 Years of Pentecostal and Charismatic Renewal. This movement is rooted in heresy and tends also to place all religions on an equal playing field, substituting �baptism in the Spirit� for authentic Catholic sacraments, and practicing a charism censored by St. Paul in his Letter to the Corinthians. The Holy Spirit does not inspire us to adopt activities which reduce us to an animal or vegetative state, to adopt activities which violate common sense. Barking like dogs, oinking like pigs, speaking jibberish, falling on the floor in a trance-like state, and wholesale abandonment to emotionalism all reduce us to a state of being which denies our God-given ability to reason. St. Paul identifies this in 1 Cor. 14:14, saying �if I pray in a tongue, my spirit is at prayer but my mind is unproductive.� As Msgr. Knox claims, speaking a foreign language without learning it is a symptom of diabolical activity. My own experience with a charismatic movement is that it divided a parish. That matches Msgr. Knox�s description of the effects of the Pentecostal Movement in Protestantism, and it matches Vinson Synan�s description of its effect as well. Where I depart from Vennari�s position is the point at which he departs from allegiance to the Pope. To believe that God has allowed the Pope to become an anti-Pope or anti-Christ is to deny the goodness of God and His faithfulness to His flock. If I must conclude that God has stopped speaking through this Pope, I will find myself unable to trust any other Pope. If God will allow one Pope to lead us astray, He will allow other Popes to lead us astray. And thus I would have no reliable source of knowledge of the faith except my own inadequate discernment. On this premise the faith collapses and God is unknowable. Therefore, if I must choose between John Vannari and John Paul II, I will choose John Paul II. Vannari condemns all ecumenism. In this position I believe that he is mistaken. While it appears wrongheaded to me to borrow doctrine from Protestant faiths such as Pentecostalism, there are beliefs which Protestant faiths have taken from Catholicism. In these beliefs we have a common bond. A Protestant and a Catholic can share those aspects of the faith which they have in common, such as the Our Father. The specifics for carrying this out would require careful study. It�s a delicate balancing act at best. Vennari has not specifically addressed ecumenism with the Orthodox in any of the material I�ve seen so far. Extrapolating from his position on Protestants, it seems he would oppose it. If so, then with this we strongly disagree. He opposes a married priesthood, and in so doing condemns the Eastern Catholic priests who have a long-standing tradition of being married. His position on married clergy is in direct opposition to Catholic practice prior to Vatican II. I�m also ill at ease with Vennari�s support of Fr. Grunner. Just as I see an in-your-face feminist nun as an embarrassment, I also see Fr. Grunner as an embarrassment. We may never know the content of the Third Secret. For whatever reason the popes have chosen either not to reveal it or to reveal what we know. Again it is necessary to trust that God has provided us with sufficient leadership to be able to serve Him in the nature He wishes to be served. To do otherwise is to see the faith crumble to dust before our very eyes, and to make a lie of the assurance that the gates of Hell will not prevail. My gut instinct�my conscience, if you will�after listening to and reading John Vennari�s material is that he has gotten many things right, but also some things wrong. So it seems that I will not be joining the integrists any time soon, and that the charge made that I am one of them is false. CarrieTomko@aol.com

STRONG STATEMENTS IN SUPPORT OF THE UN have come from the Vatican once again, according to Zenit. CarrieTomko@aol.com

THE FRUITS OF NECESSITY are evident in this story of a Melkite Greek Catholic congregation and a Greek Orthodox congregation in the suburbs of Damascus agreeing to share a church rather than have no church at all. It seems to be working out well. CarrieTomko@aol.com

ON MONDAY A ZENIT ARTICLE ON BIRTH CONTROL claimed there were three birth control commissions that advised Pope Paul VI on the subject. It was the first time I'd seen a reference to more than one. Looking through a few books about the Vatican, I found several references to a single commission, but no references to more than one. The Rhine Flows Into The Tiber by Fr. Ralph Wiltgen, which was written in 1967 refers to "commission" in the singular on p. 268, 269, and 271. O Vatican: A Slightly Wicked View of the Holy See by Paul Hoffman, written in 1984, refers to "a commission" and "the commission" on p. 30 and 31. In the Vatican by Peter Hebblethwaite, written in 1986 cites the "birth control commission" on p. 37. Papal Sin by Garry Wills, written in 2000 refers to "commission" twice on p. 82. David Yallop hints at a possibility of more than one commission, saying: Quote: On the pope's desk at Castel Gandolfo, amid the various reports, recommendations, and studies on the issue of artificial birth control was one from Albino Luciani. While his commissions, consultants, and curial cardinals were dissecting the problem, the pope had also asked for the opinions of various regions in Italy. One of these was the Vittorio Veneto diocese. The patriarch of Benice, Cardinal Urbani, had called a meeting of all the bishops within the region. After a day's debate it was decided that Luciani should draw up the report. The decision to give Luciani the task was largely based on his knowledge of the problem. It was the subject he had been studying for a number of years. He had talked and written about it, he had consulted doctors, sociologists, theologians, and not least, that group who had personal, practical experience with the problem, married couples. This last group included his own brother, Edoardo, who was struggling to earn enough to support an ever-growing family that eventually numbered ten children. Luciani saw firsthand the problems posed by a continuing ban on artificial birth control. He had grown up surrounded by poverty. Now, in the late 1960s, there appeared to him to be as much poverty and deprivation as in the days of his youth. When those one cares for are in despair because of their inability to provide for an increasing number of children, one is inclined to view the problem of artificial birth control in a different light from Jesuits who are in direct contact with the Holy Spirit. The men in the Vatican could quote Genesis until the Day of Judgment, but it would not put bread on the table. To Albino Luciani, Vatican Council II had intended to relate the Gospels and the Church to the twentieth century, and to deny men and women the right of artificial birth contyrol was to plunge the Church back into the Dark Ages. Much of this he said quietly and privately as he prepared his report. Publicly he was acutely aware of his obedience to the pope. In this Luciani remained an excellent example of his time. When the pope decreed, then the faithful agreed. Yet even in his public utterances there are clear clues to his thinking on the issue of birth control. By April 1968, after much further consultation, Luciani's report had been written and submitted. It had met with the approval of the bishops of the Vittorio Veneto region, and Cardinal Urbani had duly signed the report and sent it directly to Pope Paul. Subsequently, Urbani saw the document on the pope's desk at Castel Gandolfo. Paul advised Urbani that he valued the report greatly. So highly did he praise it that when Urbani returned to Venice he went by way of Vittorio Veneto to convey directly to Luciani the pleasure the report had given. The central thrust of the report was to recommend to the pope that the Roman Catholic Church should approve the use of the anovulant pill developed by Professor Pincus. That it should become the Catholic birth-control pill.... "I cannot believe that salvation is based on contraception by temperature and damnation is based on rubber," declared Dr. Andre Hellegers, an obstetrician and member of the ignored pontifical commission. One surprising line of the Vatican's defense came from Cardinal Felici: "The possible mistake of the superior [the pope] does not authorize the disobedience of subjects." Albino Luciani read the encyclical with growing dismay. He knew the uproar that would now engulf the Church. He went to his church in Vittorio Veneto and prayed. There was no question in his mind but that he must obey the papal ruling; but deep as his allegiance to the pope was, he could not, would not, merely sing praise to Humanae Vitae. He knew a little of what the document must have cost the pope; he knew a great deal of what it was going to cost the faithful who would have to attempt to apply it to their everyday lives. Within hours of reading the encyclical, Luciani had written his response to the diocese of Vittorio Veneto. In ten years' time, when he became pope, the Vatican would assert that Luciani's response was "Rome has spoken. The case is closed." Nothing approaching that sentiment appears in his actual words. He began by reminding the diocese of his coments in April, then continued: "I confess that, although not revealing it in what I wrote, I privately hoped that the very grave difficulties that exist could be overcome and the response of the Teacher, who speaks with special charisma and in the name of the Lord, might coincide, at least in part, with the hopes of many married couples after the setting up of a revevant pontifical commission to examine the question. p. 26-29 Unquote So it would seem that even in David Yallop's book In God's Name, and despite his hint that there was more than one commission, there apparently was only one commission that was significant in his opinion. Which leads me to wonder what Zenit was talking about and why they bring it up now. CarrieTomko@aol.com

THE COMMENTS ARE MISSING YET AGAIN...Grrrrr The template looks normal. Comments are in there just as always. This comments system seems to be even less reliable than SquwakBox comments were. Sigh. CarrieTomko@aol.com

The comments are not showing up on my computer screen today. How about the rest of you...are you seeing them? Not only that, I'm having rouble loading the blog as well. It's v--e--r--y s--l--o--w t--o l--o--a--d. CarrieTomko@aol.com

A STORY ABOUT THE POPE'S LITURGIST/MASTER OF CEREMONIES is revealing of what may be the attitude toward Mass at the summit of Roman Catholicism. The article quotes him: The celebration is the point toward which converge diverse and reciprocally coordinated elements under the guide of that spirit of adaptation that is the soul of post-conciliar reform. Thus it�s a matter of foreseeing and planning the celebration with a view toward the result one wants to obtain. "Spirit of adaptation..." Huh? There seem to be an awful lot of Catholic "spirits" these days. The article continues: For example, one can�t think of a liturgical action without taking account of the space in which it will take place, the hymns that will be performed� Everything that is thought out and predisposed in view of a celebration can be considered real and proper direction. One finds oneself acting, in a certain way, upon a stage. Liturgy is also a show.� Hymns are "performed"? The Pope's Mass is a "show"? And the most successful �shows,� those that have more than a billion spectators throughout the world via satellite, are precisely the papal liturgies, whether in Rome or other places in the world. In a June 20 interview with John L. Allen of the �National Catholic Reporter,� Marini emphasized that �the papal liturgy has always been a point of reference for the entire Church.� And Allen notes that, in effect, �more people have watched Masses planned by Marini than by any other liturgist in the world, which gives him enormous power to shape the public idea of what Catholic worship is all about�. Marini, 61, began as the personal secretary of Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, the main architect of the post-conciliar liturgical reform before his fall from grace in 1975. Since 1987, Marini has been the unrivaled master of papal liturgical ceremonies, the man who appears at the pope�s side in every celebration. The criteria of his work, he says, are two: �a work of cleaning of the encrustations that were superimposed over the centuries,� and �inculturation.� "Encrustations"? "Inculturation"? And this is the Pope's liturgist. Well, so much for claiming that those little ceremonies like the bowls of incense being used to "cleanse" the pope are something forced on the leader of the Catholic Church. Regarding the cleaning, however, some argue that he has also eliminated authentic treasures such as Gregorian chant and polyphony. By his decision, the Capella Sistina choir has been reduced to a shadow of its former glory. Today choirs from other countries and improvised choirs � ready to donate even large sums to appear on TV � accompany the papal liturgies. In the Vatican, the strongest critic of this liturgical-musical metamorphosis is Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Regarding �inculturation,� Marini�s goal is to �open the liturgy to the new peoples of Latin America, Africa and Asia,� taking from their traditions �music, language, and physical movement.� It�s a fact that on numerous occasions Marini�s choices have been criticized. Especially when he has introduced rites of pagan origin into papal ceremonies. Even the unprecedented ritual at the opening of the holy door for the last jubilee � with Asian dancers around the pope robed in brilliant colors � was an object of criticism. It would seem that the central focus of the Mass, the sacrifice on Calvary of the Son of God, has been lost on the papal liturgist. Since he was Annibale Bugnini's secretary once upon a time, perhaps I should not be surprised by anything that turns up in Papal liturgies. CarrieTomko@aol.com

THE NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER FROM THE PAGAN PERSPECTIVE Scroll down. CarrieTomko@aol.com

MAHONY'S CATHEDRAL HONORED The Vatican has recognized Los Angeles' new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels as one of the largest and most significant Christian churches in the world. Less than a year after the $200 million cathedral's Sept. 2 dedication, officials at St. Peter's Basilica have added the cathedral's name to 29 others along St. Peter's central aisle.... Does this mean that Rome likes this cathedral that so many have condemned? Or should we assume that politics lie behind this decision? Perhaps the real question is who in the Vatican made this decision? CarrieTomko@aol.com

RAINBOWS, ANYONE? THE UP-IN-THE-SKY KIND, THAT IS... If you've got one, send it my way when you're finished with it. It's wet here in Northeast Ohio. Six-inches-of-rain-since-this-morning wet. Roads are closed all around. My quiet suburban side street has been turned into a main thoroughfare since the main thoroughfare has been turned into a lake. People on talk radio are calling in with stories of 3 ft. of water in the livingroom. Callers have said that in 30 years they have never seen so much rain in a single day, and the stories about lightning get my attention as well. The rivers were up after last week's rainfall. They will be higher tomorrow. CarrieTomko@aol.com

BIRTH CONTROL... Whenever the subject of NFP comes up, the argument is made that it isn't birth control, as though the people using it were not attempting to limit the number of their children; though I have yet to see an argument stating what exactly they believe they are doing when they are using NFP and are not trying to conceive. According to this article from Zenit, NFP is quite effective. In fact it is more effective in preventing conception than other methods which have a higher incidence of failure. From the article: The WOOMB site also defends the reliability of the Billings ovulation method (not to be confused with the less-reliable rhythm methods). The most recent study, carried out with 992 couples in China, showed a 99.5% success rate with Billings. If that statistic is correct, we should be calling couples who use ABC rather than NFP the "parents." After all, the ABC couples, at least the ones using barrier methods, are the ones who are being intimate on days when the wife is fertile. Thus ABC using barrier methods comes closer to being "open to life" than NFP does. But whenever I say that, someone gets really upset with me. CarrieTomko@aol.com

ZENIT SAYS HV WAS THE RESULT OF THE WORK OF 3 COMMISSIONS not just one, which has been contended in every reference I've read about it to date. Where have these other two commissions been hiding out for the last 30+ years? Interesting passage from the report: The position of this commission was definitively ratified by a third commission, composed of cardinals and officials of the Roman Curia. Based on these judgments, Paul VI promulgated the encyclical in which he explains that the "teaching of the Church regarding the proper regulation of birth is a promulgation of the law of God himself. And yet, there is no doubt that to many it will appear not merely difficult but even impossible to observe." "But to those who consider this matter diligently," he said, "it will indeed be evident that this endurance enhances man's dignity and confers benefits on human society." So Paul VI called HV "not merely difficult but even impossible to observe." In other words, he promulgated an encyclical which he knew would be a stumbling block for the faithful. And indeed it has proven to be a major stumbling block, one that has nearly torn the Church apart in western civ. These words bring to mind St. Paul's letter to the Romans. If a law is promulgated which is "impossible to observe" what purpose does it serve, and how are those who cannot observe it liable under it? CarrieTomko@aol.com

IT'S A VERY LONG LIST at this website which classes all of the list members as "Integrist." I've been trying to come up with a satisfactory definition of "Integrism" in my own mind since it has become a term of condemnation in certain Catholic circles. It seems to be a much greater condemnation that "Protestant" when it's applied. Protestants have become our "brothers in Christ" while "Integrists" who at least in some cases, are loyal Traditional Catholics trying to understand what is happening in the Church right now, and looking at papal documents to sort it out. What does The Latin Mass Magazine, for example, have in common with someone who has declared himself pope? What sort of spirit motivates Catholics to say of their fellow Catholics, **Roman Catholic Connection - [N] Vince Paul Alcazar. Denies being an Integrist, but "looks, talks and acts like...", and "lies down with dogs."** Those are ugly words. Words which should be reserved for the lowest of the low. Is that how this person, F. John Loughnan, sees part of the Body of Christ? We are learning how to tear each other apart with our vile words and sentiments. I see that at this website. I see that on message boards. I see that in parishes. I have even seen it from the editor of one Catholic publication. Who sows the seeds of division? Is it Jesus Christ who prayed "that they may all be one"? Or is the spirit sowing these seeds an anti-Christ who desires to destroy the Body of Christ from within if that were possible? Once the Roman Catholic faith was whole, so far as the laity in the pew could tell. We thanked God for giving us a pope to make that possible. Then a division was introduced at Vatican II. We became "liberal" and "conservative." Now "conservative" has split into warring camps of "Integrist" and "NeoCatholic." While we practice ecumenism among the followers of other religions, while we bow down in worship of Allah, we call our fellow Catholics "dogs" and berate each other with words like "Negative" and "Integrist" and "Satan." This is wrong. This is not from Christ. This is not the expression of the Gospel of love. It is the expression of a philosophy of hatred, a philosophy of "Do what thou wilt" which the Satanists subscribe to. CarrieTomko@aol.com

THE ORDO ANTICHRISTIANUS ILLUMINATI that Oengus linked in a comment is an offshoot of Satanist Aleister Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) In this case, their so-called "self-initiation" I presume is the equivalent of "selling your soul to the devil." The goat figure at the website is called "Baphomet" and is said by some to be the "god" that the Templars worshipped. Thomas A. Williams uses this same "Goat of Mendes" drawing as the frontispiece for his book Eliphas Levi: Master of Occultism which was published by The University of Alabama Press in 1975. The philosophy spelled out at the website, "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole of the Law" was coined by Aleister Crowley, the founder of the religion which he named "Thelema" or "A:.A:." His Thelema religion is set up in a manner similar to Masonic Lodges, and he was a Mason. He took his religion from the magical workings of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and modified it. Golden Dawn's roots are in the material of Eliphas Levi, as is Blavatsky's Theosophy. One member of the O.T.O., Jack Parsons, was a scientist--a jet propulsion specialist and co-founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Calif. He experimented at home in his garage as well and blew himself up in the process. To give you an idea of where this religion can lead, one member of an O.T.O. group will be familiar to most Americans...Charles Manson. His group was being investigated for keeping a child in a cage in desert heat until the child died, when the Sharon Tate murder took place. It's on the web if you care to look for it. CarrieTomko@aol.com