Wednesday, October 3, 2007

last Call For Alcohol

Up and down the country , in every city and town the same grim tableau is being ennacted. On Fridays and Saturdays the night is given over to madness.
This article is not aimed at those who appreciate a little drink, who have a discernment for old malt, fine wine , real ale or Belgian organic lagers. Nor for those who can use and enjoy alcohol in an ordered and sensible fashion, but for those millions who just want to get drunk.
Drunkeness is a scourge, it is a scourge that affects not just the individual but the family and indeed the nation.
The church teaches that to voluntarily drink an excess of alcohol ie being drunk, is infact a mortal sin that removes sanctifying grace from the soul .
I am not going to be able to write this article unless I come out of the closet and admit that for well over twenty years I was a drunk, I have plummed the depths of this 'culture', to the n'th degree. I know the people , the places, the times, the prices and have felt the weight of the cost.
I became initiated into the drinking culture from a very early age, I think my first serious taste was about the age of twelve. I visited pubs from around fifteen and became a regular drinker at about seventeen. My Dad , uncles , cousins my friends all drank and so did their Fathers before them, so guess what ? I drank. Believe it or not, the first grip that alcohol has on you is bliss, it is a joy like unto flying. Did I really say that? Did I really do that? Did I really do the things that for ages I was simply to scared of to even try?
Dr Jeckyl becomes Mr Hyde and guess what? Mr Hyde is great company, he is Mr Popular, Mr Fun to be with, he is superman!
Alcohol releases the genie from the bottle and straight into the blood stream , the hidden man that most people never see can finally be revealed. Those inhibitors that are connected to the conscience become steadily disabled as the night progresses, indeed one of the goals of a heavy session is to do exactly that . When those failsafes have been overidden you get to claim your get out of jail card . 'Sure it was'nt his fault he was well drunk last night',' he is'nt really like that when he's sober', ' he was so smashed last night he didnt have a clue what he was doing'.
The mild mannered young white van man who delivered you your new freezer at noon becomes a raving lunatic at midnight. If you bump his elbow at the bar he is quite capable of shoving a glass in your face. The quiet family man that barely talked to a soul throughout the working day has people in head locks and is blabbering complete rubbish during his night shift. The stiff self-conscious youth becomes John Travolta on the club dancefloor [ or at least he thinks he has] His shyness that he thought a crippling disability is spirited away , almost as if he has shed his old skin and everybody just loves the new version, one small problem , he needs the potion and that potion only seems to work through continuing to increase the dose until he has to rely on a four pack a day just to be the shy young man again. Sadly that modern day Frankensteins monster the ' female lad', has surfaced. She drinks, she smokes, she has a tatoo or two, she shows her builders bum and can swear and sleep about just as 'good', as any man. It is almost as if equality can only be achieved by aping mans dark side in all it's ugliness, only for her the price is higher. The morning after for the girl before is one of desolation. The one who she thought she was using , was in reality using her, the things that she thought bought her equality with man only brought her contempt from him . I have seen over the years of people watching from the bottom of a pint jar, young girls become ghouls in a few short years. The morning after pill and multiple abortions cannot efface the carnage of her actions. No amount of make up can disguise the pain the sadness or the ugliness that mark her face.The wages of her sins show death in her eyes. What she thought she wanted she spends the rest of her life regretting.
A drunken girl has an effect on the drinking pack similar to that of wolves at the sight of wounded deer. They see she is vulnerable , they see she is prey! And when she is acting and dressing in a manner that says ' open for business', then she has put herself in very real and serious danger.
Most young men, young bucks on a drinking night out are after two things, a girl or a fight. And those who have found the girl slink off into the darkness while those who havent found one find each other outside the kebab house . The A&E departments of the local hospital bare witness to this ritual late into the night. Broken faces, broken limbs, blood and stitches and sometimes the hospital morgue are the deposits that fill the night-safe of the casualty department .Drunken violence is epidemic. After 9 pm on a Friday or Saturday night Most town centres are no go areas for the sane. The only sign of law and order can occasionally be seen hiding furtively behind a shop doorway radio in hand, terrified that his mere presence might cause a riot. The sight of hordes of seriously drunk or drugged up young people roaring shouting , scrapping and acting in the most foul and bestial way is a truly terrifying sight, unless of course you are one of them., for them this is normal.. Indeed their minds soon lose the ability to think that there are any other options available to them . If I dont do this what else can I do? Nearly everyone of those trapped on the alcohol merry go round cannot think of a single answer to this question and because they cannot think of an answer they buy their ticket to ride every single weekend. The week end becomes the only rationale for the working week. This is fun is'nt it ? And I aim to enjoy it no matter how much it hurts
The cost to the family is another almost unquantifyable price paid . So many families are suffering. If there is love in the family than that love feels the pain. Dads leaving the children ophans and their wives widowed as they put the counterfiet fraternity of their drinking partners above duty . However slowly but surely those comrades in arms start to disappear until the drinker finds that the only company that will tolerate him are those who are prepared to be bored by him for the price of a free pint . Indeed I know of Fathers whose only drinking partners are underage sons who are forced to keep their Dad company late into the night because no one else can stand being near him.
As the drinking habit becomes more and more regularised and the quanitties increase what began as a voyage to escape the bounds of normality becomes the only way to hold onto the appearence of normality. The crushing lows , the panic attacks the waves of neurosis and phychosis . The debilitating bouts of depression that can only be escaped when the very cause from whence they came is shakily administered. alcohol then becomes a deadly poison as well as a vital medicene. When you reach that stage it is almost as if it were not you drinking the pint , but the pint that is drinking you.
Steadily the self that you thought you knew becomes progressively more and more a stranger to you. Your ability to deny yourself becomes steadily weakened until the mere thought of a day without at least a few drinks brings on a cold sweat. A functioning alcoholic is a pitiable creature, like the lukewarm he cannot be spat out. He manages to creep along for years despite the regular morning soul desolation that follows on the heels of each bender .Every promise he makes he breaks not only to himself but to those who he curses for being concerned about him. Indeed if he could but realise it is that very soul desolation that the Good God uses as a spark to convince the despairing alcoholic to seek out his hand . however time and time again that hand is knocked away only to grasp at the next can or bottle.
The hounds of heaven are constantly on the trail the alcoholic and it is their baying that he try's to drown out , but they will never give up on him no matter how far away he thinks he has got from them. It is the weeping of his guardian Angel that has released them for the pursuit.
The pages of the Hib are perhaps not the best place to share personal and painful story of ones twenty year captivity with that old cell mate the demon drink and my eventual release under the parole of God's grace, however I would like to finish on a positive note. Hope . Most alcoholics hope, they hope someone will save them from themselves.Like a drowning man flailing about in the water threatening to take down all who might attempt a rescue. He hopes that someone will be stronger than him and win for him the victory that he has been unable to win for himself. That hope has a name and a name that you can trust and that name is Jesus Christ.
Could I leave you with the last part of a poem that I feel has real power in it's pages, because those pages were written by a down and out Victorian opium addict as he battled with his addiction. He was a Catholic and his name was Francis Thompson . The poem ' The Hound of Heaven'.
' Now of that long pursuit
Comes on at hand the bruit
that voice is round me like a bursting sea
'And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard ?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest me!
Strange, piteous futile thing!
Wherefore should any set thee love apart ?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught
and human love needs human meriting;
How hast thou merited-
Of all mans clotted clay the dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee
Save Me, save only Me

All which I took from thee I did but take
Not for thy harms
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms
All which thy childs mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home
Rise, clasp My hand, and come.
Halts by me that footfall
Is my gloom after all
Shade of his hand, outstretched caressingly?
'Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I Am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou drovest love from thee, who drovest Me'

It seems as if I can't get away without a scripture quote and this is one that I say regularily throughout the day , especially when tempted .
Luke9;62
' once the hand is laid to the plough anyone who looks back is not worthy of the kingdom of heaven'

Lord keep me your ploughman

Monday, June 4, 2007

key

My body is ruled by my heart,

My soul cannot control the flesh and the mind of the flesh until it first binds the heart.

The war between my members can only be won in the heart and by the soul.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Safe Havens

By some miracle of grace you may just have noticed that for you the end times have become the now times. Simply by standing still for just a few short decades you have become a dangerous thought criminal .
So fast is this pace of change that what was once considered by humanity for millenia as perfectly normal is now percieved by the majority of mankind as the haunt of the lunatic fringe . The things that were once sacred for the people of the past are now trashed by the herd as they move ever faster with the tide that sweeps away even the deepest and surest pillars of Christian civilisation.
Never, not even at the heights of the industrial revolution has the effect been so swift, pronounced or as deeply felt . The eternal patterns of life that could once be recognised by all the peoples of the planet have exploded!
Change used to be imperceptable, and because these changes were slow they could be checked . Things for the bad usually died during this organic process, because it was just that, organic . If over time the changes were proven to work they were accomodated as tradition and passed on in custom, if not they survived briefly but were ultimately consigned to the scrap heap of fad, fashion and novelty . The difference today is that fashion itself has become the modern custom . Each new change is accepted immediatly, the only gold standard being expedience . Does it please me ? Is it easy ?and can I have it now ? After surviving this intensive scrutiny the stamp that confirms that the newest novelty has met all the requirements of modern man is the word 'MORE'.
After having been thoroughly doped and sedated by this self loving addiction, the evil one can move in and begin his work of dismantling the reef of religious belief that for so long has protected man from himself.
Well advanced he is, and each waking day those with eyes to see can witness this demolition . Each day pandoras box releases a new demon and each day a guiding angel is imprisoned . Some, not blind but only squinting in fear of catching the full glare of this carnage say to themselves, 'If it gets any worse I'll , I'll , I will I'll do something . After a brief head scratch he continues as before accepting each new final straw as a bed to lie on.
Abortion, contraception , homosexuality, homosexual marriage, adoption and indoctrination, cloning, human/animal hybrids, euthanasia, if someone suggests that paedophilia , incest and bestiality will never join the ranks this monstrous hit parade, maybe, just maybe they should get to the front of the queue and make that same assertion to the first born head of this ever growing hydra that appeared and was accepted and worshipped less than a brief generation ago.
The breaks are off, things are bad and they are going to get far worse . That assertion may depress some but I encourage them to examine the recent past as proof of the veracitity of that statement . Without a break to apply the pressure to slow down and stop civilisation from it's carreering down hill, how on earth can a reverse or u turn ever be expected . Now this break that we need humanly and politically speaking will never shut the lid to this sewer completely , because that lid is infact the gates of hell.
The tool that God uses time and again to convince man to return to him and be saved is the rod of chastisement . The current state of mans iniquity shames the times of Noah, soddom and Gommorah and caligula by it's depths of sheer universally accepted depravity. The wages due for those sins is crying out to be paid.
While trusting in his intervention and petitioning him with prayer we must fill the time in waiting . How does one do that today?
The terror of this particular atheistic experiment, this capitalist/socialist nightmare that we are living today is only visible by those who can see the junction of the past and the present and the future . Those who can see , can evaluate, they can weigh the value of each new change, based on what was gained, what was lost and at what cost.
Whom do you serve? The choice is becoming clearer each day . Do you serve the lord of the world and his new emperors that have crowned themselves in God's sanctury or do you serve Christ the king Lord of your total life. Follow this sequence and weigh its probability if you would . Society continues as it is , the sheer volume of ever increasing occassions of sin and the complete abandonment of the guidence of the good God damns more and more souls to hell .The strong medicine that would be required to avert this and to save souls will have to be of an order that because of mans pride levels would need to eclipse anything seen previously . To re-orientate man he will need to be levelled first .
The collapse of this system could come in many ways and from many directions, war in the east, plague, natural disaster etc, perhaps even all three together . The direction of the collapse is fairly academic because from what ever direction it comes it will come for the same purpose . Like the scourges sent to Egypt to obtain the freedom of Gods chosen, these scourges will come to free man from himself and to reach out to God as saviour . Those few who can see the thunder and lightning of this spiritual storm can rest assured that the physical whirlwind will follow close on it's tail . Spiritual preparedness is obviously paramount in the obtaining the gift of eternal life, and that spiritual tribulation is here today . But what does one do physically to prepare to survive the tribulation that inevitably will follow from it ?
Man is totally dependant on the state for everything from food at the supermarket, water through the taps and heat and light via the utilities . He is in affect a baby, he has made himself so in an attempt to release himself from the responsibility to survive. He has given that responsibility to the state as parent.
So what happens when through an emergency that parent can no longer cope? If we dare use our imagination on this one it is not difficult to see . First an eruption of anarchy and disorder where the strong trample the weak . The days when Christian men accepted the self sacrifice of ' women and children first' are long gone . The first will be the strongest . The weakest will be trampled to death in the mad scrum as the vineer of civilisation is ripped from the brutish animal that man has willed to become . A glimpse of this terror was brought home during the recent hurricane katrina, where the weak trapped in the super bowl were preyed upon mercilessly by the strong . Murder, rape and robbery were the wages paid out . Looting and barbarity will be the immediate response to the breakdown.

Luke23;28
'Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; rather weep for yourselves and for your children. For the days will surely come when people will say ' Happy are those who are barren, the wombs that have never bourne , the breasts that never suckled'. Then they will begin to say to the mountains ' fall on us' to the hills ' cover us!'

It was thus for Babylon, Greece and for Rome before they fell and it will be the more for this order because it is that much more all pervading and controlling in it's grip of our individual lives.
Fortunately rural Ireland is still a long way from being Louisiana, outside of the big cities and towns familial ties still hold . The neighbourhoods that provide the parishioners for the local churches might react differently to the way they would in Bradford, the bronx or broadwater farm or even Dublin.
An emergency is due, reacting to it before it arrives would be prudent . Embracing the past before it kicks in the door would be the best defence in mitigating it's effects. Detatch yourself from Babylon.
The word 'separatism' confuses and alarms many . 'Arnt we meant to be a light in the world?' they ask . Undoubtedly, however that light must shine not just in this generation but in those to come . That is why the small lambs and the tiny flames that are the children given into each Christian family must be protected and gaurded from both the wolves and the hard winds . When candles are burning strongly and when they are standing together, their light is that much brighter and reaches so much further into the darkness.
Lets say you are not convinced that the privations you would have to accept today are proportionate to the threat that might or might not happen tommorrow . That is certainly something worthy of consideration. Do you have to sit in the storm shelter months before the storm hits? Perhaps not, but what I am proposing here is that we prepare the storm shelter in advance of the storm.
Since the begining there have been attempts to secure a safe haven from both the disorder and chastisement that inevitably followed it . Many nations seeking independence from the tyranny of imperialism have built nations within nations, while in modern times various indiginous peoples rights have been afforded plenty of largesse from big brother and have had specific areas accorded to them so that they could continue as seperate entities. There have been many third ways, and most of those ways have been wrong ways. The true way between the constant tensions of conserve on the one hand and progress on the other is Christs way.
The Catholic church and its hidden treasure of social doctrine are the only blue print for human existence that should interest us . We will have to do everything ourselves and ignore repressive and unrepresentative govenments almost entirely, they will fall and rise as they have always done while we must attempt as best we can to avoid their continued encroachments into both our adult lives and our childrens worlds .To be authentically free from babylon is as simple as ceasing to use it and by degrees our journey should be just that. And when those who scoff at the privations that you accept as part of the price for that freedom finally run for cover what they will be trying to find you will not only have found but have ready . Please God like the loaves and the fishes and the heavenly manna , divine multiplication will help you assist those whom the Lord will most assuredly send in your direction.
The most natural and most effective safe haven in the midst of this chaos would be a cluster of families and individuals of a like mind, living in close proximity to each other in a rural situation . Far from being an abnormal or synthetic construct this is infact the ideal that has sustained and supported the flowering of human civilisation since the begining . Leaving the city is the most important move you could make . When the Jews left the city of Egypt they left in such a hurry that even the dough for the morning bread remained unleavened . Now we might not have to leave overnight as they did but if we plan for our journey today, if we could but spend a few tears now we might save buckets of tears tommorrow. When the flood waters reach your doorstep take yourself your wife and your family to higher ground . It is by no accident that the fertile ground that supports the health of the physical life at the same time nourishes the spiritual life.
Colonising an area of countryside and living in an alliance of clustered homesteading families is something that the amish of America are and have been doing for centuries . It would not be in imitation of the amish that the Irish Catholic adopted this lifestyle but in imitation of his Grandfather! In Ireland that way of life continued preserved from the claws of advancement and progress right up to less than half a century ago. To be in the world but not of it , to inhabit a parallell society, a real society standing in the same time and space as this virtual society but independant from it. Whether we do this now or later it is inevitable that the 'covered wagons ' of these new pioneers will continue leaving the metropolis in search, not of a new life but of the Old life . In search not of material gain but as an escape from the worst excesses of material tyranny . If you move house, make sure that one of the most important criteria in your re-positioning is that you move closer to another christian family . It does'nt matter if they ar'nt your 'type' or whether they believe this or that prophecy or visionary. You are not marrying them and you are not going to set up house with them . Whether you see them a lot or rarely is not going to be the most important issue . What will be important however is that you will have made a committment to each other. 'If you need me I will be there for you, I might not hang around for a cuppa afterwards but you have got me if you need me'. The peace of mind that this commitment buys should transcend any of the minor differences that so bedevil the confused but scincere Catholic today . Trusting must always take presidence over liking in times of emergency . Now, if you can both trust and like someone then you have already moved closer to them . The enemies of Christ have such a unity of hate towards him that it seems to nullify any of the thousand differences among them, not surprisingly because like the the demoniac their name is 'legion'. For the many catholics that seek but have no absolute understanding of the whereabouts of the orthodoxy they all aspire to, the rebuilding of the chuch remains fixed on arguments on where to place the first brick, and who should lay it . The oneness of the true faith has become shredded to pieces while the devil and all his minions become united in their onslaughts.
If families truly understood the perilous state of affairs in this increasingly hostile territory they might better appreciate their jeopardy and their need to respond with others in the face of it . Any of these future settlements should be places not of huddled besieged neurotics but of clear sighted faith inspired realists who so value the primacy of the next world over this passing world that they are willing to make sacrifices, not continuing compromises in the face of the world the flesh and the Devil . So many today think that accepting ever increasing doses of sin into their family life is the only way that they can show others that they are 'normal' . The safety of your wife and your children are paramount , Your job is to rescue them from the lions not throw them to the lions. To be able to sally forth from your fort to stike a blow at the enemies surrounding you, you first need to build your fort ! . It is a contest between the Christ instituted Kingdom of the family versus Satan in the form of the individualist man centered super state. Of Mary's children and the Dragon.
There is no directory for the countless like minded souls and many hermit families that live scattered across this fair nation . However God is moving them , they are meeting, sometimes passing like ships in the night, but the movement is afoot.
Whether you meet them lighting a candle at the back of church, at a holywell, a shrine like Knock or at the summit of a mountain like croagh Patrick dont loose the moment, make contact.
This magazine the Hibernian is like a small radio signal , the voice of the resistence bringing hope to those besieged in occupied lands . How long it will keep going is anybodies guess but while it is there share it with others , buy some extra copies and give them to members of your family or workmates , leave some in the doctors surgery amongst the filth that is so readilly tolerated, or in the library. The powers that be have already attempted to bring the Hibernian down but thank God those committed to it are still beating out the distress signal.
First build your own small piece of 'Free Ireland' and then go join the resistence!

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Old Gods Rising

Although the names have changed , the old Gods are back .
There existed in antiquity a temple, it was called the Pantheon of the Gods . It is being rebuilt, the false Gods are being reawakened just as the true God is being put to sleep . This Pantheon was like a great ecumenical super dome . In it were found not just the God's of the Romans but also the deities that the Empire had aquired through it's contact with the rest of the Pagan world . All were found acceptable, all were authentic as all were real . The reason that they could co-exist was because none of these Gods claimed he was the only God. The modern political system of ' Big Tent ' inclusivity follows a similar pattern where all relative philosophies are on the inside while the objective ideas of men who actually believe in anything are today relegated to the cold outside .
Jesus Christ was not crucified for claiming to be any old God, indeed the Emperor himself along with Alexander the great before him claimed that title . It was because Christ claimed to be true God that he could not be accomodated into the Pantheon . Those same dark idols are being raised again , readilly worshipped and sacrificed to by a re-paganised people who again like the pagans of old see Christ as their only obstacle . Indeed this is the same motivation of the masonic New order who encourage the worship of all Gods but the one true God as manifested by our lord and saviour Jesus Christ.
In there own words ' Masonry while religious is not a religion, but within it's precepts and professions are contained the truths and universal morality of all recognised creeds and religions'
Although as previously mentioned some of the names have changed but their cults are visible and the same sacrifices are being demanded and freely offered from a new generation
Athena/Ishtar is being worshipped as Goddess by an evergrowing legion of predominently young girls drawn into the booming Wiccan earth mother religion and NewAgism . Unfortunately a concerted attempt is being made to co-opt our blessed lady into this abomination .
Knock shrine has chosen to stock material by the self proclaimed spiritual midwife and 'nun' Joyce Rupp.
Author Rupp claims to have learnt a lot from Eagle Crux a native American spiritualist and feels that she resonates with mystical islamic suffism . She tells us that everything is made of stardust including ourselves and that stones have as much right to be here as we have, infact more so because they have been here longer. Her books include how to draw sacred mandela dancing circles and even have the rites for the blessing of the sexual organs!
On Ireland she says that the Irish love of learning was first fostered by the wise druids and in the same article goes on to extoll NewAgism as valuable and that some in the church are envious of it because it draws people toward spiritual growth.
Here is an exerpt from 'Cosmic Dance' which so sadly had a big promotion by the management of the bookshop a while ago.

'Different from me , thousands of them . Holding hands, kissing, arms around each other, stretching me beyond the safe world of hetrosexuality. A gathering of lesbians challenging me to enter a world I never visit'

Infact so enamoured by the works of Ms Rupp the bookshop decided to entirely filled up it's front window with a selection of offerings from this author.
The invention of Mary as God is being attempted theologically as well philisophically by cloaking her in the mantle of Hagia Sophia the goddess Wisdom. Unfortunately Knock bookshop rather than defend our Lady against such enemies has chosen to abet them .'She who is' is one of the titles also stocked there that attempts to perpetuate the growing feminisation/paganisation of the christian faith. How Mary full of grace must weep to see the desecration that parades as choice by even the most senior gaurdians of this most sacred shrine .
The Goddess in new age speak is a representative of all the Goddesses. Lillith , Ishtar, Athena ,Sophia etc.
For todays Satanist Lillith is the star rising. Heres some words from one of the growing plethora of Satanist Web sites.
'Lillith is seen by many as a feminist role model, her worshippers today associate her with sexual freedom, especially non reproductive sex and various traditionally forbidden forms of sexuality, we regard her as the rising Queen of our age'.
The Satanist perspective continues.
' Lillith of all the rising Gods of the modern West is the one that is under greatest attack by Abrahimic fundamentalists and TRADITIONALISTS . Ishtar/Lillith queen of heaven will become the number one competitor for human worship in the West'.
Again to quote.
'Satan is a God who favours science and technology. Technology changes everything. Many things once considered deadly have been rendered harmless, conversly many things once considered reatively harmless are now potentially dangerous.'
Satanism has never been as popular, they even have their own flag of red and black . The Gothic nature of Satan worship is a big hit with the nihillistic outcasts of society . In the main these pale youths are the ones to whom the message of christ would be most needed and perhaps heeded .[ How sad that the promoters of the gospel seem to have little interest in their product nowadays, maybe they no longer have confidence in the manufaturer] .Goths can be seen on the trendy fringes of most large town centres and malls on a saturday afternoon. The pentangles, black biker boots , black trenchcoats and the pewter clawed index finger are the external indicators of their interior disposition .This growing band of societal outcasts become obssessed in their search for lifes meaning making themselves the only goal of their exsistence . In their frustration is it any wonder that this youth group are recorded as being the most susceptible to self harm and suicide.
Libertas was the ancient Roman Goddess of personal liberty . She had a temple atop one of the seven hills and is depicted as wearing a 'pileas' which is a felt cap once worn by freed slaves . Libertas reappeared during the french revolution as Lady liberty, again wearing the felt hat of freedom . In 1793 she replaced the blessed virgin at the alter of the Notre Damme de Paris cathedral when it was turned into the temple of reason . Today Libertas stands at the gateway of the new world and holds aloft the sacred torch of reason proclaiming 'Liberty enlightening the world.' She is the statue of liberty in New York harbour a gift cemented and instituted by a masonic trowel . She is the Light bearer.
'Light bearer' is the latin common noun for Lucifer!!
The Luciferian parallells with the creeds of the new world Babylon again should come as no surprise because they both share a harlot for a mother . Luciferian theology says that ' Lucifer was the real creator of this world and is truly Lord of the World . Lucifer is the angel of mans inner life, he is the angel of mans evolution . One does not walk the path one is the path . Lucifer comes to give us wholeness, if we accept it he is free and we are free.' Indeed for both the luciferian and the enlightened modernist the knowledge of good and evil, the apple of sin offered by the serpent Satan to Eve was not a curse but a gift, offering liberty from slavery to God . It was the gift of illumination the beginning of wisdom and the true acknowledgement of the divinity of Man.
Nature as a diety in herself is becoming more and more attractive to those souls that acknowledge the presence of the spirit but deny it's holy origins, prefering to accept the natural world as the kingdom of now, in preference to the supernatural Kingdom that is to come . The followers of the God Pan seem to fortify their belief in Nature as God by their growing observation that man is fast becoming a beast . Infact the more that man is seen to be fallen the greater they elevate nature as God.
There is a growing attatchement to the Norse Gods of Thor and Odin amongst extreme nationalists who see the Jewish social worker Christ as a betrayer , subvertor and emasculator of the virility of the manhood they believed once existed in the white warrior caste . Valkyries carrying the dead to the perpetual feasting halls of valhalla take the place of angels and the heavenly Jerusalem.
The Babylonian God Molech demanded the sacrifice of infants who were passed through the fire to him as appeasements . This God has sprung back to life with a vengence as the God of abortion . He offers in return for his burnt offering freedom from the burden and male imposed slavery of pregnancy and motherhood.
Bacchus the Greek god of wine and merry making seems all pervasive within the circles of the lukewarm . They live for their stomaches seeing the pleasure they get from feeding it as a means in it'self . They embark on a never ending search for satiation, a voyage that is doomed to never find it's fullfillment or to meet it's journeys end . Carnal appetites are elastic, the more they get the greater becomes their demand , you become like a man dying for lack of water yet the more he drinks the greater grows his thirst and the greater his desire to quench it.
Sex like food, being of the carnal order are bedfellows in this respect . Pornography taking the place of fast food and with it the insatiable appetite for more and greater graphic material . No wonder that the imperial banquet was usually followed by an orgy as it's last course . Mastery of our carnal nature can never be found in constantly giving in to it's increasing demands .The sence of spiritual emptiness and the sheer soul desolation that follows each disordered binge reveals the inadequecy of ever believing you can master something by repeatedly giving into it. Indeed it is by this repeated aquiecence that we become it's slave.
Man again is lost , only this time he has chosen to be lost in a futile attempt to hide from God . His dilema acknowledges the existence of interior life but in his pride he refuses to accept any help from the hands of true God preferring to penetrate his own reflection by staring in a glass darkly and becoming transfixed by his own reflection..
Interestingly unnoticed by the multitudes there was in the Pantheon the answer to their questions and at the same time the fullfillment of all the false Gods promised solutions to the enigma of mans condition.
St Paul as he strolled around Athens during his debating tours with the stoic philosophers[ who actually thought that the term resurrection was a goddess!!] came upon the Greek temple of the Pantheon of the Gods
Acts17;23
..'Because I noticed as I strolled around admiring your sacred monuments , that you had an alter inscribed ;To an unknown God . Well the God whom I proclaim is in fact the one whom you already worship without knowing it'.

The nature of the Gods is evidenced by the sacrifices they demand. What price does Christ charge for the freedom he offers? It has already been paid on the cross. It's merits available from the temple of the living God , at the Mass.
All he asks in return is a dwelling place in your heart.
Most sacred heart of Jesus I place all my trust in thee.

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Treasure Seekers

It might surprise you to learn that boys are searchers. It almost seems as if they are hardwired in this respect to go out and find, they hunt and they seek . They will first check out their immediate enviroment, then they will look under the settee and behind it and put their hands down the sides, feeling for what might have dropped down . They will search the cupboard, the wardrobe, the chest of drawers . They will risk life and limb climbing to the forbidden places . They dont know what they are searching for but they certainly know when they have found it . So many Dads seem to have a hidden stash, by stash I mean their little porn heap, their pile of mags, their 'gentlemans' perk.
How many of them are under the illusion that no one could possibly find their secret place or on the other hand just dont give a damn whether it is found or not, almost making their neglect a philisophical stance. They even attempt to justify this neglect by following the 'mature drinking' theory . The idea is that you allow a child the ability to access porn if they choose, so as to encourage the development of a responsible self policing attitude to it in later life . The problem however is that the very nature of porn, it's imbibition and it's consequences are invisible. Pornographic imagery can be brought to mind at any time, it can be mentally played with and chewed on all day long without anyone knowing . You can be thinking of your last delicious dose while your face looks dutifully downcast while listening to the lecture following being caught in the act of trawling the computer top shelf . The hunger for more and more, stronger and graphic imagery occurs when the current set of mental pictures start to loose their flavour and no longer produce the' hit '. It is no surprise that perverts prior to abusing their young victims expose them to pornographic material . This exposure to hard core pornographic material is used to illicict a concensual response to their overtures . Alcohol and drugs are also used in this fieindish process, the alcohol is not in itself the occasion of sin but is used to destroy the inhibition mechanism of the conscience . It is then after having bound their victims in these webs the stalker moves in for the thrill.
While the toxic nature of the chemicals in the alcohol and drugs, through abstinence can be cleaned from your body, the toxic nature of pornography is near impossible to erase from your brain.
For the drug addict or the alcoholic to go back into dependency he actually has to go out and find his panicea whether it be heroin or methadone, buckfast or carlsberg special brew . However for the porn addicted all he has to do is go to his memories and recall pictures or scenes and he has immediatly been re-exposed to his addiction.
The dynamics of sexual addiction have been increasingly well documented by numerous authorities, yet the information is seldom mentioned to teenagers. Few are aware that when one views pornography, powerful biochemical reactions are unleashed which can quickly lead to addiction . When a child is excited by an image , the adrenal gland secretes a chemical called epinephrine into the blood stream . This chemical then travels to the brain and locks in the image . From this point, the mind may recall the image at any time and trigger the feelings of arousal . The effect of this process is why so many adults can still vividly see the first pornographic image they saw as a youngster.
Other biochemicals are also at work which produce powerfull euphoric states in the porn viewer. Children experiencing this self induced chemical thrill naturally wish to do it again, [ this is true also of graphic violent images, where a child who is interested in one goes in search of the other ] The very act of of approaching pornography then creates a rush of expectation and anticipation before the first image is even viewed .
This can so often lead to ritualisation of porn to maximise the 'buzz' . Children who begin with casual viewing may suddenly find themselves consumed by recalled erotic images and be trapped in a cycle that requires ever more explicit imagery to achieve the same response. This childhood pre-exposure sadly often goes on to become a springboard to a future life of impurity and promiscuity .
Pornography, especially when first encountered by children leaves within them a disturbance, the waters that were and should have remained still have had a rock thrown into them . That thing that becomes disturbed goes on to affect not only adult life but relationships in marriage . Pornographic imagery promotes themes that are both degrading and unnatural, fostering expectations that are abusive and sinfull, depicting women as insatiable playthings . The sexual act itself through pornography becomes thoroughly dehumanised and desensitized.
Today we have a situation where internet access brings the filth down from on top of the wardrobe and into the childs bedroom . Parents are immigrants to the computer world, their children natives . If you have internet access in your home and children with the ability and the freedom to use it, then you have porn in your home .
There is an online party forum that estimates say 9 out of 10 teenage internet users have been active on . On that forum webcams are used to send public and private images of young people to complete stangers. Many of these images are pornographic, the childs computer terminal bedroom being the studio. Perverts pay via paypal using the digital mobile phone as an anonymous receiver.
Some children rather than going into town to 'hang out' choose to hang out around the computer terminal . Here they can visit the virtual Soho and enter invisibly any of the millions of ' adult shops' that they wish . They can take down and examine the glossy merchandise to fill up their mental store house, taking home with them the temptation to self abuse and the urge to carry out the distortions and gross perversions that they have viewed there on another person . As they walk blindly around this sexualising computer wonderland they are ever at the risk of propositioning by paedophile groomers who would freely admit that the internet is for them a dream come true.
The secret life of the modern Adrian Mole
'Adrian waited impatiently for his parents to go out and leave him 'master' of the home. After all did'nt they trust him? His first rush of anticipation came as he said a cheery 'BYE!' and the door shut.
The excitement grew as he booted up his computer. While he was loading , he would pull out a CD-ROM that he had hidden up and slip it into the drive. The disc contained hundreds of pornographic images that he had down loaded from his computer.
After viewing a handfull of pictures to feed his excitement he would log onto the internet and proceed to one of his favourte sites to indulge his insatiable quest for new images to add to his 'gold stash'.
It is in this scenario that so often a younger sibling perching at the shoulder finds his first initiation like some diabolical baptism and so the damage spreads . Many children are living a double life, one life the parent sees the other is a private life of self abuse of the body and of self harm to the spirit . This poison that so affects most of todays adults is deadly when administered to a child, there is a time for a child to wake, that time should never be hastened prematurely . Unchaperoned internet use by minors is abuse, period. It is to have abused the brief period of innocence that is the childhood right of all of us fallen adults . It seems that the mechanism by which society forces children to become grown ups sooner is simple, abuse them . The Devil must be delighted that his catch is so much greater by playing on the pride of some parents who feel that they must join in this crusade of extinguishing the light of childhood by educating their progeny with the knowledge of good and evil rather than innocence and purity.
Pope Pius XII put this dilema succinctly and so simply in his encyclical Miranda Porus.
'Everyone knows full well that very often children can avoid the transient attack of disease outside of their home, but cannot escape it when it lurks in the home itself . It is wrong to introduce risk in any form into the sanctity of the home.'
The bible can verify not only the holy Fathers concerns but the veracity of his words
Mathew 6;27
'The lamp of the body is the eye. It follows that if your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light. But if your eye is diseased, your whole body will be in darkness. If then the light inside you is darkness, what darkness that will be'.
So many parents are oblivious to the content of their childs minds and to the growing cancer affecting their childs soul . They hope, but never ask, and they are never ever told . Like all addictions the addiction to pornography thrives in secrecy, mum and dad become seen not as loving good shepherds, but the patrolling heads of an inner city school playground,. People not to be trusted but people to be hidden from . Incredibly most parents today freely admit that they know little or nothing about what their children look at online! If your earthly guardian angels in the form of your parents are blind to the things taking place within the souls of their children only one person becomes the beneficiary, Satan, and where he guides even 'Angels' fear to tread .
If you suspect even remotely that your child may be being drawn into the web of internet pornography then you must talk with them, listen to them, pray with them . The deep wounds and the mental scars that each and every pornographic image leaves both in the mind, and deeper still in the soul are wounds that can never be completely healed . Like the disease malaria even after what seems an age in remission the symptoms can burst out again and again .
What you can do however is bury them . Every time an image presents itself for inspection it can be resisted, and everytime it is resisted it can be shoved further and further back down into the pit from whence it came . The best form of resistence is not to attempt to tear the temptation out by the root because that is exactly what the temptation wants, it wants attention and it is through that attention that the temptation gains strength . Rather than stand and fight, flee at the first sight . The way to flee each assault is through prayer, petition the good God and keep petitioning him until the presence of sin leaves you, and be assured it will, no matter how long it gives the impression that it is there for life . The futher you have fallen the longer and the harder the road to recovery, but you can by the grace of God be renewed no matter how fallen you had been . When you stand in judgement it will not just be for the things that you did, but also for the things that you failed to do on which you will be judged . Dont fail your children . Because if they are not with you in heaven then there is a strong chance are that both of you will be somewhere else.

Matt18;5
'But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his kneck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea'.
'Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the man by whom the temptations comes !'

St Elizabeth Seton had a vision around a hundred and fifty years ago , it was a vision that then could not be properly understood . It was of a black box in the homes of every family , and it as from that box that the devil robbed souls. But perhaps the last word should go to Our Lady of Good Success, who referred in 1610 to events destined for the twentieth century.
..'Woe to the children of these times...In these unhappy times there will be unbridled luxury which acting thus to ensnare the rest to sin, will conquer innumerable frivilous souls who will be lost . INNOCENCE WILL ALMOST NO LONGER BE FOUND IN CHILDREN nor modesty in women, and in this supreme moment of need of the church, those who should speak will fall silent'

Monday, April 23, 2007

Family Man Family Leader

The word 'family' does not appear in either Hebrew or Greek, instead the word 'family' appears in the bible as 'household '. The biblical household comprised family members including grandparents , indeed the grandparents comprised the head of the pyramid ,aunts , uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters alongside parents. The immediate family lived in the family house and made it a home, the extended family lived in close proximity thereby constituting a familial homeland .
Adoption was a means of absorbing non blood kin into the sanctuary of the tribe. It was the eldest male member who decided, as he was the 'Father', and his headship extended to inheriting and disinheriting . Opening and closing the door to nationhood .
The Man as head is a really difficult concept for us today . Even within traditional Catholic circles there is a tension on this issue. Could God really have meant that to be the case today?
First, if you are a non christian , forget it , you are never going to understand this one.
If you are a christian than you are going to have to listen to the evidence.
1Corinthians 11;3
'I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ , and the head of every woman is man , and the head of Christ is God'.
1 Corinthians 7;11
'for a man indeed ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and the glory of God; but woman is the glory of man . for man is not from woman , but woman from man'.
1 Tim 11-13
Let a woman learn in silence with all submission . and I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over man, but to be in silence.
Tough words for those who only love selectively quoting easy on the ears passages of scripture . Did St Paul mean it , or were those quotes only relevant because the tradition of the day demanded it.? No contest he meant it all right .
He was not adverse to rocking the foundations of traditional institutions and challanging cultural norms of the day, circumcision for one, the traditions of the pharasees for another. Now you can say i dont agree with St Paul and walk away but you cannot say that is not what he meant, and still accept the word of God.
Recent generations of men have retreated from their calling to be leaders of their families . Men have abandoned the truly formative institutions of civilisation . The home stands empty and abandoned for most of the day while the physical, moral and spiritual education of their children is given into the hands of those who actually despise Christ and all he stands for. The exodus of Fathers from the centre of the home to the margins of the workplace has had a severe impact on his influence within the family. So often a work weary father rather than beginning his second shift of 'family man' when he returns through his front door, seeks time out in rest, reward and reccuperation . His only period of interaction or influence with the other family members seems to be reduced to the short time between the tv going off, food being served and the tv going on again . Basically Dad has become stranger, his focus on material prosperity has been bought at the cost of family disintegration.
The only real time he is challanged to act is when pushed to the limit this, action is usually an hysterical expletive filled rant after which he is prone to go into a deep sulk . Family man has become re-actionary rather than pro-actionary. His bottom line is keeping everyone happy even if that is at the cost of right and wrong. 'As long as they are happy then I'm happy', is his catchword . In fact those words become the families constitution . Man has lost not only conviction in himself but the courage needed to ennact those connvictions . popularity becomes his prime concern and to keep that popularity he buys his audience with unlimited freedoms. His leadership will follow in any direction it is lead .
St Paul has this advice for women , hard words for soft ears but again making no dilution, the same yesterday , today and tommorrow.
Titus2;3-5
The aged women , in like manner , in holy attire , not false accusers, not given to much wine, teaching well;
That they may teach the young women to be wise , to love their husbands , to love their children,
To be discreet , chaste, sober, having a care of the house , gentle obedient to their husbands; that the word of god be not blasphemed.
Mothers today so often neglect their home centered role for the empty fullfillment of the workplace while warehousing their children in daycare. Parents send their children to schools where God is outlawed and they allow them the near total freedom to absorb the twisted messages of trashy movies and mindless music. The computer and the tv have become the incubator for so many mums and Dads whose only wish is the passivity of their sons and daughters. anything will suffice to do that job as long as it enables them to spend their lives with the minimum of interruption or agrivation . After years of training in the ways of rebellion through Godless schooling , negative peer association and debauched entertainment , christian parents are somehow suprised when their children rebel and forsake the God of their fathers.
Since the advent of women in the workplace during the first and the second world wars society has become increasingly feminised . This feminising process has reached a point where masculine traits are either hidden away in an attempt to win female popularity, exagerrated in a violent and abusive parody of true masculinity or treated as a psychological condition. The true male role model of an accessable and loving self-sacrificing real family man has given way to a grotesque imitation . The arrogant self obsessed muscleman with the gelled hair and tan who a is also in touch with his gentler femine side and aware of gay/bisexual gender choices is the role model for todays generation of lost boys. It is so sad to see that the best husband material ignored as 'boring', while the dangermen who offer both mystery and excitement are always found to be the most sought after. No wonder boys are desperate to adopt this false image of manliness, because it brings with it the seeming rewards of female adulation.
[As an aside I had to smile at Cathals recent admission to being a night time night club crawler, albeit with no doubt honourable intentions. My experience of near fifteen years of plummeting the very real depths of this nightmare form of social madness serves only to convince me that a young lady of any worth should not be there in the first place and second, if she were she would never make herself known to anyone there, especially strangers with a roving eye propping up the bar. Unbelievably the night club has become the only way that most contemporary young human beings feel able to conduct the form of social intercourse that might eventually go on to lead to a potential marriage or as it is groaningly known today civil partnership . It goes something like this. Take two young self obsessed people , feed them constant moral subjectivity and impurity, get them both drunk, high on drugs, or both , dress her in the most sexually revealing apparell that would once have shamed any self respecting prostitute, lower them both into a scene straight out of Dante's Inferno complete with mind blowing volume levels of hypno- rythmic sensual music filled with foul lyrics and sexual overtones, squeeze them together , dim the lights , stand back and see what happens. Now thats fine and dandy in todays twisted world view , indeed it is increasingly becoming the norm, but if one were to suggest that perhaps the re-examination of the traditional matchmaking cultural practices such as chaperoning , courtship, family involvement and suitor introduction might be in order you can imagine the immoral outrage that would elicit . Enough on that one I think, back to the real subject of this article.]
Primary education is in near complete feminine control with men making up only 12% of the teaching staff. Incredibly very many boys go through their primary formative years both at home and within the school system without encountering or experiencing the vital inluence any male role models . Today we live in a period of the most profound gender identity crisis . It is a crisis that has never been experienced before. All we can do is gawk helplessly at the carnage of violence, despair, unhappiness, uncertainty and unfullfillment that are the true rewards of revolutionary emancipation .
The church like the family is certainly not immune to these symptoms, after all since Vatican II it has readilly embraced so many of the errors and modernist feminist philosophies that so bedevil the mission of the traditional and eternal family instituted by God. The crisis of Fatherhood extends to priest, bishop and as high as the chair of Peter, new man, new religion, new God . The new priesthood is that of the facilitator not the teacher, of those led rather than those who lead . Suggestions take the place of commandments and the main objective of most homiles these days is to say as much as possible while offending as few as possible. Try be mr nice [whatever that means to you ] and try not to be too hard on yourself . This is not exhortation to the war against the world the flesh and the devil but mere feelgood therapy, it is limpwristed self help designed to limit the effects of freudian angst .
The reason that the family is being attacked with such vitriolic hatred from all sides is simple, the family has not been completely liberated from the authority of man as head. It is the last of the Kingdoms. His headship like that of John the baptist is being asked for on a platter but infuriatingly although nearly empty of contents that head remains on his shoulders.
When a woman marries she is given by one man, her Father into the[ we hope loving] custody of her husband. She passes from his authority to anothers willingly.
She veils herself and reveals herself feely to her spouse, she promises to love, honour and believe it or not usually obey the one who promises to cherish.
This sacramental union and sacred oath taking is not a purely emotional response but is one that is also a choice of the will, they say 'I WILL', not 'While I feel like it'.
If the man has not Christ as his head they are doomed. He will be influenced by his pridefull inclinations , his dominion over her will be destructive, not just for her but for him also. The modern idea that is near all pervasive is that somebody somewhere that you are destined for will be able to supply all your physical, emotional and spiritual needs all of the time, and if they fail to do that then they cannot be the right one for you . This disapointment so often leads to divorce and seperation and to the tragic constant series of doomed searching for 'the right one'. Relationship follows broken relationship until old age wakes you up to the falseness of that proposition, by then it is normally too late and so begins a life of regret and lonliness where even the children that were trampled and ignored by this vain pursuit no longer care to call.
For this reason the care that both future husband and future wife should take in descerning their future spouses cannot be underestimated . This voyage that they are embarking on is for Life, only love of God more than of themselves or each other will sustain them on this incredible journey. God as direction, man as captain, woman as first mate and heaven as destination.
Temptation is always to be avoided and unfortunatly the mixed working environent today has become the cause of so many affairs as well as a hotbed of indiscretion and flirtation . No big surprise here as this time spent in shared activity away from the spouse is usually vastly greater than the time they have with each other .This can lead to an improper informality and closeness that fuelled by a constant diet of junk books, soaps and tv can so often lead to infidelity . The joke used to be about the milkman or the barmaid , today most women work with him and most men work with her!!
Important question; Should a woman obey a husband who is both abusuive, ignorant, dictatorial, tyranical or just plain stupid ?
She should from a fundamentalist position, because she has promised to and scripture and tradition require her to. The fact that the husband is an oaf does not disqualify him from being a husband.
Personally I think that perhaps the requirement to obey is operative only when the man is albeit very often imperfectly, trying to allow God to be his head . If he is sincerely and genuinely listening to her , if he is attempting to understand her point of view and include it in his decision making process then even if in his wifes eyes that decision is wrong than he should have the final say. Any other course and the dual voting rights of each leads to a permanent hung parliament and much mutual resentment . However each has their legitimate social spheres and competencies. The wife as homemaker should be allowed the chance to manage that sphere without constant or needless interference, also if she is a better economist or teacher than she should not only be allowed but encouraged to take this lead. [ I must add that abuses on a physical or moral level are never part of a husbands juristiction and these should always be resisted ]
The crisis of manhood that is having such a profound disorientating effect on our culture must be addressed . The formation of future men has to begin today and must begin in your own household . Like it or not the buck stops with you . What you allow or dont allow, what you say and what you do speaks of who you are . And that witness is going to have a profound affect for both good and ill on your children . The things that speak volumes are sometimes the things that go almost undetected because they have become habitual , the lack of charity , the back-biting tongue, the acceptence of soft porn or free internet accesss or casual swearing .the lack of leadership and initiative or the abject surrender of authority to your wife. All of these are filtering into the minds of your young ones. Computations are constantly taking place. Is dad a hypocrite?, does he say one thing and do another? is he a joke? Do I love him or even like him?
We have all seen how some Fathers disordered over emphasis on authority and dicipline without the the corresponding balances of charity and mercy within the home can so easily lead to a counter syllabus of wholesale rebelliion and rejection, and how equally charity and mercy without the balance of authority and dicipline inevitably leads to the same conclusions only this time they are called Liberty and freedom.
It seems as if both the church and the family are indissolubly connected in this way, both are suffering from the same malady . However the illness is caused by the medicine and the solution for both can be found only in a return to objective order. And that order is a return to Patriarchy ..'Rule of father'.
This war is for the hearts of our children, they live for only a short time under our immediate authority and at some time they will have to live by the spirit and that spirit must move their hearts in conformence with the will of God. The world seeks for their hearts and the fight for the parents is to capture those hearts for Jesus. If we have genuinely won the hearts of our children then both theirs and ours become one, and what child would wish to break our hearts if in doing so they risk breaking their own as well .
Last word to the last words of the old Testament
Malachai 4;5-6
Behold i will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the lord. and he will turn the hearts of the Fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their Fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Make thee an Ark

Heb11:33 'It was through his faith that Noah, when he had been warned by God of something that had never been seen before, felt a holy fear and built an Ark to save his family.'
An Ark was a vessel or perhaps a more accurate definition would be a vehicle by which God protected his people . Noah acted out of faith and built the first Ark according to God's instructions and his household were preserved during the deluge that destroyed wicked mankind . The second Ark saved Moses from pharo's instruction to drown all the hebrew male infants, it was the basket that floated amid the bullrushes.
The third Ark, was that of the covenant. It was a wooden chest surmounted by two winged angels . Inside it were the the law in the Torah , the rod of Aaron the high priest and a vessel containing the heavenly manna that sustained the tribe of Israel in the wilderness.
The fourth Ark and the last Ark mentioned in the bible appeared alongside our Lady in the book of the Apocalypse .Our Lady herself contained next to her heart for nine months the trinitarian essences found in the ark of the covenant, Jesus the word made flesh, the fullfillment of the Law, High Priest and Bread of Heaven.
THE RAIN
This time the flood is invisible to the naked eye, it is invisible because it is spiritual . The casualties are not corpses foating on the surface of the water but souls sinking into the depths of hell.
Fleeing from occassion of sin has never been as difficult, and the opportunities to excercise our sinfull capacity have never been as great as they are today . A generation ago if you wanted to be seriously corrupted you had to put in effort and take risks . You would physically have to go to the seedy part of town to access any form of extracurricular material to fuel the fires of your fallen nature . Also you might be seen, your cover blown and your reputation left in tatters . To be corrupted today, to experience a diabolical banquet that Nero himself could only have dreamed of is as today as easy as turning on a switch .Twenty four hours a day Sodom and Gommorah are available via satellite, the world wide web and mobile phone technology .10 minutes of unrestricted internet use can permanently imprint onto your memory banks a series of images so dark and so powerful that they will haunt you to the grave . We live in an age were the contents of the minds of the child asleep upstairs and the stranger we meet on the street are unguessable.
Many of us when faced with a growing awareness of issues that are so disturbing as to seriously awaken the conscience, place those issues into a box and shove them far to the rear of our phyche maked 'do not open', and there they remain, unopened and unquestioned . How few Mums or Dads bother to enquire what their own child might have seen, heard or done in their waking day. Parents are too scared and embarassed to pry into the hearts of the very ones that God had chosen them to shepherd . There is a sign hanging on Johnny's bedroom door and seen in Johnny's defiant eyes , it reads 'Parent's Keep Out ' . This is the new relationship that fits the modern individualist family model . Home has become a fast food youth hostel , the parents mere vending machines.
Chances are if you are reading this magazine that you are growing in your awareness of just bad things have become and at the same time increasing in frustration as to what to do about it. The answer is to do as Noah did and build for your family an Ark .
The most efficacious step you can make immediately, before you can even consider building your family an Ark is to stop watching terrestial or cable TV. Use videos or dvd's if you have to but only ones that you have watched yourself . Dont ever trust or assume the contents are acceptable even if the classification says so!
TV addiction could be one of the hardest chains for you to break, but it is at the same time the one that promises the most freedom. This step will force you to fill the time vacuum with family interaction . The difficulty in maintaining any kind of positive interaction will show you just how much of a virtual life you had been living .You will feel like a shipwrecked captain sitting on the beach with his crew lamenting 'what do we do now?' Answer, get building!
First Plank
HOMESCHOOL
Institutional schooling is just that , it institutionalises , no major issues with that especially if that school fullfills the third pillar of formation behind Home and Church . The problem today is that most children spend all their formational time either in the classroom , the playground or on the streets .True home time is not time merely spent in the house, upstairs alone with the PC and playstation, but time spent with the real family of mum, dad, sisters and brothers . Quality time is slowtime and plenty of it . Not neglect followed by bucket loads of material indulgence, that can only double the disorientation . Leading the child to seek 'things' to fill the gap that serial desertion leaves in their hearts . Some well meaning and also some not so well meaning commentators when faced with the issue of homeschooling cry 'What about socialisation.' Socialiastion for most homeschoolers is precisely the reason they homeschool, they dont want their child to be socialy processed by the prevailing mores of today . Socialisation can be both positive and negative, it is negative when it contradicts both traditional family values and christian morality . The truth today is that the formational climate within the school enviroment and indeed outside it in popular culture, is so toxic to the christian faith that parents have to attempt to construct a counter culture and alternative enviroment themselves . Indeed socialising is so important that a good deal of homeschool time must include visiting families that reflect , accept or at the very least not reject the parents values. A childs need to feel normal and experience peer interaction is vital and indeed a natural requisite of any childhood .Give your child what you know is good , give them their childhood.
Education means preparation for life, for a christian, life is a preparation for the life here after. Put Christ first . Homeschooling allows you to do just that.
Second plank
HOMESTEAD
A mortgage is a usurous ball and chain, you are it's slave. Free yourself !
The modern mentality of the immedite rather than the long term, the ME and NOW philosophy, has blinded so many to scramble after a mirage of 'quality life'. So much so that most people would rather live a life of debt , just to give others the impression that they have made it in the game of life. A mortgage is a bit like wearing make up , it gives the false impression on the outside of what the truth is on the inside .The truth is that such is the state of borrowing in the West that even a modest down turn in the fortunes of the economy will result in mass home repossession , displaced people and homelessness . A couple of wheelbarrow loads of Argos trinkets being the reflection of your true value in life.
A pearl of great price in todays temporal world could be a caravan on a quater of an acre in the countryide that you own, rather than a five bedroom detatched on a housing estate that you squat in. The mind conversion that you must go through to understand is this .Give the long term future, both for yourself and your family, your immediate attention . You stand today as one link in your family chain . What you do or not do today you pass on to your children for good or bad . Not so very long ago people understood this, they knew that judgement would follow the works of their life, and a greater part of that judgement would fall on their stewardship of the children that God had entrusted to their keeping.
Today's Godlessness has produced a mindset that cannot fathom that anything that happens after death can be of any consideration in the here and now, and that includes what happens to the next generation, the present is all.
Time for them is their feast, they keep it for themselves . Their children like so many little Lazarus's, living on the scraps of the few minutes they can get from the table of the day.
Abandoned homesteads are still plentiful in Ireland . A run down cottage and an acre or two can still be bought for below 100.000 euro and some can still be found below 50.000 euro. A mobile home costing below 3.000 could be found to live in while the cottage is made habitable again . Most of these old cottages have one or two outbuildings and some even have the old crane still in the fire place!
Owning and living in one of these humble cottages used to be counted a blessing, for the generation where every new luxury becomes overnight a necessity this blessing would feel like a scourge.
If you have had a mortgage even for just a few short years then chances are you have some precious equity stored up .This equity could buy you your freedom, not just yours but your children's as well . A bonded servant works for a master, a serf gives half his crop to the lord of the land . By becoming poor in the eyes of the world , by being a fool for Christ, you can become a free man . Free from debt , free from the worry of loosing your 'home', free from the yoke that says you must continue to do work that you hate just to pay the bills, free to spend more time with your family. If you live in the town or city, free from the fear of crime, the threat of drugs, gangs, and a climate of immodesty, free to spend time walking in the garden and listening to God. . Make life your work , rather than work your life.
Third plank
HOMEWORKING
So you have your children under your wing again, as it was meant to be, you have your half acre, ruined cottage and 2 berth second hand caravan. First give thanks to God, you have squeezed through the eye of the needle!
Now how to I feed and clothe my family?
Attempt to be as self sufficient as you can , start a vegetable garden and compost heap! Try to live frugaly and economically, try stretching and saving a pound rather than earning a pound .Get some hens and buy your clothes from charity shops. You could half the cost of your shopping trolley simply by buying the stores own in house brands instead of the usual ones . Assuming the property that you are now standing on is in a fairly remote part of Ireland you will not be able to replicate the job situation you had previously . However the job you held previously is a redundant position, you no longer need that size paycheck and with it that sized working week. You need a supplementary income . Part time salaried work carries with it very generous low paid worker benefits, if you work a mere 19 hrs a week these benefits, especially if you have a large family add up to more than you imagine, check them out!
For those who want to break the ties of working for another person altogether, think small business. The devil is in the internet big time, however the technology that assists him in taking so many captive could be at the same time the conduit for keeping your new found freedom.
With ebay and paypal you could start a little craft business, or antiquarian book shop, religious sacramental purveyors etc .Or maybe invest some of your dwindling cash resevoirs into a website or for your ideas to reach a larger public . Another suggestion could be to use your land, specialising in certain organic produce after doing a bit of market research into the gaps in the market place. Alternatvely start a small herd of cattle, many still do it! or rent some acreage if you have it to the forestry . The options are as limited as your imagination . Remember that even if for a while the period of work you do may not be completely to your taste, it is only a supplement and small medicine for the benefits it brings, to both you, your wife and your children, because that medicine buys you each other!
Maybe as the future unravells all the gains of the past , the patterns of the past itself will become ever more relevant .The future for faithfull Catholicism here in Ireland could very easily find itself following the same route as remnant faith groups have done over the centuries particularly in the USA.
The establishment of clusters of homeschooling homesteading families in distinct geographical areas up and down the country, usually within the close proximity of a good orthodox priest who still values the faith in it's entirety or near a parish whose ministry still includes the shepherding of souls. These groups of homesteaders could then attempt to replicate in this communitarian micro climate the set of values that greater society has chosen to abandon.
The Catholic family is itself the original community , it seeks alliance in place of union . These alliances would produce neighbourhoods, not legalistic communities . Indeed these neighbourhoods could very well be the fertile ground whose seed goes on to produce vocations both to holy orders and to holy matrimony.
Let each family build it's own Ark . Let these Arks float together in the tempestuous seas of this spiritual deluge.
Within each of these Arks may we preserve the faith, live the faith and pass on the faith.
'When the son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?', whether alive or dead please God we will have played our part in answering yes.