Global Warming Unmasked: The Hidden Agenda

RealCatholicTV's CIA is back with episode #4, "Global Warming Unmasked: The Hidden Agenda."

The team at CIA, as usual, has done an outstanding job of summarizing over 500 hours of research that went into producing this presentation.  Host Michael Voris effectively lays out the evidence that this is about much more than reducing our energy output and "carbon footprints." The sinister connection of the global warming movement as the "more sophisticated" outgrowth of the early 20th Century eugenics movement is frightening and startling; advocates of both have supported population control (many explicitly through forced methods and large-scale "reductions" if necessary), global government, and many other types of dangerous social engineering that raises man or the earth--the creation--above the Creator.  CIA has put all the pieces together in a way that everyday, working Catholics probably never would have had the time to do, and have produced a documentary that EVERYONE who believes in the sanctity of human life according to the Judeo-Christian tradition needs to watch.

Global Warming Unmasked: The Hidden Agenda

The Backup Plan

There's a story about the time after Jesus' Resurrection and Ascension that illustrates how much God is depending on us to take the Good News of Christ into the world, to "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19-20):

In heaven, all the angels could still see the wound marks on Jesus' hands and feet.  They all bowed down before Him.  Finally, St. Michael went up to Jesus and said, 'Jesus, do they know how much You love them?

"A group of them know", Jesus said.

"Well," St. Michael replied, "How are you going to tell the rest of the world?"

"I told Peter and I told James and I told John and I told the rest of the Twelve," Jesus said, "and they are going to have to tell others."

"Come on, Jesus", St. Michael said.  "How else are you going to do it?"

"This is it,", Jesus said.  "If they don't tell them, then the world will never know."

St. Michael asked, "What is your backup plan?"

"There is no backup plan.  If they don't do it the world will never know."

Ladies and gentlemen, we are the backup plan.  We, the Church, are the last chance that God has planned for humanity.  While there is certainly no "boxing in" God's capacity for mercy and creativity in countering evil, so far as we are concerned and privleged to know this side of the grave, we are it.  Beginning with Mary's fiat (be it done), made manifest in the person of Christ, and continuing in our own time, God has chosen us--you and me--to be his eyes, ears, voice, hands, and feet in the world.  The time has come for our generation to claim its call as servants of Christ and to live out that call with the intent of nothing less than changing the world.  This is not something we should take lightly or sitting down, for we are sent as sheep among wolves to follow Christ's model of laying down his life for we who he now calls friends.

In his homily for last week's Feast of the Assumption, our priest pointed out that God, the all-powerful creator of the universe, chose to hinge His entire plan for salvation on the yes of one poor, young, (but humble  and faithful) servant girl.  "God," as he put it, "likes to play dangerously."  The stakes are high, but now He has no less faith in us than He did in Christ; as we pray in the Eucharistic Prayer, "look not on our sins but on the faith of your Church..."  As he went "all in" with Mary 2000 years ago, and was satisfied by the faithfulness and perfect sacrifice of His only Son whom she bore into the world, now He looks to us.  The Lord of Hosts is hedging His bet on you and me.

This is our time.  This is the appointed time and place for us to enter the battle, like those who have fought so bravely before us, so that we might shine brighter than the stars, glorifying Him with them for all eternity.

"Turning You Into An Instrument of Efficiency"

This commercial by Verizon Wireless aired while I was at the gym today.  At face value, it's just another commercial with cool graphics promoting another techie gadget.  But, there seemed to be a message deeper than that that probably wasn't even intended by its producers.  The deeper message to me seemed to be a societal one, expressing the subconscious reality about the way our world views the worth of individual human beings.  No longer are we seen as men and women, thinking, feeling, judging, knowing, loving, and ultimately deeply mysterious creatures made in the image and likeness of our creator.  Now we are only perceived by society to be worthwhile if we fall into one or both categories: producers and consumers.  Or, as the slogan of the commercial put it so well, "instruments of efficiency."  That was reflected eerily in the transformative graphics used in the commercial.


Am I reading too much into it?  Perhaps; there's no way to tell whether or not that message was even considered by the producers.  But, nonetheless, that's what it spoke to me.  What about you?  What do you think?

Hope for the End

It's time for the Church and its faitful to look up and realize that western culture as we have known it is self-destructing around us.  With 50+ million innocent lives taken in the past 37 years in the name of "choice" and "convenience," and an attempt to redefine marriage on human terms instead of according to divine decree, it is only logical to think that we are approaching the closing midnight toll of a society spiraling downward into social and individual sin with ever-increasing speed.  If history is any indicator, it is only a matter of time before the apparatus of the state will be brought to bear against the faithful, perhaps even to the point--as we have seen countless times in centuries past--of taking lives and livelihoods.  As Michael Voris describes so well, we the faithful have one responsibility in the face of the death and destruction that is inevitable when a society gives itself over to evil: to proclaim the Truth and defend it (Him) to the death.

So how, you might ask, is this a cause for great hope?  I, for one, am struggling to internalize that reality, that persecution is God's way of separating and refining His saints.  We ought to take solace when we are despised and persecuted by the world, because that is precisely the way Christ promised it would be for those who love Him, who live in Him as children of the Father, and who the Father will glorify with his Son in heaven for all eternity.  For, as Saint Paul tells us,

"You who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.  For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, 'Abba, Father!'  The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us" (Romans 8:14-18).





This program is from RealCatholicTV.com

Who Is Like Unto God?

This blog is placed under the patronage and guardianship of St. Michael, the captain of the heavenly armies of God who, with the battle cry that is his name, "Who is like unto God?", drove the rebel Lucifer from heaven like a bolt of lightning to end the great conflict of the heavenly hosts.  He now intercedes for us as the champion of the faithful who struggle with the powers of evil.

Michael appears in Scripture as the guardian of the children of Israel, as their comfort and protector who prepared their return from the Persian captivity (Daniel 10:13).  Just as he rescued the body of Moses from the grasp of the evil one (Jude 9), today he continues to fulfill in a particular and powerful way the final petition of the Lord's Prayer, "deliver us from evil," at the same time both strengthening and encouraging the Church Militant and equipping the faithful with courage and fortitude to fight for the salvation of souls.

Michael stands by the side of the faithful in the hour of their death, ready to escort them to their final judgement and into the glory that is promised those who live and die as friends of God.

Finally, at the end of time, Michael will unfurl the standard of the Cross, sound the last trumpet signalling the end of time, and bind together the beast and his servants, chaining them for eternity in the burning pool (cf Daniel 12, Revelation 12:7).

Saint Michael the Archangel,

Defend us in battle

Be our protection against the

wickedness and snares

of the devil;

May God rebuke him,

we humbly pray;

O Prince of the heavenly host,

By the power of God,

thrust into hell

Satan and all evil spirits

Who prowl about the world

Seeking the ruin of souls.

Amen.

Saint Michael's feast day is celebrated on September 29.  He is the patron saint of police, knights, soldiers, those in battle, grocers, and radiologists.

The Heart of the Matter

I've been taking a class this semester called "The Psychology of Learning."  It is tremendously interesting to discover how different organisms learn and all of the different neural processes that take place that make learning possible in God's creatures, from the least complex, like cockroaches (yes, cockroaches can be trained) all the way "up the chain" to humans.

But (there's always a but)...

Psychology, and science in general, doesn't go any further than that.  It can't.  It is purposely limited and leaves off without delving into the "metaphysical."  This all left me thinking, is that it? Is that all there is to it?  Is learning nothing more than an ever-increasingly complex system of theories of behavior modification?  Is there no difference between me training my dog and raising children, save the advantage of brain size and a more and more complex system of modifying behavior and shaping neural processes?

Of course there is.  For those of us who believe in the Lord and his plan for us, behavior is simply not enough.  We need to go deeper.  We have a longing to discover not only why we do what we do, but who we are and why we were created.  It is here that our search for understanding takes a gargantuan leap from the brain to the heart.  Where our limited human knowledge leaves us unsatisfied, there is precisely where love picks up. 

We were given the incredible gift of free will, of being able to choose, so that ultimately we might choose to love.  In loving as Christ commanded--God with our whole heart, mind, and strength, and flowing from that, our neighbor as ourselves--we finally find satisfaction in our thirst for identity and meaning (cf. Matthew 22:36-40).  It lies in complete surrender of self, of holding nothing back.  It is in that burning, self-sacrificing love that is embodied in the Sacred Heart of Christ, where we are invited to enter and abandon ourselves in trust to his unfathomable love for us, that our hearts are united with His.  It is love so powerful that it brought God himself down from heaven, to ultimately descend into death and rise again to prove that it--that HE--still wants us.  From there, it is only a stone's throw back to our minds, so that in His Spirit, we learn more and more each day to think and judge with the mind of Christ.  Our behavior is changed, and along with it, our whole way of thinking and doing.

Far from being relegated to a complex, animalistic way of thinking and living, we are given the gift--through Him, with Him, and in Him--of becoming like Christ, to share in the eternal glory of God.

"Behold this Heart Which has loved men so much that It spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming Itself, in order to testify to them It's love; and in return I receive from the greater number nothing but ingratitude by reason of their irreverence and sacrileges, and by the coldness and contempt which they show me in this Sacrament of Love." 

Our Lord to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

Choose what all the science in the world cannot and will not ever be able to explain.  Choose Him.  Choose Love.