http://www.dailycatholic.org/issue/05Dec/dec2ftt.htm

The Devil Never Sleeps

The Fall

            It all started with Adam and Eve and that pesky snake. That same devilish serpent is busier today than ever before and if we don't stay awake, keep our eyes on the Prize and look away from the apple of aggiornamento we too could fall just as easily as our First Parents. It happened in Noah's time and Moses' time. Though Advent chronicles their fall from grace in preparation for the promised Messiah, we have no excuses today because Christ has atoned for our sins....and yet we go right on sinning as if there's no tomorrow. The problem is, if we continue in our modernized comfort zone on the course of rebellion and concession accommodated by the conciliar church, there won't be a tomorrow we can look forward to without fear. The devil has seen to that.

    "Jesus died on a tree that Satan used to entice man into sin. He was crowned with thorns that the ground brings forth as a result of sin. He was born of a woman, who through her obedience untied the knot of the disobedience of the first women. It was Jesus' total and complete obedience - obedience unto death - that atoned for the damage caused by man's disobedience. And it was the humility of this God-man Who allowed Himself to be beaten, spat upon and killed by the very men He created - that made atonement for our pride."


    Over the next several weeks, I would like to share with Daily Catholic readers in this column some things that were quite a prominent part of my thoughts as I converted from the new order travesty to Catholicism. I would also like to take this opportunity to share some other tidbits that I believe Daily Catholic readers will find interesting and edifying, and truly see the contrast between what was always taught and the tripe being passed off today by the new order. It is all more evidence that the devil never sleeps.

Blame it on Adam and Eve

    Since we are now in Advent which deals with preparation for the Coming of Christ, let us go back to the beginning and the reason why it was necessary for Christ to come. I will begin by going into who Adam and Eve were and what the results of Original Sin are. This will lead me into subsequent and related topics on the Blessed Virgin Mary, on modesty and on sinful bishops.

    As most know, Adam and Eve were the first created human beings. They were created in the image and likeness of God. They were male (Adam) and female (Eve). They were in a state of perfect happiness. They enjoyed the preternatural gifts. Some of these gifts would include a perfect state of health, a superior intellect to that of the fallen man and having no inclination or tendency towards sin and evil. They walked with God - having direct communication with Him. They were distinctly human having the capacity of perfect love before the fall.

    Our First Parents committed the sin of pride and disobedience. Satan tempted the woman into thinking she could "become like God" with the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She took the fruit and gave it to her husband (Adam), for "it was good to behold and pleasing to the eye". This sin of pride and disobedience was a trusting in oneself and the devil rather than trusting in God.

    The effect of this sin on them and their descendants was first, the mark of Original Sin, secondly, a loss of Original Justice and innocence, the result being a darkened intellect and weakened will. Further, the man would now dominate the woman who would now have sorrow and pain in childbearing. The man would have to toil and labor by the sweat of his brow for their food. The ground would bring forth thorns and thistles. They would hunger and thirst, get tired, sick and be doomed to die the death and return to dust.

    God promised Adam and Eve (and promised us as well through them) that He would provide them and us - the children of Adam and Eve - with a New Adam (Jesus) and a New Eve (Mary) that would rescue man from eternal separation from God. God would be on our side and we would have the possibility of eternal life that the people who died prior to the establishment of the New and Eternal Covenant could only attain - due to the lack of grace available to them from the non-existing Sacraments - with difficulty and at great odds - and even then the Beatific Vision would only be attained after the New Covenant was established in the Blood of Christ.

    Since the fall of Adam sin got worse and worse through the ages - like and avalanche. Man's life was shortened from 900 years to 120. God got so fed up with man that He destroyed all mankind with the deluge - save Noe and his wife and 3 sons and their wives - along with pairs of each animal. God made His first covenant with man promising not to destroy the world again by flood as signified by the rainbow.

Who is really in exile?

    Consider that beautiful rainbow that signaled a new civilization, if you will, in Old Testament times and consider what that very symbol of the rainbow represents today: sins that caused the flood, most specifically sodomy. If I am not mistaken, the very word takes its name from a city called Sodom, which along with another city - Gomorrah, was summarily destroyed, its inhabitants including Lot's wife turned into pillars of salt; definitely not the salt of the earth that Our Lord spoke of in the Gospels. The devil was a busy body, not letting the "people of God" rest as they wandered for centuries and, by their own sins, earned exile.

    Notice I said "earned exile"? The "chosen people", that is the Jєωs, were not persecuted as innocent victims but because they had veered from the covenant which God had established with them through Abraham and then Moses. That is why it bothered me greatly when Benedict XVI this week in his Wednesday audience to a multitude in St. Peter's Square confused the whole issue with his verbal engineering of the Psalms to patronize those who still do not accept Christ as the Messiah. Furthermore, he referred to the Jєωs of the Babylonian Exile not in terms of being prisoners because of their sins, but innocent victims, "the deported Jєωs." When have you heard that in Catholic teaching? Also he equated the nαzι Death Camps, as terrible as they were, as the same thing - as if the Jєωs were still God's chosen people and nothing had changed. Has he read the New Testament? Is he aware of the fact that 6 to 9 million Jєωs were exterminated in the cσncєnтrαтισn cαмρs while 10 to 13 million, and possibly even more Catholics met the same fate in those same camps and in the Soviet Gulags in Russia and Eastern Europe? While the Jєωs were annihilated only from 1940 to 1944, Catholics were persecuted and put to death not only in the first 300 years after Christ, but also in the Protestant Reformation in Germany and England, in the French Revolution, in Spain and in Mexico in the early 1900's as well as World War II. What you don't hear much about is how it continued on after, especially following the despicable Pact of Metz signed between the Communists and the new order church in 1962 at the urging of John XXIII in which so many priests and the faithful were betrayed behind the Iron Curtain by the compromises of the Vatican II apparatchiks. Yes, isn't glasnost and perestroika wonderful? It is, just as Benedict's address was, all part of the false ecuмenism exposed by the pre-conciliar popes as the heresy it is. But the devil doesn't want anyone defining it as such. You'll note that not since Pope Pius XII has the word "anathema" been used!

Twisting words to leave people twisting in the wind

    In that frame of mind, am I the only one who was greatly bothered by the very verbal engineering and twisting of meaning that Benedict used in referring to the esteemed Saint Augustine? Here is what the post-conciliar pope said as docuмented by Zenit (11-30-05)

    "We want to commend to St. Augustine a further meditation on our psalm. In it, the Father of the Church introduces a surprising element of great timeliness: He knows that also among the inhabitants of Babylon there are people who are committed to peace and the good of the community, despite the fact that they do not share the biblical faith, that they do not know the hope of the Eternal City to which we aspire. They have a spark of desire for the unknown, for the greatest, for the transcendent, for a genuine redemption.

    "And he says that among the persecutors, among the nonbelievers, there are people with this spark, with a kind of faith, of hope, in the measure that is possible for them in the circuмstances in which they live. With this faith in an unknown reality, they are really on the way to the authentic Jerusalem, to Christ. And with this opening of hope, valid also for the Babylonians -- as Augustine calls them -- for those who do not know Christ, and not even God, and who nevertheless desire the unknown, the eternal, he exhorts us not to look only at the material things of the present moment, but to persevere in the path to God. Only with this greater hope can we transform this world in a just way.

    "St. Augustine says it with these words: 'If we are citizens of Jerusalem ... and we have to live on this earth, in the confusion of the present world, in the present Babylon, where we do not live as citizens but are prisoners, it is necessary that we not only sing what the Psalm says, but that we live it: This is achieved with a profound aspiration of the heart, fully and religiously desirous of the Eternal City.'

    And making reference to the 'earthly city called Babylon,' he adds: In it 'there are people who, moved by love for it, contrive to ensure peace, temporal peace, without nourishing another hope in their hearts than the joy of working for peace. And we see them make every effort to be useful to the earthly society. However, if they are committed with a pure conscience in these tasks, God will not allow them to perish with Babylon, having predestined them to be citizens of Jerusalem, on the condition, however, that, living in Babylon, they do not seek pride, outdated pomp and arrogance. ... He sees their service and will show them the other city, toward which they must really long and orient all their effort'('Esposizioni sui Salmi' [Commentaries on the Psalms] 136, 1-2: 'New Augustinian Library,' XXVIII, Rome, 1977, pp. 397, 399)."

    Can you see here the verbal engineering, the twisting of the meaning of the holy doctor's words, and Benedict's subtle attempt to justify universal salvation? Not only that, but note the source he used, the "New Augustinian Library." The published date of 1977 gives it away as we are subjected to more of the new, revised teachings that I would challenge are not the exact Latin words used by Augustine. Rather it is a modernist translation to justify those who would dare alter true Christian teaching. With even that aside, knowing the context of what Augustine was referring to - namely the great Arian crisis and other heresies of his time - he was not, as Benedict falsely assumes, speaking of our time but his time. Let's look at Augustine's words:

    'If we are citizens of Jerusalem ... and we have to live on this earth, in the confusion of the present world, in the present Babylon, where we do not live as citizens but are prisoners, it is necessary that we not only sing what the Psalm says, but that we live it: This is achieved with a profound aspiration of the heart, fully and religiously desirous of the Eternal City.'

"Citizens of Jerusalem" has nothing to do with the place in Israel, but the New Jerusalem - the Church founded by Jesus Christ. St. Augustine is right that, just as today, we have to "live on this earth, in the confusion of the present world, in the present Babylon, where we do not live as citizens but are prisoners..." Again, remember the persecutions against those bishops and priests who refused to go along with the Arian heresy. Would he not feel the present Babylon as being the Arian church which in those times, just as today's new order church, have engulfed and confused the faithful? What Augustine is saying is "Keep the faith! Don't succuмb to the heretics and keep your eye on the prize: the Eternal City." Remember it is Augustine who wrote City of God.

    Augustine never said, hinted or intimated that pagans and non-Catholics could be saved unless they believed and were baptized. It is called conversion. That is something foreign to the new order theology and philosophy. Where does it say that "Babylon will be saved" as Benedict infers, if "also among the inhabitants of Babylon there are people who are committed to peace and the good of the community, despite the fact that they do not share the biblical faith, that they do not know the hope of the Eternal City to which we aspire"? Again we hear those buzz words "peace and the good of the community." Can you see how Augustine's words have been twisted to justify this push for universal salvation and the eventual One World Religion?

Is Limbo destined for Limbo?

    Just as in the time of the Babylonian exile, believers that persevered and were of good heart quite possibly ended up in Limbo awaiting redemption. On the same day as Zenit's release there was an article in the London Times on an alarming piece about the modern church wanting to do away with the concept of Limbo because, and I quote,

    "The Pope is set to abolish the concept of Limbo, overturning a belief held by Roman Catholics since the Middle Ages. Limbo has long been held to be the place where the souls of children go if they die before they can be baptized. However, a 30-strong international commission of theologians summoned by the late John Paul II last year to come up with a 'more coherent and illuminating' doctrine in tune with the modern age is to present its findings to Pope Benedict XVI on Friday."

    Again we see more verbal engineering, compromising and tinkering with Catholic teaching based on the slur that anything up to Vatican II was medieval and out of date, superstitious, and worse, unenlightened. Note the word used by JP2 - "illuminating" - more of the Masonic semantics.

    Now we know that ultimately, as foretold throughout the Old Testament, God sent His only-begotten Son to die on the cross for our sins. This was the only way to make up for the sin of man against God. For the one whom we offended is infinite and a finite creature can not make up for this. Only God Himself could. Let no one tell you that you "only" committed a venial sin as if this is not something to concern yourself with. The One being offended is INFINITE no matter how "small" the sin. And we know, from the Apostles' Creed that Our Lord "descended into hell." Why? Did He want to taunt the tormented souls? Of course not, He descended to redeem first those who had been in the "Laver of Abraham" or "Limbo". This was the fulfillment of His promise. But now even that is being erased because it doesn't play with modern thinking. In the Novus Ordo, everyone goes to Heaven except "hateful and intolerant, stubborn Traditionalists."

    Regardless of their view of Traditional Catholics, we know through Catholic truth that only through our cooperation with the grace that Jesus won for us do we have the possibility of obtaining eternal life. Christ said it: "He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not, shall be condemned." Who then are we to believe? Benedict and his modern trolling for compromise to please secular sectors or Jesus Himself? That, my friends, is a no-brainer. To reinforce this we have the dogma of the Church "No salvation outside the Church" (Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus). Only through the merits of Jesus is it now possible to see the face of God and live at the end of our earthly life despite our inclinations toward evil and our inordinate affections and self-serving attitude.

    Through Baptism, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass - the only means for the True Holy Eucharist - and other Sacraments, we now have the potential to be raised higher than Adam and Eve were in the garden before the fall. We have sanctifying and supernatural grace available to us though we have a life-long battle against the concupiscence of the flesh to contend with. This is exactly what Augustine was speaking of, even though it has been spun by Benedict to look like it was about non-Catholics, specifically the Jєωs, being saved without believing in Christ, without being baptized. Friends, how what Benedict is saying cannot be heresy is beyond me?

    To summarize, we started out good (a state of original holiness). Fell (God's Justice) really low - the loss of original innocence. And now have the potential to be raised higher than we originally were in the Garden because of God's love, grace and mercy, which we receive through the Sacrament of Baptism coupled with the virtues, gifts, charisms, fruits and beatitudes that were won for us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

    Jesus died on a tree that Satan used to entice man into sin. He was crowned with thorns that the ground brings forth as a result of sin. He was born of a woman, who through her obedience untied the knot of the disobedience of the first women. It was Jesus' total and complete obedience - obedience unto death - that atoned for the damage caused by man's disobedience. And it was the humility of this God-man Who allowed Himself to be beaten, spat upon and killed by the very men He created - that made atonement for our pride.

How Pride leads to Anathema

    It has been pride that has kept so many in the dark; pride on the part of the perpetuators of Vatican II who refuse to repent of their error-filled ways, stubbornly forging on further into full-blown apostasy; pride on the part of many of the faithful who refuse to realize this and respond, continuing to blindly go along with all the novelties and ecuмenical clap-trap that come down the pike even though inherently they know these changes are not right, not Catholic. Pride keeps them all from realizing they've taken a big bite out of that apple and can't seem to spit it out. Pride keeps them from realizing the simplicity of what God is asking: He merely wants us to freely know, love and serve Him in this life, so that we may share in His Divinity in the next. He wants to raise us to a higher level than the first man while he was in the state of Original Justice.

    And yet today, that same serpent entwines itself around so many hearts and minds and tells them they don't have to believe anymore what they were told, that it's all superstitious, that they all can be like God if they but throw off the shackles of a medieval Church and realize they've all been boondoggled that they can all not only be like God but be gods themselves. It worked with Adam and Eve, and ever since man has been beaten down to where if he no longer believes in anything, he'll fall for anything and, as we can clearly see, he has.

    To the novelties, innovations, ecuмenism, humanism, modernism and all such other nonsense all we need to do is listen to St. Paul's words in Galatians 1: 8-10:

    "But though we, or an Angel from Heaven, preach a gospel to you beside that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema. As we said before, so I say now again: If any one preach to you a gospel, besides that which you have received, let him be anathema. For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? If I did yet please men, I should not be the servant of Christ."

    Last night on ABC there was a two-hour docudrama on John Paul II and next week CBS launches a mini-series on his life. Why? Because the world loved him. What does that say? Let Jesus Himself tell you:

    "If the world hate you, know ye that it hated Me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you" (John 16: 18-19).

It is obvious ever since John XXIII announced an ill-advised council on January 25, 1959 and Paul VI sold off the triple crowned papal tiara and sold out to the UN, and John Paul II accommodated pagan and non-Catholic at Assisi and schmoozed with celebrities the world over that the world loved them because they had turned their back on Christ and His uncompromising teachings. Meanwhile, the world continues to villify Pope Pius XII because he was chosen out of the world while, from the bitter fruits produced by the conciliar 'popes' it would seem the devil has chosen his successors. And it continues right where JP2 left off with Benedict and the unCatholic travesties he has committed since his election in April.

    Who do we have to thank for this erosion of the Faith? We could begin by saying thank you, Adam and Eve and thank you, Vatican II. But the real credit goes to the devil. As Adam might have paraphrased to Eve the same humorous pathos of Laurel and Hardy: "Here's another fine mess you've gotten us into", the same can be said about the serpent that has slithered into the fray to fray nerves and senses - the faithful's watered down sensus Catholicus. Are you going to stand for it? Or are you going to go along with the domino theory and fall for it because everyone else is? Hallelujah, brother, universal salvation is at hand, but you have to cooperate and compromise. Funny, that's the one salvific factor that marks Traditional Catholics. They've learned from Adam and Eve's mistake and are mighty stubborn when it comes to someone, even the so-called pope, denying Catholic truth and cooperating with the enemy. If you are truly Catholic, you too will resist no matter how shiny that apple might look!

John Gregory


            "Catholics who remain faithful to Tradition, even if they are reduced to but a handful, they are THE TRUE CHURCH"
            Saint Athanasius, "Apostle of Tradition" AD 373