Judy and John Medjugorje Testimony 1990

 John and Judy - Our Medjugorje Testimony - Done with love for Jesus and Mary

Our miraculous images on photo and we also have images on video, May 25, 1990...

Our Lady of Medjugorje

John and I were married in a civil ceremony in 1984. John was not Catholic, and I was a fallen away Catholic...how and why we ended up in Medjugorje was truly an invitation from the Blessed Mother....April 1989 was a very difficult time in my life, my mother died and the circumstances surrounding that were awfully painful...I couldn't seem to shake off the 'blues' and so John suggested going to church and I hadn't thought of that at all. The only church I knew was the Catholic church and John didn't really care, as long as I didn't ask him to become a Catholic. We started going to Sunday Mass occasionally in September 1989. I did not receive Holy Communion. I was obedient to the Catholic faith that I was taught. I was never a 'cafeteria Catholic.'

Around late November 1989, I heard about Medjugorje from my friend, Linda who had read an article in her local home town newspaper. It was just a matter of fact statement from my friend, but I was 'transported' back in time to 3rd grade where I had been placed in the middle of the school year in Catholic school from public school. The change in schools happened because my younger sister; Laurie, had been diagnosed with Leukemia.

Laurie

My mother made a marriage vow to raise her children Catholic and she wasn't doing it. I think she thought if she corrected that vow now that perhaps God would let my sister live, but she died. I was only a few weeks in 3rd grade Catholic school when the nun told us a story about Bernadette and Lourdes in 1858 and I was completely enthralled. This really seemed marvelous to me. I remember after the story was over that I wanted to go there desperately. I was so excited. I started thinking about how I could get there and I looked out the window and thought, well, I know my mother wouldn't take me there, much less believe the story (she was not Catholic) and I felt that the Blessed Mother wouldn't appear to me because she only chose one girl and I didn't think that I was as good as Bernadette, and then I said to myself, well, "if that ever happens in my day, I'm going"! That was the last time that I thought about that 'vow' and that schoolday until the moment when I heard that Our Lady was appearing in Medjugorje. I was so excited and felt 'alive' in an entirely new way. I was going! Somehow, someway, I just knew I was going to Medjugorje. My husband and I watched some videos that a priest, Fr. Joseph Milford (Oblates); gave me who was on my mail route and wow, it just confirmed my belief . I just knew right from the start that this was really happening. Then my husband and I read every book we could get our hands on but my husband was not open to going at all. He said he was not going to a communist country. So, I prayed the rosary on my fingers because I didn't even have a rosary. One Sunday after Mass, in January of 1990, John found a flier on a trip to Medjugorje with this church, St. Paul of the Cross.  Then he said we could go! Ah, the power of the rosary! We had four months to prepare and we just knew we had to prepare with prayer and all that Our Lady was asking for. 

My prayer was for God to give John 'more than me' while we were there so we could stay happily married because I was going to go back to the Eucharist and my Catholic faith no matter what (and since I never discussed my religion with John since I hadn't thought about it in many years, he knew nothing of what the Eucharist is). My initial immediate calling when I heard about Medjugorje was to go back to the Eucharist because, you see, that belief never left me. I had just forgotten about all of it....and I had to have Jesus now. I was ready to give up everything to do that. I went to confession after 20 plus years to a new priest of one year in 1989, a Fr. Thomas Euteneur. I started going to daily Mass with John and I received Holy Communion. John and I lived as 'brother and sister' from that time until our wedding day in the Catholic church out of obedience to the Catholic faith and for love of God.

finally found the holy water fountain in a photo,

 today, Sept. 2011! (far right of photo.)

We arrived in Medjugorje on the bus after midnight on May 25, 1990 and ended up parked on the street in front of St. James Church. Our group had spent a few days in Austria and I was so very sick with the flu and fever. While we were waiting to figure out where we were staying, our new friend, Jim suggested that the 3 of us walk over to the church. We did and as we were walking, I said to them with a little humor and a sense of hope, "well, if I drink this holy water and get well, then Our Lady is really appearing here". I already believed She was appearing here, I just didn't know that 'miracles' were up for the asking! It was dark, the church was closed and yet there was a fountain somewhere around the statue of Our Lady outside and I drank from the holy water. And I got well immediately. I also was not tired at all the next morning with only a few hours of sleep and that has never happened in my life. To this day, I have never seen that fountain of holy water in any pictures. 

That first morning in Medjugorje; May 25, 1990, we went to the 10 am English Mass and afterwards, the priest, Fr. Pavich, blessed all the articles and John decided to hold up his camcorder and looked at me to see what I thought...I thought right away, why not, it was like a little kid asking... I never thought about blessing a camcorder but what did I know...so it was blessed....so I raised up my new camera and had it blessed also.

Our first full day there was May 25, 1990. We climbed Apparition Hill after Mass and as I got to the top and looked to my right, (where Our Lady appeared) I felt this 'breeze' engulf me and I just knew it was something special. I felt incredibly loved in a way I had never felt before. Later on, I realized it had to be the Holy Spirit 'wind'.  Our Lady said: "The wind is my sign. I will come in the wind. When the wind blows, know that I am with you. You have learned that the cross represents Christ; it is a sign of Him. It is the same for the crucifix you have in your home. For me, it is not the same. When it is cold, you come to church; you want to offer everything to God. I am, then, with you. I am with you in the wind. Do not be afraid." February 15, 1984

At 3 pm that afternoon, Fr. Jozo was giving a talk in the church and we went. The church was packed. And then this happened...John saw Jesus just like we see one another, full face complete, on the altar that afternoon as Fr. Jozo was giving his afternoon talk at 3 pm. Fr. Jozo said "And Jesus stands before you" and then John saw Jesus through his video camcorder ONLY. When John looked with his eyes, there was nothing, John only saw Jesus through the blessed camcorder.....I was not next to him in the church but he passed the camcorder down to me with this message but I knew then, that this was God answering my prayer, to 'give him more than me' which actually was much more for me! The video camcorder went right back to him as I said 'this is just for him', but we were left with an image in the video and on a photo. Our friend, Jim, from the group was taking pictures right behind John so it was perfect when we all shared our pics later....anyway, Fr. Jozo then says and "Mary stands before you" and that is when the Blessed Mother must have 'popped' in the picture but we didn't see Her till we got home when we shared our photos and video with the rest of our pilgrimage group. All of us saw Jesus and Mary's IMAGE while John saw Jesus as a real live person that day and still - TO THIS DAY - sees Jesus and Mary completely full faced clearly the same as he did that day in Medjugorje when he looks at this picture or our video.....we were blessed with the images and people see them today ....it makes a dynamic picture blown up with the rosary in Fr. Jozo's hand and Jesus and Mary's images...ALSO, LOOK AT THE 'FIRE LIGHT' (Holy Spirit) COMING FROM THE LEFT OF THE PHOTO WHICH STREAMS RIGHT TO FR. JOZO AND THE ROSARY AND TO THE TABERNACLE!...

OK....look at the bouquet of flowers on the altar....look at the tall Lily and the stick of thorn to the left of the lily, and you will see in between those two , image of Jesus crucified face...now look to the right of the lily and you will see the Blessed Mother's face slightly leaning towards Her Son and on the video you can see HER gold crown and you can see it in the photo too...now that evening, our priest said we should meet and share our day with one another....well, I was so overwhelmed and just in awe about this since we could see the image of Jesus in the camcorder that I stayed in my room while John, very excited; the only non-Catholic went down and testified to what he saw and the image that was left and stated to the group that HE NOW KNOWS THAT JESUS IS TRULY PRESENT IN THE EUCHARIST, ....now, he did not know that at all before....so John's testimony was a real blessing for the group and especially for our priest, Fr. Venezia.

Many other things happened to us in Medjugorje that were enlightening and miraculous....I took care of my father in 1980, when he was sick with cancer. He told me that he was so grateful to have me taking care of him that if he could get well, he would take me on a 'trip around the world' and I thought how sweet that was but also unusual, we were poor and a trip around the world is not something I ever thought possible...well, one day in Medjugorje, I realized that my father was with me because I WAS on a 'trip around the world', people from all over the world were here! And they were also here from the supernatural world!....

One day during the apparition that was taking place in the church we saw the sun spin, pulsate at us like a beating heart, throw colors out and at one point there were 3 small clouds with three crosses going through them one at a time - and then at the end, Our Lady, from head to 'toe cloud', appeared in the sky, plain as could be!- so incredible! We were outside praying the rosary because the Mass at that time of day is in Croatian and for the people of the village.

During the Thursday night rosary prayer meeting that Ivan group has on Apparition Hill, Our Lady came that evening and it was so quiet.  A whole group of us were going up the back side of the mountain which leads to the blue cross (where Our Lady first appeared to the children).  This is where Ivan has his apparition on his rosary prayer nights on the hill. It was so dark we could barley see anything but we knew there were huge rocks everywhere.  I stumbled along and found a spot to sit and was leaning up against a rock wall.  John and others were kneeling in front of me and to the side.  I thought about kneeling but the rocks had jagged edges and there didn't seem to be any room.  The next thing I heard was that Out Lady was here and it was quiet before but now it was complete silence.  Then 'someone' punched me directly in the middle of my back and I hit the ground kneeling.  I knew immediately that this was impossible since my back was up against the rock wall.  I thought I had probably cut my legs because the force of the punch was dramatic but I didn't dare move an inch because I  knew it was the 'hand of God'. When the apparition was over we all got up and we walked back down the hill.  My legs were not injured or bleeding at all and I had no pain.  Later on, back home, I found this message from Our Lady - On June 25, 1988, Ivanka, one of the six Medjugorje visionaries, during her apparition, said to those present at the apparition, many of whom were standing up or sitting:  “Our Lady wishes for all present to kneel down.”

We also could look over at Cross Mountain and see the Cross as plain as day. It was all lit up with supernatural light because there were no lights on either hills in 1990...and there is no way you should be able to see this Cross, too far away and black as night outside. I didn't realize this at first but as I was walking down the mountain, I looked over and of course, saw nothing but night time blackness and this is when it finally registered what happened. There was no electricity on the mountains. Things like this happened to us the entire time we were there and to millions of others! It was as though you were not on the earth but experiencing something supernatural. Even climbing the hill was like being 'lifted' up there. We helped very old people and injured people up the hill and it was almost effortless for them and us.

We came back home and John went to RCIA to learn about Catholicism. He became a Catholic :) and we got married in the Catholic Church one year later on miraculous day, May 25, in 1991. We love daily Mass and Rosary and try to live Our Lady's 5 stones which is daily Mass, daily rosary, monthly confession, fasting, and bible reading.  John became a lecture and we started making the Mother Theresa rosary because I had read the story in the Catholic Digest in 1991. It has become John's exclusive ministry now, making these Mother Theresa rosaries, (over 13,600 as of Oct. 9, 2019) and to give them away to whomever Blessed Mother puts in our path. Many miraculous stories have come back to us through the years because of this rosary. That's another story....so many miraculous healings physically and spiritually and emotionally but 'believing is the key to the miraculous.'  It is a 'thin veil' from the natural to the supernatural when you pray to God from the heart.

*****Monthly Message, May 25, 1990 "Dear children! I invite you to decide with seriousness to live this novena. (Holy Spirit Novena) Consecrate the time to prayer and to sacrifice. I am with you and I desire to help you to grow in renunciation and mortification, that you may be able to understand the beauty of the life of people who go on giving themselves to me in special way. Dear children, God blesses you day after day and desires a change of your life. Therefore, pray that you may have the strength to change your life. Thank you for having responded to my call. " *****

Our Catholic wedding, May 25, 1991

our testimony is at several sites on line, google the title

and also on blog called    And Amazing Grace

Faith is a gift from God.  “For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11: 29).   Faith is a priceless gift which can be lost through our own personal negligence.  Faith must be nourished with a well developed spiritual life and with the continual study of our Catholic Faith.  Spiritual laziness, culpable ignorance and indifference can weaken our faith and even cause the loss of faith.

     Parents have a solemn duty to pass on the gift of faith to their children. 

May 25, 2014
“Dear children! Pray and be aware that without God you are dust. Therefore, turn your thoughts and heart to God and to prayer. Trust in His love. In God’s spirit, little children, you are all called to be witnesses. You are precious and I call you, little children, to holiness, to eternal life. Therefore, be aware that this life is passing. I love you and call you to a new life of conversion. Thank you for having responded to my call.”

Vice President J.D. Vance speaks Catholic theology on Christian love.

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Cardinal molar defies globalist LGBT agenda and bombshell interview

 https://youtube.com/watch?v=MWQipy0yjHo&feature=share

Democratic socialist mourn the loss of their sacrament of abortion

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Eternal and Natural Law: The Foundation of Morals and Law

Eternal and Natural Law: The Foundation of Morals and Law: Eternal and Natural Law: The Foundation of Morals and Law - For moral order to exist, there must be an objective moral law easily perceived, common to all…

Celebrating abnormal behavior. Homosexuality etc.

 https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/controversy/other-topics/celebrating-abnormal-behavior.html

Celebrating Abnormal Behavior

• ANTHONY ESOLEN

Some years ago, in Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity, I wrote, as the ninth argument, that "to celebrate an abnormal behavior makes things worse, not better, for those inclined to engage in it."

 

I believe that that statement, right now, would be quite uncontroversial in any other area of human choice but the sexual; though it is precisely the sexual that illustrates its truth most clearly, as we see in our midst, so obviously that only our own moral compromises, or a kind of ideological idolatry, can prevent us from telling ourselves what we do see.

For back in 2014, those halcyon days at what most people thought was the floor of a crater below which we could not continue to fall, no one thought that drag queens in see-through garb would be encouraging little children in public libraries to stick dollar bills in their underwear, or that a photo of a little Dutch girl surrounded by "bondage" men in black leather underwear would win an award for being "iconic" and "inclusive."

Try, dear reader who may still be unwilling to follow a premise to its conclusion, try to imagine uttering the previous sentence to any but the most depraved human being on earth, anywhere, in 2010, or 2000, or, dear Lord, in 1990, when, if we are to judge by the mad accusations madmen make against the few remaining people in the West who do not parade along with the madness, the world was peopled by "theocrats" and knuckle-dragging, right-wing, snake-handling fundamentalist Christians, rather than ordinary people with some residual sense of shame and some guilty reservations about the sick world into which they were sending their children.

Mere garden sins bring boredom. We must rouse the spirit to more and more outrageous wrongs.

There is a good reason why things get worse and not better for them who celebrate the abnormal.  It is, as I wrote, that "what compels is not merely the object, but the very wrongness of the object.  Mere garden sins bring boredom.  We must rouse the spirit to more and more outrageous wrongs."  Homosexuals themselves, I said, "admit that they delight in being 'transgressive,' crossing the boundaries of what is decent or even mentionable.  It follows that the nature of the transgressing behavior will depend upon where the society draws the line."

Where is that line now?  Oh, I hear, people will never go so far as to invite children into their sexual lives, by action rather than celebration.  Do not believe it.  It is a short step from seeing to touching.  The very publicity of it will lend it some cover.  And man, ever inventive in the illogic of evil, will find some way to distinguish a "good" kind of pederasty, the kind we see putting forth buds right in our midst, from the "bad" kind, the kind for which the Church's coffers were — justly — rifled.

Sins of intemperance still respect the created order, the order of nature.  Wine does gladden the heart, though a man may drink too much of it, or in the wrong place, or at the wrong time.  But in sins aimed precisely against the created order, we direct our strengthless swords against the very heart of God, and the more we fail, the more furiously we go on the attack.

You do not have to take my word for it though.  Human history abounds in examples.  Take St. Paul's word for it.  "Claiming to be wise," he says of fallen man ever-falling, "they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles," and "for this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.  Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error" (Romans 1:22, 26-27).

We are touching upon what an old colleague of mine, Rene Fortin, called "negative transcendence," an attempt to imitate God in an inverted way, hungering for evil upon evil, and setting the will up as a creator unto itself.  "Whilst they adore me on the throne of hell," says Milton's Satan, when he is alone and the devils he deceived cannot hear him,

With diadem and scepter high advanced,
The lower still I fall, only supreme
In misery: such joy ambition finds.

The crater of evil has, of itself, no floor because of itself it is no thing at all, it is an anti-creative turn toward nonexistence, masking itself as creativity and life; and Hell itself may be the lowest plain below which the merciful God will not permit His creature to fall.

Is it then an accident of history that just at this time we find people eagerly awaiting the day when man will become "transhuman," collapsing beneath the human, to enmesh himself in the toils and traces of the machine?  It is as if, to use David Hart's apt jest, when these wild-eyed worshipers of technology were little boys, they dreamed of someday growing up to be robots.

The alternative to the restlessness of those who seek God is the restlessness of those who reject God.

Or is it an accident of history that just at this time, hardly hidden at all beneath the desperate hope that "climate change" will render all the old modes of human life impossible, we find a self-righteous hatred of man, a wish, without Jonathan Swift's satirical irony, that there would be far fewer of "the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth"?

Another accident of history, that some women, again without the slightest sense of irony, should splash themselves in garish red paint for blood, to protest against any retrenchment of their legal permission to splash their bodies and the sanitary towels and the stainless-steel forceps and clippers of the operating room with the real blood of their own children?

Still another accident, that no nation in the cratering West can now replace the dying with the newly alive?  That the richest of our urban neighborhoods should resemble Hell in this most significant respect, that people keep as far away from one another as possible, with fewer and fewer inhabitants per household, less and less likely to be married to a human being and more and more likely to be wedded or welded to a job, and a job, at that, less and less likely to promote or protect anything necessary or desirable for the common good?

Hell is a lonely place.  And man, for whom it is not good to be alone, seeks to assuage his loneliness not by getting up and saying, "I will arise and go to my Father" (Luke 15:18), but by confirming the very evil that has made him lonely in the first place.

But it does not work.  The drink does not satisfy, the drug no longer gives the thrill, mere nudity is dull, the first slimy dandling of the unnatural feels commonplace and "natural," building a brutalist church seems but dry and unimaginative, the unspeakable obscenity now means little more than an ordinary adverbial intensifier, and the throne of Hell is not so glorious after all.

We have been made by God, for God, in His image, and that is why, as St. Augustine says, "Our hearts will never rest until they rest in Thee."  The alternative to the restlessness of those who seek God is the restlessness of those who reject God, pitched into a fury of restlessness because they wish to be gods unto themselves, and it is all in vain.

 

The Hidden Life of Mary Ann Long

March 29, 2022 | Norman Fulkerson  

The Hidden Life of Mary Ann Long

Saintly souls often remain hidden from the eyes of the world and are only discovered by chance. In this way, Mary Ann Long is a source of inspiration in much the same way as Saint Therese of the Infant Jesus. Like the “Little Flower,” Mary Ann provides a valuable lesson that anyone can fully live a Catholic life and die a saintly death by simply accepting God’s will. This is especially true in our present world, where people’s lives are judged by the pleasures they enjoy and where “useless” lives are extinguished before birth or shortened in old age.

The only book about this unique little girl titled A Memoir of Mary Ann1 was written by the Dominican Nuns who cared for her in Atlanta, Georgia. The only photo shows only the profile of Mary Ann sitting in a wheelchair. The reason why we only see part of her face is where the story of Mary Ann begins.

Deformed Face

She was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1946. The Memoir does not mention the day of her birth nor the names of her parents. We only know they were Dollie and George Long because she is buried beside them in Louisville’s St. Stephens Cemetery.

St. Stephens Cemetery in Louisville, where Mary Ann Long is buried with her parents, Dollie and George Long.

At the age of three and a half, she was afflicted with a cancerous tumor on the left side of her face, which required the removal of her eye. The doctors gave her six months to live and told the parents they could do nothing more for their child. This was a particularly heavy blow for Mrs. Long, a mother of three, whose own health was not good. At the doctor’s recommendation, they decided to send Mary Ann to Our Lady of Perpetual Help Free Cancer Home in Atlanta, Georgia.2 It was a painful decision for the parents, but they had no other solution.

The Home in Atlanta received a letter from the Louisville hospital about the girl heading their way.

“This patient,” it explained, “is a very lovable little girl and one who touches the hearts of all who come into contact with her.”

Most Unique Religious Vocation

It is worth noting that neither of Mary’s parents had any religious affiliation. Although Mr. Long was baptized a Catholic, his mother had fallen away from the Faith. This might have been the reason for their unease in sending their ailing daughter to a home run by Catholic Dominican Nuns. Mary Ann had no such fear.

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When they arrived at the Home, Sister Veronica, who was the first to see the child, held out her motherly arms. Mary Ann instinctively flung herself into her maternal embrace. One sister wrote down a first impression of the child:

As I entered the ward, I saw just one side of the child’s face. A lustrous sparkling brown eye, clear, bright skin tending toward olive, with a faint flush high on her cheek, a delicate straight nose, all this framed by light brown wavy curling hair, made a symmetrical, clean-cut profile.

She then describes the rest of her face with “a swollen left cheek and closed eye [socket],” but it did not repel her. Mary Ann showed no shyness about her affliction. “She expected to be accepted for herself.”

Mary Ann quickly moved from one patient’s bed to another, spreading sunshine and comforting those with whom she shared the same illness. It was the beginning of a most unique religious vocation. Indeed, before her death at 13, she was admitted into the Third Order of St. Dominic as a Tertiary.

Apostolic Efforts of The Child

Over the next nine years—for a girl who only expected to live six months—Mary was a normal little Kentuckian in every respect. She had a dog named Snappy, loved Dagwood sandwiches, and played hide and seek with her sisters when they came to visit. She was also mischievous, but her pranks were not meant to harm but rather to uplift the spirits of those around her.

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Before long, Mary Ann began to ask questions about the Catholic Faith. When told about the True Presence, she longed to be included in the heavenly banquet and wept when she could not receive communion with the nuns. She loved to talk about the “baby Jesus” and was profoundly moved by Our Lord’s Passion and Death.

When one nun first showed her the Stations of the Cross. Mary very closely examined the Second Fall of Our Lord. Moved with pity, she exclaimed, “Oh, poor Jesus!”

She was eventually baptized with the somewhat reluctant permission of her parents. They were bewildered by their daughter’s conversion but even more so with her apostolic fervor.

Mary Ann desired that her sisters convert, especially Sue, who showed openness to the Faith. Sue made frequent visits to the Home and was very impressed with Mary’s fervent devotion, especially for the Eucharist. She, too desired to receive Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Before long, Sue began religious instruction back in Louisville. She was eventually baptized and received her first Holy Communion in Atlanta, among the nuns, while kneeling next to Mary Ann. Winnie, the oldest of the sisters, was also at this ceremony and shortly afterward converted to Catholicism.

Finally, there is the story of a 20-year-old female patient named Charlie Mae. Her maladies were of such seriousness as to leave her bedridden. Mary would do little things like brush her hair and keep her company. One night our little apostle asked Charlie to join her in evening prayers.

Embracing Christ and the Cross

“I don’t know how to pray,” said Charlie. Mary immediately offered to teach her, which led Charlie to ask questions about the Faith. Mary could not answer some of her inquiries and pointed her to the nuns. Charlie, too was eventually received into the Church.

Accepting the Way God Made Her

People often tried to downplay her deformed face and hideous looks. Once, a nun, seeing Mary in a new dress, commented how pretty she was. “No, sister,” she gravely responded, “I’m not pretty.” On another occasion, a visitor asked the child why she did not pray to God for a cure. She gently smiled and said, “This is the way God wants me.”

This admirable acceptance of suffering was also manifested when her mother tried to take Mary to a plastic surgeon. Once again, the child insisted she was the way God wanted her to be. However, the Memoir astutely points out that Mary was intelligent enough to know that God might have wanted her to be “less than perfect,” but her family did not.

A “self-styled faith healer” once found his way into Mary’s room.

“The Lord can heal you, Mary Ann!” he yelled. Not getting the response he expected, the healer repeated the same phrase three more times with ever greater insistence.

“I know He can,” Mary sternly replied, “but it doesn’t make a bit of difference if He heals me or not. That’s His business.”

Christ’s Passion in Our Days

Through all her suffering, Mary found great consolation with thoughts of heaven, the angels and the perfection of the glorified body. “When I get to heaven,” she once said, “I’ll have two good eyes, and I’ll run around heaven and be able to see everybody there at once.”

Final Months

In September 1958, the first death knell sounded for the valiant youngster. One nun entered her room to check and was shocked to find her bed soaked with blood. The little patient had suffered a severe hemorrhage and was weak from the loss of blood.

Over the next several months, she endured similar episodes until one proved fatal the following January. The Dominican Sisters then gathered around her bed as was their custom when one of their own was dying. They sang the Salve Regina. Mary looked up and was so enchanted that she asked them to repeat it.

She slid into unconsciousness but, upon awaking, saw the lighted candle which the nuns had placed by her bed. Mary Ann reached over towards the soft glow of the taper and repeated again and again, “Dear Jesus, I love you!”

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At 3:00 in the morning of January 20, 1959, Mary Ann asked for her rosary. As she slipped the beads through her fingers, she dozed off and died a peaceful death.

Mary Ann Long’s tombstone.

Today we do not appreciate lives like Mary Ann or value her sacrifices. We prefer the frenetic intemperance of a world without restraint.

We will only know in eternity the value of the sufferings Mary Ann Long so patiently endured during her short life. In a world that chases after celebrities and yearns for earthly recognition, this child lived a hidden life and now rests in anonymity. Yet her name and heroic feats are most certainly written in that marvelous Book of Life. Hidden from the eyes of man but precious in the eyes of God.

https://www.tfp.org/the-hidden-life-of-mary-ann-long/

OBEDIENCE. Magnificat. Feb. 28. 2022

 Psalm 119

1-8

If they obey and serve him,/ they spend their days in prosperity,/ their years in happiness. (Jb 36:11)

Obedience to God’s law seems an unlikely road to happiness. Indeed, at times it seems to bring us conflict, trial, and great loss. What we lose, though, is far less than what we gain if we do the will of the God who wills nothing less for us than the joy of life everlasting in his presence.

They are happy whose life is blameless,
who follow God’s law!
They are happy who do his will,
seeking him with all their hearts,
who never do anything evil
but walk in his ways.

You have laid down your precepts
to be obeyed with care.
May my footsteps be firm
to obey your statutes.
Then I shall not be put to shame
as I heed your commands.

I will thank you with an upright heart
as I learn your decrees.
I will obey your statutes:
do not forsake me.

Glory to the Father….

Word of God 1 Peter 1:22-23

Since you havepurified yourselves by obedience to the truth for sincere mutual love, love one another intensely from a [pure] heart. You have been born anew, not from perishable but from imperishable seed, through the living and abiding word of God. 

All who inhabit the world shall understand/ 
That nothing is better than the fear of the Lord,/ 
nothing more salutary than to obey his commandments. 
(Sir 23:27)

The Intentional and Malicious Infiltration of the Church by Fr. Robert Altier

 The Intentional and Malicious Infiltration of the Church

By , Fr. Robert Altier 

St. Paul tells us that we have to make the most of our opportunity because the days are evil. We aren’t just simply living in days that are evil, we are living in the days that Isaiah spoke about, the days when they will call evil good and good evil. And we have been brainwashed into thinking that evil things are okay, they’re not.

So, from this point forward, what I am about to relay is completely politically incorrect and if you have young ears that you don’t want to hear it, you may want to take a fifteen-minute walk.

In the last couple of weeks, we have heard some pretty unfortunate things. A cardinal of the Church who abused children and young men, and now in Pennsylvania the grand Jury report 301 priests violated more than a thousand children. And on top of that we have the episcopal cover-up, the word episcopal means bishops, so the cover-up by the bishops. And, it’s not just simply a cover-up, it’s an agenda.

If you’ve listened carefully, since 2002 when all this broke, the bishops keep on coming back to the same point, pedophilia, its pedophilia, it’s pedophilia, its pedophilia. No, it’s not. In fact, the John Jay institute, the group that the bishops themselves hired to look at what was going on, came back and said this is a homosexual problem. 86.6% (if I recall correctly) of all of the abuse cases were on post-pubescent males, and the bishops told them “no you go back, and you rewrite it and you say that it isn’t a homosexual problem.” So, they came back and said well 86.6% of this is all about post-pubescent males, but it’s not a homosexual problem; like really?

So, pedophilia is the violation of pre-pubescent children, less than 3% of all of these cases were pedophilia. Ephebophilia is the violation of post-pubescent children, pederasty particularly, post-pubescent males. That’s what we are dealing with here.

Now we need to make an important distinction, there are some very, very good people who struggle with a homosexual orientation. All of us struggle with different things, that doesn’t mean that we’re a bad person just because we have certain weaknesses. And the Church recognizes that that orientation is not evil, it is the activity which is evil. And so, for these men who want to live a good life and who are trying to fight against those temptations and the struggles, this is a cross. And it is a huge cross that they have to carry. In fact, you can think how much God loves these people if he allows them to carry a cross that is that big; its huge.

Now we need, as again we look at our own selves, we can say alright there are some for instance who struggle with alcohol or people who struggle with pornography, whatever. If they’re really trying to fight against those temptations these are good people with a weakness. That’s different for instance from the drug dealer, or from the guy who is making pornography, or the guy who is trafficking the women or something; those people are pigs. The guy who is struggling and trying to live a good life is a good person with a weakness. And that is the distinction that we need to keep in mind.

And so, the Church is very clear that even for men with a deep-seated homosexual tendency, that they are not to go to the seminary. That’s not because the Church is being discriminatory or hates these people, but rather because the same principle if you look at it and say: would you take somebody who is struggling with an alcohol addiction to a bar? It’s a point of temptation. We don’t allow men into women’s convents because it’s not going to be long before somebody’s going to be having problems. And that’s what the Church is looking at to say this is not good.

Go back to when I was in college seminary. I was having a conversation with another seminarian, in the midst of the conversation he looked at me and said would you ever consider taking a shower in the women’s locker room? I said certainly not. He said well why not? I said well the temptations and the problems… and he said you’re right, now you know what I have to go through when I go into a men’s locker room. I thought oh my goodness…yuck. This is why the Church says even for these good men who are struggling and trying to overcome this, we don’t want to put them in a point of temptation.

So those are not the people that we are having a problem with. The people that we are having a problem with come from two different groups and understand there is an intentional and malicious infiltration of the Church for the purpose of destroying her from within.

This is what you need to understand.

When I was in the seminary, it was one of the worst seminaries in the nation. 1983 is when our seminary was at its absolute worst; I started in ‘85. It was getting slightly better. But these people were so arrogant. I should point out when I was in the seminary if you were not homosexual or a radical feminist you were in big trouble. One of the professors actually was arrogant enough to stand up in front of the class and say “Martin Luther had the right idea, but he did it the wrong way – he left the Church. You can’t change the Church from the outside you can only change it from the inside, so we’re not leaving.”

So, these are people with an agenda. And what are the two groups? The two groups are: number one, a group of predatory homosexuals. They started their infiltration of the Church in 1924. You want to look it up? There is a book called The Homosexual Network written in 1982, so this is 20 years before all of this stuff hit. A man named Enrique Rueda looked at all of this, studied all of their own publications, (they were publishing every year the number of seminarians, priest and bishops they had), he traced it back to when they started, it began in 1924. And then five years later, in 1929, the communists began their infiltration of the priesthood and the two groups did exactly the same thing. You want to read about the communist one? There is a woman by the name of Bella Dodd who was a deep-seated communist who got out of communism and converted to the Faith. She testified before congress in 1953 and in that testimony she said that “we got the instructions from Kremlin in 1929 as to what we were to do,” and she said “we were to take the best and the brightest, the guys who were smart enough to live a double life, good looking guys who were sociable so that they would be noticed by their bishop, and they would get promoted, they would become vocation directors, they would become bishops, they would become rectors of seminaries, they would have influential positions” and she said “we were successful beyond our wildest imagination.” She said: “I am personally responsible for more than 1,200 seminarians, priests and bishops.” And in 1953 mind you, again, now they started in 1929, in 1953 she said: “we already have four cardinals in the Vatican.” That was 1953, it’s way worse today.

So, we have these two groups. If you want to read about her, she wrote a book called School of Darkness, that was published in 1954. You want to understand why all of the promotion, the propaganda, the agenda? You can go back and read another book that was written in 1932 by a man named William Foster. William Foster ran for the president of the United States in 1924, 1928 and 1932 for the Communist Party USA. In 1932 he wrote a book called Toward Soviet America. And in that book, he said “we aren’t being able to get to the Americans because of three things, their morality, their family and their patriotism.” And he said: “so the way that we are going to attack these three things is through homosexuality and radical feminism.” They have been extraordinarily successful.

So, what are we dealing with? We are dealing with a group of predatory homosexuals who became priests not to serve the Church but to destroy her from within. In this, they are at every level. There was – there is an article that just came out from the Catholic Register in which six priests from the Newark diocese were interviewed and they spoke about the homosexual network in their diocese. It’s in all of them, not just in Newark. They cover up for another, they share their victims with one another, they do all kinds of horrible things. It is so wide spread now that there is actually talk on the federal level of using the RICO laws against the Church because of this kind of nonsense that’s been going on.

And people ask, why don’t the good priests speak up? I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, he looked at me and he said: “I’ve known about this for 50 years and you’ve known about it for 40 years.” Yep, it’s about time it’s coming out. So why didn’t somebody speak up? Number one if I would have stood here even a couple of years ago would you have believed what I am telling you? Number two, who were we supposed to go to? It was at every single level all the way to the top. You wanted to be ordained a priest, you couldn’t day a word. And even as a priest you can’t.

Again, these priests that were interviewed in the Catholic Register were interviewed only because of anonymity. It required anonymity because they were afraid of what was going to happen to them if the bishops and the people at the chancery found out who it was that spoke. These people have that much power. And so, we need to realize that. So, again just to tell you a quick story about how bad things were. When I was in the seminary, they would put up their communist propaganda, I would rip it down and every time I would do that there would be an announcement “Whoever is taking the notices off the bulletin board…” When I would put up a notice that says we were going to pray the Rosary, that would get torn down immediately and there was never anything said. Now having said that, thankfully the seminary today is way, way better than it was. These young guys are not having to deal with this trash, but that was the climate at the time.

Now if we just use the McCarrick situation, since that’s been in the news, everyone is disgusted with what this man did to boys and to young men, and rightly so. But anybody, by the way, who thinks that all of this is just great – they’re such nice people and they’re no different – look at what McCarrick did: that is what predatory homosexuality looks like.

These are not nice people who are just like everybody else. But as disgusting as all that is, think about the fact that this man was in the pulpit for 50 years, he sat in the confessional, he was in the bishop’s office making decisions about priests’ lives, about diocesan finances, about the direction of the diocese and so on. He served on Vatican commissions, he was a consultant to the Vatican, he made lots of bishops. What kind of advice do you think somebody struggling with some sexual problem in the confessional would have gotten from somebody like this?

What kind of men do you think might have been elevated to be bishops by somebody like this?

You now understand why all that we get is fluff and stuff instead of good homilies? You understand why there are problems in the world that aren’t being addressed? That’s what it is about. Where is the doctrinal integrity? Where is the moral teaching? Someone that is not living it is not going to teach it. Now there are, after this grand jury report came out a few days ago from Pennsylvania, there are several more states already talking about doing their own grand jury investigation. It will probably go all over the place, so I say that to simply say there is going to be more in the news coming up.

And as sad as this is we have to recognize that it is actually something very good. It is the purification of the Church and that is going to lead ultimately to her crucifixion Not many are going to remain faithful, unfortunately. But when we look at it and say: “well if this is what is going on in the Church what are we supposed to do?” We are supposed to look at Jesus and say exactly what St. Peter said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life”.

Jesus founded one Church and that one Church is the only institution in the world for the salvation of souls. It was founded for that purpose and it will remain to the end of the world for that purpose.

I have spoken with a number of people in the last week or two about what’s going on, prayerful, holy people and they have all concurred on the same point – Our Lady’s work has finally begun. Praise God!

She gave the bishops 16 years to clean up this mess and they did nothing. Now we are hearing from the bishops.

Courageouspriest.com

Fatheraltier.excerptsofinri.com

Pope Francis a Wolfe In Shepherd’s clothing?

 

‘Pope Francis’ – A Wolf in Shepherd’s Clothing?

BY WILLIAM KILPATRICK | JAN 25, 2022

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano sheds a disturbing light on the ‘Deep Church’.

“A non-Catholic Pope”?  It sounds like a contradiction in terms.  But those are the words used to describe Pope Francis by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States.  In fact, he rarely uses the term “Pope Francis.”  He refers to him instead as “Bergoglio” and to his pontificate as the “Bergoglian papacy.”

Vigano has a following in some Catholic circles but it’s likely that the vast majority of Catholics have never heard of him.  Yet the questions he raises about Pope Francis are of great consequence, not just for Catholics but for non-Catholics as well.

Since there are about 1.3 billion Catholics in the world, whoever leads them can have a significant effect on a large segment of the global population.  It’s widely thought, for instance, that Pope John Paul II did more to put an end to communism in Eastern Europe than any other individual with the exception of Ronald Reagan.  For evidence of the close collaboration between the two men, read historian Paul Kengor’s revealing book, A Pope and a President.

Now we have a new pope and a new president and neither of them seem terribly concerned about the revival of communist power throughout the world.  In fact, both men have surrounded themselves with left-leaning advisors and appointees.

In addition, both Francis and Biden have effectively rolled back the agendas of their immediate predecessors.  This is obvious in the case of Biden because the reversal has been swift and abrupt.  The reversal that Francis has engineered is less noticeable since it has been more gradual, but the resulting change in the Catholic Church has been every bit as radical as the one now taking place in American government and society.

Archbishop Vigano links the two together.  He talks of a coup in America and other Western nations led by secular leftist ideologues, and a coup in the Catholic Church led by Bergoglio and the progressive Catholics who surround him.

However, the coup in the Church has been a more silent one.  Catholic writers who have studied Francis’s career describe him as a skillful–even Machiavellian–manipulator.  According to them, all his actions are shrouded in a deliberate fog.  Consequently, most Catholics remain unaware of the magnitude of the changes.  It is only when a priest or prelate resists Francis that “the dictator pope” (the title of Henry Sire’s book about Francis) reveals himself. Just as the Biden administration is seeking to purge conservatives from government and the military, Francis seeks to purge traditional Catholics from the Church.  And since some of the strongest resistance to Francis comes from adherents of the Latin Mass, he has acted to suppress the Latin Mass.  Meanwhile, some conservative prelates find themselves demoted to obscure outposts, and others live in fear that false charges of sex abuse could land them in jail (as happened to Australian Cardinal George Pell).

Moreover, since Francis has been promoting progressive prelates to high posts for nine years, it looks likely that his “anti-Catholic” (Vigano’s term) brand of Catholicism will continue to dominate.  Because Francis has carefully packed the College of Cardinals (who elect the next pope) with men made in his own image, we shouldn’t be surprised if the next Pope takes the name, Pope Francis II.

You’ve heard of the “deep state;” Vigano maintains that there is also a “deep church”—a network of progressive prelates who, together with Francis, plan to change the face of the Church beyond recognition.  Moreover, the deep state and the deep church reinforce each other: “The deep church and deep state are nothing other than two parallel tracks which run in the same direction and have as their final destination the New World Order, with its religion and its prophet.”

Vigano points out that although Francis is “universally considered as the head of the Church,” he is at the same time a “liquidator” of the Church: “His dual role as pope and liquidator of the Catholic Church allows him on the one hand to demolish it with decrees and acts of governance, and on the other hand to use the prestige that his office entails to establish and spread the new religion over the rubble of the old one.”

The “new religion” which Francis hopes to usher in is, according to Vigano, a humanist and progressive one— “the religion of Mankind, an ecumenical and ecological one.”  This new religion will also result in “the legitimization of Evil,” and the persecution of good people.”

If all of this—this notion of a non-Catholic pope who seeks to liquidate the Church—seems outlandish and inconceivable, consider that only a short time ago, the notion of a communist-ruled USA also seemed inconceivable.  It seemed inconceivable that Americans would elect as president a man who would immediately set about to demolish American history, values, and institutions.  But that is what seems to be happening.

As far as I know, Vigano has never actually said that Francis is not the pope, but he has implied as much.  The evidence that he and others present can be divided into four categories:

1. Evidence that Pope Benedict’s resignation was invalid
2. Evidence that the election of Francis was rigged
3. Evidenced of widespread corruption in the Francis papacy.
4. Evidence that Francis embraces heresy.

Whether or not Vigano makes the case is a subject for another time.  The point I want to make here is that, despite the gravity of the charges against Francis, the response has been muted.  Neither Francis nor the Vatican has ever responded to Vigano’s explosive “testimony” in 2018 accusing Francis and other prelates of covering up Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s long history of sex abuse.  Francis said that he would trust the media to come to the proper conclusion; and the media obliged by ignoring Vigano’s charges altogether.

Likewise, the Francis-friendly media has had little to say about Vigano’s claim that Francis is not a legitimate pope.  As a result, the average Catholic is unaware that there is a problem.  Most Catholics would be surprised to learn that although Francis has frequently promised to put an end to clerical sex-abuse, he surrounds himself with abusers and enablers and promotes them to high office.  Likewise, most Catholics would be surprised to discover that although Francis verbally condemns abortion, he sees to it that prominent advocates of abortion are invited to Vatican conferences, and he sometimes showers them with praise.

Moreover, although he states that abortion is murder, he intervened to prevent the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) from voting to deny communion to President Biden because of Biden’s flagrant pro-abortion policy. According to Vigano, Francis is a master of duplicity whose modus operandi is to say one thing to please the pew-sitters, and to do the opposite in order to please the worldly elites.

It should be noted that Vigano has recently been a bit more in the public eye because of two letters he wrote to Donald Trump, and because of Trump’s positive response to them. As a result, some in the liberal Catholic press have mounted a vigorous campaign to discredit him.  For example, the Jesuit-run magazine Americadismisses him as just another right-wing conspiracy theorist who ought to be wearing a MAGA hat instead of a bishop’s cap.

The foundation for the conspiracy-theorist charge is that Vigano says what a growing number of Americans believe about a deep state increasingly controlled by global elites intent on reducing average people to the status of worker bees.  He speaks disparagingly of the New World Order, and the machinations of the Rockefeller Foundation, The World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, and Bill Gates.  Furthermore, in contrast to Francis, he sees the Covid pandemic as an invented crisis which is intended to create a more docile population.  Finally, Vigano often talks in apocalyptic terms.  He speaks of death and judgement, heaven and hell, Satan’s war against heaven, the Second Coming of Christ, and the “Mark of the Beast.” To the modern ear and to many modern Christians such talk is embarrassing, but through the ages most Christians have regarded such signs and prophesies not as the ravings of extremists, but as the revealed word of God.

Vigano has a good grip on science, finance, and politics, yet he does sometimes sound more like a 19thcentury pope than a 21st century prelate. This is actually quite refreshing because many modern clergymen have learned to talk in a corporate-therapeutic lingo that is devoid of any depth.  Take this tweet sent out by the USCCB to prepare Catholics for the upcoming “Synod on Synodality:”

“Here are seven attitudes we can all adopt as we continue our synodal journey together.  Which one inspires you the most?”

• Innovative Outlook
• Inclusivity
• Open-mindedness
• Listening
• Accompaniment
• Co-responsibility
• Dialogue

“Which one inspires you the most?”  But these psychobabble buzzwords aren’t meant to inspire, they’re meant to put to sleep—to distract people from the crucial issues that face the Church today such as the issue of “a pope who does not behave like a pope and does not speak like a pope.”

Vigano wants to wake up the sheep and so it seems quite fitting that he uses the strong language of the Bible to arouse people from their slumber.  While other bishops babble on about “inclusivity,” “dialogue,” and “open-mindedness,” it’s somehow reassuring that at least one bishop points to the very disturbing signs of the time.

It’s easy enough to dismiss Vigano as a paranoid conspiracy theorist, but let’s not forget that the Bible contains many admonitions to be alert to the signs of the time, and many warnings about “spiritual” leaders who are not what they seem. One of the warnings goes like this: “Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” Mt. 7: 15.

Of course, it’s not easy to discern a false prophet when he is dressed in sheep’s clothing.  It would be more difficult still if he were dressed as a shepherd.

This article originally appeared in the January 25, 2022 edition of Front Page.

Pictured above: Pope Francis

Photo credit: Pixabay