On the True notion of Perfection: "All our actions then must be referred to God- to know, love and serve Him and thereby glorify Him, this is the end of life, the source of all perfection pg. 157

"John 20:23: Whose sins you will forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you will retain, they are retained." "We should say, as we already did, that in the sacraments the priest acts as a minister: this is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God (1 Cor 4:1). Thus, in the same way that God forgives and retains sins, so also does the priest. Now God forgives sins by giving grace, and he is said to retain by not giving grace because of some obstacle in the one who is to receive it. So also the minister forgives sins, insofar as he dispenses a sacrament of the Church, and he retains insofar as he accounts someone unworthy to receive the Sacrament, pg. 472, 478

Requisites of Worthy Reception - Contrition: The Council of Trent defines contrition as a "sorrow of the soul and a detestation for sin committed, with the purpose of not sinning for the future." Hence contrition is essentially an act of the will, by which man renounces sin and determines to avoid it in future. The act of renunciation is called contrition in the strict sense, while the determination to avoid future sins is termed purpose of amendment. Being an interior sorrow of the soul, contrition differs from that purely intellectual regret which consists in a mere perception of the damnableness of sin, and also from the so-called terror conscientiae, i.e., the fear with which conscience is smitten upon being convinced of iniquity. Both these emotions may be present without a spark of genuine contrition. The moral value of contrition, as a turning away from sin and a turning to God, consists in its being an act of the will, and consequently it need not be accompanied by sensible pain or grief, nor manifest itself by sighs and tears.
Perfect Contrition: is inspired by charity, i.e., a perfect love of God as the supreme good for His own sake. Imperfect contrition, now technically called attrition, is sorrow inspired by some other supernatural motive, e.g, fear of eternal punishment, repugnance to sin as an offense against Almighty God, regret at having lost divine grace and forfeited heaven, etc. As can be easily seen, the distinction between perfect and imperfect contrition is not based upon the degree of sorrow a man has for his sins, but upon the motives by which that sorrow is inspired; this distinction is specific rather than generic. Perfect Contrition, coupled with a desire to receive the Sacrament of Penance, is sufficient to effect the forgiveness of sins not merely in cases of necessity, or when it reaches the highest possible degree of intensity, buto f itself and always. Imperfect contrition, on the other hand, can produce this effect only in connection with sacramental confession....(abbreviated) pg. 143

The Recidivist: In the strict and formal meaning of the term, a recidivist is one who after repeated confession (on three or four occasions) frequently falls into the same sin with the result that there exists just reasons for doubting the good will of the penitent...that after repeated confession the penitent commits the same sin in similar circuмstances of time and place, so that one may prudently infer the continuance of an evil will in the penitent (cf. c. 2208/1). Absolution: in normal circuмstances the recidivist cannot be absolved unless he show special signs of sincerity such as to destroy the presumption against him of lack of suitable dispositions...The reason for the above rule is that the penitent's frequent relapses into the same sin with no sign of amendment create a strong presumption that he lack sincere attrition and firm purpose of amendment...(abbreviated)pg. 330

I can't believe the Conciliarist heresy is being advocated on CathInfo…

This thread is on the most difficult topic of the 21st Century and the above quotes indicate as much.  Our problem is that hearts have grown too cold, not that heads are too hot.  We require heads so hot they will start to warm our hearts, i.e., we need actually and really to reject rationalism and be Catholics again.  We are perishing from cool heads and frozen hearts.

We need intellects hot enough to start functioning so that we begin to see the forest for the trees.  We need some normal Catholic imagination.  Then there would at last be mention of the elephant in the living room, namely, the Apocalypse.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

If this isn't the Apocalypse, then what might be?  We keep repeating that things will remain normal until the End of Time.  Well, perhaps it is therefore time to smell the roses, so to speak.  This is the long-awaited End of Time, and welcome to it!

Our fatal flaw is our rationalism.  We have only childish simplistic notions of our Catholic religion and expect the Apocalypse to be some variety of cartoon or cheap fundamentalist soap opera.  (Fundamentalist and secularist modernism are both of them rationalist and cold to the max.)

Basically the Apocalypse began in 1914 (or 1917) and has been getting worse ever since.  Popes St. Pius X and Pius XII said repeatedly in public that the Apocalypse was beginning.  All through our history the Apocalypse was expected to begin in the 20th Century.  If we are not simple-minded rationalists we should see that the 20th Century was the outbreak of the Apocalypse, so to speak, on steroids.  The recent global show-down around Syria (i.e., around the Holy Land) was the perfect fulfillment to a tee of the prophecies on the Battle of Armageddon.   To expect some different climactic Last Days is to expect some childish rationalist materialist literalism that has never existed and never will.  Roman Catholicism is not like that, never has been and never will be.  That was John Calvin's materialist rationalist Fideist religion, but it is not a Catholic's religion.

Catholics are not Fideists.  We are expected to have brains and hearts and to use them!  And that means to have imaginations as well such that we can see easily and clearly that we are living the Last Days of Planet Earth and it is, so to speak, well past time for us to smell the coffee and get a move on.  This is not merely war.  This is Holy War!  And there can be no mere renewal of the Church.  There is the Second Coming of the Lord and the resurrection of Holy Mother Church from the dead.

Catholics are required by faith to believe in the Whole Christ, and that includes the Parousia.  As Roman Catholics we are required to really and truly believe in the Parousia as something absolutely real (not something cartoonish, but as the real and historic End of History) and as something to be vividly expected by all the faithful.  The Parousia is not and never has been any marginal luxury that Catholics sort of believe in with a wink and a nod.  As Roman Catholics we believe in the Parousia of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  Totally and without reservations.

Catholicism has never ever taught for even one moment that at the End of Time the Papacy might not cease.  The Papacy is not merely suffering another temporary vacancy.  The Papacy has been violently obliterated from the face of the earth by the evil powers and principalities of this world (aka the Allied Powers).  The Soviet K.G.B. and the American C.I.A. have quite literally murdered and usurped our Papacy.  And this has happened because we are living in the Last Days of this dark and fallen world.  "The End" is not nigh, it is here right in our faces.

We need to become so hot-headed and warm-hearted that we stop being rationalists and start to pray and study as Catholics and clearly see the reality now all around us. In truth Our Lord is not far to seek.  We need but to open our timid rationalist eyes and we will see Him.

This our 21st Century is the Parousia of the Lord.  

We should not expect another Pope or an earthly Restoration.  We should expect with all our minds and all our hearts the Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ and trailing behind Him with clouds of glory!  Again, this is not the time for reforms or wars.  This is the time for the Holy War that brings such utter destruction to this world that many Catholics will live to see a New Heaven and a New Earth descend and the long-prophesied millennial Kingdom of God on earth.

That is our own time, and nothing less than that.