Pope Francis visits a Prison in Philadelphia: "Let us look to Jesus, who washes our feet. He is “the way, and the truth, and the life"

Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility in Philadelphia

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

                Thank you for receiving me and giving me the opportunity to be here with you and to share this time in your lives.  It is a difficult time, one full of struggles.  I know it is a painful time not only for you, but also for your families and for all of society.  Any society, any family, which cannot share or take seriously the pain of its children, and views that pain as something normal or to be expected, is a society “condemned” to remain a hostage to itself, prey to the very things which cause that pain.

                I am here as a pastor, but above all as a brother, to share your situation and to make it my own.  I have come so that we can pray together and offer our God everything that causes us pain, but also everything that gives us hope, so that we can receive from him the power of the resurrection.

                I think of the Gospel scene where Jesus washes the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper.  This was something his disciples found hard to accept.  Even Peter refused, and told him: “You will never wash my feet” (Jn 13:8).

                In those days, it was the custom to wash someone’s feet when they came to your home.  That was how they welcomed people.  The roads were not paved, they were covered with dust, and little stones would get stuck in your sandals.  Everyone walked those roads, which left their feet dusty, bruised or cut from those stones.  That is why we see Jesus washing feet, our feet, the feet of his disciples, then and now.

     Life is a journey, along different roads, different paths, which leave their mark on us.

                We know in faith that Jesus seeks us out.  He wants to heal our wounds, to soothe our feet which hurt from travelling alone, to wash each of us clean of the dust from our journey.  He doesn’t ask us where we have been, he doesn’t question us what about we have done.  Rather, he tells us: “Unless I wash your feet, you have no share with me” (Jn 13:8).  Unless I wash your feet, I will not be able to give you the life which the Father always dreamed of, the life for which he created you.  Jesus comes to meet us, so that he can restore our dignity as children of God.  He wants to help us to set out again, to resume our journey, to recover our hope, to restore our faith and trust.  He wants us to keep walking along the paths of life, to realize that we have a mission, and that confinement is not the same thing as exclusion.

                Life means “getting our feet dirty” from the dust-filled roads of life and history.  All of us need to be cleansed, to be washed.  All of us are being sought out by the Teacher, who wants to help us resume our journey.  The Lord goes in search of us; to all of us he stretches out a helping hand.

                It is painful when we see prison systems which are not concerned to care for wounds, to soothe pain, to offer new possibilities.  It is painful when we see people who think that only others need to be cleansed, purified, and do not recognize that their weariness, pain and wounds are also the weariness, pain and wounds of society.  The Lord tells us this clearly with a sign: he washes our feet so we can come back to the table.  The table from which he wishes no one to be excluded.  The table which is spread for all and to which all of us are invited.

    This time in your life can only have one purpose: to give you a hand in getting back on the right road, to give you a hand to help you rejoin society.  All of us are part of that effort, all of us are invited to encourage, help and enable your rehabilitation.  A rehabilitation which everyone seeks and desires: inmates and their families, correctional authorities, social and educational programs.  A rehabilitation which benefits and elevates the morale of the entire community.

                Jesus invites us to share in his lot, his way of living and acting.  He teaches us to see the world through his eyes.  Eyes which are not scandalized by the dust picked up along the way, but want to cleanse, heal and restore.  He asks us to create new opportunities: for inmates, for their families, for correctional authorities, and for society as a whole.

                I encourage you to have this attitude with one another and with all those who in any way are part of this institution.  May you make possible new opportunities, new journeys, new paths.

                All of us have something we need to be cleansed of, or purified from.  May the knowledge of that fact inspire us to live in solidarity, to support one another and seek the best for others.

                Let us look to Jesus, who washes our feet.  He is “the way, and the truth, and the life”.  He comes to save us from the lie that says no one can change.  He helps us to journey along the paths of life and fulfillment.  May the power of his love and his resurrection always be a path leading you to new life.

Cardinal Dolan has the buildings; Africa has the Faith

They have the buildings, we have the Faith"

 St. Athanasius

Cardinal Dolan is very proud of his newly restored St.  Patrick's Cathedral at the cost of $200 million there can be no doubt. 

Likewise he must be ever so proud of his Papal Mass that he staged at Madison Square Gardens. Replete with a militantly homosexual Lector. 

They have the buildings.

...meanwhile...

In Africa. They have the faith. 

Media and enemies of the Church rejoice in the selection of a known sodomite to read at Papal Mass in NYC

The reaction by the enemies of the Church has begun. The selection of an openly known, pro-"same-sex marriage" sodomite, Mo Rocca, by the authorities in the Archdiocese of New York is a terrible blow against the Church of Christ. 

The men who have done this are not working for Our Lord, they are working for the Antichrist and the False Prophet. The blame for this lies at the feet of Timothy Cardinal Dolan. But the atmosphere that gave the authorities in New York the daring to select a homosexual lies with the confusion that has been created by Pope Francis. The homosexualists see a weakening, a confusion, a darkness - have struck, and struck hard; lying in wait for decades. Bonny, Bode and now Dolan.... the list of evil churchmen gets longer and longer. But then, who am I to judge? 

Homosexual Mo Rocca reads First Reading at Papal Mass at Madison Square Gardens in New York City

An openly homosexual individual by the name of Mo Rocca read the First Reading at the Papal Mass in New York City. Rocca is also in favour of "same-sex marriage". This abomination was referred to by the now long forgotten St. Pope John Paul II as "an ideology of evil". The homosexual "Advocate" writes: 

Rocca also talked about being outside Stonewall Inn the night New York enacted marriage equality: “I tweeted about it. It was very memorable, very emotional, it was a great place to be.”

One must presume that the details were drawn up by Timothy Cardinal Dolan's underlings. Dolan is now infamous for his disgraceful pro-homosexualist behaviour at the St. Patrick's Day Parade this past March. One wonders why Dolan has changed his mind on homosexuality? Why is Cardinal Dolan an open homosexualist? The possible answers, dear reader, I leave to your capable deliberations.

Yet there are still those who deny that a powerful, influential and deadly homosexualist force has infiltrated the Catholic Church. And there will be those who continue to deny it.... 

And what was so "beautifully put", that Rocca retweeted? Here it is: 

Apostasy over America: Catholicism in the USA is a disaster

One would never know that the Catholic Church is collapsing in New York if one watches Timothy Cardinal Dolan. Ever laughing, the Cardinal boasted about his cathedral's facelift (that cost  a mere $200 million). Yet His Eminence failed to note all the closing parishes  in New York. But it gets worse, much, much worse. The fact is, behind the hysterical celebrity-like treatment of the Pope by the media and  the crowds,  there is apostasy. They have the buildings, the Africans have the Faith. 

From Sandro Magister: 

If it is in fact true that 90 percent of Catholics in the United States see the family with a married father and mother as the ideal environment for raising children, there is also a large percentage who at the same time see it as acceptable that children grow up with parents who are single (87 percent), or divorced (83 percent), or just cohabiting (83 percent), or of the same sex (66 percent).

And if one asks if the Church should recognize homosexual marriages, 46 percent of American Catholics respond yes, against an equal proportion of nos. But there is a distinct majority (62 percent) of those who would like the Church to allow communion for the cohabiting and for those who have remarried civilly while the spouse married in church is still alive.Among those who go to Mass every Sunday (one fourth of the total) and those who go more infrequently there are notable differences. The former are more faithful to the magisterium of the Church. But even among them those against communion for the divorced and remarried do not amount to half, topping out at 42 percent.These attitudes are influenced by personal experience. One fourth of American Catholic adults have had a divorce, and one out of nine have remarried civilly. One out of ten cohabit without being married, and almost half have cohabited for a certain period of their lives. Among the divorced, one fourth have requested and obtained a declaration of nullity for their sacramental marriage.

HUMILITY: the "go-to communicator" ?

Dear priests, may God the Father renew in us the Spirit of holiness with whom we have been anointed. May he renew his Spirit in our hearts, that this anointing may spread to everyone, even to those “outskirts” where our faithful people most look for it and most appreciate it. May our people sense that we are the Lord’s disciples; may they feel that their names are written upon our priestly vestments and that we seek no other identity; and may they receive through our words and deeds the oil of gladness which Jesus, the Anointed One, came to bring us. Amen.

Pope Francis (Chrism Mass, 2013)

Michael Voris: why the American "right" is a collaborator with the "left" in its hatred of the Church and Christ

"...there can be no genuine solution of the "social question" apart from the Gospel"

Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus

Michael Voris is one Catholic who understands the grave threat of naturalism (liberalism, when applied to politics and economics). I have written about the baneful influence of John Locke on American society in the past. But Locke is not the most influential figure in American history. Henry VIII is. Ultimately, that disease riddled and lecherous apostate is the spiritual father of America. We are now seeing the disintegration of America before our very eyes.  

It was from the poisoned well of the philosophy of Locke that the American "founding fathers" drank deeply. Most American Catholics, so brain washed from their school days to regard these men as idols, have incredible difficulty to see them as what they really were. Many perform incredible mental feats of self-deception to deny the innate anti-Catholicism in their deistic and naturalistic ideology. 

Incredibly, most of us have even met devout Catholic Americans - even daily communicants - who hold these men up for admiration. For example, the slave owners George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. We must judge men not on so much what they say, but what they do. Jefferson had many beautiful words (if not sophistries); however Catholics need to be blunt: this man was objectively evil. As was Washington. 

With freedom detached from truth, it is only normal that one evil leads to another. Hence the appearance of the diabolical baby killer, Barack Obama; or so-called "conservative" Catholics who love their contraception, such as Chris Christie. And so on. At one time America fudged along with reasonably decent men running a country founded on a flawed Constitution. But eventually men become what they believe in: the indifferentism to truth in the philosophy of the "founding fathers" has seeped into most Americans' minds, turning them to mush. 

Americans have far better men and women to admire and imitate: Elizabeth Seton and Junipero Serra, for example. 

Religious liberty is really code for religious indifferentism. American "freedom" is based on this. It is a lie. It is blasphemy. Freedom is based on Truth. Our Lord is truth.

Pope John Paul II before the United Nations twenty years ago ~ October 5, 1995

"As a Christian, my hope and trust are centered on Jesus Christ, the two thousandth anniversary of whose birth will be celebrated at the coming of the new millennium. We Christians believe that in his Death and Resurrection were fully revealed God's love and his care for all creation. Jesus Christ is for us God made man, and made a part of the history of humanity. Precisely for this reason, Christian hope for the world and its future extends to every human person. Because of the radiant humanity of Christ, nothing genuinely human fails to touch the hearts of Christians. Faith in Christ does not impel us to intolerance. On the contrary, it obliges us to engage others in a respectful dialogue. Love of Christ does not distract us from interest in others, but rather invites us to responsibility for them, to the exclusion of no one and indeed, if anything, with a special concern for the weakest and the suffering. Thus, as we approach the two thousandth anniversary of the birth of Christ, the Church asks only to be able to propose respectfully this message of salvation, and to be able to promote, in charity and service, the solidarity of the entire human family".

The full text may be read here.