Dutch bishop removes priest after ‘anti-gay’ homily upholding Church teaching

Jeanne Smits, Paris correspondent

Analysis

May 10, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — Father Marc Massaer will be leaving his present parish in the diocese of ’s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands, by the 1st of July. His removal is seen by many as a consequence of a strongly worded sermon he gave last December 26, speaking out against gender ideology and same-sex unions. Fr Massaer has published the news of his departure himself on his parish website on May 7, explaining that he has accepted Bishop de Korte’s suggestion that he leave Sint-Christoffel in West Maas en Waal on short notice. His new destination is as yet unknown.

While the priest himself has not underscored the link between his removal and his “controversial” homily (from the Dutch mainstream point of view), it is certain that he has gone through a period of confrontation with his parishioners, the Catholic members of eight former parishes he has led alone for the last eight years when a “super-parish” was formed, due to a dearth of priests and faithful in the formerly heavily Catholic south half of the Netherlands.

Hostilities were opened following the “Second Day of Christmas,” as it is called in Holland: a public holiday when many nominal Catholics who seldom go to church are wont to join Mass. Fr Massaer was celebrating  in one of “his” eight parish churches, in Walen.

In this case, the daughter of a local choir member had come back to her home town for Christmas and joined Mass on the 26th. Ceciel Kalkers was shocked to hear the priest condemning “the indoctrination of gender ideology.” He said it “is radically opposed to the order of creation, and it promotes that what is not Catholic.” “This is a boomerang that will head back towards humanity,” he said, with all its “negative consequences,” she wrote two weeks later in an open letter to the local newspaper, De Maas en Waler.

She added another quote from the sermon from memory: “Only ‘holy families’ (man-woman-child) could bring peace and harmony.”

Her letter went on to speak of her “sadness,” thinking about “two good homo friends, a homo-couple with a newborn child.” “I hardly know anyone nicer.  Weren’t these people welcome?” she said. And so her text went on, deploring the priest’s tone, his “condemnations,” his lack of “inclusion.”

Kalkers tried to speak to Massaer in the sacristy, but he had already left. The following day, she called him over the telephone, and was again shocked to hear that he was standing by his words. “People should start thinking, because they have fallen asleep,” he said, according to Kalkers.

Challenged about the “hurt” such words could cause to homosexuals, she said Fr Massaer added: “A man with a man is no lifestyle. We can’t make wrong things right just by talking. As a Church, we have a right to say what is right and what is wrong. Every human being stands before a choice, and I want them to think about that.”

“So orientation is a choice, according to Fr Massaer,” angrily wrote Ceciel Kalkers. She was even more indignant when she heard him add: “You’re really going against the order of creation and then you’re just sinning. Sins don’t fit with the Christian lifestyle. I condemn what is wrong.”

Shortly after this letter was published, the governing board of the parish of St. Christopher reached out to the diocese of ’s-Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch), whose bishop, Gerard de Korte, is known for his openness to the “LGBT community,” having even accepted to open his cathedral for the local “Pink pride” a few years back before being forced to back down.

According to the regional press, the board’s move was dictated by anger at the “gay-unfriendly” sermon of Marc Massaer, although the no details were given. Its vice president did tell De Gelderlander that the board was “not happy with the impact of the homily.”

The newspaper compared Massaer’s words with the Nashville statement condemning homosexual acts. At the time in the Netherlands, the statement was being picked up and signed by local evangelicals, amid furious media reaction. Some of them even received death threats at the time.

De Gelderlander wrote on May 7 that Massaer’s sermon had triggered “a storm of outrage, also among parishioners and volunteers.” Now Massaer is being moved to other pastures.

Talks took place between the parish governing board and the diocese, according to the newspaper: “It is not clear whether Massaer’s departure is a result of those talks. No one at the diocese or in the parish is prepared to answer requests for comment.”

Even if his new nomination was on the cards, reactions to his sermon are sufficient to show how difficult it is in a deeply paganized country such as the Netherlands to proclaim the full Catholic truth.

Local media noted that Massaer “keeps himself strictly to church rules.” “Last summer he banned a nonreligious choir from singing at the funeral of a parishioner,” noted De Gelderlander. But even that liberal daily was obliged to acknowledge that under Massaer’s guidance, not one of the eight churches of the joint parish of West Maas en Waal has been shut down.

Facebook comments called the priest an “Inquisitor” and a “freak.”

That is how upholders of traditional Church teaching are now seen in secularized Holland.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/dutch-bishop-removes-priest-after-anti-gay-homily-upholding-church-teaching

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Mother of Good Counsel

In the quaint medieval town of Genazzano, about 30 miles from Rome, on a side altar of the Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel, there is a small image of the Blessed Virgin holding her infant Son. The Child, in His turn, lovingly encircles Mary's neck with His arm, inclining her head towards Himself in a gentle and intimate embrace.
This small fresco has a marvelous history.

In the fifteenth century there lived in the town an elderly widow, by name Petruccia, who had invested the entirety of the small fortune left to her by her husband in a needed side chapel for her church. Her money running out when the walls were only a few feet high, the townsfolk openly mocked and ridiculed her for her foolishness. Undaunted, Petruccia assured them that in spite of the apparent failure of her own endeavors, the Mother of God and St. Augustine, whose spiritual sons were caretakers of the church, would finish the work she had begun.

On April 25, 1467 as the inhabitants of Genazzano celebrated the feast of their patron St. Mark, marvelous music was heard approaching, its source seemingly from above. Looking upwards, the astounded citizens saw a brilliant cloud descending towards them. The bell of the church, and then others throughout the town, began to peel of their own accord. The cloud came to rest on Petruccia’s unfinished chapel wall and gradually dissipated, revealing the extraordinary image of the Madonna and Child. The widow's supernatural confidence being so wonderfully rewarded before the astonished gaze of all, the construction of the chapel was not long in its completion.

Shortly after these remarkable events, two foreigners in strange attire arrived in Genazzano claiming to be Albanians. Their names were Giorgio and DeSclavis and on seeing the icon, they cried out with joy and then told a wonderful tale.
After the death of Albania's king, George Castriota, known as Scanderberg, their nation had finally been conquered by the invading Turks. Early in 1467, while they prayed before the miraculous fresco, the image suddenly became illuminated, and detaching itself from the wall, it began to move through the air. Entranced, the two former soldiers followed the painting, first over land and, then, across the Adriatic Sea, which solidified under their feet.

In the Eternal City they lost sight of it, until hearing reports of a great miracle in a nearby town, they surmised where their Madonna had come to rest. Both decided to remain near their treasure, and married and raised families in Genazzano.

A plaque left at the shrine by visiting Albanians begs their Madonna to return to them, but there she is to this day. It is a continuous miracle: a fresco painted on eggshell plaster suspended in the air for five and a half centuries, but how much greater is the miracle of that tender embrace between Mother and Child, that union of soul into which each one is invited and warmly received.

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Vasectomy, not God’s Plan

https://rcspirituality.org/ask_a_priest/ask-a-priest-was-my-husbands-vasectomy-ok/

“Ask a Priest: Was My Husband’s Vasectomy OK?”

View all Ask a Priest February 1, 2019

Q: My husband had a vasectomy two years ago. He decided that because, despite having a healthy daughter, I was not able to give birth to a second child. I would get pregnant and everything would look fine until the babies suddenly die inside of me. Since the babies were already big every time that happened, I had to go through a C-section surgery. We went through a lot of emotional pain, including our daughter, every time. No medical explanation. The last time the doctor said it was dangerous for me to go through it again and recommended a definitive method. My husband didn’t want me to go through that again, and he decided to get a vasectomy. I didn’t agree at first, but I didn’t stop him either because it was too much pain to see my children die and my daughter suffering. I asked God to stop him if we were offending him. My question is, given the circumstances, is this a sin? He says he doesn’t regret it because that’s what God wanted, based on everything we went through. What do we need to do to be in peace with God and our faith? – K.

Answered by Fr. Edward McIlmail, LC

A: I am sorry to hear about the medical problems you have had, and the babies you lost. Our Lord has allowed a heavy cross in the life of your family.

Ideally you should have resorted to natural family planning, which is highly effective for the avoidance of pregnancy.

NFP does no damage to the integrity of the marriage and is often an opportunity for the love of spouses to deepen. It requires discipline, yes, but it also helps couples to grow in unity since husbands have to be especially attentive to their wives’ bodily cycles.

Certainly it sounds as though your husband is very dedicated to you.

Nonetheless, a vasectomy is a form of mutilation that is motivated by the intention to contracept. As such, it is not morally permissible, whatever the reasons.

A basic norm of moral theology is that we cannot do evil in order to achieve a good ends. If that were the case, anything could be justified.

But what is done is done. Perhaps there is a need for a good confession to be made. The Holy Spirit wouldn’t have sanctioned the vasectomy while at the same time inspiring the Church to teach something different. God simply doesn’t work that way.

Perhaps now the best way forward is to recognize that the procedure wasn’t sanctioned by God. But the task of helping your family get to heaven remains ahead of you. With lots of prayer and sacrifices and recourse to the sacraments and the grace of God, all this is possible. And wouldn’t it be nice to be reunited with your lost babies someday?

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Our Bodies Long to Be in Heaven

STEPHEN BEALE https://catholicexchange.com/our-bodies-long-to-be-in-heaven

What does our body crave?

Most people might say food, air, warmth, sleep, and sexual pleasure. 

But there is something more, an even deeper longing.

Our bodies crave eternity.

Here is how Henri Nouwen puts it in his book, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom: 

Your body needs to be held and hold, to be touched and to touch. None of these needs is to be despised, denied, or repressed. But you have to keep searching for your body’s deeper need, the need for genuine love. … Every human body has been given a new hope, of belonging eternally to the God who created it. Thanks to the Incarnation, you can bring your body home. 

That the body wants to be in heaven is a fundamental truth of Christianity. We proclaim it every Sunday when we affirm the resurrection of the body in the creed. But it’s easy to think of the body as just being along for the ride, lifted up with the soul, much like our bodies themselves wear garments. 

Nouwen, on the other hand, phrases this desire as active, as deeply embedded in our bodies. 

The truth of his approach is can be appreciated by first remembering that man is a soul and body. If we are called to seek heaven, then it is with our souls and bodies that we must pursue this end. As Christ Himself says in the gospel, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). 

But is our body really part of who we are? St. Thomas Aquinas answers with a resounding yes. In the Summa Contra Gentiles, he explains that the body is related to certain powers of understanding of the soul: 

The fact however that the very act of understanding in the human soul needs certain powers that work through bodily organs, namely, phantasy and sense, is a clear proof that the said soul is naturally united to the body to make up the human species.

According to Aquinas, our bodies aid in our process of knowing, which involves a certain trial and error. This is consistent with the character of our wills, which, unlike those of the angels, are changeable. 

Modern science has confirmed the connection between the body and cognition. As one writer for the Association for Psychological Science reports,

[E]merging evidence suggests that how our bodies engage with the environment around them has significant influence on how we see, feel, learn, and communicate.

‘Embodied cognition’ is even its own field of study in psychology. It has been used to explain everything from how a baseball outfielder is able to catch a fly ball to how teachers’ hand gestures help their students learn math. The body’s influence on the mind is evident by the very vocabulary we use to explain our perception of the world around us. As Scientific American explains,  

This is why we say that something is ‘over our heads’ to express the idea that we do not understand; we are drawing upon the physical inability to not see something over our heads and the mental feeling of uncertainty. Or why we understand warmth with affection; as infants and children the subjective judgment of affection almost always corresponded with the sensation of warmth, thus giving way to metaphors such as ‘I’m warming up to her.’

When we talk about our mind, its capacity for understanding, or our personal need for affection we cannot exclude the body from these realities. We speak about how our minds our drawn up to God, how our faith seeks a deeper understanding of Him, and how our longing for affection ultimately can only be satisfied by His love. Aquinas’ theology of the body and modern science both say these realities must extend to the body. 

Put another way, our longing for God is rooted in our bodies. As the prophet Jeremiah says, 

If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot (Jeremiah 20:9). 

Further confirmation of this truth comes from Pope St. John Paul II’s theology of the body. Here is what he says about the role of the body in heavenly affairs: 

The sacrament, as a visible sign, is constituted with man, as a body, by means of his visible masculinity and femininity. The body, and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden since time immemorial in God, and thus be a sign of it.

John Paul II, following St. Paul’s lead, teaches that the nuptial union teaches us about the relationship between Christ and His Church. It is heaven’s language, God’s own way of speaking to us about our deepest calling and final destiny. 

One could argue that the body is just the messenger to the soul, meant to stir within ourselves a longing for the divine that it itself does not experience. But our bodies could not communicate to us a desire that they themselves do not experience. Truly the body that aches for the love of a spouse is ultimately crying out for the joy of heaven. 

But even here on earth the body both seeks and finds God. This is evident from St. Paul’s teaching that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). Traditionally, the Holy Spirit is called the dulcis Hospes animae—the sweet guest of the soul. This theology of the hospitality of the body presupposes that our bodies, properly purified and disposed, want to host the Holy Spirit. God, as the Church teaches, does not force Himself upon us. He knocks at the door of our souls and bodies, asking to be let in. 

The paramount example of this reception of the Holy Spirit, of course, is Mary herself. The Church recognizes Mary as being espoused to the Holy Spirit. Her encounter and longing for God involved her whole being. Only through the total surrender of herself—soul and body—was the Incarnation possible. 

In a way, thanks to her Yes to God, all of creation now shares in her longing. As St. Paul writes in Romans,

We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now; and not only that, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies (Romans 8:22-23). 

When man experienced the fall, our bodies, along with our souls, suffered horribly. So also, our bodies, just like our souls, long for salvation. Which is another way of saying they too groan for God.

Mary appears in Egypt 1968

This Marian apparition in Egypt was witnessed by at least 250,000 people

The Vatican, the Coptic Church and even the government of Egypt were unified in their approval of the apparition.

Philip Kosloski https://aleteia.org/2019/05/05/this-marian-apparition-in-egypt-was-witnessed-by-at-least-250000-people/

On April 2, 1968, a Muslim bus mechanic saw something strange hovering over St. Mary’s Coptic Church in Zeitoun. He thought someone was going to commit suicide, but after closer examination, he saw it was a silhouette of light that resembled a woman.

The apparition attracted a large crowd, but only lasted a few minutes.

The following week it happened again, and continued 2 or 3 times a week for a total of three years, ending in 1971. Many believed the apparition was the Virgin Mary, clothed with light. The phenomenon occurred on top of a church that is traditionally held to be a location where the Holy Family stayed during their sojourn in Egypt.

The apparition was witnessed by people of every faith, including both Muslims and Christians. The head of the Coptic Church made an investigation of the apparitions and he declared them miraculous and an authentic appearance of the Virgin Mary.

Also located in the city was a Roman Catholic religious order who sent a report to the Vatican, detailing the extraordinary phenomenon. While Pope Paul VI deferred to the leader of the Coptic Church to make a public decision, a Vatican envoy arrived in Cairo and made their own report. They witnessed the apparition of light and wrote the following details in a formal statement.

The apparitions occurred on many different nights and are continuing in different forms. The Holy Virgin Saint Mary appeared sometimes in full form and sometimes in a bust, surrounded with a halo of shining light. She was seen at times on the openings of the domes on the roof of the church, and at other times outside the domes, moving and walking on the roof of the church and over the domes. When She knelt in reverence in front of the cross, the cross shone with bright light. Waving Her blessed hands and nodding Her holy head, She blessed the people who gathered to observe the miracle. She appeared sometimes in the form of a body like a very bright cloud, and sometimes as a figure of light preceded with heavenly bodies shaped like doves moving at high speeds. The apparitions continued for long periods, up to 2 hours and 15 minutes as in the dawn of Tuesday April 30, 1968 (the 22nd of Barmouda, 1684 A.M.), when She appeared continuously from 2:45 am till 5:00 am.

Thousands of people from different denominations and religions, Egyptians and foreign visitors, clergy and scientists, from different classes and professions, all observed the apparitions. The description of each apparition as of the time, location and configuration was identically witnessed by all people, which makes this apparition unique and sublime.

They also related how the apparition was causing a miraculous revival of the Christian faith, with many conversions taking place in the city. Also, various healings were recorded that occurred near the apparition site.

Furthermore, even the Egyptian government investigated the apparition. President Gamal Abdel Nasse witnessed the apparition and the Egyptian police could not find any natural way to explain the phenomenon. Everyone was universally stunned by what they saw and no one could offer a scientific explanation.

There was no particular message associated with the Marian apparition, but it came at a time when the Middle East was in turmoil and after Egypt was defeated in the Arab-Israeli war. It gave people hope in a time of darkness and strengthened the faith of many.

https://catholicexchange.com/mary-is-the-walking-equal-sign?mc_cid=d6e3616299&mc_eid=4984a8e283

Mary Is the Walking Equal Sign

“She is the world’s first love.” Fulton Sheen’s masterpiece on the Blessed Mother reveals the deepest meanings of who Mary of Nazareth was, along with the blueprint for the call of every human soul. Sheen has an impeccable gift for combining great storytelling with vibrant analogies. The result is a read that will capture the imagination and emotions of the one whose eyes are drawn to his pages. 

Love is a dream. Behind every creation of God and beneath every action of the human being there is an idea, a plan, a blueprint. When God creates a flower he has an idea of what a flower should be and that manifestation of gentleness, color and beauty is what appears in reality. 

The cosmos have an ordained order that the Father placed within it at the foundation of the world because his divine genius crafted it that way. When a painter sits down with her canvas and brush she has in her mind what she wants to create and it is only from there that her work of art can come to life. 

In a sense, these archetypes or prerequisite ideals are like dreams in the mind of the one who sets out to create. Love is similar. 

“Every person carries within his heart a blueprint for the one he loves. What seems to be ‘love at first sight’ is actually the fulfillment of a desire, the realization of a dream.”

Ven. Fulton J. Sheen, The World’s First Love

Love is the highest capacity of the human person and in each love we are captivated by someone or something that is desiring to fulfill a void within our hearts. In every occasion of love we are chasing after the Love of the universe. No matter how beautiful and intimate of an encounter we have with our beloved, we always look towards the next moment and we crave to have more. This is not wrong and it doesn’t mean we are misconstruing the essence of love. It simply highlights the fact that the human soul is designed for a love that is beyond the temporal. We were created for an eternal flame of love that quenches the hearts desperate craving for the true, the good and the beautiful. 

We are destined for the depths of this infinite love. As the divine architect, God is able to perfectly create in reality what he has in his mind. However, because human beings are endowed with freedom, we are placed in a precarious situation. For us, God has two images that stand before him: who we are in reality and who we ought to be. He has the blueprint and he has the building that presently exists. He has the sheet of music that was written and the melody we actually play. “God has to have these two images because in each and every one of us there is some disproportion and want of conformity between the original plan and the way we have worked it out.”

This is true of every human person who has ever walked this earth, except for Mary. The Blessed Mother is the only case when the ideal, the blueprint matched the reality. Unlike the rest of us she fulfills the Creator’s plan perfectly. 

“Most of us are a minus sign, in the sense that we do not fulfill the high hopes the Heavenly Father has for us. But Mary is the equal sign. The Ideal that God had for her, that she is, and in the flesh. The model and the copy are perfect…the melody of her life is played just as it was written. Mary was thought, conceived, and planned as the equal sign between ideal and history, thought and reality, hope and realization.” 

Sheen, ibid. 

In her freedom, Mary chose to give life rather than to act out of selfishness. In her choices, she placed God and others before herself. Through love, she shines as a bright light in a darkening world. The entire life of Mary shouts out to the world that we were created for something greater, that there is more.

This is why she personifies the highest peak of human living. The Blessed Mother is so often called the model of discipleship, but she is so much more. “She is the one whom every man loves when he loves a woman — whether he knows it or not. She is what every woman wants to be when she looks at herself.” 

In these days, we look to the Virgin Mary and we beg for her prayers. In these days, let us look at her with the eyes of her Son. Let us be moved by her tremendous love and her uncompromising beauty. More than anything though, let us live just a little closer to the blueprint God crafted for us. 

Slowly, let us flip our minus sign to equal the grandeur that awaits us. The promise of that eternal love is constantly being offered to us, let us freely choose to embrace it this year and become less of who we are and more of who we are meant to be.

The Robber who Stole Heaven

The Robber Who Stole Heaven

In the mountainous region of Trent in Germany, there lived a notorious robber who made his living by bringing misfortune on others. His occupation being what it was, he would only increase his property by decreasing that of his victims.

One day, he was admonished by a local religious to change his course of life and thereby insure his eternal salvation. The only answer the robber gave was that for him there was no remedy.

"Do not say so," said the religious, "do what I tell you. Fast on each Saturday in honor of the Virgin Mary, and on that day of the week do no harm to anyone. She will obtain for you the grace of not dying in God’s displeasure.”

The robber thought to himself, “This is a small price to pay to insure my salvation; I will do as this holy man has prescribed.” He then obediently followed the religious’ advice, and made a vow to continue to do so. That he might not break it, from that time on he traveled unarmed on Saturdays.

Many years later, our robber was apprehended on a given Saturday by the officers of justice, and that he might not break his oath, he allowed himself to be taken without resistance. The judge, seeing that he was now a gray-haired old man, wished to pardon him.

Then the truly miraculous occurred. Rather than jump for joy thanking the judge for his leniency, the old robber, said that he wished to die in punishment of his sins. He then made a public confession of all the sins of his life in that same judgment hall, weeping so bitterly that all present wept with him.

He was beheaded, a death reserved for the nobility, rather than hanged. Then his body was buried with little ceremony, in a grave dug nearby.

Very soon afterwards, the mother of God came down from Heaven with four holy virgins by her side. They took the robber’s dead body from that place, wrapped it in a rich cloth embroidered with gold, and bore it themselves to the gate of the city.
There the Blessed Virgin said to the guards: "Tell the bishop from me, to give an honorable burial, in such a church to this dead person, for he was my faithful servant." And thus it was done.

All the people in the village thronged to the spot where they found the corpse with the rich pall, and the bier on which it was placed. And from that moment on, says Caesarius of Heisterbach, all persons in that region began to fast on Saturdays in honor of she who was so kind to even a notorious robber.
From the Glories of Mary, by St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori.

The Ecstatic Visions of St. Catherine of Siena

When we contemplate, we set aside a place, either externally in the physical world or interiorly within our minds and hearts, or both, to ponder, observe, and meditate. After Catherine donned the habit of the Mantellate she spent three years in seclusion, except when she went to church for confession and Mass, in the small room of her family’s house that she converted into a templum of continual prayer, fasting, silence, self-mortification, and study. Catherine had been inspired since childhood by the prayerful ancient Desert Fathers. Per Blessed Raymond, she “established a desert within the walls of her own home, and solitude in the midst of people.”

It is fascinating to consider that it was not until these years of contemplation that this great Doctor of the Church even learned to read and write! During a prayer one morning, Catherine asked Christ to teach her so that she could say the Psalms and sing His prayers, since she was not smart enough to master it on her own, adding that she would remain ignorant and meditate on Him in other ways if this was not His will. When she arose, she found she could read fluently. She read so fast that she was not able to read out separate syllables and could hardly spell the words, which he took as a sign of a miracle. 

Catherine read Latin but could not speak it. She would not write her first letter until 1377 at around the age of thirty. Her ability to write came as a gift in a vision of Christ, who was accompanied by His beloved disciple Saint John and the Angelic Doctor, Saint Thomas Aquinas. Her letters and Dialogue were written in Italian and in such beautiful language that they have been compared to the works of Dante.

Mystical Ecstasies

During these years of secluded contemplation and through the remainder of her life as well, Saint Catherine experienced many mystical ecstasies with visions of Christ and of the saints. Raymond relates an early vision of Christ in which the most profound of theological proofs are stated simply and sublimely in just a handful of words.

In one of Saint Catherine’s first visions, Christ asked of her, “Do you know, daughter, who you are, and who I am? If you know these two things, you will be blessed. You are she who is not; whereas I am He who is.” These simple words were as a Summa enriching Catherine’s growth in wisdom and understanding. As Blessed Raymond explains, “All creatures are engulfed in nothingness — made from nothingness, tending toward nothingness.” Sin is a nothingness, a lack of a goodness that should be present, so that when we sin, we move back toward nothingness. This is why Christ said, “[A]part from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). We must embrace humility in the recognition of our potential nothingness and the fervent love of charity for the One who gives us life and sustains us.

Among the most profound of Catherine’s ecstatic visions was the “mystical marriage” in which she was espoused to Christ, the wedding party including the Virgin Mother, Saint John the Evangelist, Saint Paul, Saint Dominic, and King David, who played his harp. Christ presented her a ring that was invisible to others, but which she could see for the rest of her life. 

In another powerful vision revealed to her confessor, she asked Christ to take her own heart and will from her, and Christ came to her and removed her heart. Some days later, he appeared to her again and placed his own heart within her breast. Saint Thomas said that understanding is an excellence of knowledge that penetrates into the heart of things. Christ Himself said that the pure of heart shall see God. Through the Holy Spirit’s gift of understanding, Catherine was given visions of Christ, and in a mystical sense, His very own Sacred Heart.

The fruits of Catherine’s gifts of understanding blossomed most completely in her dictated work called The Dialogue or The Dialogue of Divine Providence, in which Catherine makes four requests to God the Father for herself, for the Church, for the world, and for assurance of His divine providence to provide for all things. The responses come from God in four treatises of over two hundred pages on divine providence, discretion, prayer, and obedience. The Dialogue treats of a great many basic, essential, creedal, catechetical issues of faith and morals in the most moving, intimate, and creative ways. They drip with moving and memorable metaphors containing great mystical truths. 

A Treatise on Divine Providence

Catherine speaks of “the virtue of desire,” of the soul’s “fire of holy desire” that makes us contrite of heart for our sins and desirous of the limitless loving mercy of God, made possible for us through Christ’s Crucifixion. Our holy desire brings remission of sins, and here our holy hound of the Lord speaks of the “hound of conscience” as well: 

“I wake up in them the hound of conscience, and make them smell the odor of virtue, and take delight in the conversation of My servants.”

She provides insights as well on the nature of virtues and of suffering and injuries, noting the virtues are demonstrated and fortified by their contraries. Patience, for example, is proven and fortified when one is injured by his neighbor. It is through such injuries that patience is given the opportunity to manifest itself and grow. We build justice within our souls when we are treated unjustly. The virtue of humility conquers the vice of pride, because a proud person can do no harm to the humble, who are not concerned about their worldly reputation. God, in his providence, has so arranged the world that from vices in some spring virtues in others; from contrition for sin springs limitless mercy; from worldly suffering springs heavenly joy.

A Treatise of Discretion

Here Saint Catherine reveals the Dominican thirst to bring souls to Christ. God tells her our works are holy and sweet to Him when they are infused “with hunger and desire for My honor and the salvation of souls.” Here, too, she explicates on the instrument through which God provided the mechanism for our salvation in her most famous metaphorical elaboration of Christ as the Bridge by which man can pass from earth into heaven. 

This Bridge has three “steps” that signify the three states of the soul through which we ascend to heaven from earth:

The first step signifies “the feet of the soul,” representing our affections, because as the feet carry the body, so do our desires and affections carry our soul. The pierced feet of Christ the Bridge are the means by which we reach the second step, at His side, which reveals to us the secret of His heart. When the soul desires to taste the love of Christ’s heart and gazes into his heart with the eye of the intellect, it finds His heart “consumed with ineffable love.” Having tasted of this love, the soul reaches the third step, of Christ’s mouth, and finally attains peace from the terrible war that it has waged against sin. In the first step, then, the soul steps away from earthly affections and is stripped of vice. In the second step, the soul fills itself with love and virtue. In the third step, the soul “tastes peace.” 

So then this Bridge to heaven was lifted on high for us when the Father’s Son was lifted up on the wood of the holy Cross, “the Divine nature remaining joined to the lowliness of the earth of your humanity.”

A Treatise of Prayer

Saint Thomas Aquinas had written that prayer is a most reasonable thing to do. Citing the ancient Roman theologian Cassiodorus, Thomas had agreed that “prayer is spoken reason” and that speech is a function of the intellect, a power that no other creature on earth has been given by God. Prayer, for Thomas, was “the raising of one’s mind to God,” and the “parts” of prayer include supplications (humble requests) for particular blessings from God and thanksgiving for blessings He has already provided.

Saint Catherine provides most penetrating insights on the relationship between the intellect, the Scriptures, and the life of prayer. “The intellect was, before the Scriptures were formed, wherefore, from the intellect came science, because in seeing they discerned.” God illuminated the intellects of the ancient prophets and apostles before all the Scriptures had been written down. Likewise, after we had received the Holy Scriptures, God gave light to the eyes of the intellect of holy, prayerful men, such as Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, and Jerome, so that even the light that comes from Holy Scriptures comes through the supernatural light of illumination. 

God warns us, then, that we would be better off seeking spiritual counsel from a holy person of upright conscience than from a proud, learned person who lacks God’s supernatural light. Those without God’s light are mired in the darkness of self-love, which is “a tree on which nothing grows but fruits of death, putrid flowers, stained leaves, branches bowed down, and struck by various winds.” 

Indeed, the seven deadly sins are this tree’s seven drooping branches. They droop to the earth because only earthly things can feed them, and they are never satisfied. Man has been placed not below but above all other creatures, though, and he cannot be satisfied except when he rests with the eternal God.

A Treatise of Obedience

Here Saint Catherine sails into the theological waters of obedience to God’s will, for all of us in general and in particular for those of religious orders who have taken vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty. She compares the religious orders to great ships that sail toward the port of salvation. These ships are so rich that the religious need not worry about their temporal or their spiritual needs, for those who are obedient will receive all they need through the Holy Spirit who guides them.

“Now look at the ship of your Father Dominic,” God tells her. That ship was ordered perfectly, since Saint Dominic wished only that his sons would endeavor to bring honor to God and seek the salvation of souls, “with the light of science,” which is the order’s principal foundation. It cherishes poverty too, not as an end in itself, but so that the preachers need not be distracted by temporal things as they fight error and spread God’s truths. The three riggings of obedience, chastity, and poverty make his a royal ship and make it broad, joyous, and fragrant. 

Glorious sons of the order Saints Thomas and Peter Martyr are praised for the illumination that arose from their obedience, and Dominic’s friend in Christ is praised for his order too: “Of a truth Dominic and Francis were two columns of the holy Church. Francis with the poverty which was especially his own, as has been said, and Dominic with his learning.”

https://catholicexchange.com/the-ecstatic-visions-of-st-catherine-of-siena

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This article is an excerpt of Dr. Vost’s Hounds of the Lord: Great Dominican Saints Every Catholic Should Know. It is available as an ebook or paperback from Sophia Institute Press.

By Dr. Kevin Vost

Dr. Kevin Vost, Psy D. is the author of Memorize the Faith, The Seven Deadly Sins, The One Minute Aquinas, as well as numerous other books and articles. He has taught psychology at the University of Illinois at Springfield, Lincoln Land Community College, and MacMurray College. He is a Research Review Committee Member for American Mensa, which promotes the scientific study of human intelligence. You can find him at drvost.com.

How We Redefine the Good to Justify Our Sins

I remember a political debate where participants were asked, “Who is your favorite philosopher?”

Mostly their answers were ones you’d expect — Aristotle, Plato and so on. But one piously said that his favorite philosopher was Jesus. Another replied with even greater rectitude that Jesus was not a philosopher: Jesus is not a lover of wisdom, but Wisdom itself. He is the Truth that has ordered the universe. Philosophy is a natural activity of the mind — the discerning of the basic hierarchy of principles by which we deduce what truth is. Theology, however, moves beyond philosophy by considering the source of truth itself.

When Our Lord was twelve years old, the rabbis in the temple marveled at His wisdom. I am sure that Our Lady and St. Joseph had a very good little domestic school going in Nazareth, but His wisdom did not come from them. In His human nature, He did have to learn natural things; for instance, He had to be taught the grammar of the Scriptures that He had given the world. But this magnificent paradox does not contradict His divine nature, which is not merely intelligent, but is the source of all intelligence.

What We Choose

The human being has a free will to choose good or evil. But after having plotted evil, when a person begins to commit the act itself, it begins to contradict the human dignity and the conscience in a more poignant way. This is why the most evil people in the world have had to redefine evil, pretending that it was good. Or, when that hasn’t worked, they have had to drug themselves, either with intoxicating language — slurs and euphemisms and so on — or with chemical drugs.

If we cooperate with evil, if we plot to do evil, and then if we commit ourselves to evil, the human spirit has to deny that what it is doing is evil. Evil always calls itself good; every vice parades itself as a form of liberation.

Fr. Theobald and Our Culture

In the nineteenth century there was a remarkable character named Fr. Theobald Mathew, an Irish Capuchin who dedicated his life to the temperance movement. There are those today who speak patronizingly of such work, but he was not a puritanical teetotaler, and drunkenness truly was a social crisis at that time. He had a higher vision, a vision of the human soul as a reflection of the glory of God. And it was so wonderful to him that he wanted people to understand that they were losing sight of something far more splendid than what alcohol or drugs could give.

This article is from a chapter in Grace and Truth.

He was a virtual miracle worker, giving the temperance pledge to hundreds of thousands of Irish and, on one occasion, to a multitude of a hundred thousand Scotsmen. He came to the United States and visited at the White House, where he presented his work to the admiration of President Zachary Taylor. The vice president at the time, who later became President Millard Fillmore, received him at City Hall in New York, and it is said that he even took the pledge.

What Fr. Mathew faced in his day was no different from the drug culture we face today. Any sociologist can come up with an explanation for why alcohol was such a problem in the nineteenth century: The breakdown of social institutions, economic oppression, the suppression of religion, political tyranny, or any number of other things drove people to seek some kind of escape. But this good priest told the people that God gives us not an escape but an “inscape” — a vision of the good that challenges every attempt to contradict that good by doing evil.

Our Lord gives us His Body and His Blood in the Holy Eucharist. When the world denies the majestic reality of the Holy Eucharist, it will always try to drink itself into oblivion or drug itself out of reality. Any attempt to redefine the Blessed Sacrament as something less than the sacrifice of Christ for the forgiveness of sins and the presentation on the altar of His True Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity is an embarkation upon a kind of semi-life.

Allegories

Why do people even consider doing evil? Well, it’s in the blood — not the Blood of Christ, but human nature. It’s Original Sin. When we appropriate that Original Sin in the form of explicit acts against the good, that’s what we call a sin.

Our Lord told a parable about the owner of a vineyard who left tenants in charge of the land. The proprietor sent one man to visit the vineyard and collect the rents, and that man was beaten. Another went to the vineyard, and he was gravely wounded. And then finally he said, “Surely, they will not touch my son.” He sent his son in, and they killed him.

Our Lord is giving us an allegory for sin. The beating of the first servant is venial sin, a lighter kind of offense against the good that can easily be remedied through an Act of Contrition. It does not even require a sacramental Confession, though it is recommended. But a venial sin is not to be dismissed lightly, because it lays the groundwork for the more direct affront against God represented by the wounding of the other servant, which represents habitual sin. The ache in the soul that takes away our desire for the good forms a habit of behavior. These habits lead to the gravest offense of all: killing of the Son Himself. This is mortal sin, and every mortal sin is an act of violence against the Lord of Life. St. John Vianney said that when we confess our sins, we take the nails out of Jesus.

Charles Darwin, in his expedition to the Galapagos Islands, noted with great insight how the wildlife seemed unperturbed by the arrival of his ship or the men on it. The reason was clear: They had never seen humans before, and thus had no reason to feel threatened by them. They were not potential hunters or collectors, but just like the birds in the air and the beasts of the field. But, he observed, the seals jumped off the rocks and swam away at the ship’s approach, for the seals alone of all the species on that island had a long experience of being hunted by humans.

The sons of Adam were like those seals. We have had a long experience — that is, all of human history — to observe and to learn the various ways in which people have offended God by offending against men and women, and this has created a deep wound in the human heart. If we are not careful, it can rust into cynicism, which denies the possibility of holiness and eternal joy. Cynicism cooperates with evil.

Jonathan Swift & Righteous Indignation

One of the most admirable writers in the English language was Jonathan Swift. He lived something of a misplaced life as a non-Celt living in Ireland and the dean of the Protestant cathedral of a Catholic country. But he was a man of deep natural virtue. He saw injustice all around him, and he marshaled his literary talent to do what he could to publicize these accounts. To do this, he unleashed his acidic tongue in the form of biting satire.

A lot of people continue to think that Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is a children’s book. It is anything but! A child can enjoy it, of course, but it was written for the minds and hearts of the most sophisticated people of his day. He aimed his satirical barbs at the government officials and the representatives of the ancient institutions of his culture who had fallen into the dismal self-parody of worshipping themselves and their class instead of worshipping the God Who gave them life and power and prosperity.

He reserved particular scorn for the intellectuals who used their intelligence for no useful purpose at all. In the book, they live on a flying island, which they can never quite get to settle down on solid ground. He satirizes the politicians as jumping through hoops or over strings just to get a particular kind of colored ribbon. Swift laid before the reader how easy it is for us, deprived of the vision of God, to lapse into a kind of innocent rejection of our own dignity. Once we have done that, we become easy prey for the liar. The prince of lies knows that once we have lost the vision of higher things, we can be persuaded to participate in the lower things.

Jonathan Swift, as I said, was a man of natural virtue, to a remarkable degree. What he did lack were the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love to a degree that could overcome bitterness and cynicism. He practically dissolved in his frustration and indignation at the injustices of his day. On his tomb in the cathedral in Dublin is this epitaph: “Where savage indignation no longer tears his heart apart.”

Our Lord doesn’t want us to deny that kind of bittersweet indignation, but He also doesn’t want our hearts to be torn apart by cynicism. The goodness of the human soul can discern good from evil, but it will be eternally frustrated if it doesn’t have access to the grace and truth of Christ, which can release the good and conquer the evil.

Light in Darkness

It is highly significant that Our Lord reveals Himself as an eternal light shining in the darkness. Our Lord, when He wanted us to see His divine mercy, showed it in a private revelation to St. Faustina with lights coming out of Him. The Light that made the world can cancel out the propensity to evil that is in every human heart.

Instead of surrendering to indignation and dying with a sense of futility, it is far better to follow the example of the saints. In particular, we could take as our model that saint whose very name means “fire”: Ignatius Loyola. He prayed in his Spiritual Exercises, and the Church has taken up his prayer ever since,

Take, O Lord, and receive my entire liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my will. All that I am and have You have given to me. And I give all back to You to be disposed of according to Your good pleasure. Give me only the comfort of Your presence and the joy of Your love, and with these, I shall be more than rich and shall desire nothing more.

https://catholicexchange.com/how-we-redefine-the-good-to-justify-our-sins

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This article is adapted from a chapter in Fr. Rutler’s latest book, Grace and Truth: Twenty Steps to Embracing Virtue and Saving Civilization. It is available from Sophia Institute Press.