What are you doing to bring Christ into the world? What type of representation of the Catholic church do the members of this forum make of the Catholic Church when they are not reading or posting on the forum?
As an example I read and contemplate the Eleison Comments, and post or read it to people whenever possible. Like this :
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Eleison Comments XXXIV, 23 February 2008
True Anti-SemitismMost people seeing how Pope Benedict XVI has changed the Church’s Good Friday prayer for the Jєωs will think he has been their friend, because the change was in a direction demanded by spokesmen of theirs, who made themselves heard. However, for any Catholic who has the Catholic Faith, Benedict XVI has been in this not their friend but their enemy.
The difference is quite simply the difference between our brief life here below, and life everlasting: For purposes of this life, lasting for each of us, let us say, 70 years, he has been their friend, because by, for instance, taking out of the 1962 text the references to the Jєωs’ “blindness”, “darkness” and “the veil over their hearts”, he has softened the Church’s solemn criticism of their condition. On the other hand by the same softening he will also have diminished Catholics’ awareness of how especially Jєωs need the charity of Catholics’ prayers.
For indeed from Adam to world’s end, faith in the one and only Redeemer, to come or having come, can alone save any soul from eternal damnation, unless that soul lives without serious sin and is honestly ignorant of the Redeemer. But honest ignorance presents a particular difficulty for the Jєωs who had all the privileges of the Old Testament to prepare them for the coming of their Messiah, Jesus Christ, and who ever since have had to put “the veil over their hearts” in order not to recognize him in the multiple prophecies of their Old Testament, notably Isaiah LIII.
Therefore the recent Good Friday liturgy change, by diminishing Catholics’ awareness of that real “veil”, etc, has done a disservice to Jєωs’ eternal salvation. In this respect of the Catholic Faith, Benedict XVI has, objectively, shown himself to be against the Jєωs purely as Jєωs. Is there any other possible true definition of the expression “αnтι-ѕємιтє”?
Sacred Heart of Jesus, between now and world’s end, grant to your Church many martyrs to die for the eternal salvation of your racial kinsmen, beloved by you! Kyrie eleison.
Bishop Richard Williamson
La Reja, Argentinia
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Eleison Comments XXXV, 1 March 2008
False Anti-SemitismWhen “Eleison Comments” last week argued that insofar as Pope Bnedict XVI's Good Friday prayer change worked against the eternal salvation of Jєωs, he had proved himself -- no doubt unintentionally -- to be a true αnтι-ѕємιтє, ie enemy of Jєωs purely as Jєωs, a number of readers apparently agreed. I congratulate them, because they had to be thinking with their Catholic minds instead of merely emoting with their (objectively) vile media. Let us think a little further.
Obviously, the basic principles apply to all men and not just to Jєωs: to wish them eternal salvation is to love them truly, because it is to wish them the greatest good of all, namely everlasting happiness in Heaven, through and with Our Lord Jesus Christ. To wish them welfare or prosperity merely in this little life on earth is to love them much less, especially if that worldly success would get in the way of their eternal salvation, as it all too easily can do -- Mt.XIX, 24.
But fewer and fewer people today believe in life everlasting, or in Our Lord, so naturally the perspective of such people is different. If I urge upon them eternal life, or if I do what I prudently can to obstruct their campaigning against Our Lord, then I will seem to them to be their enemy when I am in fact their best friend. It is all a question of perspective, but it is not a question of opinion: the eternal perspective is true, while the anti-Christian perspective is objectively and absolutely false.
Now ever since the Jєωs were responsible for the crucifying of Our Lord Jesus Christ -- “His blood be upon us and upon our children”, Mt.XXVII,25 -- they have as a race and as a religion, always with noble exceptions, continued to reject him down to our day. Thus St. Paul observed that they not only “killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets”, but they also prohibited St. Paul himself from “speaking to the Gentiles so as to save them”. In brief, their behavior was such that “they please not God and are adversaries to men” (I Thess. II,14-16). Closer to our own time, it is a matter of historical record that the designing and launching of, for instance, Communism, to wrest mankind away from God and to replace his Heaven with a man-made paradise, was largely their achievement.
So they persecuted St. Paul at every turn (see Acts of the Apostles) as being one of their arch-enemies, when in fact nobody loved them more truly or labored more for their real well-being than did St. Paul (cf. Rom. IX,1-5). Similarly today, they will call an “αnтι-ѕємιтє” anybody who gets in the way of any godlessness of theirs, when in fact all people laboring for their salvation, as for the salvation of Gentiles, are their best friends. St Paul, pray for us! Kyrie eleison.
Bishop Richard Williamson
La Reja, Argentinia