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July 2009 |
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Wednesday, July 1, 2009 This month's first column, as usual, is about the reasons for Catholic Fundamentalism in a world that increasingly shuns both Catholics and Fundamentalists. Most of us are aware that computers have changed the way we see the world. Our minds are so barraged with information that we tend to spend most of our time looking sideways, absorbing more information about other programmed entities, rather than looking and moving "up" to our Creator, The Unprogrammed Programmer. As we grow more addicted to absorbing more information, we tend to grow farther from the God Who loves us and wants our souls to get closer to Him. Getting closer to God requires us to do things that are a lot harder than opening and perusing another web site. We have to study His Operating Instructions and obey them. It's easier for some of us to do as Catholic Fundamentalists do, which is to picture Him as the Unprogrammed Programmer, Who programmed energies and particles before compiling them into systems and beings. When we look at each chapter of Scripture as its own web site, with its own lessons to be absorbed, it may be easier to learn their important lessons than by trying to fit ourselves into a God and Scripture removed from our own time and experience with a lot of Iron Age vocabularies. When we think of, and describe, the Unprogrammed Programmer of particles, energies, systems, and beings with words that have more meaning to us, we can more easily understand Him and our duties to Him just by looking at the many, many programs programmed by human programmers that we, ourselves, use every day of our lives.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009 The Programmer programmed things the way He did in order to provide us with free will. It doesn't matter whether He wrote the Creation Program a long time ago, or, if He programmed it ten or fifteen thousand years ago. The particles, energies, systems, and beings that were programmed and downloaded were made to exist in such a way that some people can choose to believe Creation is billions of years old. On the other hand, some are able to believe that He programmed the whole thing in place so that we free-will programs could freely make one of three choices: it was produced by a loving God, it came into being by accident, or was made by some unfeeling, uncaring God Who's gone on to other things. The important thing about The Creation Program is that it gives each of us a lifetime of opportunities to lie or to tell the truth about any number of things. When we tell a lie, we get a "bad mark" on our soul. When we believe a lie, we get a similar negative score, the size of which is determined by the obviousness of the lie and whether we believed the lie because we lacked either the courage or the energy to find the truth. Every time we tell the truth, we get a "good mark" on our soul. The harder the truth is to tell, the greater the reward we receive. If, to give an extreme example, the person in front of us buys a lottery ticket, and it falls to the ground while items are being packaged, and we pick it up and win a hundred million dollars, do we tell the truth? If, in that situation, we told the truth, every angel and saint in Heaven would know about it. "Look what that person did!", they would say with love and joy. If we did not sully ourselves afterwards, our soul would be welcomed among them forever.
Thursday, July 2, 2009 "The Proclamation of the Kingdom" On Thursdays, those who say the Rosary pray the Luminous Mysteries, instituted by Pope John Paul II. The Third Luminous Mystery is "The Proclamation of the Kingdom". That's an especially illuminating Mystery for Catholic Fundamentalists. Unlike others, we see God as The Unprogrammed Programmer. We understand that He programmed all Creation with His ability to program energies and particles which He then compiled into the systems and beings which include us and everything else. One does not have to believe that to appreciate "The Proclamation of the Kingdom", but it certainly makes it easier. We see that God has programmed two types of beings, sheep and goats. We also know that one can choose to move from being a sheep to being a goat and vice versa. His Kingdom, often called "Zion" is where those who believe and obey choose to live. We see enough of The Program to know that our souls are programmed as immortal entities, and that, therefore, they must spend eternity somewhere. We also see enough of The Program to realize that it is a program, in which we are privileged to live, ever grateful for the great gifts He has given us. It is ever astonishing to us that anyone in their right mind would not choose to see, as we do, the wonderful Kingdom that The Loving Programmer has programmed, both in this world and beyond. It is even more incredible that they, too, cannot and will not, see it. But, sin is blinding.
Friday, July 3, 2009 Automation. Labor saving devices don't just save labor, they eliminate the need for laborers. When we look at any human occupation, we quickly see that a tiny percentage of those involved in it are thinking about better, faster ways to do things. In a way, those who try to eliminate labor are waging war with their less creative, less ambitious fellow-workers. They are trying to put them out of work and get themselves some of the money that used to go to them. Living in rural, Western Pennsylvania, one sees that clearly. Once, there were hundreds of small, labor-intensive iron furnaces in the area, all of which disappeared when the huge steel-making centers developed in Pittsburgh, Johnstown, and other steel-making centers. There were also thousands of small coal, limestone, and coke producers. All were put out of business by the centralization and increasing automation of those facilities. Those with the abilities to automate, centralize, and reduce costs were also able to swing the legislative process to their side, making most attempts to maintain the inefficient and decentralized production centers futile. During this time, the rich got richer, and European immigrants went from abysmal poverty to something resembling prosperity. Automation did not proceed rapidly enough to eliminate their jobs before they could form unions, become politically powerful, and eventually destroy the source of wealth that had enriched them by stopping further automation in their own industry. Now, of course, those mills are closed. Steel is being produced overseas, and huge shopping malls line the once productive valleys that no longer produce anything but a market for steel made in other countries. There is no meaningful automation that saves labor in any government agency. There, workers are safe from every kind of competition. So, more people are drawn to government employment. There is little useful work done in any of those agencies that came into being after 1930. The huge drag that such agencies put on the activities of the "automators" keeps them from automating any sizable number of government jobs. Perversely, the growing inefficiency in any government raises taxes. That causes more unemployment, and poverty throughout the lands where the "anti-automators" rule. Ideally, the growing number of government "workers" would be equal to those whose jobs were displaced by automation. Then, we could have both prosperity and full employment. But, government employment goes to "favorites", rather than to those who are most able to do the best job, so those displaced by automation in the private sector have a hard time getting government jobs. The more qualified they are, the harder it is for them.
Friday, July 3, 2009 Changes in news and opinion dispersal. Governments have always built and staffed information distribution systems. Whether the Elizabethan poets who worked for the intelligence service or town criers telling people what their government wanted them to hear, all established news and information systems work to support and expand the government that, directly or indirectly, supplies them with employment. A few decades ago, there were three major information broadcasters and countless newspapers, most of whom relied on a handful of government-approved news sources, like the Ass. Press, UPI, and Reuters to supply them with approved information. They, and others also supplied access to "correct opinions", so that people would "think properly". As always, the distribution of information and opinions about how people should think about the "facts" they were provided were tightly controlled. During this period, there was endless going-on about he rights and duties of "a free press", whose self-praising press releases were largely believed. Even twenty years ago, information about "problems" like the "Ozone Hole" could be disseminated without fear of contradiction. First, the specter of penguins going blind because of the "Ozone Hole" was raised. After a few such fears were turned into "common knowledge", laws could easily be passed. They were designed to let a few special interests replace cheap freon with various other chemicals that drove the price of a can of install-it-yourself freon from .99 cents to twenty dollars, and required a "licensed professional" to recharge any cooling system. Much the same thing happened with the elimination of "dangerous dioxin", which was replaced, on schedule, with vastly more expensive chemicals. Simple, trusting, "concerned" people could be relied on to "fight" whatever bugaboo they were told to battle. This beautiful, efficient system began to unravel as the internet multiplied. Suddenly, anyone who was interested could find out that most such "problems" were utterly imaginary, invented and publicized only to benefit a few special interests and those whom they bribed for ever more favorable legislation. Formerly, no one paid attention to those who disagreed with established sources of news and opinions. The populace was successfully encouraged to view them as "cranks", "malcontents", and, worse yet, "radicals". Now, thanks to the internet, only the most credulous morons believe anything their governments tell them about any issue that's even remotely connected to raising their taxes.
Saturday, July 4, 2009 Programming programmers. In our age, huge enterprises like Microsoft and Oracle have come into being that do little except programming. Such companies hire programmers and various grades of sub-programmers who write smaller programs that fit into the vast programs that they sell to others. Upper grades of sub-programmers make sure that all the smaller programs work without error. These companies exist to give us, in our day, a crude idea of what The Unprogrammed Programmer did from the beginning. He wrote and downloaded the Creation Program by utilizing efforts of the Sub-Programmers whom He programmed near the beginning. We call them "angels". There are nine orders of angels, who Catholic Fundamentalists see as nine orders of Sub-Programmers. Some put the various "Particle Programs" into what we see as the Periodic Chart of Elements. Other sub-Programmers put those elements into compounds. Others worked on the various energies so that particles would behave according to some rules that the Human Programs With Free Will (that's us!) would be able to work with them. Their programs were so powerful that they were able to make huge stars, black holes, and cosmic dust. In the center of it all, they programmed the Earth, along with the "Eden Program". The Unprogrammed Programmer, Himself, lavished a lot of care, concern, and love on programming the Free Will Programs, even writing powerful programs in each of the free-will creatures to let them think they were just as good as He, Who programmed them. Programming the capacity for such colossal vanity was one of the biggest programming jobs in all creation. Catholic Fundamentalists believe that every single free-will program was written and downloaded to provide each individual vanity between Eden and the end with the free will necessary to choose or reject the Programmer and His Operating Instructions.
Monday, July 6, 2009 Reaching out. As we make our way through life, most of us give far more thought and effort to satisfying our vanity than we realize. This morning, is it vanity that calls me to sit and write of Catholic Fundamentalism's approach to God, creation, and us in it? In a way, even thinking that one of us free will programs can attempt to know The Loving Programmer's will and do it is vanity. So is thinking that we may have a slight grasp of Him, Who created all. Yesterday, I was working with a piece of heavy machinery, a large, 40 hp brush-cutting mower that could cut saplings two or three inches thick. I thought that the silent, spinning blade had been turned off, and missed having my fingers removed by a fraction of an inch while trying to shift the mower. This morning, typing this, I realized the enormity of the severing I barely missed. I type each letter with the realization that I nearly could never type again. My gratitude to my guardian angel knows no bounds. Each one of us, every day, driving, riding, and walking is close to death and disfigurement. (In yesterday's case, "disfingerment"). Being aware of the nearness of disaster keeps us grateful and provides an ongoing check on the destructive power of our own vanity.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009 I'm still haunted by the near accident with the huge brush cutter. I've relived it dozens of times, growing ever more thankful that I still have the eight fingers with which I'd stupidly gripped the rim of the silently spinning blades' housing. If the blades had been a quarter of an inch longer, my fingers would have been severed. If the spindle had been knocked off center by a similar amount, today I'd have no fingers. If the housing had been bent inward, the result would have been the same. We've all had similar close calls. We can thank God for the reminders He kindly provides. Close calls with our bodily safety are, of course, analogies to the more serious results that may come from spiritual mistakes. Mortal sin does more than cut off our fingers, it cuts our souls off from He Who made them. One may reasonably conclude that we have close calls and accidents to our minds and bodies to remind us of the far worse consequences that willful sin has to our souls. Each time we are near to something that may hurt our worldly entities, we may be reminded that we are also always close to falling into sin and the far more permanent suffering that will cause.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009 The Discadalicon of Hugh of St. Victor described, in the 1100s, the same evil that confronts us, today. All of us who work to be saved are puzzled by the preponderance of evil in the world. It takes horrible form in abortion, in the malaria murders of hundreds of millions by the prohibition of DDT, and by the deaths imposed by leftist tyrants from Cuba to once-prosperous Rhodesia. Hugh of St. Victor was a monk of the 12th century. Chapter 4, Book Five of his short work contains seven rules about the study and utterance of Sacred Scripture. The seventh rule concerns evil in the world: "For the apostate angel is the head of all who are evil, and all who are evil are the body of the head." When we consider that The Church is The Body of Christ, it makes perfect sense that those who worship lies, death, and hate rather than truth, life, and love are parts of the body of "the apostate angel". We see that the professional liars who control the airwaves and print media are part of that body. Political figures who control them are a little closer to the source of evil that is the father of lies and corrupting viruses, though not as close to the very source of corruption as those who tell their wholly-owned politicians which lies they are to transform into legislation. Those who tell us lies, whether the seemingly insignificant lies that obsess about the "dangerous levels of salt in potato chips", or the far more lucrative lies, "the world is growing warmer, so we need higher taxes on energy" are part of the body of the apostate angel. We cannot change them by logic, for they have renounced logic. We cannot change them by facts, for they have renounced reality. What we must focus on, first and foremost, is not in changing those who have willingly become part of the body of the apostate angel, but to be sure that we, ourselves, do not ruin our lives and souls by becoming like them. It is not uncommon for those who are the most critical of evil to become a part of it.
Thursday, July 9, 2009 The body of the apostate angel on earth must be made of corrupted spirits within bodies directed toward thinking, saying, and doing evil. Some parts of the body, according to the Prayer to St. Michael, "roam throughout the world, looking for the ruin of souls". When we feel temptations in our own mind, we are dealing with some part of the body of the apostate angel trying to establish itself within our own minds, often getting there when we fail to "avoid the near occasion of sin". The body of the apostate angel has, one may reasonably conclude, the spiritual equivalent of seven body parts, one for each of the seven deadly sins. Inside our minds, but hopefully outside each of our souls, are the battalions of corrupting viruses, each focusing on distracting, separating, and turning us against the God Who made us, Who loves us, and Who wants each of us to have our soul to be with Him forever in Heaven. As we grow closer to He Who programmed us, the members of the body of the apostate angel work harder to move our souls away from the possibility of salvation. We see that we are in a perpetual war with those who want our eternal destruction. We can respond to the corrupting viruses of the apostate angel by asking the help of St. Michael, the Archangel: "St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the Power of God, thrust into Hell Satan and all the evil spirits who roam the world seeking the ruin of souls."
Friday, July 10, 2009 The parts of the body of the apostate angels can be identified because they are always wrong about everything they think, say, and do. The only good thing about identifying those who spread the lies of the virus is that they let us know who's working for the "apostate angel" so that we can disregard them. We can also see, by the lies they prefer to tell, their approximate "ranking" in the hierarchy of the damned. The most vicious liars in the chorus of the condemned tell variations of the "It's not really a baby." lie. Those who love death as much will spread the surprisingly common "Even though DDT may save millions of lives every year, it may cause even more hurtful damage to the environment." ("The environment" is preferably said in tones of hushed awesomeness.) The less vicious in hate's cohorts moan endlessly about "The dangers of humanity's carbon footprint." Those who are a little less hateful than that content themselves with smaller lies. "All of us are eating too much sugar. It's important that we eat much less. Many people do not even read the warning labels, which should be larger and in more languages." It's easy to separate lies from truth, particularly when we understand that before anything is allowed to appear in any government-controlled media, it must be thoroughly vetted and edited before being broadcast in order to best benefit the various groups of liars behind the lie. Therefore, we may reasonably assume that almost everything being told to us by a government-controlled source is a lie. At the same time, we realize we're hearing the lie from an experienced liar, trained to convince us that we're hearing truth from someone who cares deeply about it. The lies, whether in human or verbal form, are piled high upon each other. The safest thing to do is to automatically assume that every single magazine, newspaper, and network broadcast is either a lie or a lesser distraction from more important issues, like "sports", "films", and the latest "books". Simply realizing that lies are lies, and that we must swim through endless seas of them, makes our lives far less worrisome. We can ignore them, and concentrate on worrying about the most important thing we can do, which is to work to be sure that our behavior commends our souls to God. Simply understanding how the war that rages in and around us is waged helps lead us toward that victory.
Saturday, July 11, 2009 All parts of the apostate angel's body embrace lies, hate, and death. As we watch England sinking into a depraved, English-hating tyranny, we see our own future. Untrammeled immigration has filled their country to the breaking point. As the invaders increase, the war waged on the English people by their own government increases in intensity. Children are taken from parents, permits are needed to do anything, regulations multiply, schools rot, and there is no solution in sight. We see the same things being repeated throughout Europe and Canada, while gathering momentum in the United States. The common denominator? The countries being destroyed have all legalized abortion. God has simply turned His face from them. It's unlikely that many of them will ever recognize that as the cause of their collapse. Those who do recognize turning away from God as the ultimate cause of our problems are quickly labeled "religious fanatics" by those committed to the apostate angel. They are quick to identify such people and attempt to marginalize them as "out of touch".
Sunday, July 12, 2009 A Tory's question. In the days before the American Revolution, Tories were in the majority. While they favored more representation for Americans in the English Parliament, they also wanted to maintain the monarchy. Since they'd never seen such a mindless, fad-driven nincompoop as today's Prince Charles, they believed the monarchy to be a stabilizing force that was less likely to be swayed by popular fancies. Many still held to beliefs about "the Divine Right of Kings", and many of them believed that God chose Kings to do His will. A few believed that the King of England was actually descended from King David, a point still largely ignored by a political/literary/scientific establishment who does not fear God as much as the belief in Him. When encouraged to join the Revolution and fight against England, one American Tory asked a profound question about the difference between monarchy and democracy: "Am I better off to be ruled by one King, three thousand miles away, or by three thousand kings a mile away?" If you try to cut down a tree, paint your house the color you want, or park a pick-up truck in some neighborhoods, his question now makes more sense than ever.
Monday, July 13, 2009 Rendering unto Caesar. As most of us know, when Jesus was asked by His enemies if they should pay taxes, He asked to see a coin, pointed out that Caesar's image was on it, and replied, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and render unto God that which is His." This is both a command and a separation of people into those in the Kingdom of God and those who are not. If we feel that the gathering of programmed entities is more important than He Who programmed them, and obey the Unprogrammed Programmer's operating instructions, we have entered into His Program, which is how Catholic Fundamentalists see "Zion" and "The Kingdom of God". A lot of people are able to break free from the goal of accumulating more programmed entities and cheerfully give Caesar what he wants. It's only for a little while.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009 Are we part of "the body of the apostate angel". We are indebted to Hugh of St. Victor for brilliantly describing all the evils in the world as "parts of the body of the apostate angel." The devil's work is all around us, visible and audible in every lie, each unnecessary tax, every intentionally inflicted pain, every nit-picking regulation, and all the deaths from abortion, euthanasia, and malaria. Every human component of every endeavor that justifies hurt is part of the body of the apostate angel. It is a living, though somewhat disorganized, body whose individual components are invariably saying "More for me. Less for you." Each person who becomes a part of the apostate angel's unholy body has renounced God, truth, and love for the satisfaction of their own vanities. The more that someone is willing to sacrifice for vanity, the higher rank granted. The highest-ranking in the devil's body are those who destroy the most lives. Pharmaceutical companies involved with birth control chemicals, for instance, are staffed with the accursed. Movies that glorify the satiation of lust are nearly as bad. But, among those groups, where does God draw the line between sheep and goats? Does a secretary or janitor who's a devout Catholic working at a birth control manufacturer have a chance of salvation? This is where it gets sticky. Manuel Ramirez mows the lush lawn at the headquarters of XYZ Chemicals, the large birth control pill manufacturer. He goes home to his devout Catholic family, attends Church every Sunday and every Holy Day. Does Manny get into Heaven? We can assume so. But, what of the chemist who develops the compounds at the same company, knowing that they will result in the death of the tiniest of babies? We can assume not. So, where in such an organization does a damnable level of culpability begin?
Wednesday, July 15, 2009 It's a great breakthrough to see that "Those who do evil are part of the body of the apostate angel". That brilliant summing-up by Hugh of St. Victor in the 1100's, in one simple sentence, still sheds light on problems we face nearly a millennium later. We often find ourselves saying, of politicians, for instance, "Why can't so-and-so figure out that his votes are doing so much damage?" We are all so besotted with innocence, which often disguises a lack of courage, that we think people who make mistakes don't realize that they're making mistakes. They know exactly what they're doing, with one exception. They simply can't see that their choices have precluded the possibility of a joyful eternity in Heaven. In the great battle that each of us wages for our own soul, we want to take Jesus's advice to steer clear of the broad pathways to destruction. We combine that Scriptural passage with Hugh of St. Victor's description by seeing that traveling that broad pathway to destruction may be likened, if Hugh of St. Victor can be expanded upon, to being actually swallowed within the very gullet of the apostate angel. Thus do those who choose evil become part of his body, being sent where they can do the most harm. After they are thoroughly chewed and digested, they take their place as parts of the body of the apostate angel. When they die, they stay right where they lived, but the tiny pleasures they once had are reversed, and there is naught but wailing and gnashing of teeth remaining for eternity. We should not relish the thoughts of what awaits them, though it's hard to avoid. Instead of rejoicing at the agony they will become, we may consider trying to pry them away from their pathway to misery. That's hard to do! And, they hate it! Still, we have the same duty that our predecessors took upon themselves to save the souls of those whose bodies still live among us. We begin by, thanks to Hugh of St. Victor's unbelievably brilliant exposition of their dilemma, understanding that they are in the body of the evil one. Every endangered soul is a part of that accursed body. It may still be in the devil's mouth, being chewed to be more easily absorbed within it after swallowing. It may have been swallowed, and on its way to the next stage, in the belly of the beast. Or, the lost soul may have passed through that, and have been pumped within the mass of internal sewage to take its place as an operating cell within the body of the apostate angel. Wherever the lost soul is, it is in there, somewhere. And, since that soul is programmed to be reachable as long as it's in that evil body, we must work to see how to do so. First of all, the soul is immutable. It was programmed to operate in a lesser image of the God Who programmed it. It has an affinity for God that the "spiritual digestion" that takes place from mastication to the acid bath of the apostate angel's digestion cannot destroy. We know that the soul always has an affinity for God because we know that the lost souls suffer torment, and that the greatest torment comes from knowing that the separation between it and its Creator is permanent. So, let's look at one of the most hurtful souls still in an earthly body, Fidel Castro's. His soul has embraced such evil that it's destroyed an entire nation. He has had hundreds of thousands of people murdered, and torments millions every day. Yet, when Pope John Paul II visited Cuba, Fidel appeared at the airport, where the Pope shook his finger at him. If the Pope, himself, admonishes him, that admonishment would be a waste of time if not accompanied by a belief that Fidel's soul was still salvageable. Even a lost soul yearns to be saved. Though it may be thoroughly incorporated into the body of the apostate angel, it can still escape. Such a soul knows that if it renounces evil and embraces Christ, its remaining days will, in all likelihood, be accompanied with poverty and pain inflicted by those enraged that it escaped the sure and certain punishment that awaits those too cowardly to break away. That fear tends to keep souls locked in place, so one thing we can ask God to do is to transmit some courage to help the brave soul leave the body of the apostate angel.
Thursday, July 16, 2009 When we focus on people's souls we see each person we meet in a new and different way. We don't let ourselves get distracted by their family, social, occupational, or financial status. We try not to be put off focus by their physical appearance or their mental state. We do know a great truth, each human being we meet is a soul who is in one of two states of being: At any given time, any given soul is either closer to God than we are, or, it is farther away. It is a principle of Catholic Fundamentalism that the human soul is a Programmed Entity that has, itself, been programmed with the ability to program. At the moment of conception, the divine spark began to wrap itself with all the sub-programs that make up our mind and body. The soul is programmed to support itself in a world where gravity rules by building bone programs. It moves itself by downloading its muscle programs, sustains all its physical and mental processes by putting the various digestion and circulation programs into place. It knows something of itself and the past and present outer programs by its nerve and brain programs. Each one of us is, in essence, a programming soul blanketed in a wide array of support programs. Our human programs share many common programs. The "Kidney Program", near the end of "The Digestion Program", is, for instance, so common that one may be taken from one human program and downloaded into another human program that's been programmed with many of the same program characteristics. The "Blood Programs" are similar enough that there is are many human programs who can give and receive blood from each other. There are bone transplants, marrow transplants, heart transplants, and skin grafts. The brain, so far, is too complicated to transplant. The soul, however, is somewhat transplantable. A truly holy person, say Padre Pio or Mother Theresa, is able to actually impart cleansing energy into the souls of others. It never does any good to tell another soul, "Your soul is in trouble." Anyone with half a brain already knows that their soul is always at risk. What most of us spend a lot of time not knowing is that we can get our soul out of trouble, simply by letting it access The Unprogrammed Programmer through The Program (Jesus Christ is The Program in perfect, loving, eternal obedient, human form) with the help of The Holy Wireless Connector, the eternal Three In One. What we can, and should, do is remember that our own soul was once corrupted by error and spiritual viruses. We either were at one time, or would now be, but for a lifetime of miracles, far farther from God than any soul we may meet.
Friday, July 17, 2009 When we focus on souls we see that everyone is a soul in a body whose trappings and actions indicate where they are in relationship to God. When we hear a soul's mind choosing to have its mouth talking about "the importance of a macrobiotic diet", we are hearing a soul trapped in the utter trivia that its mind has heard and believed to be important. Every activity in which a human mind and body engage simply shows where its soul is, whether it's buried in concerns about various programmed entities or concentrating on He Who programmed them. More of us worry about food for our bodies than about the nutrition that our soul needs to grow. That sustenance is to be found in the Seven Gifts of The Holy Wireless Connector Who will, if asked, make better connections between our own "mini-programmer" souls and The Unprogrammed Programmer Who programmed them. We may profitably consider those gifts and their the ideal results of our accepting them:
We have been given the opportunity to access these pathways to The Programmer. Just as the food we eat nourishes our bodies, these gifts feed our starving souls. As we look at these great gifts, we realize that the lost souls, those who have become "part of the body of the apostate angel", reject all of them. In those lives, these wonderful gifts are replaced with the opposite characteristics, and end with the opposite results.
Saturday, July 18, 2009 Most lost souls hate the idea that they are lost so much that they stop thinking that they have souls. Instead, they race to embrace theories that encourage such thinking. They are like light bulbs refusing to believe that electricity exists and think they give off a light that's not nearly as bright as they think it is without it. One of the most common characteristics of lost souls is that they believe "I'm just as good as God, if there is one." That, of course, is idolatry of the self. Their litany is simple: "I do not know that I have a soul. If I don't know that, how can I believe in a God Who (they will not use capitol letters for either God or for pronouns that refer directly to Him) tells me I have to do what He wants to save it?" Such souls have one thing in common, they all want to do things that have been proscribed by the Ten Commandments. "I won't, indeed, I can't, believe in a God Who (again, caps added) would keep me from fulfilling myself. That wouldn't be right." Another group of lost souls believes in God, and thinks that The Commandments should be followed. But, they give into temptations, thereby falling into sin. That soul may go to Confession and be absolved, or, if not Catholic, say, "God forgive me!" When they see how easy that was, they may continue sinning, finding their souls farther and farther from God with each recurrence. The main reason that we have been programmed with minds is to let us see ahead to know that, like dangerous reefs a ship is nearing, the sin to which we draw near may wreck our soul. I am reminded of earlier columns this month, when I came within a fraction of an inch of losing all my fingers to the unfeeling blades of a silently whirling brush hog. We are all within a similar sort of fraction of losing our souls. Temptation arises at any time, and can be overpowering if we do not immediately ask God or our guardian angel to help. Both of them know when we're in danger, and are only waiting to come to our assistance. When do we ask for help? We might turn to the last part of Revelations, John, 22;14-15 to see where all the Heaven-barring behavior we should avoid is listed: "Happy are those who will have washed their robes (the behavior our souls are wrapped in) clean so that they will have the right to feed on the tree of life and can come through the gates into the city. These others must stay outside; dogs, fortune tellers, and fornicators, and murderers, and idolaters, and everyone of false speech and false life."
Sunday, July 19, 2009 Of "Those others who must stay outside". St. John, writing at the end of the last Book of The New Testament, tells us much of what we need to know about the seven kinds of souls who will not be allowed in Heaven. We may wonder if they are listed in ascending order, and explore whether each of those described represents the personification of one of the Seven Deadly Sins: "Dogs" were programmed to do various jobs for people, from herding sheep to providing company for the lonely. Their instincts tell us much about what The Programmer wants, and doesn't want, us to be and do. The dog's loyalty is to itself. It will do whatever the owner can teach it, even jumping through flaming hoops, in order to get food and praise. Similarly, dog-like souls will do whatever their earthly masters order to provide themselves access to programmed earthly entities like money and property. Just as the dog recognizes no higher power than whomever is most likely to feed it, the dog-like human soul blinds itself to any power above the earthly person or organization that provides it with sustenance. "Fortune tellers" deceive and manipulate their more vulnerable neighbors by pretending to have powers greater than other human programs, claiming: "I have been given special access and know the future." Some fortune tellers claim that they simply "know" the future, but most cannot resist claiming to be so close to The Programmer and what He has programmed that they have been granted special access. "For money, I will share my downloads with you." Today, most fortune tellers work for government agencies, from whose august halls they announce the forthcoming beneficent results of plans that are sure to fail to do anything but raise taxes, increase enslavement, or kill people. Those who believe such prognosticators are mostly to be found among the people described in the preceding paragraph. "Fornicators", in the original Latin, are "those who frequent prostitutes", which would include the above group who have prostituted themselves to vanity and lies. Once, an old, wise priest with over a hundred thousand Confessions under his belt told me that lustful desires "never go away". We can, of course, resist lustful desires for people, as well as for programmed entities, and we should. This sin is strongest among the weak, the lonely, and the insecure, so it afflicts all of us. When Ammon wanted improper relations with his half-sister, Tamar, he raped her, and then despised her. Two years later, her brother, Absalom, killed him for what he'd done to Tamar. We may learn from this that the sin has deadly repercussions. "Murderers" is taken from the French for "kill", usually meaning to kill people. In Catholic Fundamentalism, murderers erase other human programs. Murderers don't just kill people. They will also try to kill truth, the desire to do good, and the desire to worship the God Who encourages both truth and goodness. Murder is a manifestation of hate, which makes it an attack on love, which is the essence of The Programmer of He Who programmed all creation into being. Murderers will also try to kill ideas that may make things better for people. Today, murderers support abortion, euthanasia, prohibiting DDT, along with religions and practices that encourage hatred and death. "Idolaters" are those who worship spirits, thoughts, actions, and things that distract and separate we who are created from He Who created us. If the distraction and separation are made big enough, we are lost. Idols are all around us. From antiques to zoology, the world is full of things that were programmed to be interesting enough to take our time and energy away from The Programmer Who made all things to separate those who'd rather obsess about people and things than concern themselves with Him. "Those of false speech" are those who lie. Every mind was programmed with the ability to know truth, and every mind demonstrates that by reading, writing, eating, drinking, watching TV and talking to others. Those who lie about the workings of the programs among which we all live are introducing viruses into the system with every lie they tell. The biggest lies result in needless death and poverty, and we are familiar with them. From "It's not really a baby." to "We have to worry about our carbon footprint.", clouds of vicious, destructive viruses (To Catholic Fundamentalists, lies are living things that grow and spread.) are introduced and reinforced in human operating systems every second, minute, hour, and day. "Why are those poor, lost souls numbering themselves among the damned?", we ask. The answer, "Because they want to." is not enough. We have to do what we can to help, which includes praying for the habitual liars. "God, please save Al Gore's soul." is something we should say every time he, or another similarly pitiful boob, opens his or her lying mouth. Most of us just roll our eyes skyward, which, in itself, may be precisely that prayer in silent form. "Those of false lives" is an all-inclusive catch-all phrase for souls who have embraced all six of the preceding personifications of sinfulness.
Monday, July 20, 2009 "You are as Gods." the Bible tells us. As Catholic Fundamentalists, we realize the The Unprogrammed Programmer is telling us that we have been programmed with similarities to He Who programmed us. We have been given the ability to program. Farmers plan (program) what seeds they will plant. Geneticists re-program various sorts of grain programs to produce the seed that their employers try to get the farmers to incorporate into their planting programs. Others program ways to get the seeds into the ground and get them to grow best. At the end of the grain-farmers' programs are various programs for reaping and harvesting machines that precede the human programs for grain storage and transportation. Every single one of us spends our days programming, programming, and more programming. Some humans are better at programming than others. The best human programmers try to figure out what The Programmer has programmed them to do best. They realize that each human program has been given unique gifts and abilities to program for themselves, and they encourage each to do best with the programming skills programmed within us. The worst programmers program power structures, like Cuba's secret police, that force people to operate according programs that force them to give money to them. The Unprogrammed Programmer doesn't like them. "Esau have I hated" describes how He feels about human programs who won't do His will. In that case, Esau should have been at home comforting his dying father, obeying the "honor thy father" operating instruction. Instead, he used his free will to choose to go hunting. He favors human programs that use their own free will to find and then do His will for them. So, the Esau-souls among us lose their inheritances. He has left each of us human programs plenty of operating instructions, and has provided each of us with the free will to decide to follow them, or not.
Monday, July 20, 2009 Programming errors run rampant in the higher levels of governments. Those who get very far ahead in government "services" tend to hate the very neighbors whose work generates taxable income. Those who generate taxable income are vilified unless they give large amounts of money to buy protection from government intervention. Governments, over time, tend to squeeze lesser criminals out of their businesses, often by throwing them in jail. About the time, for instance, that numbers-runners were jailed, governments got into the lottery business. Now, of course, "big business" is criminalized, and government is moving into the auto, medical, and insurance businesses. Governments raise taxes relentlessly. As long as the productive portions of a society are allowed the freedom they need to provide goods and services at ever-lower prices, the increased government employment is not as hurtful as it might first appear. Today, millions of teachers, policemen, and other low-level civil servants owe their jobs to the fact that producers are able to produce at lower costs than ever. The funding that provides millions of civil servant jobs for the largely decent people who have them is threatened when more hateful people take control of the economic system. They don't mind killing the golden goose that provides the taxable income the lower-level government employees need. Since they hate everyone equally, such political leaders don't really care if their attacks on the private sector destroy funding for the public sector. Smarter public servants know this. Oddly enough, they are often among the first to vote for more conservative candidates, knowing that established cash flows are not as likely to be diverted or destroyed.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 Lots of rabbits this year, for awhile. As I type this, a young rabbit is sitting on the grass, about ten feet away looking at me through the open window out of his right eye. My yard, most of June and July, has had a half-dozen rabbits in it at any time. I've never seen as many as there are this year. Previous generations of farmers who lived here would have shot this particular rabbit immediately, or their dogs would have run it down and eaten it. But, I have no dogs or cats, and the rabbits have multiplied. This young rabbit has no idea how lucky it is. It, and its parents, are alive not through anything they've done to defend themselves. They owe their lives to a local trapper who has literally wiped out all the foxes and coyotes within a mile, and the hawks seem to have disappeared. Past generations of Americans were raised in similar safety. Those who would prey on us were kept away by the most powerful armies, navies, and air force in the history of the world. In the first part of last summer, I had a lot of rabbits, too, though not as many as this year. Then, they began to disappear. Suddenly, there were none around during the day. I wondered what happened to them until, one morning, I went outside early and a large owl took flight from the top of the garage. It had been showing up in the evening, and had, in a couple of weeks of nights, picked off nearly every rabbit, silently swooping down on them in the night with claws as sharp as nails.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 Wasting time. Most of us waste a lot of time. We could all be doing a lot more good than we're doing, but we don't. We spend a lot of time doing far, far less than we should, and most of that focused on silly things of little ultimate worth. My own waste of time is abysmal. If I'm fortunate enough to be sent to Purgatory, a foreseeable punishment is having to be made to relive every wasted moment, and compare it with the good that could have been done had my priorities been better. It would be a horrible way to be punished, knowing that the evils around me were able to do what they did only because all of us who spend time and energy avoiding sin do not spend enough effort doing good. Feeling the consequences of our own sloth on our own souls is going to be agonizingly awful. The wonderful thing about Catholicism is that there is no sin it does not recognize. The sins of omission are forgivable, and as we recognize how frequently we commit them, we should drive ourselves to our knees, and pray for the saints to share their zeal with us. Once in a while, I think about spending an entire day without wasting a minute. My lack of success in even spending one entire day, out of the thirty or forty thousand that I may have, completely busy doing something important or useful has, so far, been too difficult.
Thursday, July 23, 2009 Political systems are a mess from one end of the world to the other. One may conclude, from their utter awfulness, that they're supposed to be a mess, simply to separate sheep from goats. Today's Reading, from Matthew 13; 10-17, includes the following: "You shall indeed hear but not understand, Those who embrace loving our neighbors continue to be appalled at the fate awaiting those who refuse to be converted and healed. But, they have chosen to gain things in this world by hurting their neighbors. We see them impoverishing those around them by raising the price of energy. We see them killing their neighbors by denying them access to better medical systems and messing up existing medical systems. We see them turning generations of children into helpless illiterates who think only of satisfying physical desires. We understand that they have given into various types of bribes to do these horrible things. We explain the awful hurt they are doing to their neighbors, but they do not hear. We show them how much damage they are doing, and they do not see. Their hearts are, as Scripture tells us, "gross". They do not want to see, hear, or understand. Even an ultrasound picture of a living baby is not enough to let them see that the unborn baby is a human being, one of their most helpless neighbors. Rather than understand, in every generation, many, maybe most, choose to reject The Loving Programmer. His vast Creation Program put each of our souls in each of our bodies to let each of us decide whom we will obey and worship and be subject to in this world and which of the two kingdoms beyond awaits our inevitable arrival.
Thursday, July 23, 2007 Surrounded by lunacy or something worse? As we grow in age and wisdom, we begin to perceive that we are taxed and regulated by maniacs. Each group of them begins slowly, paying some passing obeisance to common sense. Then, as they become entrenched and divert steady streams of cash flowing into their agencies and departments, their inner desires emerge and they begin to take the bribes for which they lust. We go through several stages during the growth of our understanding. At first, we have a hard time believing that anyone could worry about something as trivial as, say, spotted owls. Then, we find that every such issue being raised by agencies and their associates in the "free" press is only a surface concern. We understand that politicians and agencies have been bribed to pass laws creating, expanding, or protecting the cash flows of the bribing groups, and have selected some small facet of nature to use as the wedge of an attack on the incomes of other people. If we are wise, we begin to understand that this process is subordinate to yet another, darker force. Those who push for favored treatment have that same process turned against themselves. As the coal and natural gas lobbies, for instance, make it impossible to build nuclear reactors that provide the cheapest, cleanest energy of all, the regulations they impose on the nuclear power groups are available to be used against them. Soon, fantasies of wind, tide, and solar power generate enough funding to bribe legislators to attack the coal and natural gas interests. Power costs are increased, and everyone grows poorer. While this enriches a few, it impoverishes billions. One can imagine, for example, what building a dozen or so new nuclear reactors would do for Africa, where the only power for many is that which is supplied by their own muscles. Then, we may reconsider some of the earlier columns this month that mentioned The Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor, the Saxon monk who, in the 1100s, described those who chose to do evil as "parts of the body of the apostate angel". Considering his description helps us see that those we thought were merely mistaken fanatics are actually part of a great, coordinated, living body of evil that seeks to destroy life, truth, freedom, and any system that works. Those involved in those great evils wrap themselves in lies, bits of which they swallow whole, a reverse of the Catholic's Communion, every day absorbing more corruption from the body of the apostate angel. They may prosper greatly during their days in the clay, but are condemned in the next life's endlessness to the most painful pits of Hell. So, maybe "lunacy" is the best way to describe the thought processes that would lead them to give up so much for so long for so little. Understanding them merely requires that we realize just how bad "lunacy" can be.
Friday, July 24, 2009 Pity the poor fools who continue to be bamboozled by the Global Warming lies. These simple pawns spend their lives being moved from square to square on the Great Chessboard, inevitably sacrificed by those who move them. They were moved onto the Global Freezing squares thirty years ago. Then, they were moved to the squares delineating the Dioxin Fright. After that, they were moved into the Diet Scare squares, where all obediently agreed that meat, fish, milk, fat, fiber, sugar, and salt were deadly killers. While those great panics were still ongoing, many pawns found themselves moved onto the Ozone square, and worried mightily about words they could not spell and have now forgotten. "Was it fluorocarbons or carbonfluoros?", the dimly aware sometimes still ask themselves. They get confused about the squares to which they've been moved. "Was I on the acid rain square before or after I went to the Alar square?" Most recently, masses of pawns were shuttled onto the Global Warming squares, which they still claim to be "the greatest threat humankind has ever faced" even as record low temperatures have been recorded every day, week, and month for the past few years. As the poor pawns were shoved from square to square, where the brighter ones learned and repeated the latest lies, their analytical abilities were eroded. Now, they are reduced to little more than a mindless pawn-herd, thinking whatever they are told, intellectually paralyzed by untruths with which their thinking is permanently short-circuited. At some level, they know they have never been right about anything, and know just as well that they never will be. They have lost the joys of independent thought while exchanging the joys of truth and freedom for the proverbial "mess of pottage". They have no more self-confidence, no more free will, no more freedom. "Can I ever be right about anything?", a few of the less dim bulbs wonder, even as they replace their incandescents with the new, mercury-laden bulbs, successfully foisted onto the pawn-herd at great cost to each one of them. Pity the poor fools as they are moved across the board, even as they think they are intelligently moving themselves, to be sacrificed at the whim and will of those whom they have allowed to control their lives.
Saturday, July 25, 2009 The "pawns on a chessboard" analogy may continue by imagining several levels of chessboards. We, moving across our individual board from birth to death may picture another chessboard, immediately above us. On "God's Chessboard", above the Kingdom of the World, to which we can move any time we want, the "pawns" are no longer manipulated as easily. There, we decide what we believe and what way we will move toward He Who made the board below and everything on, above, and below it. The happiest ex-pawns move closer to God, above the distractions of the lower chessboard(s). As we rise, we look back on the Kingdom of the World, and see the pawns behind, not even struggling as they are moved from square to square, either to be trampled by an elephant, have their head chopped off by a mad queen, lanced by a black knight, or led farther astray by a rogue churchman, always attacking them at unexpected angles. Their fate, from above, is sure and certain. The only hope they have is to do as we have, and leave lower chessboard for The Kingdom of God, a parallel chessboard above. Some will try. Some, like us, will make it. If we reach out a helping hand, we must keep in mind that some on the board are only waiting for a chance to grab us and pull us back into the world below. I just ran across a quote on instapundit.com from William F. Buckley that is appropriate when considering pawns and where they originate: In Up From Liberalism, he said:
Monday, July 27, 2009 The culture of death is anxious for as many deaths as possible. As The Church predicted, they began by legalizing and encouraging contraception, moved to abortion, and now, euthanasia is publicly mentioned. Power death-lovers have paid huge sums for legal decisions allowing for "assisted" suicide, preparing the way for it to be mandatory. The problem is, many are afraid that they may lose something. Babies are routinely aborted for because one or both parents "can't afford a baby, right now". Young people are, whenever possible, shunted into life-shortening practices. Old people are directly threatened. Oddly, few fight against the culture of death. "What can I do?", we ask as we understand the incredible size of the goliath that wants to destroy us. None of us are too busy to say, every day, the prayer mentioned back in the beginning of this month's columns: "Saint Michael the Archangel, Praying that vital prayer takes little time, and little effort, but it shows God that we care and that we know we need His power to make things better. Praying is more than most people do. As we grow in faith, we see that there is great help available beyond. We have but to ask for it . It helps in the frequency and intensity of our requests to live in a way that makes our requests of that great power consistent with our obedience to it. Since none of us is as good as we can be, we may at least mention our shortcomings in our prayers, so we know that God knows that we aren't trying to put something over on Him.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009 The most important thing that any of us can do let our soul grow closer to God. Reading the Bible every day helps. It also helps to read the Daily Readings that The Church uses in the daily Mass. The Rosary is a great source of strength for moving our soul toward God. As we take advantage of these many assists, we are a little like a person on a sailboat. It has silently moved so far away from shore that we suddenly realize, "I'm really a long way from where I started." We want to avoid going back to the shore, though from the distance, we can certainly see and understand better what's going on there. From our new vantage point, we can see lots of people, doing lots of things. We can, from this new perspective, see lots of ways that we do quite well on the teeming shores. We mustn't be tempted to return in order to accumulate more of what is now more clearly as "pottage". We are, of course, surrounded by other boats. Some are moving toward the final horizon that awaits us all at various distances from shore. Some have come to a dead halt in the water. Many are drifting, aimlessly, hoping for better directions, but afraid to ask. Others are making their way back to the shore, realizing that they're over very deep water, and wanting to return to the seemingly safer life they once knew. Once we've set our course, and asked the Navigator to provide help reading the charts, it's better to keep going, though there are ever fewer boats traveling with us. We can get assistance from earlier people who've made the trip. They left their own charts and logs, as we find in the Lives of The Saints.
Thursday, July 30, 2009 The more things change, the more they stay the same. From Lactantius, writing of the early Christian era: "While Diocletian, that author of ill, and deviser of misery, was ruining all things, he could not withhold his insults, not even against God. This man, by avarice partly, and partly by timid counsels, overturned the Roman empire. For he made choice of three persons to share the government with him; and thus, the empire having been quartered, armies were multiplied, and each of the four princes strove to maintain a much more considerable military force than any sole emperor had done in times past. There began to be fewer men who paid taxes than there were who received wages; so that the means of the husbandmen being exhausted by enormous impositions, the farms were abandoned, cultivated grounds became woodland, and universal dismay prevailed. Besides, the provinces were divided into minute portions, and many presidents and a multitude of inferior officers lay heavy on each territory, and almost on each city. There were also many stewards of different degrees, and deputies of presidents. Very few civil causes came before them: but there were condemnations daily, and forfeitures frequently inflicted; taxes on numberless commodities, and those not only often repeated, but perpetual, and, in exacting them, intolerable wrongs.
Thursday, July 30, 2009 There are vast differences in pay scales between those who tell lies and those who believe them. Al Gore, for instance, appears to have made one or two, depending on who's counting, hundred million dollars from various aspects of the Global Warming Lies. The credulous nincompoops who've been reliably taking in and re-broadcasting those lies are comparative paupers. This shows what a good bargainer the apostate angel is. Al Gore, who holds out for a lot of money, gets hundreds of millions of dollars. The poor, pitiful boobs who merely absorb and pass on lies end up losing a few hundred dollars every month of their lives to pay higher energy costs. So, by buying one person, and a few media supporters to provide him with something that the simpler folks think is "credibility", the personification of evil is able to wrap several hundred million souls in confusing, impoverishing lies, convincing his followers to make themselves poorer in the process. Those very same people, usually the least intelligent 20% of the electorate, even as Mr. Gore makes huge sums that come out of their own pockets, will be quick to complain about the "unfairness of executives making a hundred times more than workers". Their minds are too dimmed to even notice the selectivity of their complaints. If the salary disparity about which they love to complain is pointed out by comparing Mr. Gore's newfound fortune to their own economic status, there is a momentary confusion, but no improvement in analytical ability, and no diminution of the respect they have for Mr. Gore. They will simply ignore any disagreeable truth about whatever's being said and continue their march to perdition. At the same time, we who seek truth are often paralyzed by thinking that our spiritual and mental abilities are better at discerning worldly reality than they often are. In our innocence, we tend to believe: "All people seek truth. If I can point out to them some factual error or inconsistency, they will be glad to move away from inaccuracy and inconsistency toward truth." Many of us simply do not understand that most of those who have embraced lies do not want to move toward truth. They prefer their lies, even when, as in the case of Mr. Gore's insane desire for more energy taxes providing him with a vast personal fortune while it leaves them with less money than ever. The lies they cherish cost them far more than they'll ever let themselves understand. Only loving them may encourage them to think more highly of obeying the God Who programmed them with the ability to draw closer to truth. They are not used to being loved, if only because they have some awareness of how full of hate they are. They are even less accustomed to including within their thought patterns the idea that God loves them more than anyone else ever will. One goal is to let them realize that.
Friday, July 31, 2009 Prayers. When we pray, Catholic Fundamentalists understand that we sending a request to The Unprogrammed Programmer, asking Him to provide special programming assistance for us. For instance, a farmer may ask for programming assistance to save his crops from drought. That's a simple, forthright prayer. In most years, such programming requests are answered. But, when were they answered? Once, Mother Theresa had a patient who required a rare, expensive medication. She asked God to provide it. A few minutes later, an aide, carrying a basket of donated medicines from a hospital in the United States passed by. The particular medicine Mother Theresa asked for was on the top of the basket. The medicine was either "programmed in place", or her prayer had been answered months previously, when the medicine was donated, packed, shipped, unpacked, and distributed with the end design being that it appeared in answer to her immediately preceding prayer. We may assume that The Unprogrammed Programmer knows what we'll be praying for in the future. Therefore, He already knew what we'd be praying for today, and has programmed them into His various supporting programs. If we are using software from Microsoft, we may ask a programmer at the company for help in programming. Such requests may go to a "help desk", which is hopefully manned by someone with the skill and desire to help us. We do not call Bill Gates directly. Each of us has a "help desk" in the form of our guardian angel. Many of our desires, especially those that involve obtaining programmed entities, are not particularly worthy, but some are still granted so that we can learn how transient such things are programmed to be, and from that, move into higher concerns.
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