Recently I had a life shattering experience.   Three strokes, to be exact.  So why did I have those strokes and more to the point why did I turn around and come back from a vegetative state to my fully functioning state?  

Some things really upset me about this--like my doctors ignoring my condition until I had those strokes and the hospital tying me to the bed in case I fall.  So when I went to Mass and my priest was talking about the insanity of natural goodness and how it has come to mean condemning the Catholic missionaries who stopped Aztec human sacrifices I saw the line from natural goodness to evil right away.  

You don't?  Sure you do.  What about the children who are taken from their parents and put on ritilin and prozac---for their own good.  What about the tender hearted care for animals that has human habitats being emptied so snails and lizards, etc. can live there.  What about the taking away of vitamins and such so we won't hurt ourselves with them.   Not to mention guns.  The list is truly endless as all these tender hearted people seek to protect us from ourselves.  

Today I got the Four Marks.  Kathleen wrote her editorial on Mr. McGoo and whether or not we are obliged to address his blindness.  Are we?  Are Catholics obliged to correct sinners and instruct the ignorant? The foregoing bit of absurdities we live with are none of our business, right?   So what if children are being arrested for saying a prayer, aborted for body parts, lusted after by dirty old men---what's that to us?  

Also in the Four Marks is an article hosting quite a few vignettes of bad news in keeping with the times--everything from bad weather to bad behavior in high places.  But the author believes these are good signs of God working on things.  Evidently he doesn't think we should junk it, but hope.  

Another man wrote hoping we Catholics would hang together.  Actually he addressed the sedes, but I am mindful of something my priest said that there are many Catholics in their hearts even though they may have been fooled, their hearts remain Catholic.  Today we had a rosary procession.  It was beautiful.  Our Mother took us for a walk and it was beautiful.  There weren't very many of us, but I thought of all the heart Catholics.  They would certainly swell the group and if we all took care of one another, wouldn't it be wonderful.  All praying as one to restore this country to sanity, all supporting one another, all gathered around Our Lady.  Is it time???

Well, those who consider us the dreggs had better get over it.  The beauty of a Catholic resides in his/her faithfulness to the Church not to politics.  Yes, the rosary---even Mr. McGoo would see if he prayed the rosary.  But in the meantime, Catholics have been know through all ages for taking on ignorance and evil, standing up to it and backing it down, building hospitals, universities and churches.  Even the Kennedys stood for something, though they weren't really good Catholics.  They had a grace, and people of this country would have united behind them.

Thank you, Veritatis.  You say it's time.  I'm thinking it always was.  We're Catholics, fooled or not.  We have a rich and gorgeous history of standing up and speaking out like St. John the Baptist.  When idiocies are being tossed around like the "mercy of abortion" it has always been a Catholic who made the speech or wrote the paper that brought it down.  People keep asking "where are the saints."  Saints were just Catholics who fought an evil.    

I can't get past the beauty of a large Catholic family.  Maybe that haunts me now because of the shattered Catholic family where some of us are dregs.  Did it never occur to anyone to heal this rent?  That we could be one family and let God take care of the incidentals?  Believe me the rosary would clear things up in no time.  

Awesome recovery from the strokes, Trinity.  Just incredible.

Thank you for your loving post.  Our Rosaries - we can't recite them enough!

Dear Dawn.  Trust you to put your finger on things.  Would you good people agree with me, though, that a Catholic is a definite thing, all politics aside.  I would say that Catholicism is a way of being and doing, it's not a person, place or thing.  So can we define what makes a Catholic Catholic?

Trinity, glad to hear you are improving....

I do not feel that the marjoirty of SV's are dregs, like any group, there are a few bad apples....

Dawn, true on Americanism, but blame is not square on US Catholics, lets recall that Modernism got its biggest boost in France and Germany.....that the Rhine countries and there neighbors were biggest liberals at V2....Also, French Revolution was a true Masonic victory, the US Revolt a partial one....

Trust you to put your finger on things.

The theological errors flow from philosophical errors.  That is hwy a seminarian's training begins with philosophy, and why a bad philosopher will never be a good theologian.

The philosophical roots of the present illness pre-date the USA (by a fair stretch).

We have played our part, but things did not start here.

Would you good people agree with me, though, that a Catholic is a definite thing, all politics aside.

Men are, by nature, social beings.  Our beliefs and the influence of Holy Church naturally affect our relations with each other, whether the situation involves a small group of men, a family, or a larger group of men.

Excuse me, Veritatis.  There is a reason I don't get on think tanks like Catholic Gentlemen.  I have the germ of an idea here which I think will facilitate healing,  because no matter how you slice it, we have all been wounded by the splits in our Church.  I think my priest gave me a great gift when he said that there are Catholics in their heart even though they have been fooled.  Lord knows we have all suffered from that fooling, so it makes less than no sense to go on carping at one another,  picking more wounds.

In my humble opinion some of us have been ripped off, and I am disposed to commisserate with them and wish them the full, generous measure of Catholicism.  Face it, the saints were saints because they gave generously.  I believe Fr. Oswalt hit the nail on the head in his "Observation" in the Four Marks this month.  I will reproduce it here and hope no one is offended at my plagiarism.

"Coming out of my first Traditional Lenten Season, I have noticed some very glaring differences and deficiecies of the Novus Ordo.  The practice of fasting and abstinence has a whole different tone in the New Church compared to the Catholic Church.  In the New Church one is obligated to fast 2 times a year, on Ash Wed. and Good Friday.  One is only required to abstain from meat on Fridays in Lent...."

"Easter morning for me this year was a great joy, not only spiritually, but physically as the toll of fasting the whole of Lent enabled me to take that physical deprivation and 'feed' that into my spiritual life.  How deprived I have  een and so many in the New Church are by the near abandonment of mortification and penance..."

These are excerpts and only one area of things stolen from our brethren.  Poor things!  I am thinking....what can I do to restore to them what was stolen.  Can I tell them of the saints who got rich by giving, for God is never outdone in generosity.  Surely I can get rich by giving myself.  Can I help them see that natural goodness is a deficit?  

One thing I can and will do is a Rosary Walk, taking Our Lady of Fatima with me.  It should be something, since I am in a wheel chair and I hope to start at St Peter's down the street.  It is time Our Lady went out to greet her children---she will know hers and they will know her.

Theologically  , yes, but mothers and children speak heart to heart, don't they.  Well a day.  I shall enjoy it.

Oh, yes, by the way,  someone needs to define what a Catholic is.