Abbey-Roads2

Know what you are walking in on. 

Blogging is essentially conversation, especially when it comes to what goes on in the comment boxes.  A reader walks in on the conversation, and if they wish, they may add to it or, as often happens in my case, distracts from it.  I just walked in on a conversation the other night - without reading in detail what was being said - I added my own two cents worth - to what I thought was being said.  I can be annoying that way - especially if I decide to write nonsense.

At least I try to be consistent.

At any rate, this is what happens here on this blog - newer readers have walked in on a conversation that has pretty much gone on for 2 or more years.  What I write has to do with conversion, piety, prayer, sexuality, chastity, and everything else that affects our lives as Catholics.  This blog is all about trying to be a faithful Catholic, and sometimes I have attempted to examine what I perceived to be in opposition to this.

Vigilance.

How often I have written about bloggers who are not what they seem to be?  Now a few of them have come clean and we understand where they are at.  We have come to realize that some people have raised their pope banner and waved it around with enthusiasm, but since they had no roots, their enthusiasm wanes, along with their faith.  When the narrow way is beset by difficulties and struggle, they falter.   Others, perhaps grieved by poor liturgy and bad example, jumped on every band wagon, but then worldly cares and human respect stifled their faith.  Then of course there are the those who wait quietly, like weeds hidden in the wheat field, hoping to infect the whole crop.  Therefore, be vigilant and discerning as you surf the net.

A continuum.

Please keep in mind - when you read what I write here, that what I’m discussing may be part of a thread from another post, or a delayed response to a comment made on another post, an email, or even what another blogger may have written on his blog.  I just don’t always mention my motivation.  Believe it or not, there is a continuum here.

Even though I get people burning mad.

Oh!  And as for the apostates in the field of bloggers, in the end “The Son of Man will dispatch his angels to collect from his kingdom all who draw others to apostasy and all evildoers.  The angels will hurl them into the fiery furnace where they will wail and grind their teeth!“- Matthew 13: 41-42.  ”Wail and grind their teeth”…  I think they kind of do that now.

(It may seem as if I’m writing about two different things here, but I’m not.)  

Remaining faithful.

Years ago, while considering the astonishing persecution of English Catholics, wherein a great many died as martyrs, I almost laughed to myself when I realized the simple reason for their brutal deaths was because they remained faithful to the Pope. 

I came to this realization in the early 1970’s, after Catholics - priests and laity alike - dissented from Humanae Vitae.  I turned to the English martyrs after I was repeatedly told adoration of the Blessed Sacrament was old fashioned, and that certain behaviors were no longer considered sinful.  You know, that whole liberal spiel.  I laughed because the very things being said to me were similar to those things that had been said to faithful Catholics in England and Wales after Henry VIII broke with Rome.

They could have said one thing and done another.

These people died simply because they were faithful to Rome, obedient to Christ’s Vicar, the Pope.  They were arrested, detained, tortured, and barbarously executed all because they would not recognize an unlawful marriage, or take the oath of supremacy, thus refusing to renounce their Roman Catholic faith. 

For many, simply being a Roman Catholic became a crime of treason against the State.