The saints were no exception to this. If any of them were alive today, they wouldn't be members of CathInfo, nevermind argue in the Crisis section with any regularity. They would be spending their time with family, reading spiritual books, praying, and doing good works like visiting the sick, helping the poor, etc.


Matthew

This is where I fall now...deep down, I think that everyone realizes that CathInfo (and other internet forums) bear little or no spiritual fruit that will help you become holier.

Thomas a Kempis said that when two people that have the spirit of Christ converse with each other it would bear great fruit for both of them, but I don't see how this is true for the majority of threads on this site and others.

In the two years that I've regularly posted here, I cannot attribute any spiritual growth to this site except my great leap backwards when I took CM as my guru (a very embarrassing time for me...if it were possible I would delete every single post of that arrogant fool, DeMaistre).

At the end of it all, I don't really know where I stand. I'm anti-Conciliar Church, but think that there can be salvation in it. I'm not extremely anti-sede, and I *might* attend a sede mass if I had to. I'm anti-Indult, but attend an Indult Mass. I guess the SSPX fits my thinking most, but I'm disturbed by Archbishop Lefebvre's (a man who I greatly respect, since it was reading his Open Letter that introduced me to trad. catholicism) opinion that non-Catholics can be saved....

I've been posting less and less frequently and paying more attention to my own poor soul (sad to say, even after I found trad. Catholicism..was still committing mortal sins) and I've noticed GREAT SPIRITUAL FRUIT, so I think I'm going to lay low for a while (1. I'm not attributing any of my own faults to CathInfo 2. Its not like I post anything of any real value on this site, since I probably know the least) and tend to my own salvation by prayer, penance, and spiritual AND corporal works of mercy.

I just bought a beautiful set of pictures in the Redemptorist bookstore in Sai Gon...one of them is a picture of a holy death, with the dying man holding a crucifix surrounded by his praying family and the priest and angels waiting to  conduct him to heaven...the other is a picture of a bad death where the man is screaming, the priest is holding the crucifix in front of his face, his wife is crying, and there are demons surrounding him waiting to drag him into Hell. I'm going to start from this moment seriously applying myself in the practice of virtue and holiness that I may die a good death. Amen.


in the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary,

EDIT:

no, I haven't gone soft on the Crisis, etc. I'm not going to be moved by any accusations that I'm ignoring the obvious fact that the Con. Church isn't Catholic, etc or that this is a prime example of the depravity and contradictions that the SSPX position leads to blah blah blah...

Salvation is our only business..everything else is foreign to us. The Church was made for our salvation, not us for the Church....

Do you think that we could post things helpful to our spiritual journey?  That's what some of us have been  trying to do.

I wasn't implying that it was the forum itself that was detrimental to me, just that it isn't a source of any real or significant spiritual fruit. In other words, its just something that's fun to do in the evening, etc. For this reason I think its best to leave it for now.

I've been praying all 15 decades of the Rosary daily for a few months now and prayerfully reading a lot of Saint Alphonsus. School is about to start up for me again, so I'll be pressed for time to pray and read good books, so CathInfo just needs to go, since its the least important.