It's all about you Peaches

When I read this week's bulletin message from Fr. John Unni, it brought me back to my high school days when I used to needle the nuns about the futility of going to Church and 'getting something out of it'.

We were looking for better entertainment. Beatles songs or something.  Some percussion, and we want our egos stroked.  The world was changing and we were rocking and rolling.   We're coming to Church to get God's stamp of approval on us.

How those nuns must have prayed for my enlightenment and conversion, eh?   Thank God for them.  They did not waiver. They kept explaining the Eucharist, Sacraments, virtue and salvation.

Still, some priests implemented our stupid ideas.  We flocked there to hear the guitars and tambourines and the "I'm OK, You're OK" homilies.    We drifted from Christ and Sanctifying Grace to adore ourselves.

I get a boot out of the priests who are still living in the 1970s, paganizing what is holy and telling us we are living in the past.    They're drying up and they are pooling their resources.   This week's golden turd is from Fr. Austin Fleming.

The Baptism of Christ is conveying to us that Christ is soooooooo human.  The message for us to take home is: I am who I am and who I was made to be.  God finds me pleasing.  I am good.  I am the likeness of Christ.  My Maker is pleased with my very being.  I was made to love and be loved.   Listen to the Father tell you that YOU are the beloved.  

What is next?  Fr. Fleming telling us to imagine the Angel Gabriel deliver the message from God that we are all the Immaculate Conception?

The Gospel is about a sinless Man and how the Sacrament of Baptism - and for the already-Baptized the Sacrament of Confession, restores our soul to a sinless state. Christ was not down in the dumps looking for a compliment from His Father to lift his spirits.

The Father is speaking to a Man who lives a perfect life of obedience - from the cradle to the grave.  That is why the Man standing in the Jordan River is pleasing to His Maker.

This homily might be safe to give in a Convent or seminary or monastery - but at the bottom of Mt. Sinai, where the pagans are dancing around their golden calf banging their tambourines, it dangerous to those who heard and now read it, because its message is diametrically opposed to God's.

Fr. Fleming left out the most important parts of God's message.

It is not possible Fr. Fleming misunderstood, because  today's readings are carefully chosen to illuminate the reasons the Father is pleased with His Son and consequently when He is pleased with us.

Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him.

 The grace of God has appeared, saving all and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age, Why would Fr. Fleming - and Fr. Unni - want to cheapen and subvert the message of this Gospel?

 He's got to know the consequences of his subversion is that people with think "Hot diggity dog. What was I thinking? I am who I was meant to be. Come on honey, let's go home for a roll in the hay. Our guilt has been expiated. We pleaseth God."

 Do you suppose these priests believe the subversion of the salvation of souls pleases God?

 Their march into hell with the souls Christ died to save is the purpose for which they were ordained and the Father is pleased with their very being? 

This drivel imprisons souls for decades. Some, if not most, die in this state.

 The Holy See has ordained busload of bishops for Boston. Do you suppose one of them has the fortitude to use the power entrusted to them to unhinge the wagon full of souls from the lunatics?

  Boston Catholics are most disturbed by the trajectory of the reconfiguration. The first wave appears to be hitching more wagons full of souls to priests who spiritually mislead.

 There are some new people at the Boston Chancery in charge of the reconfiguration, so here's the flare across the bow: Boston Catholics are going to be making some recommendations.

 Here's the bottom line: Reconfigure the parishes and put faithful priests as the pastor of the cluster. We don't care what you do with the assets our ancestors labored to build for 200 years. Dispose of it as you see fit.

 But we are going to get our religion freed from the hands of these priests.

 We love you, we pray for you, we want peace and unity - but truly, as God is our witness, we are finished watching you destroy our children, our parents, our relatives, our neighbors, our friends and our enemies.

 If you continue down this road, it is going to get ugly. You've got Church Militant here in Boston. I would invite you to contact the people who packed their suitcases and limped out of town.   You do not want to go this route.


ADDENDUM:    Fr. Rutler's homily surprised me.  I think you'll see why.  Yikes.

FROM THE PASTOR 

by Fr. George W. Rutler 

 While St. John the Evangelist was still alive, there was already a Gnostic heresy that separated the human Jesus from the divine Christ. It supposed that the man Jesus was given divine power at his baptism (one form of this mistake is called “Adoptionism”), but that this power left him on the cross. The Gnostics could not accept that God would have anything to do with physical matter, which they thought was intrinsically evil. One of these heretics was Cerinthus, an Egyptian who made his way to Ephesus in Turkey. St. John was living there and fled from a building when Cerinthus entered, for fear that the roof might fall in.

   This explains the urgency with which St. John writes his letters. He is the only New Testament writer to use the term “AntiChrist” (1 John 2:18, 2:22, 4:3, and 2 John 1:7), although St. Paul speaks of a “son of perdition” (2 Thessalonians: 2:3-4). It certainly would be wrong to claim to know who he will be (or, to be gender neutral: who he or she will be), but this devastating being will have seductive power to enlist followers, will hate the Church, will destroy innocent lives, especially infants, and will claim to be greater than God. St. John says that the AntiChrist already is at work in the world, so anyone who cooperates with him is in one way or another a lesser AntiChrist. The essence of the AntiChrist is deceit. AntiChristianity calls good evil and evil good and inverts the natural order, taking pleasure only in disorder and perversion. “Every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God” (John 4:2-3).

   Trying to see the truth of God is like “looking into a cloudy mirror” (1 Corinthians 13:12), but at least we “seek his face” (Psalm 27:8). The AntiChrist would have us seek our own face. This narcissism is his cunning deceit, and it has infected our culture. Results of the American Freshman Survey, to which more than nine million young people have responded since 1966, show that a growing number of them are “convinced of their own greatness whether or not they have accomplished anything.” Along with a 30 per cent increase in narcissistic attitudes since 1979, there is a decline in study, work habits, and the ability to communicate with others. Not surprisingly: “These young egotists can grow up to be depressed adults.”

   The cult of “self-esteem” foisted on young people in their schools is not a modern invention. The Prince of Lies told the very first man and woman: “You shall be like God” (Genesis 3:5). False pride is the alchemy for creating little AntiChrists. It was out of love that St. John wrote: “But we are children of God, and those who know God listen to us; those who are not of God refuse to listen to us” (1 John 4:6).