Side Effects of Psychiatric Drugs, Deadly

Elliot Rodger, like nearly all young killers, was taking psychiatric drugs (Xanax)

Tuesday, June 03, 2014by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Tags: Elliot Rodger, Xanax, psychiatric drugs

(NaturalNews) Like nearly all mass murderers and psycho killers, Elliot Rodger is now confirmed to have been taking massive doses of psychiatric drugs. Law enforcement authorities have now confirmed Elliot Rodger, the "sorority girl" killer of Isla Vista, California, was taking massive doses of Xanax, a psychiatric drug belonging to a class of chemicals called benzodiazepines.

"Elliot had been taking Xanax for awhile, according to his parents ... there were fears he might have been addicted to it, or taking more than was prescribed," a law enforcement source told RadarOnline (1), which first broke the story.

"The Xanax had been prescribed to Elliot by a family doctor," the story continues.

A second story on RadarOnline (2) explores, "disturbing details about the community college student's dependence on Xanax."

That story goes on to report:

Based on interviews with Elliot's parents, Peter and Li Chen, the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department "is being told that he was likely addicted to Xanax ... Peter and Li have been doing basic research on addiction to Xanax, and based on what they have read, they believe the tranquilizer made him more withdrawn, lonely, isolated, and anxious," a source told Radar. "It's their understanding that when Xanax is taken in large amounts, or more than the prescribed dosage, these are some of the side effects."

Time after time, mass murderers are found to have been taking psychiatric drugs

Elliot Rodger now joins a long and ever-expanding list of other killers who were either taking psychiatric drugs or withdrawing from them at the time they committed mass murder.

While the mainstream media predictably blames guns for all mass shootings, it rarely looks at the chemical drugging of the person who pulled the trigger on those guns. After all, guns don't operate by themselves. They require a person to make a decision to commit murder.

In case after case, mass murderers on psychotropic drugs describe themselves as feeling withdrawn, isolated, distant and almost living out a "video game" that isn't real. This is what psychiatric drugs to do you: they make you feel detached from reality.

Here's just some of the true history of psychiatric drugs and mass murder:

* Eric Harris age 17 (first on Zoloft then Luvox) and Dylan Klebold aged 18 (Columbine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado), killed 12 students and 1 teacher, and wounded 23 others, before killing themselves. Klebold's medical records have never been made available to the public.

* Jeff Weise, age 16, had been prescribed 60 mg/day of Prozac (three times the average starting dose for adults!) when he shot his grandfather, his grandfather's girlfriend and many fellow students at Red Lake, Minnesota. He then shot himself. 10 dead, 12 wounded.

* Cory Baadsgaard, age 16, Wahluke (Washington state) High School, was on Paxil (which caused him to have hallucinations) when he took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates hostage. He has no memory of the event.

* Chris Fetters, age 13, killed his favorite aunt while taking Prozac.

* Christopher Pittman, age 12, murdered both his grandparents while taking Zoloft.

* Mathew Miller, age 13, hung himself in his bedroom closet after taking Zoloft for 6 days.

* Kip Kinkel, age 15, (on Prozac and Ritalin) shot his parents while they slept then went to school and opened fire killing 2 classmates and injuring 22 shortly after beginning Prozac treatment.

* Luke Woodham, age 16 (Prozac) killed his mother and then killed two students, wounding six others.

* A boy in Pocatello, ID (Zoloft) in 1998 had a Zoloft-induced seizure that caused an armed stand off at his school.

* Michael Carneal (Ritalin), age 14, opened fire on students at a high school prayer meeting in West Paducah, Kentucky. Three teenagers were killed, five others were wounded..

* A young man in Huntsville, Alabama (Ritalin) went psychotic chopping up his parents with an ax and also killing one sibling and almost murdering another.

* Andrew Golden, age 11, (Ritalin) and Mitchell Johnson, aged 14, (Ritalin) shot 15 people, killing four students, one teacher, and wounding 10 others.

* TJ Solomon, age 15, (Ritalin) high school student in Conyers, Georgia opened fire on and wounded six of his class mates.

* Rod Mathews, age 14, (Ritalin) beat a classmate to death with a bat.

* James Wilson, age 19, (various psychiatric drugs) from Breenwood, South Carolina, took a .22 caliber revolver into an elementary school killing two young girls, and wounding seven other children and two teachers.

* Elizabeth Bush, age 13, (Paxil) was responsible for a school shooting in Pennsylvania

* Jason Hoffman (Effexor and Celexa) – school shooting in El Cajon, California

* Jarred Viktor, age 15, (Paxil), after five days on Paxil he stabbed his grandmother 61 times.

* Chris Shanahan, age 15 (Paxil) in Rigby, ID who out of the blue killed a woman.

* Jeff Franklin (Prozac and Ritalin), Huntsville, AL, killed his parents as they came home from work using a sledge hammer, hatchet, butcher knife and mechanic's file, then attacked his younger brothers and sister.

* Neal Furrow (Prozac) in LA Jewish school shooting reported to have been court-ordered to be on Prozac along with several other medications.

* Kevin Rider, age 14, was withdrawing from Prozac when he died from a gunshot wound to his head. Initially it was ruled a suicide, but two years later, the investigation into his death was opened as a possible homicide. The prime suspect, also age 14, had been taking Zoloft and other SSRI antidepressants.

* Alex Kim, age 13, hung himself shortly after his Lexapro prescription had been doubled.

* Diane Routhier was prescribed Welbutrin for gallstone problems. Six days later, after suffering many adverse effects of the drug, she shot herself.

* Billy Willkomm, an accomplished wrestler and a University of Florida student, was prescribed Prozac at the age of 17. His family found him dead of suicide – hanging from a tall ladder at the family's Gulf Shore Boulevard home in July 2002.

* Kara Jaye Anne Fuller-Otter, age 12, was on Paxil when she hung herself from a hook in her closet. Kara's parents said ".... the damn doctor wouldn't take her off it and I asked him to when we went in on the second visit. I told him I thought she was having some sort of reaction to Paxil...")

* Gareth Christian, Vancouver, age 18, was on Paxil when he committed suicide in 2002, (Gareth's father could not accept his son's death and killed himself.)

* Julie Woodward, age 17, was on Zoloft when she hung herself in her family's detached garage.

* Matthew Miller was 13 when he saw a psychiatrist because he was having difficulty at school. The psychiatrist gave him samples of Zoloft. Seven days later his mother found him dead, hanging by a belt from a laundry hook in his closet.

* Kurt Danysh, age 18, and on Prozac, killed his father with a shotgun. He is now behind prison bars, and writes letters, trying to warn the world that SSRI drugs can kill.

* Woody, age 37, committed suicide while in his 5th week of taking Zoloft. Shortly before his death his physician suggested doubling the dose of the drug. He had seen his physician only for insomnia. He had never been depressed, nor did he have any history of any mental illness symptoms.

* A boy from Houston, age 10, shot and killed his father after his Prozac dosage was increased.

* Hammad Memon, age 15, shot and killed a fellow middle school student. He had been diagnosed with ADHD and depression and was taking Zoloft and "other drugs for the conditions."

* Matti Saari, a 22-year-old culinary student, shot and killed 9 students and a teacher, and wounded another student, before killing himself. Saari was taking an SSRI and a benzodiazapine.

* Steven Kazmierczak, age 27, shot and killed five people and wounded 21 others before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University auditorium. According to his girlfriend, he had recently been taking Prozac, Xanax and Ambien. Toxicology results showed that he still had trace amounts of Xanax in his system.

* Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen, age 18, had been taking antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School – then he committed suicide.

* Asa Coon from Cleveland, age 14, shot and wounded four before taking his own life. Court records show Coon was on Trazodone.

* Jon Romano, age 16, on medication for depression, fired a shotgun at a teacher in his New York high school.

Missing from list... 3 of 4 known to have taken these same meds....

* What drugs was Jared Lee Loughner on, age 21... killed 6 people and injuring 14 others in Tuscon, Az?

* What drugs was James Eagan Holmes on, age 24... killed 12 people and injuring 59 others in Aurora Colorado?

* What drugs was Jacob Tyler Roberts on, age 22, killed 2 injured 1, Clackamas Or?

* What drugs was Adam Peter Lanza on, age 20, Killed 26 and wounded 2 in Newtown Ct?

Sources for this article include:

(1) http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2014/05/el...

(2) http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2014/06/uc...

About the author:Mike Adams (aka the "Health Ranger") is the founding editor of NaturalNews.com, the internet's No. 1 natural health news website, now reaching 7 million unique readers a month. 

In late 2013, Adams launched the Natural News Forensic Food Lab, where he conducts atomic spectroscopy research into food contaminants using high-end ICP-MS instrumentation. With this research, Adams has made numerous food safety breakthroughs such as revealing rice protein products imported from Asia to becontaminated with toxic heavy metals like lead, cadmium and tungsten. Adams was the first food science researcher to document high levels of tungsten in superfoods. He also discovered over 11 ppm lead in imported mangosteen powder, and led an industry-wide voluntary agreement to limit heavy metals in rice protein products to low levels by July 1, 2015. 

In addition to his lab work, Adams is also the (non-paid) executive director of the non-profitConsumer Wellness Center (CWC), an organization that redirects 100% of its donations receipts to grant programs that teach children and women how to grow their own food or vastly improve their nutrition. Click here to see some of the CWC success stories. 

With a background in science and software technology, Adams is the original founder of the email newsletter technology company known as Arial Software. Using his technical experience combined with his love for natural health, Adams developed and deployed the content management system currently driving NaturalNews.com. He also engineered the high-level statistical algorithms that power SCIENCE.naturalnews.com, a massive research resource now featuring over 10 million scientific studies. 

Adams is well known for his incredibly popular consumer activism video blowing the lid on fake blueberries used throughout the food supply. He has also exposed "strange fibers" found in Chicken McNuggets, fake academic credentials of so-called health "gurus," dangerous "detox" products imported as battery acid and sold for oral consumption, fake acai berry scams, the California raw milk raids, the vaccine research fraud revealed by industry whistleblowers and many other topics. 

Adams has also helped defend the rights of home gardeners and protect the medical freedom rights of parents. Adams is widely recognized to have made a remarkable global impact on issues like GMOs, vaccines, nutrition therapies, human consciousness. 

Kingdom of Heaven

Scripture Speaks: Kingdom of Heaven

Today, Jesus uses parables to teach about the kingdom of heaven. What do all three of them have in common?

Gospel (Read Mt 13:24-43)

In this chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus uses parables to teach the large crowd gathered to hear Him at the seashore. In the first one, He says, “The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field.” However, during the cover of night, “while everyone was asleep,” an enemy came and sowed weeds all through his field. The weed, sometimes called “darnel,” looks very much like wheat in its early growth. If it gets ground up later with the wheat and made into flour, it can cause sickness. In Jesus’ day, personal vengeance sometimes took the form of sowing this weed in an enemy’s wheat field, a punishable crime in Roman law. In the parable, the slaves ask the landowner if they should pull up the weeds, but they are told, “No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them.” The plants will have to grow together until harvest time. By then, the weed will be easily recognizable; no wheat will be pulled up by mistake.

In the explanation He later gives the disciples, Jesus explains that the Sower is Jesus, the field is the world, and the seeds are either children of the kingdom or children of the evil one. In this, He makes it clear that goodness and wickedness will exist, side-by-side, until the end of time, when Jesus comes with His angels to execute justice. We might wonder why it will take so long to rid the world of evil. This question especially nags at us when we see evil in the Church, as well as the good. How we itch to clean up the field, as the servants in the parable did. The landowner cautions against this expediency, however, because he knows that sometimes it is hard to distinguish the good seed from the bad in its early growth. The danger of uprooting the wrong growth in a freshly sown field is high. Letting time lapse, waiting for the mature growth that signals harvest time, will avoid this danger. Because this parable teaches us about the kingdom of heaven, think about the mercy of God this story represents. How many of us have started out in life looking more like bad seed than good? Repentance and conversion made all the difference. Likewise, how many have started out looking like good seed but never bore good fruit? It takes a long time to know who we are. The great gift of time God gives to the world is to allow as many of us as possible an opportunity to be mature wheat. At St. Peter wrote, “The Lord is not slow about His promise [to return] as some count slowness, but He is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet 3:9). In the meantime, we should not be shocked by the presence of evil in the world. We are assured of a future just judgment on it. Our work now is to pray and work for repentance and conversion, which leads us to the other two parables.

Jesus speaks of the kingdom of heaven as being like a mustard seed, tiny as it goes into the ground, but, in time, becoming “the largest of plants.” Here He gives us a picture of the Church, inauspicious at the beginning (only Twleve men) but growing to become universal. His reference to “birds of the sky” coming to rest in the mustard plant’s branches is not just nature talk. In the Old Testament, large empires, including Israel, were often described as great trees (Ezek 31:1-13; 17:22-24; Dan 4:12). There, “birds” represented the Gentiles. So, Jesus is describing a Church that will need time to grow from a coterie of Jewish disciples into a Church that would someday be home to Gentiles, as well as Jews, all over the world.

Finally, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to the yeast a woman uses in baking bread. It is small and hidden as it goes into the dough, but, in time, it has an effect on the whole batch, causing it to greatly increase in size and making it ready to bake. This helps us understand how the work of the Church in the salvation of the world is often hidden, unseen. Do we have the patience to wait for its ultimate effect?

We can’t miss the emphasis in these parables on time and on the danger of making judgments based on appearance, before the proper amount of time has passed. What a wonderful corrective for people like us, who live in a culture that has nearly declared war on time. Our technology has almost made an enemy out of time—fast is good, instant is better. We need to let these parables sink in and renew our minds about time, about avoiding premature judgment, about letting God work out His plan of salvation for the world in His own time. When we do this, we are better prepared to understand our other readings today.

Possible response: Lord, I confess that waiting for Your work to unfold is often hard for me. Please grant me patience.

First Reading (Read Wisdom 12:13, 16-19)

Here we have a beautiful description of why God is not in a hurry. He takes His time with His Creation, including His judgment on it, because He is kind: “…though You are the master of might, You judge with clemency, and with much lenience You govern us.” God’s perfect justice makes Him perfectly patient. As noted in St. Peter’s epistle, God’s “slowness” comes from His desire that all men repent and be saved. We see that here in this reading, too: “And You taught Your people, by these deeds, that those who are just must be kind; and You gave Your children good ground for hope that You would permit repentance for their sins.” Instant judgment of others (with the battle cry of “Let’s clear the field now!”) leaves little room for the kindness and mercy of God.

Possible response: Father, help me learn from Your kindness to be kind to others, especially when I only care about being right, not kind.

Psalm (Read Ps 86:5-6, 9-10, 15-16)

It should not surprise us that our psalm response today is, “LORD, You are good and forgiving.” The psalmist extols the kindness of God and so counts on the Him “to attend to the sound of my pleading.” Interestingly, the psalmist prophetically declares, “All the nations You have made shall come and worship You, O Lord, and glorify Your Name.” This is the very picture of a Church comprising “all the nations” that Jesus gave us in the parable of the mustard seed. The psalmist shows us that God’s patience and slowness to anger should lead us to prayer for help when we really need it: “Turn toward me, and have pity on me; give Your strength to Your servant.” A merciful God is eager to do this, as we shall see in our next reading.

Possible response: The psalm is, itself, a prayerful response to all the lectionary readings. Read it again as your own response to God’s Word.

Second Reading (Read Rom 8:26-27)

Can there be, anywhere, a more powerful statement of God’s kind mercy toward His people than what St. Paul writes here? Not only can we pray to God in our time of need, as the psalmist teaches us, but St. Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit “comes to the aid of our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought.” The Spirit prays “for the holy ones according to God’s will.” God invites us to prayer and then, by His Spirit, enables us to pray according to His will. What a beautiful description of His tender care of the “field” of the Church! He is like the Good Farmer, looking after the welfare of every tender shoot that springs up from the good seed He has sown. No wonder God is not afraid of time. St. Paul helps us see that God Himself is bringing His harvest to maturity, working in the hidden, unseen chambers of our hearts to unleash prayers that will save the world. What a sublime subversion!

Possible response: Holy Spirit, thank You for your prayers in me, wiser than my own.

http://catholicexchange.com/scripture-speaks-kingdom-heaven

Gayle Somers is a member of St. Thomas the Apostle parish in Phoenix and has been writing and leading parish Bible studies since 1996. She is the author of three bible studies, Galatians: A New Kind of Freedom Defended (Basilica Press), Genesis: God and His Creation and Genesis: God and His Family (Emmaus Road Publishing). Gayle and her husband Gary reside in Phoenix and have three grown children.

Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried.

Is There Growing Confusion over Church Teaching?

I begin with a piece, spotted by Fr Tim Finigan and reported in his indispensable blog The Hermeneutic of Continuity, which had been published in Sandro Magister’s blog—not his English one, Chiesa, but his Italian language blog for L’Espresso, Settimo Cielo.

A few days ago, Magister told the story of a parish priest in the Italian diocese of Novara, Fr Tarcisio Vicario, who recently discussed the question of Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried. This is how he explained the Church’s teaching on the matter: “For the Church, which acts in the name of the Son of God, marriage between the baptized is alone and always a sacrament. Civil marriage and cohabitation are not a sacrament. Therefore those who place themselves outside of the Sacrament by contracting civil marriage are living a continuing infidelity. One is not treating of sin committed on one occasion (for example a murder), nor an infidelity through carelessness or habit, where conscience in any case calls us back to the duty of reforming ourselves by means of sincere repentance and a true and firm purpose of distancing ourselves from sin and from the occasions which lead to it.”

Pretty unexceptionable, one would have thought.

His bishop, the Bishop of Novara, however, slapped down Fr Tarcisio’s “unacceptable equation, even though introduced as an example, between irregular cohabitation and murder. The use of the example, even if written in brackets, proves to be inappropriate and misleading, and therefore wrong.”

Fr Tim comments that “Fr Vicario did not ‘equate’ irregular cohabitation and murder. His whole point was that they are different—one is a permanent state where the person does not intend to change their situation, the other is a sin committed on a particular occasion where a properly formed conscience would call the person to repent and not commit the sin again.”

It was bad enough that Fr Tarcisio should be publicly attacked by his own bishop simply for propagating the teachings of the Church. Much more seriously, Fr Tarcisio was then slapped down from Rome itself, by no less a person than the curial Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, who said that the words of Fr Tarcisio were “crazy [‘una pazzia’], a strictly personal opinion of a parish priest who does not represent anyone, not even himself.” Cardinal Baldisseri, it may be remembered, is the Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, and therefore of the forthcoming global extravaganza on the family. This does not exactly calm one’s fears about the forthcoming Synod: for, of course, it is absurd and theologically illiterate to say that Fr Tarcisio’s words were “a strictly personal opinion of a parish priest who does not represent anyone, not even himself” (whatever that means): for, on the contrary, they quite simply accurately represent the teaching of the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church.

Sandro Magister tellingly at this point quotes the words of Thomas, Cardinal Collins, Archbishop of Toronto, who was appointed in January this year as one of the five members of the Commission of Cardinals Overseeing the Institute for the Works of Religion, and who at about the same time as Fr Tarcisio was being slapped down from the beating heart of curial Rome, was saying almost exactly the same thing as he had:

Many people who are divorced, and who are not free to marry, do enter into a second marriage. … The point is not that they have committed a sin; the mercy of God is abundantly granted to all sinners. Murder, adultery, and any other sins, no matter how serious, are forgiven by Jesus, especially through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and the forgiven sinner receives communion. The issue in the matter of divorce and remarriage is one’s conscious decision (for whatever reason) to persist in a continuing situation of disconnection from the command of Jesus … it would not be right for them to receive the sacraments….

What exactly is going on, when Bishops and parish priests can so radically differ about the most elementary issues of faith and morals—about teachings which are quite clearly explained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church—and when simultaneously one Cardinal describes such teachings as “crazy” and another simply expounds them as the immemorial teachings of the Church? Does nobodyknow what the Church believes any more?

The question brought me back powerfully, once more, to one of the most haunting blogs I have read for some time, one to which I have been returning repeatedly since I read it last Friday. It is very short, so here it is in full; I am tempted to call it Fr Blake’s last post (one can almost hear his bugle sounding over sad shires):

It is four months since Protect the Pope went into “a period of prayer and reflection” at the direction of Bishop Campbell, someone recently asked me why I tend not to post so often as I did, and I must say I have been asking the same question about other bloggers.

The reign of Benedict produced a real flourish of ‘citizen journalists’, the net was alive with discussion on what the Pope was saying or doing and how it affected the life of our own local Church. Looking at some of my old posts they invariably began with quote or picture followed by a comment, Benedict stimulated thought, reflection and dialogue, an open and free intellectual environment. There was a solidity and certainty in Benedict’s teaching which made discussion possible and stimulated intellectual honesty, one knew where the Church and the Pope stood. Today we are in less certain times, the intellectual life of the Church is thwart with uncertainty.

Most Catholics but especially clergy want to be loyal to the Pope in order to maintain the unity of the Church, today that loyalty is perhaps best expressed through silence.

I look at my own blogging, and see that I perfectly exemplify this. More and more, my heart just isn’t in it; and I blog less than I did. Now, increasingly, I feel that silence is all. Under Benedict, there was vigorously under way a glorious battle, an ongoing struggle, focused on and motivated by the pope himself, to get back to the Church the Council intended, a battle for the hermeneutic of continuity. It was a battle we felt we were winning. Then came the thunderbolt of Benedict’s resignation.

After an agonizing interregnum, a new pope was elected, a good and holy man with a pastoral heart. All seemed to be well, though he was not dogmatically inclined as Benedict had been: all that was left to the CDF. I found myself explaining that Francis was hermeneutically absolutely Benedictine, entirely orthodox, everything a pope should be, just with a different way of operating. I still believe all that. But here is increasingly a sense of uncertainty in the air, which cannot be ignored. “One knew where the Church and the Pope stood” says Fr Blake. Now, we have a Pope who can be adored by such enemies of the Catholic Church as the arch abortion supporter Jane Fonda, who tweeted last year “Gotta love new Pope. He cares about poor, hates dogma.”

In other words, for Fonda and her like, the Church is no longer a dogmatic entity, no longer a threat. That’s what the world now supposes: everything is in a state of flux. The remarried will soon, they think, be told they can receive Holy Communion as unthinkingly as everyone else: that’s what Cardinal Kasper implied at the consistory in February. Did the pope agree with him? There appears to be some uncertainty, despite the fact that the Holy Father had already backed Cardinal Mueller’s insistence that nothing has changed.

We shall see what we shall see at the Synod, which I increasingly dread. Once that is out of the way, we will be able to assess where we all stand. But whatever happens now, it seems, the glad confident morning of Benedict’s pontificate has gone, never again to return; and I (and it seems many others) have less we feel we can say.  
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/growing-confusion-church-teaching

Editor’s note: This column first appeared July 11, 2014 in the Catholic Herald of London and is reprinted with permission. (Photo credit: CNS / L’Osservatore Romano via Reuters)

Exorcism Gets Formal Recognition from Vatican

Thursday, July 3, 2014 10:36 AM EST

Exorcism Gets Formal Recognition from Vatican

By Sounak Mukhopadhyay

The Vatican has given formal recognition to the International Association of Exorcists, which means that the exorcists can now perform their rituals legally.

The International Association of Exorcists consists of 250 priests from 30 countries. These priests perform exorcism on Catholic believers who are possessed by demons. The procedure is conducted to liberate the demons from the human bodies. According to L'Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of the Vatican, the organization has been approved by the Congregation for Clergy. The group is recognised under canon law, Associate Press reported. The Reverend Francesco Bamonte was happy about the recognition. "Exorcism is a form of charity that benefits those who suffer," he said.

Pope Francis has been frequently heard talking about the devil. Only in 2013, he strategically placed his hands on the head of a man who was apparently possessed by four demons at that time. According to exorcists, the pontiff was engaged in a prayer which would liberate Satan.

Conservative Catholic organizations are often critical of the vast popularity of Satanist culture in modern times. They believe that prime-time television shows feature Satanists while neo-pagan religions manage to have a vast number of followers. Even tarot card reading on newspapers is a part of the Satanist culture, they believe. The popularity of such culture is the main reason why exorcism is on the rise, according to Catholic experts. Father James LeBar, who is an exorcist at the Archdiocese of New York, earlier said that there had been a "large explosion" of exorcism which started in the 90s. Father John Hampsch who is a psychologist apparently deals with 10 to 15 cases of exorcism in a week.

The first official guidelines related to exorcism came from the Vatican in 1614. The guidelines were further revised in 1999. At the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, it was deduced that demonic possession could cause symptoms like "excessive masturbation."

However, science is yet to recognise exorcism - derived from the Greek word "exousia" meaning oath.

Contact the writer: s.mukhopadhyay@ibtimes.com.au

http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/557837/20140703/exorcism-formal-recognition-vatican-science-satan-demon.htm#.U8KDLFZUNpo

The Spiritual Drama of Eve Lavalliere

On Friday, July 12, 1929, the following report appeared in The Times of London:

“Our Paris Correspondent telegraphs that the death has occurred at Thuilieres, in the Vosges, of Mlle. Eve Lavalliere, formerly an actress of distinction. She had been living in retirement for the last 12 years, having suddenly come to the decision, in 1917, to lead a life of religious seclusion.”

In this sparse report of a death there was hidden more drama than any performer could have invented upon the stage.

This was especially so given that the actress named had been in a ‘role’ not sought, but, rather, one that had ‘found’ her, and which, by its end, had won her little praise. Instead, her life had become a slow white martyrdom—having chosen to return to the Garden by the only way possible: the Cross.

The newspaper conveyed what until then the world thought of as the elemental parts of the enigma that was the actress known as Eve Lavalliere. In short, a glittering career followed by what seemed a vacuum. Her decision to retire as baffling to the former legion of adorers as it was frustratingly opaque to those around her.

But, then, how could they have comprehended what was really happening, for they had known only the invention that was Eve Lavalliere: comedic actress; wit and raconteur; stage sensation in Paris and beyond; mistress and mother; one of the wealthiest and most beautiful women of her day. The woman behind the mask was less well known: one with an unfathomable sadness; alone; prey to depressions, despair and suicidal thoughts.

After her disappearance from the stage, and ‘the world’, what followed next appeared to some nothing more than a morbid obscurity. What no earthly audience could have perceived, however, was that she had acquired an altogether different ‘audience’, and one that watched intently her every move. Now, instead of a stage play, what was being played out was an all too real drama, and one with a finale that would end either in Heaven or Hell, with the saving of a soul or its eternal forfeit.

Now, with the Overture ended, let us move to the first act that can have but one name: Tragedy.

Eugenie-Maire Pascaline Feneglio was born at Toulon on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1866. Her family life was miserable, and was to shatter calamitously. Her father a depressive with a temper, her mother tried to placate; for years, together with her older brother, the girl lived in dread. The mounting misery erupted on another Sunday—March 6, 1884—in what would be a deadly climax.

All day a stream of invective had rained down upon Eve’s mother. By late afternoon, the children were growing ever more alarmed for her safety. In the end their instincts proved right, as, after a crack of a pistol, they saw her lying mortally wounded upon the floor. As Eve stared in disbelief at the bloodied face of her mother, an altogether new fear suddenly gripped her. She was right to be frightened, for, as she turned, she was staring down the barrel of a pistol now pointing directly at her. A shot discharged, ricocheting off the wall as its intended target dived for cover. That was not to be the end of the blood lust, however, as, on that accursed Sabbath, a demon was loosed, and soon after another shot rang out. This time it found its target, and her father lay dead. The two children ran from the house, with her brother never seen again. On that tragic March evening, with her childhood now ended, yet barely a woman, Eve Lavalliere was left to face the world alone.

The next years can be summed up as follows: drab jobs in provincial obscurity fueling a longing for the Paris stage; an increasingly eye-catching face combined with an ever growing vivacity, all enveloped with a will of iron matched only by one burning ambition: to “escape.” And escape she did; along the way, taking the stage name “Eve Lavalliere.” Thereafter, like some fairytale, all her wishes came true, but wishes are not prayers, and the realization of her dreams gradually turned to nightmare.

Playing before packed, adoring audiences, with even Crowned Heads bowing, the very world appeared to be at her feet. No one but she, however, knew of the shadows that grew increasingly darker as the stage lights dimed, and as the darkness descended so too did the demons that relentlessly tormented her.

Superficially, the truth appeared simple enough: by the turn of the century she was the toast of Paris and much of Europe. And yet, by then, she knew nothing but an aching emptiness, something that would persist for years. An incident in 1916 reveals its depths. After a performance in London to aid the war effort, and while the audience were still standing and applauding she left the stage and made straight for the banks of the river Thames with one intention: to drown herself.

As she stood watching the lights of the city playing on that dark river’s ever-onward course, she relented, but only just. Sadly, it had not been the first time such thoughts had driven her to the brink of annihilation. It would be the last, however. Less than a year later, an event occurred that was to change her life forever, and in the process the world would be shocked, and its overlord angered.

This tragic first act now closes as we move on to the strange second one.

It was May 1917. Eve Lavalliere was then aged 51 years old, and in her world all appeared as normal. Europe may have been at war but she had just signed a contract to tour the United States, and with it even greater fame beckoned. Before this important event, however, she felt the need to rest in the French countryside. It was then that the unexpected happened.

If one is to remain in the clutches of the Evil One then three things are to be avoided: rest, recollection and exposure to things of the Spirit. On retiring to the rustic backwater of Touraine, Eve was to discover all three, and with that was to be set free forever.

The landlord of the house she rented happened to be the local Curé; a good priest who soon asked why she was not present at Sunday Mass. Thereafter, each Sabbath she attended, but more out of human respect than any reverence. Nevertheless, the priest and his new parishioner began to talk. She revealed, amongst other things, that she had dabbled in the Occult. The shocked priest warned of such dalliances. Disturbed by his reaction, later that night, she was to ponder upon both an insight, and a resultant question: if the devil did exist then so too must God, and, if this was the case, what was she doing with her life?

That night a fear gripped her, but also a hope was born.

The next day, looking chastened, she presented herself to the priest and, to his astonishment, proceeded to sit down with one intention: to begin instruction in the Catechism. However enigmatic, it was a beginning.

The weeks that followed found her reading the life of the saint she would later identify closely with: the Magdalene. The priest had lent her a volume of that saint’s life, suggesting Eve might want to read it on her knees. She did. Soon after, repentance followed, then Confession, and with it a curious light began to dawn.

In this spiritual drama we now come to its final Act—the most mysterious of all.

Because it was from now on that Eve Lavalliere entered into a period of profound darkness when the only light given her was that of Calvary. And from then, like her patron before her, she was to take her place at the foot of the Cross.

If the earlier years had been a triumphal procession, the years that followed her conversion were viewed as anything but that by those around her. Following her conversion, Eve became a penitent soul, taking to prayer and mortification to make reparation for her previous ways. Retreating to obscurity, however, her attempts to find a spiritual home—a convent or monastery—were to lead nowhere. She wandered from place to place before for a time retiring to Lourdes, where, even in the driving rain, she was to be seen on its hill making the Stations of the Cross barefoot. Increasingly, unable to find something or someone, she was forced to cling to the only thing left her: the Cross—her sole refuge from the storms that now began to assail her.

During these years, her adult illegitimate daughter’s immoral lifestyle was flaunted before all to see. It cost Eve many tears—more than anything else. Remorselessly, the daughter also took all she could from her mother—mostly money—leaving behind nothing but a trail of cold indifference and pain, bitter regret and heartbreak.

By the end, walking her penitential path as fully as she had once walked that of evil, her already fragile health broke. With illness and infirmity, the body now became her cross. Eventually, for medical reasons, her eyes had to be sewn closed. Of this operation, without an anaesthetic and without complaint, she was to offer its almost unbearable pain in expiation, simply saying that she had sinned with her sight…

Now effectively an exile upon the earth, mercifully her time was drawing to a finish.

Finally, with health shattered and body exhausted, the end came on July 10, 1929: her long watch at the foot of the Cross now over.

Buried in a simple grave, without fanfare or entourage, she was to be forgotten. The brief newspaper report of her death contrasted starkly with the columns of newspaper print from decades earlier when she was without equal on the stages of Europe. No doubt, those reading such reports of the once brilliant actress were puzzled by her end, but only momentarily before turning the page as they and the world moved on.

On that July day, however, as the earth fell upon the silent casket, and the few mourners departed from the modest gravesite, none could have realized what was to happen next.

Having been buried to the world long before any physical interment, the former actress was now to have the last word.

Those last years of faithful testimony when she gave up so much, and endured even more, at last began to bear their fruit as she proceeded to make a ‘comeback’ worthy of any actor. Within a few short years of her death, books were being published about her life and conversion, and tentatively a cult began to grow. And it was then that her witness rose to stand upon a very different stage, one reserved for God’s Elect, and where Eve Lavalliere now made an entry in what was be her final, and indeed greatest, role.

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/spiritual-drama-eve-lavalliere

AMC’s taut modern-western crime-drama, Breaking Bad.

Breaking Mad

Many Americans are just getting out of rehab for their addiction to AMC’s taut modern-western crime-drama, Breaking Bad. The expression “breaking bad” is street slang meaning to break loose from the established traces and give in to wildness and wickedness. The series told the tragic, traumatic tale of Walter White, an unassuming high-school chemistry teacher who secretly cooks crystal meth to pay for his cancer treatments. Hoping to find success as a quiet, civilized criminal, Mr. White finds that the world he has sold himself to is one where logic and longevity do not exist. There is but one way to go and that way is down, the slope slick with blood. Walter White falls, ultimately embracing his doom as a devilish drug-lord. Though the program is an interesting study in corruption, it also plays out the consequences of a life of contradiction: the calamity and confusion that springs out of double-dealing and ends-justifying-means philosophies. There is a current crisis of contradiction that is a cut deeper, however, than just breaking bad—and that is breaking mad. The West is wild once again; and quite mad, too, for it has made the wide world its prison.

Uncle Sam’s MadhousePornography is free speech. A baby is a choice. Marriage is between two men or two women. A man is a woman, if he wants. A woman is a man, or equivalent to one by all means. From murder to sex to narcotics, the category of permissiveness is ever growing and giving contradiction more and more legroom to run by removing the boundaries of objectivity. When objectivity is rejected, insanity sets in, for nothing can be true if everything is true. “Subjectivity is the only universal here,” leers the American Mad Hatter as he pours his brew, and the confusion is as overbearing and overwhelming for the American Alice.

Lunacy is the new great American revolution; and like all revolutions, it is contradictory. The devastating function of this revolution is that it perpetuates and feeds off the thing that caused it to begin with. Contradiction makes men mad; and madmen live by contradiction. This is both the bane and the banner of the American mentality. Reason and truth are growing out of vogue for they are inimical to the absurdities of individualistic sophistry, political posturing, and the moral miasma that bestows mass control through mass confusion. Other pillars upholding this American lunacy are, of course, cynicism and boredom, but over and above these poisonous attitudes is a culture of contradiction that cannot but drive people out of their minds.

What else but insanity can preside when the open-minded diversity agenda consistently strives for the homogeneous contrary through closed-minded equality? What else but insanity would not recognize multiculturalism as anticulturalism (for culture actually does melt in the melting pot)? What else but insanity would render houses and streets across the nation indistinguishable from one another? Or perhaps the real question is, what else can result from all these things but insanity? America has lost its mind. Local peculiarities are fast fading, as is the charm connected with peculiarity. The blinding, unchanging highway has buried the open road and its landmarks. The roles of man and woman are lost in a fog of sexist equation and confusion in the frantic effort to defend gender.

Rather than holiness being the source of health, health has become holiness itself in organic, non-GMO, fat-free, sugar-free, gluten-free products. Death observances are a flagrant denial of the final fact, as the bizarre American funeral industry does everything in its power to negate the reality of death with painted corpses and upholstered coffins that play music underground through a Spotify streaming account. Where is the diversity in fast-food restaurants or shopping malls? Cookie-cuttered. Mass-produced. Made in China from sea to shining sea. America is immured in contradiction. Uniformity, not diversity, is the real aim and the real result; and this contradiction is the cause of a very real madness that modernity embraces as the new normal.

The Culture of ContradictionThe modern American madness is chiefly propagated by the contradiction involved in quarantining traditional ethical principles from one another, isolating the virtues (or “values,” to use the modern, muddy term) from the context of an integrated moral universe, leaving Americans in a state of profound moral imbalance and ambivalence. Fortitude cannot survive if it need not be seasoned by humility. Charity will wither when forgiveness is optional. Justice without mercy is a monster. This segregation, this violent separation of grounded and grounding realities, is done in the land of “inclusiveness” and “tolerance.” If liberalism gradually dilutes all things human unto destruction, it is not liberating. It is enslaving. It is mental paralysis. It is a world of Orwellian doublethink and doublespeak. As G. K. Chesterton famously wrote in Orthodoxy, “The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason,” living separated from the real world and everything in it, with nothing but his mind forever turning in upon itself. “Have we eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner?” asks Banquo of Macbeth, for insanity truly does take reason prisoner, locking it in a padded cell with nothing but itself.

Madness prevails.

“In truth the prison unto which we doom ourselves,” Wordsworth writes, “no prison is.” The most startling contradiction of the insanity of contradiction is that America can hardly be American anymore, that is, a nation with identifiable bones, blood, and beauty. The land of the free has become a prison. Until identity is loved over ideology, the craziness will continue. Patriotism is impossible when regional character is destroyed; and a people who have no true, meaningful love for their country are a people who have lost touch with a basic tenet of human piety and human sanity. Unfortunately, the American lunatics can be lulled in their straightjackets by sex, drugs, video games, virtual-reality technology, mindless movies, mindless music, and mindless media. All of these are, after all, far preferable to facing the fearful truth of political corruption, economic failure, the $17,600,000,000,000 national debt (and counting), fierce global unrest, and the loss of an objective moral universe.

Again, from Orthodoxy:

Their attitude is really this: that the man must stop thinking, if he is to go on living. Their counsel is one on intellectual amputation. If thy head offend thee, cut it off; for it is better, not merely to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a child, but to enter it as an imbecile, rather than with your whole intellect to be cast into hell.

In Detention and Denial
Breaking Bad followed the trajectory of the immoral life to its natural conclusion, and it is a trajectory and a conclusion that bears a strong parallel to the intellectual life gone wrong. If people give in to the promise of peace and power through secular and self-centered devices, they step on a slippery slope above a gulf of devastating consequences. Man must never expect to be his own savior—it is a contradictory premise. Like Walter White, those who give in to the insanity born of contradiction only serve to perpetuate the illusion and the contagion in themselves and in others. Though no one can ignore the unhappiness shackling society, most ignore the cause. They deny it. If a cure is inconvenient to the markets, the malady is contradicted—even though it is everywhere and obvious. What else can explain Islamophilia in the face of Boko Haram? Or the sanction of a football player kissing a man on public television? On an even darker note, one of the surest signs of a mad culture is the rise of true madmen, true psychopaths—lost souls like Adam Lanza and, most recently, Elliot Rodger who sought satisfaction in slaughter, driven mad by a world of contradiction that left them suffocating in mental conflict, without recourse, without succor.

To claim that Americans at large are a sane people is similar to the assertion of an inmate who says he is Napoleon. He may be in deadly earnest, but it is earnestness wrought of obsession on a microcosm rather than a macrocosm. It is earth without heaven. It is madness—the operation of reason without rationality, without first principle or final purpose.

Euripedes said: Those whom the gods destroy, they first make mad.

In God, therefore, we trust.
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/breaking-mad

Never Say Never, A Padre Pio Miracle by Susan Brinkmann

   

 Paul Walsh was 17 years old when the car he was driving hit a tree on Chester Pike in suburban Piladelphia on an icy December night in 1983. One doctor described his head injuries as the equivalent of dropping an egg on a cement sidewalk. Not only was his skull shattered, every bone in his face was broken and there was a tear in his brain. Doctors at Crozier Chester Medical Center said he was irreversibly brain damaged and would never regain consciousness.  But as the old saying goes, “never say never.”

     On Saturday, May 14, 2005, Paul Walsh received a bachelors degree in liberal arts from Neumann College In Aston, PA. “I’d like to teach special ed,” said the 38-year-old graduate, who is employed as a full-time health care associate with Elwyn, Inc., a residential day program for the mentally disadvantaged. “I’d like to continue working with mentally disadvantaged persons.”

     Paul’s recovery from massive head injuries in 1984 was “unexplained, on a purely medical and scientific basis” said one of the physicians who treated him, Michael Ryan, M.D. In a written statement, Dr. Ryan said: “It is my feeling that without the help of the supernatural influence, Paul would today be dead or continue to be in a comatose state.”

     Although he recalls little of his four-month ordeal following the accident, his mother, Betty Walsh, remembers every detail, from the moment she got the phone call on the night of the accident. “The nurse told me to come to the hospital right away,” said the mother of ten from Ridley Park, PA.  “It was hard to even recognize Paul. His face was so swollen, like a pumpkin, and totally wrapped in bandages. It didn’t look very good but he did recognize my voice because he moved when he heard me.”

After ten hours of surgery the following day, during which Paul lost four and half times the amount of blood in his body, he was transferred to Crozier-Chester Medical Center where his condition remained critical.

     At first, he seemed to be improving and was even talking a little, but there was a suspicious fluid dripping out of his nose. Everyone thought he had a cold and a month went by before doctors discovered the fluid wasn’t from nasal congestion - it was spinal fluid. A cat scan revealed a tear in Paul’s brain.

     “That’s when they realized he was worse off than they thought,” Betty said. 

     Doctors tried to repair the tear but the inside of Paul’s head was too shattered. They resorted to draining the fluid with spinal taps and then a catheter, but Paul’s condition continued to deteriorate. He began slipping in and out of consciousness.

     Another cat scan revealed that he had hydrocephalus and the ventricles of his brain were filling with fluid. Doctors prepared him for emergency surgery to put a shunt in his head to drain the fluid when they discovered yet another serious complication - he had also developed spinal meningitis. “At this point, there was no hope,” Betty said. “The ventricles just kept filling with fluid and it flattened the frontal lobe of his brain which one doctor told me was his whole personality.”

     Even though Paul was alive, in essence, he was gone.“They kept saying ‘you have to stop hoping. . . the way he is now is the way he’s going to be. He is permanently and irreversibly brain-damaged.’” But Betty was not about to give up on her son. Even though she had nine other children at home, she felt like the woman in the Bible who had ten coins but lost one and could not stop searching until she found it.

     “We just decided Paul needed a miracle,” Betty said. “In the end, if Paul didn’t get better, I would accept it, but in the meantime, I was really going to believe I could have a miracle and I would at least pray with faith.”

     A woman from St. Madeline’s in Ridley Park, gave her five prayer cards for people who were in the process of beatification and needed a miracle. Every day after Mass, she and her mother would go to the hospital and pray the rosary over Paul, then say the five prayers. “Whenever I came to the Padre Pio prayer, Paul blessed himself, even though he was totally unconscious,” Betty said.

     Several people witnessed the phenomena, including a few nurses. Betty decided to call a local group of Padre Pio devotees and report what was happening. They decided to send someone to the hospital with one of the gloves worn by Padre Pio over the bloody stigmata wounds in his hands. On Monday, March 12, Paul was blessed with the relic and within days, one of his many serious ailments had miraculously vanished.

     Betty called the group again and on April 6, 1984, the glove was once again brought to Paul and laid on his head.  “I knew immediately something happened because it was like an electric shock went through him,” Betty said. “He opened his eyes and looked around the room, very clear-eyed. Then he fell back into the coma again but I just knew something had happened.”

     She was right. The next day, when she returned to the hospital she was shocked to find her son sitting in a chair and watching television. He turned and said “Hi Mom.”

     The nurse rushed in and told Betty: “He’s been talking all day!”  When she called the neurosurgeon to tell him Paul Walsh was talking, the doctor said, “It’s not possible’ and hung up on her.”

     But it was true. “They gave Paul another cat scan and all the doctor kept saying was, ‘I don’t believe this. I don’t’ believe this.’ The frontal lobe of his brain wasn’t smashed anymore.”

Even more inexplicable was what happened days later, on Easter Sunday morning, when Paul and his roommate woke up to find a man standing at the foot of Paul’s bed. Described as “an old priest in a brown robe,” Paul thought it was Betty’s brother, Charley, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Padre Pio.

     “I remember being very certain that my Uncle Charley had been in to visit me,” Paul said. “I did see him. He was very happy and smiled at me. And then he left the room.”

     Betty knew it couldn’t have been Charley because he lives in Boston. She folded up a picture of Padre Pio, hiding the name, and showed it to Paul. “That’s who visited me,” he said. “Isn’t that Uncle Charley?”

     Weeks later, Paul Walsh walked out of Crozier Chester Medical Center, completely healed.

     If there was any doubt in their minds that Padre Pio interceded in Paul’s healing, those doubts were put to rest a year after the accident when the family received an unexpected phone call from Bill Rose, who lived on the property where Paul hit the tree. Rose claimed he heard the crash the night of the accident and ran outside to find Paul laying on the ground with his face in a gutter. He knew the person was dying and while someone called for an ambulance, he held Paul’s head up out of the gutter and prayed for his soul.

     “Within three to five minutes of your son’s accident,” he told Betty, “I dedicated him to Padre Pio.”

     To this day, Paul admits he still wonders “why me?” But that doesn’t stop him from telling his story whenever he can. “I’m not doing this for myself,” Paul said. “I want to give other people hope.”

http://www.pattimaguirearmstrong.com/2013/07/never-say-never-padre-pio-miracle-by.html

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This story written by best-selling author Susan Brinkmann was one of the collection of survivor stories in Amazing Grace for Survivors

For more inspiration check out:  Big Hearted: Inspiring Stories From Everyday Families , a collection of  22 stories, that share a glimpse inside the triumphs, struggles, joys, and sorrows of ordinary families with generous hearts. 

Dear God, I Don't Get It  blends drama, humor, and inspiration in a fictionalized story to address questions faced when prayers seem not to be  answered―most importantly, “Is God even listening?”  

True Religion Is An Interaction Between Heaven and Earth

It Is Not A Set Of

Meaningless Rituals and Fellowship!

One of the most disturbing things about the modern age is the fact that for many Christians religion has ceased to be religion. That is to say, it has ceased to be about a transaction between this world and the next and has denied the next world altogether.

Come Holy Spirit

Religion, if it is religion at all, is surely about man’s commerce with the supernatural realm. In this sense Paganism is a real religion. A priest sacrificing chickens or virgins to a monstrous deity in hope of supernatural protection and power is what I call religion. An animist, high on the fermented juice of the tropical tree, dancing around the campfire and cutting himself to satisfy the spirit of the river is a real religion. So is a Buddhist monk sitting in a snowdrift in his underpants humming his mantra and transcending the cold. For that matter, even the Mormon baptizing someone for the dead or a televangelist praying down the Holy Spirit fire to heal, mightily heal is practicing real religion. It may be a false or misguided religion, but at least it is religion.
All of this is in contrast to the milk and water that much of mainstream modern Christianity has become in most Western cultures. There is no religion there because the modernists no longer believe in the supernatural. Their religion is not a transaction with the other world for they do not believe any world but this one really exists, or if they do believe in the other world, they do not believe that is is possible to interact with it. Instead what was religion has been reduced to three things:

1. a meaningless ceremony;  2. a set of mild moral principles; and 3.  an inclination to make the world a better place. While these things may be laudable in their way, they are not essentially religious. They are the bland leftovers from what once was religion.

The ceremonies they practice are meaningless because they have denied their meaning. The modernist goes through all the ritual. He uses all the words, but he doesn’t believe the ritual matters, nor does he believe the meaning that the words carry for he has learned to ‘de-mytholigize’ and ‘re-interpret’ for a modern age. Subsequently the miracles of the gospel are explained away, the gospel of grace is turned into a gospel of good ideas and the sacrifice of the Mass is turned into the ‘fellowship meal of the people of God.’

The second part of this religion that is not a religion is the replacement of clear moral teaching with mild mannered morals. There is no longer a congruent and consistent set of beliefs which are divinely inspired, but there is one over-riding moral principle: “We must all be nice to one another.” There is not reason why this should be so, but we insist that it is so because without it we would have no religion at all. What they have done is replace religion with a set of table manners.

Finally, this religion which is no religion has eliminated dogma. That is to say, it has eliminated all but one dogma and that is,  “We can make a difference. Yes we can!” The followers of this false religion, having thrown out any idea of a transaction with the supernatural have replaced the idea of getting ready for the next world with the concept of making this world a happier place.This is simply the religion of good works.

What is paradoxical is that this ‘religion’ of meaningless ceremony, social courtesy and good works is practiced by the descendents of the Protestant reformers who inveighed against a religion that was no more than empty ceremonial, social standing and good works. They who were so opposed to a religion of works have turned their religion into nothing but good works. The only difference is, they don’t believe their good works will get them into heaven because they don’t believe there is such a place as heaven.

Unfortunately, this religion which is no religion, has influenced, invaded and infected much of modern Catholicism as well. Too many Catholics have also swallowed the idea that religion is essentially about being nice to one another and helping others. While this is certainly the fruit of true religion, it should not be confused with real religion itself.

Instead, full blooded Catholic religion engages in an interaction with the other world. Through the celebration of Word and Sacrament we believe that the once for all sacrifice of Christ on the cross is brought into the present moment and applied to the needs of human souls for their eternal salvation. This essentially religious act is the ladder between earth and sky. It is the linkage point between heaven and earth. God comes down as he always does, and transforms the human soul. Through this miracle in the heart of ordinary life the soul is opened to something called ‘grace’ which is God’s own power poured forth. This action of faith and love defeats the powers of darkness, brings Christ’s forgiveness and healing into the here and now and plants the seeds of hope that will transform the soul, transform the family, transform the church and transform and redeem the world.

This is real religion. Everything else that is great and good springs from this, and nothing–not even that which is great and good can ever replace it.

Father Dwight Longenecker

http://www.courageouspriest.com/ascension-heaven