Social Media has become a Death Trap for the Christian Life!

The world is a nasty place, and only getting nastier. It is a selfish place. Full, sadly, of selfish people, myself included. We are simply infected with the cancer that surrounds us. It takes a tremendous effort to cleanse oneself from the dirt, the poison, the filth, that we breath everyday, nearly on an hourly basis. Far, far too many of us Christians are nasty, selfish people, who outside of popping into church on a Sunday, have very little to show that we actually believe and live the Gospel. 

Social media provides immediacy, anonymity, and yet detachment between interlocutors (hence communication is really "virtual" rather than real) has become, generally speaking, a very destructive and dehumanizing tool. I too have abused social media. Like many of you, I too have felt, and can feel its seductive pull, to "get involved", to "make a stand", to "speak out" etc! 

This is a grave danger that must be avoided by the Christian. I must strive to minimize my usage of it, and to periodically review and clean up - spiritually and physically - my social media. Most people (such as perhaps you dear reader) are not too interested in my opinion/s. And they are probably just as much not interested in yours. My social media footprint is very, very small (just over 16,000 followers on Twitter, which is nothing) and as such, I am deluded if I believe that I am an "influencer" (so goes the new catchphrase). And even if I were, the dangers would only be that much more magnified. 

As such, the way I can "influence" is to strive to live my life as a Christian. That means, living an upright moral life, living in the moment, and living as a Christian witness to those with whom I live, and with whom I interact with. This is where God placed me, this is where I will live out my salvation or damnation. I am certainly not going to be saved by being active on social media. To the contrary, social media, usually (though not always) is a crack in the wall to sin. The sins of sloth, anger, hate, slander, ridicule, and pride are there for the picking. It really is not too difficult to enter a life of sin using social media. The greatest deception of all, is that one can walk this path into darkness believing that one is defending Christ and His Church. How tragic. 

I find it bizarre to use the word "social", as given in most instances there is no direct person to person contact. Contact is, at best, undertaken in a hidden manner, electronically obscured and transmitted. True social contact is made face to face; it is, so to speak incarnational. Our Lord did not come hidden, He came in the Flesh and revealed Himself to us. 

Sloth is one of the easiest of sins that social media offers. Five minutes a day, 10, 30? Maybe an hour or two, perhaps three...? Just how much time do Catholics spend on the interminable Twitter or Facebook? The question then arises: if people devote (e.g.) 30 minutes on social media, just how much time do they devote in prayer? Perhaps a two or three to one ratio? This would still be giving God short thrift. Is God only worth three times more than looking for gossip or scandal and eagerly re-tweeting it? If we want to defend the Church, the best place is in front of the Blessed Sacrament.

What have we become, when we no longer "have time" go to daily Mass, or visit the Blessed Sacrament, but we can engage in "daily" social media? Just who is first in our lives? What about our families? What about our friends? What about those who are suffering, those who are alone, abandoned? St. James called them the "widows" and the "orphans". Do we have time for them? Or, do we have only time (or too much time) for impersonal and detached social media activity? Let us ask ourselves these very serious questions. 

The Sacred Scriptures are absolute on a fundamental error that has swept social media: one cannot do evil that good may come of it (Roman 3:8). Spiritual writers and directors are as firm: from the desert Fathers, through the Carmelites, to modern writers (such as Dom Chautard). 

We live in an evil world and many of us feel frustrated about this evil. It is not easy to confront evil without hatred and anger. But it must be done. That is why we must increase our prayer life and also live the Christian life. The Apostles certainly confronted evil, but do you notice one outstanding thing? They were able to do this only because they lived - firstly - lives of prayer. Our Lord warned us, "without me you can do nothing". (John 15:5). 

St. James provides us with great advice - indeed a litmus test - on how we should be living our lives, if we wish to be saved: 

Only you must be honest with yourselves; you are to live by the word, not content merely to listen to it.  

One who listens to the word without living by it is like a man who sees, in a mirror, the face he was born with;  he looks at himself, and away he goes, never giving another thought to the man he saw there.  

Whereas one who gazes into that perfect law, which is the law of freedom, and dwells on the sight of it, does not forget its message; he finds something to do, and does it, and his doing of it wins him a blessing. 

If anyone deludes himself by thinking he is serving God, when he has not learned to control his tongue, the service he gives is vain.  

If he is to offer service pure and unblemished in the sight of God, who is our Father, he must take care of orphans and widows in their need, and keep himself untainted by the world.

James 1: 22-27

Catholic Education is Dead: How a Militant Teacher's Union Wages War against the Catholic Faith and Children

OECTA and its promotion of "LGBT" propaganda

Catholic education in Canada is a disaster. For well OVER two decades in Ontario, the militant Union, the Ontario English Catholic Teacher's Association (OECTA), has promoted dissent and outright heretical positions. In the past, the Hierarchy was able, and did discipline and even dismiss teachers who were openly and knowingly flaunting Faith and Morals. However, by the late 1980s dissent had become much more organized and entrenched. Dissenter and "religion" teacher Joanna Manning (who eventually left the Church) had a confrontation with the late Cardinal Ambrozic that began in 1987 and lasted until 1994. 

Manning raged against the Church in these words: 

Sexual harassment, put-downs of women, jock networks of boys, lack of female role models for girls and other inequalities exist in all school systems. In the Catholic system they are reinforced and legitimized by attitudes like Ambrozic's which are fostered within the institutional Catholic church."

There you have it! The late Cardinal accused of "reinforcing" and "legitimizing" sexual harassment! Perhaps contemporary OECTA members can explain that to the teenage boys who are being sexually abused and even raped by their female pedophile teachers? 

But let us continue the tale of the attack on Cardinal Ambrozic. The Cardinal, working with the then Metropolitan Separate School Board (MSSB) managed to silence and removed the dissenting woman, who, incidentally, would eventually join the Church of England, to then join up with neo-pagans. But OECTA counter-attacked and defeated the Cardinal in the courts. Manning was reinstated (with the proviso that she not teach "religion"). With their victory, OECTA effectively assumed complete control of "Catholic" education in Ontario. 

In more recent years, when OECTA's leadership  announced that it intended to enter and officially participate in the notorious "gay pride" parade in Toronto, Cardinal Collins issued a statement that the "...OECTA leadership have an inadequate and mistaken understanding of their faith...it seems to be going completely against what we believe in many ways". OECTA marched anyway, with the support of a number of dissident Catholic School Boards. The Cardinal's ineffectual statement fell flat, and OECTA emerged triumphant. "Catholic" education was firmly under their control. It remains so to this very day. 

OECTA propaganda in favour of the "LGBT" agenda

Since Cardinals Ambrozic and Collins' humiliating defeat at the hands of OECTA, the aggression, the militancy, the vile imposition of evil on innocent children has only increased. Boards are passing pro-"LGBT" position papers, enforcing their "LGBT" decisions in classrooms. Staff are being spied on, and anti-Christian edicts are being enforced. The most obvious recent example is the glorification of the new fad of "transgenderism". 

OECTA "transgender" propaganda

Let us not be deluded. Even at the private level, Catholic education is a farce. Witness the scandalous "Broom Handle Sodomy Trial" trial (concluded just the other day), with three boys pleading guilty from the once venerable St. Michael's College to (so it was reported in the media when the outrage first broke last year) gang-raping a fellow student with a broom handle. So much for Christian morals and living. One can only wonder what types of homes these degenerate boys come from. 

Or, let us consider the ever constant flow of sexual assaults and rapes committed on school children. It is interesting to note how many of these sexual assaults are committed by hyper-sexualized women on teenage boys. So much for "male privilege" that OECTA keeps on complaining about, in their never-ending promotion of feminism. However, OECTA, heavily dominated by bitter angry females issued the following from a 145 page "Equity Report":

When all is said and done, the Old Boys Network is more than statistics of race or gen­der: it is about who partakes in the culture of power in the system. The inner circle of influence has often depended on shared social activities as much as academic influence. Golf, fishing, jock talk, athletics: the "Cathletics" culture of the traditional all-male Catholic school which repli­cates the hold of white male power in the Catho­lic Church fosters an automatic assumption of being included with the 'good guys'. Many male administrators at MSSB are graduates of the private, elitist all-male schools that were typical of Catholic secondary education in Ontario be­fore full funding, and that model has a strong influence on the type of school culture they will try to create. Not all men fit this model: gay men, men who are not into athletics, for instance, find themselves on the outer fringes along with women and visible minorities of both genders. (Toronto Secondary Unit (1997) Equity Report (p. 62)

OECTA promoting the ideology of "feminism" 

A few news items regarding teachers (from OECTA and others) may be reviewed, here, here, here, here, here, and here. A special thanks to the blog, "Jonah in the Heart of Ninevah" is called for. We are all indebted for the constant watchfulness of "Jonah" regarding sexual predators in what should be the teaching vocation.  

Convicted pedophile and former OECTA member, Christina Albini

Nor can we forget the innumerable times that pro-homosexual activists at OECTA march in the evil "Gay Pride Parades", where teachers, adorned in the colours of "gay liberation",  holding aloft and waving OECTA rainbow-coloured flags, march alongside naked homosexuals, drag queens, and other perverts.

These same teachers will then report to class the next day and claim they are teaching Catholic Faith and Morals. A cursory gland through the Catechism of the Catholic Church exposes the contradiction between attending a parade that not only excuses grave sin, but glories in it.

OECTA members/supporters attending a "Gay Pride" march in Toronto

Where does this all leave us? Simply put, it means the de facto decimation of the Catholic Church. For if the next generation is paganized by its teachers, (with the seeming full assistance of paganized parents) where and how will the Faith by handed on? 

Look for things to get much, much worse. More to follow. Stay tuned to this blog. 

An Open Letter to Canada's Bishops: Why did you help re-elect Justin Trudeau?

Bishops of Canada,

We write to you, the morning after the 2019 Election with a few questions:


Where were you when a brother bishop gave the Holy Eucharist to Justin Trudeau at a Solemn Mass in Ottawa?

 Where were you, when Justin Trudeau advocated un-Christian moral positions as a Member of Parliament?

Where were you when he considered severing Canada as a nation, to protect the crime of abortion?

Where were you when he came out as Liberal Party Leader and banned pro-life candidates?

Where were you when he was running on an openly, militantly, pro-abortion, pro-LGBT and pro-marijuana agenda platform in 2015?

Where were you when he was pushing euthanasia?

Where were you when he rammed euthanasia through Parliament?

Where were you when he was marching in "Gay Pride Parades"?

Where were you when he promised the homosexuals that he would lower the age of consent for anal "sex" to sixteen?

Where were you when he announced a $650, 000,000 abortion funding program?

Where were you when Trudeau's hand-chosen atheist Governor General mocked religion?

Where were you when he rammed pro-marijuana legislation through Parliament?

Where were you - when time and again - over the years in his townhall meetings he would keep pushing the abortion and LGBT agenda?

Where were you when he came out during the 2019 election campaign to say that abortion was a "good"?

Where were you during the 2019 election campaign to call for the end of abortion, euthanasia and legal drugs?

Where were you when he promoted and pushed the latest horror of the LGBT agenda: transexualism?

Where were you when he was pushing the "LGBT" agenda on the international stage?


There are assuredly many more other examples of your inaction and silence, but we have made our point.

We pray for your conversion, that you repent of your spiritual and moral crimes. We pray you will obtain the courage to resign from your Sees, which you have profaned with your inaction, even collusion with Trudeau. 

We respect your Offices as Bishops, but, rest assuredly, we do not respect you as men. In fact, we see you as men who have betrayed your Offices of feeding the Sheep, of being watchmen against evil. 

Sincerely, The Witness Blog 

Video emerges of Justin Trudeau planning to use "hate" and "intolerance" as part of his Election Campaign from seven months ago

Justin Trudeau at the OECTA March AGM, where he revealed the election will be about smearing political opponents as "haters" 

The recent cries of alleged "hate", "intolerance", "divisiveness" etc., that Justin Trudeau and his media sycophants have been pushing during the election campaign was actually planned a long time ago. This is all part of a long-term strategy to sling mud and falsehoods on political opponents to steal an election through lies and deception. 

In March of this year, at the AGM of the Ontario Catholic Teachers' Association (OECTA), Trudeau (before an adoring audience of militant, hard-left activists masquerading as "Catholic teachers") outlined how name-calling and the smearing of others would be at the core of the Liberal Election platform. 

So here we are, seven months later, and with seeming perfect timing, Trudeau and his allies in the shameless, monolithic media (CBC, CTV, and Global) all begin a strident cry of "hate" and "intolerance". Truly disgusting.

There are no coincidences in politics, just carefully laid plans. However, even the best plan can go awry. Videos uploaded to the internet can backfire. 

Watch this video and see this dangerous, divisive narcissist in action. 

Readers may wonder how is it possible for "Catholic" teachers to applaud and support such an open enemy of Christian morality? That disturbing question will be dealt with in another post. 

Happy Thanksgiving to our Canadian Readers

Psalm 137

(Of David.)

1

 

My heart’s thanks, Lord, for listening to the prayer I uttered; angels for my witnesses,✻ I will sing of thy praise.

2

 

I bow down in worship towards thy sanctuary, praising thy name for thy mercy and faithfulness; thy own honour and thy pledged word thou hast vindicated for all the world to see.

3

 

To thee I appealed, and thou didst listen to me, didst fill my heart with courage.

4

 

All the kings of the earth, Lord, will praise thee now; were not thy promises made in their hearing?

5

 

Their song shall be of the Lord’s doings, how great is his renown,

6

 

the Lord, who is so high above us, yet looks with favour on the humble, looks on the proud too, but from far off.

7

 

Though affliction surround my path, thou dost preserve me; it is thy power that confronts my enemies’ malice, thy right hand that rescues me.

8

 

My purposes the Lord will yet speed; thy mercy, Lord, endures for ever, and wilt thou abandon us, the creatures of thy own hands?

October 11th: Feast of the Maternity of the Mother of God

 

This feast commemorates the dignity of the Mary as Mother of God (Theotokos), the title of Mary ratified by the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD. The feast was first granted to the dioceses of Portugal and to Brasil and Algeria in 1751. In 1752 it was granted to the province of Venice, in 1778 to the kingdom of Naples and in 1807 to Tuscany.

Eighth Lesson from the Roman Breviary

Marvel at both these things, and choose whether to marvel most at the sublime condescension of the Son, or at the sublime dignity of Mary. Either is amazing, either marvellous. That God should obey this woman, is a lowliness without parallel; that this woman should rule over God, an exaltation without match. In praise of virgins, and of virgins only, is it sung that “These are they which follow the Lamb wherever He goes” (Apocalypse xiv. 4). Of what praise then think you that she must be worthy who even leads the Lamb. “O man, learn to obey. O earth, learn to submit. O dust, learn to keep down. It is of your Maker that the Evangelist said: ‘And He was subject to them.’ Blush, O proud ashes! God humbles Himself; and you exalt yourself? God is subject to men; and will you, by striving to rule over men, set yourself before your Maker?

O happy Mary, lowly and virgin; and wondrous virginity, which motherhood destroyed not, but exalted; and wondrous lowliness, which the fruitful virginity took not away, but ennobled; and wondrous motherhood, which was both virgin and lowly. Which of them is not wondrous? which of them is not unexampled, and which of them does not stand alone? The wonder would be if you were not puzzled at which to wonder most — motherhood in a virgin, or virginity in a mother; a motherhood so exalted, or lowliness in such exaltation. But indeed more marvellous than any one of these things is the combination of them all, and without all comparison, it is more excellent and more blessed to have received them all, than to have received any one of them alone. What wonder is it that God, of Whom we see and read, that “He is wonderful in His holy places” (Psalm lxvii. 36), should have shown Himself wonderful in His Mother? O you that be married, honour this incorruption in corruptible flesh; O, holy maidens, gaze in wonder at motherhood in a maid; O, all mankind, take pattern by the lowliness of the Mother of God.

O God, who willed that your Word should take flesh at the message of an angel in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, grant to us, we beseech you, that we who believe her to be indeed the Mother of God may be aided by her intercession with you. Through the same our Lord Jesus Christ your Son, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

 From In Lumine Fidei.