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October 2009 |
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Thursday, October 1, 2009 Still under the radar. Catholic Fundamentalism is an alternative to the Conventional Reality in which most of us operate our thoughts, words, and deeds. Since we tend to be quite comfortable with what we believe, we see no reason for change. "If it's not broke, don't fix it.", we say of our beliefs with a smugness that irritates the saints more than almost anything we do. On the surface, Catholic Fundamentalism is simple. "God can program in three dimensions. He programmed energies and particles. Then, He compiled them into systems and beings. We are beings with free will, and the entirety of creation was programmed to separate those of us who would believe in Him and follow His Operating Instructions from those who won't." When we consider the vast Creation Program, we realize that it could have been written and downloaded by such a powerful Programmer, in three dimensions, in much the way Genesis says it was. The Programmer made Himself some help. In this vast endeavor of bringing all of space and time into being, He programmed countless Programming Assistants, whom our Iron Age ancestors called "angels". Some of those angels decided they should have a "union shop", and started working against The Programmer and The Program. Too bad for them and for those who choose to follow their vain examples, but He knew how The Program was to operate. Jesus Christ, of course, is The Program. He is everything The Programmer programmed; summed up in perfect, living, obedient, human form. Between the Programmer and The Program is the personification of His version of the interaction that goes on between a human programmer and his program. The being that makes it possible for the Programmer and Program to be one is The Holy Wireless Connector, the living and eternal verb. The oneness of those three, Programmer, Program, and Holy Wireless Connector may be more easily understood by thinking with those terms, along with "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit".
Friday, October 2, 2009 Catholic Fundamentalism helps us understand this passage, beginning with First Colossians, 1;15: "He is the image of the unseen God and the first-born of all Creation, for in Him were created all things in Heaven and on earth; everything visible and everything invisible, Thrones, Dominations, Sovereignties, Powers--all things were created through Him and for Him. Before anything was created, He existed and He holds all things in unity." These words are made clearer when we describe The Father as The Unprogrammed Programmer and The Son as The Living Program in human form. The Program was written at the beginning. The Program took human form, in the person of Jesus Christ, within Whom every programmed entity is contained. From the beginning, it was programmed that each of us free will creatures would move toward or away from The Programmer. The Program, which we can physically download at the Eucharist, allows us to have The Program become part of us and allows us to become part of The Program, The Church, The Body of Christ. The vast bulk of the Creation Program is similar to our autonomic nervous system. Just as our pineal gland goes on doing whatever it does, the stars shine and the rains fall pretty much automatically, except when Programming Changes interfere, often at the request of our prayers. The entirety of the Creation Program was written and downloaded simply to provide our souls with the opportunity to save themselves by joining with The Program into which we may choose to write ourselves. One easy step is to simply ask The Holy Wireless Connector to plug us in.
Friday, October 2, 2009 It is hard to imagine a worse wreck in the world than Prince Charles. It is almost as if shallowness, itself, decided to take human form and live among us. There has neither been a hare-brained scheme that he did not embrace nor a false alarm that did not concern him "Deeply." He moves from fad to fad as a moth flutters from candle to candle. While some may be satisfied with emptying one's mind of all intellectual respectability, the poor prince has sunk further. He now insists that he is not "The Defender of the Faith", but that he is "The Defender of Faiths." This keeps him from having to offend any of the rising minority of professionally, perpetually angry malcontents who wish death on the Christians and Jews of his "realm". If the living Son of God said, "The lukewarm water, I spit out of my mouth.", how much farther from goodness will the soul of such be expelled? To be sure, he is not the first in the long line of royal apostates. But, at least Henry VIII and Elizabeth I had enough sense to maintain the form, while denying the substance, of The Church upon whose foundation their throne once rested. It has taken a few centuries for the rot to spread from crown to kingdom, but it has. Without the emergence of an Alfred, England will soon be another Ishmaelite state. Then, joy will disappear. Laughter will be replaced by the grim business of being ruled by whomever is most filled with hate. A good thing about Prince Charles? He does provide an encapsulation of how smoothly one may slide from grace. And, by seeing how often we agree with what he says is right and important, he provides a living milestone from which we can calculate our own place and direction on the broad path to destruction.
Saturday, October 3, 2009 Plastic or paper? Paper grocery bags don't work as well as plastic bags. And, they're far more expensive. A plastic bag costs about a penny. A paper bag? Around a nickel. As a result, plastic is replacing paper bags by the billions. Nanny has noticed. "Hmmm.", she says, brows furrowed in what she believes indicates deep, deep thought, "Since they cost less, those bags should be taxed! How can we do that? I know! Let's tell people they're bad! I know! We'll tell 'em 'Plastic bags hurt the environment!'" Nanny's friends are told of this opportunity. One of them says: "Plastic bags don't really hurt the environment. All the plastic bags that a person uses in a year can fit in one plastic bag that only weighs a pound or so. There's really not a problem." Nanny says, "That won't do! We need a problem!" "Well,", another Nanny suggests, "we could tell the fools that so many plastic bags end up in the ocean that precious marine life is being destroyed. We'll tell the fools that billions of plastic bags are floating around in huge gyres centered in the Pacific Ocean, where they're choking whales and dolphins. It's our duty to make whatever investments are necessary to protect those magnificent animals, and the only 'fair way' to do that is a tax on plastic bags!" "And," Nanny knows, "when the fools have to pay the tax, they're standing in line, with money in their pockets, all ready to pay. It's the best possible time to tax them. Why shouldn't we?" Nanny is now pondering, as the dollars generated from five and ten cent taxes on each plastic bag begins to roll it, "If they aren't smart enough to figure that out, we can tax every single can, every single bottle, every single . . . "
Saturday, October 3, 2009 The phrase "you must be born again", along with the question, "Are you born again?" are surprisingly offensive to some who see such statements as badges of ignorance, intolerance, self-righteousness and a lot of other things that give them an excuse not to think about the process or its meaning. Catholic Fundamentalists try to replace Iron Age words with descriptions more meaningful to those living in our Age of Electron Transfer. Instead of using the phrase "born again", we think of the same process as erasing from ourselves the old operating systems and downloading The Program and The New Operating Instructions. As we download more of The Program, we become aware that billions throughout the ages have done so before us. As we learn about them, we find similar pathways, like The Confessions of St. Augustine, that lead us from our vain concerns about programmed entities to think about He Who programmed them. And, as we look at any single program, for instance, a butterfly, we see some of the thousands of subsidiary programs that have been compiled to produce the program we contemplate. We are struck with the sheer, overwhelming genius of The Programmer and His brilliant assistants, the angels who actually set up the universe in which the butterfly was downloaded. Looking around the world, we see so many programs that it's almost impossible to imagine a programmer with the power to program it all. That's because we haven't erased enough of our Vanity Program, which doesn't want to take its rightful place as being so incredibly inferior to He Who programmed everything we sense. The more we understand the power of The Programmer, the less impressed we are with our own abilities. Vanity resents being upstaged, so the greater we think God is, the more we are automatically disliked by those more mired in vanity. Rather than using the phrase "born again", we may want to say, "It's vitally important to erase and over-write the Program of Self-Love with the "Love God and Your Neighbor Program."
Sunday, October 4, 2009 We spend our lives dealing with two types of programs, His and ours. The universe is made out of a vast series of interlocking programs, all woven together by The Programmer and His assistants. We, made in His image, are also able to program. Unlike Him, we are not programmed with the ability to "program from scratch", creating something out of nothing. But, we can rearrange some of His programs and program things that we need or think we need. Our ability to program is part of the meaning contained in the passage "We are made in the image of God." Things that humans program include things like two by fours, that we program in ever more automated processes out of His various tree programs. Among the most complicated human programs are large, complicated airplanes, rockets, and warships. Huge cornpickers are surprisingly complicated human programs. When we ask another free-will program, "What do you do?", we are really seeking an assessment of that person's programming abilities. A finish carpenter has a different, more complicated set of programming skills than a framing carpenter. So, when the answer is "I'm a carpenter?", most of us will ask, "In what kind of carpentry do you specialize?" in order to more accurately assess the programming abilities of the person to whom we're talking. It's always tempting to hire a less skilled programmer to do what we think a more skilled programmer would charge us more to do. That sort of money-saving shortcut rarely works out well, but hope springs eternal in the hearts of those who think they can outsmart the program. Those of less skill often take advantage of such "smart" buyers, and enjoy having them think they're getting a bargain. We should, therefore, always remind ourselves to "get with the program". We should start by getting with His, the very biggest Program of all. It will save us a lot of trouble for a very long time.
Monday, October 5, 2007 Pyramids of lies. Along the Nile valley, the automation of irrigation reduced the number of people needed for food production. The armed forces were as big as they needed to be, and the unemployed farm workers had to be kept busy. So, those made umemployed by technology were made to build pyramids, from which the souls of the pharaohs could be launched into space, apparently toward the star Sirius. Why someone would want their soul to be sent to Sirius is beyond the scope of this column, but they must have had their reasons. As a result of convincing leaders that pyramids should be built, people were dragooned into work squads. They quarried, cut, and moved stones for generations, heaping up one vast pile after another. Some worked on elaborate paintings, carvings, coffins. Their output was all the more remarkable for its utter uselessness. The only good thing about them was that they did provide tourist income for a couple of thousand years. Even today, people spend a lot to go to Egypt, look at the pyramids, and be impressed with the scope of large-scale government projects thousands of years ago. Governments never stop building pyramids. Today's monuments have little lasting structure and more lies. We see vast edifices in which the environment, social justice, and universal well-being are served by endless hordes of priests and acolytes in the new pyramids. As long as the armed forces are maintained, it really doesn't matter much, except for those whom they help. The recipients of such "aid" are routinely destroyed by such assistance.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009 Loving neighbors is loving whom? The command we have been given to love our neighbors as ourselves is clear. When we consider our actual neighbors, of whose many, many faults we are acutely aware, we find that it's a surprisingly difficult order to obey. Most of us are far more aware of our neighbors' faults than our own, and we may tend to treat them as the (grossly?) flawed creatures that it's always easy to see them as. Indeed, some of us often feel we have a duty to familiarize ourselves with our neighbors' faults, and share those thoughts with surprising frequency. When we reflect upon our feelings about our neighbors, we may find that they reflect our feelings about He Who programmed them. If we look, we automatically find another reflection; our neighbors feel the same way about us as we feel about them. Those not committed to obeying the injunction to love their neighbors sometimes tend to despise them. As they do so, they find themselves sharing negative feelings about their neighbors with other neighbors. Frequently, those who have received those opinions feel a duty to share them with the very neighbors whom have been disparaged. Harmony is thereby discouraged. "Neighbor" means "nearby dweller". Since we know that the Creation Program spans what we think of as millions of light years, it's not unreasonable to think that "neighbor" means everyone on our tiny planet. Certainly, a person living twelve and a half thousand miles away, as far away from us as it's possible for a non-astronaut to get, is a "neighbor" when compared with people who may be thought to live somewhere beyond Alpha Centuri. As we attempt the process of considering everyone in the world our neighbor, we come face-to-face with the fact that a billion or so of our neighbors are in a religion teaching that those who are not of their faith must either be killed or converted by any means necessary. Similarly, we have hundreds of millions of other neighbors who have embraced political theories that put the means in place for putting their own hatred and dislike of virtually everyone into practice. We may conclude that we've been given marching orders that send us to death. Or, we may give serious thought to what may be regarded as a "just war". There's always a lot to think about.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009 ". . . it should be noted that knowledge is higher to the degree that it is more unified and extends to more things.", St. Thomas Aquinas With all my heart, I hope he'd approve of Catholic Fundamentalism! It is, after all, amazingly "unified" and undeniably, it "extends to more things". Reading that sentence justified the last quarter-century of exploring the wonderful concept that "God can program in three dimensions. He has programmed particles, and compiled them into systems and beings. Some of those beings have free will, and have been downloaded, in living form, within the vast Creation Program simply to give them the ability to believe in, or reject, He Who programmed them within it." Catholic Fundamentalism does provide a solution to a problem to which St. Thomas gave a lot of thought. He was challenged to unite Aristotle, who was regarded as the high point of human wisdom, and his belief that the world always existed, with the the Catholic belief that the world was created as Genesis describes. On the surface, it must be one or the other. The Catholic Fundamentalism solution to Aquinas's dilemma is to simply say that "God, The Unprogrammed Programmer, is eternal. So were His programs. The world may be said to both 'have always been' (while still in the program, prior to its download), and created five days before the Adam Program was downloaded simply because it's existence was eternal within The Creation Program." The difference between Aristotle and The Church is simply understanding that The Programmer, Program and Download are, all three of them, both the same and different, much as the Three Persons in One God.
Thursday, October 8, 2009 Odd coincidence. Sometimes, we meet remarkably intelligent people who sincerely want to do good, do good works, and do not believe. They are aware of evil, and have a hard time believing in a God Who would allow it to exist. They may feel that: 1. Evil is stronger than good, and are fearful of offending it. 2. They have so thoroughly embraced the various God-denying and God-minimizing theories abounding in Conventional Reality that they ignore their own soul's innate affinity for He Who made it. 3. If God created the universe to provide us with free will, it causes such suffering that it is not worth having. "I have a hard time believing in Him because of the pain and suffering that some of us free-will programs do to the helpless, innocent, and unsuspecting." The personification of evil is thereby encouraged to do even more evil because doing so keeps such sensitive souls from salvation. After meeting with a semi-non-believer who did good works, was aware of the effects of evil, and had, thereby, separated himself from God, I puzzled about it. Later that day, I ran across something from Aquinas, who, on a somewhat related point, had quoted its most likely author, St. Paul, in the Letter to the Hebrews, 11;6: "Now, it is impossible to please God without faith, since anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and rewards those who try to find Him." That's a very strong message from a man close to God, with universal words like "impossible" and "anyone" within it. If Aquinas, one of the smartest men who ever lived, uses the Letter to the Hebrews as an authority, and that authority was also accepted by the Church Fathers, we can certainly consider how difficult it is to deny the validity of the statement, and accept as a fact, or, at least, an operating principle, that without faith, there is absolutely no possibility of getting to Heaven. A supporting temporal truth is similar: "Just as you can't practice law without passing the Bar Exam, you can't get to Heaven without believing." It would appear that James's "faith without works is dead" is the flip side of "without faith, it is impossible to get into Heaven." So, we may conclude that "faith without works" is as useless as "works without faith" when it comes to passing our final exam.
Thursday, October 9, 2009 Next Sunday's Scripture Reading is bizarre. It is from Mark 10;25, in which we are told: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." When a much younger man, I decided to go into business. After from resigning from my tenured job, I looked for opportunities, and found one. Then, I ran into the above passage. At the time a Protestant, I had adopted the position of taking the Bible literally, and ran right into a stone wall. "What's the point of going into business to make money if I can't go to Heaven." I was paralyzed. There were, to be sure, many "easy interpretations", such as "The 'needle's eye' referred to a narrow gate in Jerusalem's wall that was so narrow that camels had to be unloaded to get through." Others explained that it was simply an allegory. Too stubborn to listen to that, I remained in limbo until an odd thing happened. A thought came into my mind, and asked "How would you put a camel through the eye of a needle?" "I'd freeze-dry it, grind it up into dust-like particles, dilute them, and dribble it through the needle's eye with a tiny hypodermic needle." When the thought came to me that such a process would not produce a camel that could walk, just as a three-block long needle with an eye the size of a barn door couldn't be used to sew a button on a shirt, I was stumped. The thought continued: "What you do," it seemed to explain to me, "is take an egg from an ovulating camel. Put it on a microscope slide, floating in amniotic fluid, and fertilize it with a donation from a male camel. When the fertilized egg begins to divide, carefully take a sterilized needle, put the eye under the growing cells, and they'll go through the eye of the needle like a ping-pong ball through a basketball hoop. Then, reinsert the fertilized egg into the mother camel. When that camel is born, it will be a camel that has gone through the eye of a needle." So, I went into business.
Friday, October 10, 2009 Once we see that God can program in three dimensions, we may unite the disparity that exists between theology and science. In the Middle Ages, it was largely understood that "Science is the handmaiden of theology." During the reformation, emphasis was shifted from The Church to the state, and from theology to science. That may help us understand that "reformation" is not always a step forward, resulting, as it has, in millions of aborted babies, destructive wars, taxes and regulations that are more akin to slavery than freedom, and generations of lost souls who've wasted their own eternities attempting to find salvation where it wasn't, isn't, and can never be. Science is nothing more than the study of His programs. Each field of science studies limited aspects and numbers of His programs. They pay little attention to other programs and give no time at all to considering He Who programmed them. Scientists who break through to Catholic Fundamentalism understand that science is self-limiting; nowhere in any state-supported science are employees allowed to even consider The Programmer. Instead, most science is funded by those who wish to separate man from God, eliminating Him as a Prime Mover, pushing Him ever farther back in time, thus proclaiming, and, to them, proving, His inability to do anything worthy of their august consideration even as they glorify the power of whatever state they're in by building vast pyramids of lies to justify ever more funding.
Saturday, October 10, 2009 Living a lie has consequences. Recently, an experiment was done with two groups of Canadians. One group, selected from politically-correct, "green store" shoppers was compared with "normal" shoppers at a "regular" store: "In this experiment that underlined the moral turpitude of eco-conscious consumers, two groups carried out purchases either in a "green store" or a normal store. They were then told they were to participate in an exercise intended to help design new tests, in which they would be paid money based on answers given. It was revealed to them in a dry run beforehand that they could lie about the answers in order to increase their earnings. They were also told to pay themselves - unsupervised - from an envelope of cash. As the profs put it: 'Thus, in addition to having the opportunity to lie, participants could also steal...'Those who had made purchases in the green store lied and stole significantly more than the normal-store buyers, according to Mazar and Zhong." So, believing lies that result in impoverishing one's neighbors seems to justify lying and stealing for personal gain. The question rises, "Why do some people have an affinity for believing lies?" One answer is that they have chosen to disregard God and His instructions. That leaves a vacuum that's easily filled by whatever comes along. Advice that seems appropriate: Avoid dealings with those who believe things that aren't true.
Monday, October 12, 2009 It's difficult for many to accept The Trinity. From the beginning, those who sought reasons to ignore or attack Christianity used The Trinity as a way to disparage Christians by calling them "polytheists" who worshipped many Gods. Such arguments were popular with Jewish believers, and with Arians, Manicheans, and Moslems. They are still used by many who seek to deny the teachings of The Church. Catholic Fundamentalists understand that, and respond to the same argument with different words: "We see The Father as The Unprogrammed Programmer. Like a father, He loves His children, but wants them to find Him as a result of their own urge for truth. "We see The Son as The Program. He came among us in perfect, obedient, human form. As Colossians 1;15 tells us, 'all things were created through Him and for Him.' We see that the Lamb of God sacrificed Himself for us to bring those who would be saved to The Programmer by downloading The Program among them, collectively and individually. Catholics have the opportunity to download The Program directly, in the Mass, where the Miracle of Transubstantiation makes His Presence available to us. Truly, He is One with The Father. "The Holy Wireless Connector joins Programmer and Program. No programmer can create a program without the process of actually doing so. The Holy Wireless Connector is that process, in living form. Additionally, He connects us with The Programmer and Program as we draw closer to the truth that all was programmed by God, including the free will that lets us choose or reject that belief." No human programmer can program without reflecting, in far cruder terms, what was accomplished by The Unprogrammed Programmer, The Program, and The Holy Wireless Connector. The relationship between those three in one human programmer is our human equivalent of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Tuesday, October 13, 2009 Hatred manifests itself in hurting other people. Clever haters generally mask their efforts with pretenses of assistance. "We are making things fairer." is a common camouflage for things that will impoverish or shorten the lives of their neighbors. It's very hard to get hate-filled people to love their neighbors and want to do anything to actually help them. The old adage, "If I'm in an accident, and a liberal drives by, he won't stop to help, but will bemoan the lack of a government program to provide assistance." is true. Those who separate themselves from their neighbors will not sacrifice to make things better, but will be eager to establish a new bureau that will pretend to do so. The distance of self from neighbor measures the hatred a lost soul feels toward others. Haters are rarely as filled with hate as, for instance Jim Jones, who killed hundreds of his followers when his position among them was threatened. They are rarely as filled with hatred as the Communists who sent infantry into Ukrainian houses to slaughter the inhabitants. But, they are often filled with enough hate to ravage their neighbors with high taxes, unnecessary regulations, and rules that will make their neighbors' lives more unpleasant. Most haters focus their activities on some idol or another. For some, Global Warming provides an excuse to take things away from people. "Mustn't make the planet too hot." Others prefer speed limits. "Can't go too fast, might get hurt." Some concentrate on food. "Better not eat that." There is no healthy human activity they encourage. The only behavior of which they approve is that which shortens lives, and many among them believe that everyone a few years older than them has already lived too long. They do not only attack life, but also truth and goodness. Collectives are preferred to families, cooperatives to businesses, and communal living to private property. Once they take command of the armed forces, those who head these organizations can replace the smarter, more moral people whom they hate. Officers who are not gentlemen take over, hastening the collapse and destruction for which the hate-filled live.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009 Both blessings and sins take human form. Those who love their neighbors operate on a higher level. Universally, those who love their neighbors also love truth, and, usually, God. They are a different breed, loved by the God Who rejoices at their having chosen to obey His Operating Instructions in order to enter His Kingdom. Opposed to them, those full of sin hate their neighbors and routinely lie to them, minimizing the great harm they lust to do to all they can. It is true that "the wages of sin is death", so it follows inescapably that those who choose sin, die. Often, the sinners' death is earlier, but it is always followed by an eternity of receiving the pain they wished to inflict, or did inflict, on their neighbors. This agony lasts for a very, very long time inflicted by those who hate their neighbors in perdition nearly as much as they hate the God Who would not tolerate them in His presence. Similarly, truth and lies take human form. Those who tell the truth do not need long memories. There is little inconsistency within them, except that which naturally occurs as they move farther from telling lies. Lies, on the other hand, force a distortion of reality within the mind. A person who lies has a mental picture of the truth encoded within the memory particles of the brain. When a liar lies, he must pervert the very structure of his own mind. That takes a surprising amount of mental energy that can no longer be usefully employed. As a result, one's thinking ability is increasingly impaired with every lie. One reason that God's program allows for liars to amass considerable political power is to let large numbers of people see the cumulative effects of lying upon a person. A liar with governmental authority can actually believe himself to be capable of changing the world to reflect the cherished lies, and most seek the political power to so alter reality. We see lies repeatedly writ large in the concentration camps of Cubas, Zimbabwes, and Jonestowns of every age. Thus, a humble Saint, like Therese of Lisieux, who does little with a short life but grow closer to truth, charity, and the God who prefers both to lies and selfishness, outranks forever even the most accomplished liar. But, what of lies that God "commissions"? First Kings, 22;22, mentions a time that God's will was accomplished by using a "lying spirit". Does this square with the Operating Instruction "Thou shalt not bear false witness?" Judges 9;23, and First Samuel 16;14 mention Him sending spirits of discord and terror. Can we relate this with "Love your neighbor as yourself.". Simple justice requires that punishments fit crimes. How better to punish liars than with lies? How better to punish enemies of peace and harmony with the exact things they, themselves, wish to inflict? Once, as a young man, I was given a plastic boomerang. The sun was setting beyond a vacant yard next to my house, and I threw my new boomerang as hard as I could into the sun, which was swollen, perched an inch or two above the horizon. Then, I realized that the whirling boomerang could be hurtling, with its sharp edges, back toward me, and I, temporarily blinded by the sun I should not have stared into, couldn't see it. I dropped to the ground and covered my head. "Oh, God, don't let it hit me!", I unthinkingly and instinctively prayed. Similarly, but on vastly larger scales, the justice of God is often programmed in such a way that the sinner must be "hoist by his own petard" to set an illuminating and instructional example for generations who follow.
Thursday, October 15, 2009 Fleeing objectivity. Many have a deep hatred for the idea of "right" and "wrong". They hate instructions and standards that flow from the idea that there is a right and wrong. Human history is, in a sense, merely a record of how people either fled from God and His standards or justified worship of self. When we see the endless public works of the vain, including pyramids, great walls, and endless graves, what we are seeing is wasted lives and lost souls. Those whose lives are centered on accumulating things in this world have, as their only duty, the gathering of more. This can become the raison d' etre of their lives, justifying all that they do. When they see, "Thou shalt not steal.", there's a tendency to say, "I'm really not stealing." The more hardened self-lovers say "So what?"
Operating Systems. When our computers' operating systems are corrupted, they don't give us the right answers. Similarly, when our own, individual, human operating systems are flawed, our lives don't go as well as they could or should. The individual operating system that we have compiled and downloaded within our own mind determines how well we do in this world and in the life to come. Most people in the West have downloaded, in widely varying degrees, some of The Roman Catholic Church's beliefs. It is the oldest of the Big Operating Systems, and the only one that promises, through the Sacraments, direct availability to the Will, Mind, and Body of its Programmer. Protestants have Operating Systems that differ from the Church's. Protestants who are extreme have operating systems that are in direct opposition to Her. We do not usually think of Moslems as protest-ants, but The Church was 600 years old when they began, in largely Christian areas. They, as many before and since, protested against Her. In fact, anyone who protests against The Church is, technically, a (small "p")protestant . Capital "P" Protestants, like Lutherans and Presbyterians, generally believe in The Trinity, Virgin Birth, etc., but prefer to be "unencumbered" with any Catholic teachings, like the need to go to Mass every week, or the perennial Primacy of Peter, that they find to be inconvenient. Such Protestants, if able to find a sufficient number of similarly-thinking people, are able to begin their own semi-Catholic denominations. The Church's operating system was downloaded on earth by Jesus Christ. He, by the laying on of hands, gave His disciples direct access to some of The Source Code. That provided the authority through which they could ordain future priests and bishops so that The Body of Christ would always be available to help those who wanted to download the same operating system and obtain the same access to the Source Code as that utilized by the first disciples. That download requires an initial two passwords that we enter with both our prayers and our actions, "Belief" and "Obedience". Those two passwords are also be described as "Faith" and "Works". We may think of them as we do our feet, putting one in front of the other and then repeating as we move closer to God. Moving forward in this way requires the continual re-programming and upgrading of our own operating system. Information about the right way to download such upgrades is available at the nearest rectory. It is not necessary, and may only cause confusion, to speak with a priest, or any other professional Catholic, about Catholic Fundamentalism. They've done quite well without it, and most see no need for any new approach to God and His Church. It is only a few of us, fleeing a world overwhelmed by flawed operating systems, who might see it as a new road to Rome.
Friday, October 16, 2009 Downloading the New Program. The Old Programming Log made it clear to most who believed in it that God's orders must be followed. As time went on, it also showed that people who liked to pick nits would add endless laws, rules, and taxes that suited them. After a while, so many laws, rules, and taxes were added that people lost sight of what they were supposed to do, love God and their neighbors. So, The Programmer decided to download a New Program. Much of what we need to know about that is recorded in The New Programming Log. Some are drawn to its operating instructions as hungry birds to a ripe wheat field. We may choose to download The New Program. Those who make a living by laws, rules, and taxes are, and never have been, enthusiastic about The New Program. We may picture our self as one of a vast throng of lemmings that spend their lives heading toward the proverbial cliff. If we download the New Program, when we reach the edge, we don't fall down to the rocks below. Instead of dropping in and on surging seas and hard rocks, we are, amazingly, able to go in the opposite direction. The New Program does not allow us to use our knowledge to force people to download it. Some of our fellow lemmings may listen to what we tell them, or see how we're living our lives, and a handful may be encouraged to make the download. To that end, we must pray, asking The Programmer to download the awareness of The Program into their minds. Then, it's their choice.
Friday, October 16, 2009 The Programmer will let entire peoples erase themselves. As we see what is happening to Europe and North America, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that God has turned His face from us. As we ignore His Operating Instructions about the need to love Him and our neighbors as ourselves, that lack of love becomes part of how we feel about ourselves. "There's really nothing wrong with abortion and euthanasia, because there are too many people, anyway." quickly blossoms into the self-hating fetidness that infects, like a spiritual plague, all who embrace it. Many no longer hear with horror the silent screams of millions of unborn babies dismembered every year, but God does. Fewer of us can see that we have greatly offended the God who lovingly programmed each of them to have a chance at life and salvation. His justice is sure. We can see His mighty hand behind the destruction of those who hate Him and their neighbors. The ruins of Babylon, the New York City of its day, provide all the proof we need that human structures can be utterly erased at His will. We do well to pray for His Programming Assistance that we may saved, despite the efforts of our leaders to destroy us. We must separate ourselves from those who hold beliefs that trivialize their neighbors' lives and well-being so that His wrath does not fall upon us. We do so by praying. Prayers work because He hears them. The Book of Revelations tells us that the souls of innocents are within the Altar before Him, crying out for justice. We can pray, and live, in such a way that we are not included in their demands for retribution. Since none of us work as hard, or do as much as we can, to protect life and truth, our prayers should include a plea for mercy.
Saturday, October 17, 2009 "We are made (programmed) in the image of God" is a paraphrase of Genesis 1;26-27, and has many meanings. Like God, we have free will, the ability to love, an ability to program that's far more limited than we tend to think it is, and each of us has the ability, that we generally over-rate, to organize things and people around us. When we make and do things, we are actually re-programming, using the abilities and structures that He programmed in us and for us to accomplish our will. Most of us are so entranced with the re-arrangements that we make of His programs that we forget to thank Him for programming the wherewith all for for both us and our endeavors. Today, Catholic Fundamentalists have moved to thinking of God as the "Unprogrammed Programmer", updating Iron Age descriptions with those from our own "Age of Electron Control". This change is not significant, except that it may make belief in Him more plausible to moderns who've grown up with no knowledge of, or education about, Him. Vanity, however has remained the same since He programmed us in His "image and likeness" in the Garden. The greatest manifestation of human vanity is a magnified reflection of ourselves. It first distorts Him, then minimizes Him, and, finally, replaces Him altogether with the sheer wonder of the person overwhelmed by vanity. Those whose vanity is uncontrolled by even a shred of modesty actually consider themselves to be "Unmoved Movers". It's easy for political leaders, whose vanity is already near-overwhelming, to, after endless praise from sycophants, believe that they are, in fact, "unmoved movers", able to re-program their societies, usually holding a huge umbrella of "Fairness" or "Universal Well-being" over all who need to be sheltered. Some even try to re-program the whole world in their image. Vanity may be seen as existing in stages. All but the most saintly have had problems refraining from the belief that we're "better" than some of our neighbors in some way or another. Those who do not restrain such thoughts begin to think that the dividing line between them and God is far narrower than it actually is. They are convinced they actually are so much "better" than their neighbors that they have a "duty" to direct the way they live. It's normal for children to sometimes dress up as adults, and play games in which they pretend to be much older and wiser than they actually are. The most vain among humans never stop playing "dress-up", and don't realize how childish they look to He Who programmed them with a completely different goal in mind for their souls than self-worship.
Saturday, October 17, 2009 Vanity turns into idols. Vanity drives us to think we are more than we are while believing that God is less than He is. Vanity takes form in idols. The most vain, who serve idols in order to pretend they are, themselves, gods, have several things in common: 1. They do not let themselves see that vanity destroys their ability and desire to solve problems. The fads they embrace are, in fact, programmed so that we could see the results of delusions and avoid vanity and idols that cause and encourage such delusions in our own lives. "The Environment", for instance, said in awed tones, shows only their idolization of entities and processes programmed around us. "Protecting the environment" serves only as an excuse for vain foolishness that includes riches and political power. 2. Vanity and its idols allow us to see how irrational those who separate themselves from God will become in order to exalt themselves. When we consider, for instance, that the nuclear reactors they refuse to build will produce electricity for less than two cents a kilowatt hour and also know that the windmills they encourage produce the same amount of power for $1.20/kwh, we see that the corrupted mind is able to prefer and justify that which impoverishes their neighbors by a factor of sixty times in order to serve an idol who lives only within their individual and collective minds. 3. We see, then, that maintaining delusions is more important to them than loving truth or helping neighbors. 4. There is among them an ongoing desire to be wrong and hurtful to their neighbors. We are then left with questions: A. Do we pray for them? Yes. We know that The Programmer has the power to send truthful spirits into human minds, reprogramming them from evil to good, leading the lost from Hell to Heaven. It is our duty to encourage those who have embraced lies to seek the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We may help in this by asking God to send truthful spirits into their minds. B. Will they go to Hell if left to their own devices? Yes. Their minds are clouded by vanity and hate that keeps their souls from salvation by refusing to believe and obey God and by willingly and repeatedly hurting their neighbors. C. Should we be happy about their fate? No. Those with an inkling of God's power know that we have been given our opportunities of salvation only by His Grace and Mercy, without which we would be, like them, overwhelmed by our own vanity and reduced to worshipping the same idols. We want others to share in joy and salvation, not be denied it because of their ongoing, willful disregard of His Operating Instructions.
Sunday, October 18, 2009 Retribution is coming. We can only pray. "Dear God, please don't punish we who were led away from You. Forgive us for having disobeyed You. You, Who were stronger than temptation, know how weak we are. When every single establishment 'leader' in every field of human endeavor, said that every sort of sin was 'okay', 'desirable', even 'necessary', we let them lead us down the broad path to destruction. Now, we can see where that has led us, and we see that our demise was planned by those whose goal was, and is, to destroy us. Please, Dear God, forgive we who ask forgiveness, turn our enemies upon themselves, and restore us, Your people to You."
Monday, October 19, 2009 When we see the massive mounds of the Middle East, we are observing the remains of once-thriving cities. Tens of thousands of cities, in dozens of civilizations, flourished and disappeared. Similarly, we see among us ruins of the more immediate past. America's cities are filled with decaying mansions, once-substantial middle-class homes, and growing areas of destruction that look like bombed-out cities of war-torn Europe. When we see evidence of collapse, we wonder why. Lots of glib answers emerge; "Trade routes changed.", "Foreign invaders destroyed the city.", "They were destroyed because they abused the environment.", "Climate change destroyed their food source." Such explanations are popular, and usually serve the political agenda of those who make them, but they ignore the fact that the people whose intelligence built the civilization simply lost the ability to solve problems. This paralysis is from God. His retribution falls on all who have lost faith in Him and in His Church, the only thing on earth that can keep us both faithful and favored. When we see the collapse of Christian countries all over the world, we are seeing the slow, inexorable decline that Luther's apostasy, which led to birth control, abortion, and euthanasia, has brought upon our part of the world. No longer is His Church a rallying point for the faithful, but a target for those who seek to plunder the descendants of once-favored Caucasia. The sons of Jacob, from whom all of us are either spiritually or genetically descended, have had God do to us what we did to Him, turning His face from us as we turned ours from Him.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009 Caucasia Catholic Fundamentalists believe that most Caucasians alive today are descended from the Ten Northern Tribes. They were deported from their Israeli lands around 720 B.C., and were settled in the North. From there, they migrated, mostly West and North, spreading throughout Europe, somewhat more slowly than they extended their sway across North America in two or three centuries. The Norman Invasion cemented their hold on the outlying portions of the Continent they had long held. Under the umbrella of The Church, all Europe was ruled by the descendants of the old Tribal nobles. At one time, Caucasia included Europe, Turkey, Central Asia (as far as China), Northern India, the Americas, the West Indies, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, South Africa/Rhodesia, Kenya, Russia, The Philippines, the Caucasus (of course!) from which they'd originally emerged, and various other countries for differing lengths of time. Caucasia continued to expand even after the apostates among it left the umbrella of The Church. That's when countries like North America, Australia, and New Zealand were added. But, after abandoning their umbrella, they began to be washed away. Now, every country in Caucasia is threatened. As their leaders flee from God and His Operating Instructions about the necessity to love Him and their neighbors, their countries move closer to collapse, and their inhabitants are increasingly threatened with slavery and extinction. This process of collapse measures our increasing distance from He Who programmed us. Though we were long the children of His most beloved people, our apostasy increasingly separates us from Him. The murder, rape, and looting of South Africa's Caucasian inhabitants is being duplicated in Britain, and we can feel the tremors of collapse threatening the structure of the U.S. branch of Caucasia. Not one leftist raises a voice in concern of what will happen, inevitably, to them in this process. We may pray that The Programmer will not do as He did before, allowing our nations to crumble and our people to be destroyed. Reconciliation and repentance is far, far better than the retribution that our embrace and toleration of death deserves. To be effective, this reconciliation and repentance must take place beneath the ancient umbrella.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009 Haters start out, and end up, hating themselves. Haters have the hardest time getting away from their own hatred, which, according to spiritual laws more immutable than those of physics, inevitably recoils upon themselves. One of the most bizarre examples of haters hating was recently seen when members of various pro-homosexual groups began an assault on Christian, mostly Catholic, Baptist, and Mormon, churches. They went so far as to obtain the names of all those opposed to their legislative agenda, and attack them in every way possible. At the same time, there have been slaughters of homosexuals by Moslems. In Moslem countries, they are hunted down, tortured, and killed as a matter of routine. In some cases, they have gotten access to the emails sent and received in their own countries. When people are found, or said to be found, frequenting homosexual web sites, squads go to their homes, where they are arrested, made to suffer unspeakable pain, and killed. Yet, those enemies, who still go on doing such things and are proud of doing so, are ignored by the threatened group, while Catholics, Baptists, and Mormons are singled out for attack simply because they were against the passage of laws that would lead to more premature deaths. Those pledged to "turn the other cheek" are always the easiest, and therefore, most preferred, targets for attack. It is impossible for minds distorted by hate to notice such contradictions, just as it is impossible for them to publicly admit that one of the most prosperous countries in the world, ninety miles from our shores, has been turned into a vast prison camp by fellow haters who work to have the same thing happen all over the world. In that country, incidentally, homosexuals are hunted down as ruthlessly as in the Moslem countries, showing that the left is as filled with hate and intolerance as the Moslems. Oddly, the hatred institutionalized within the Moslem and Communist regimes is sometimes embraced by other extremists, who feel that, like running a roto-tiller through a garden, such brutal actions are to be encouraged. We may do well to ask The Programmer, in fear and trembling, not to visit us with the universal desolation and destruction that He has visited upon Cuba and South Africa, but to apply a more selective weeding program.
Thursday, October 22, 2009 What's in those particles? Our minds are filled with memories, pieces of the past stored in our minds. Each thing that we think we know is actually there, encoded in or on, or has become, some tiny particle. People in jail, with a lot of time on their hands, can remember long-ago events very clearly as they learn to recall different memories from their home in the mind. Many spend their sentences reliving past years with astonishing clarity. So, seemingly, can those who are hypnotized. Memory particles can make us sad or happy. Victims of abuse, with bizarre pain frequently filling their memory banks, have a hard time being joyful. Just as a computer programmer is able to re-write the files in a computer, so we have the opportunity to over-write what's written in our minds. This may be a painful process. Our individual memories, as if they are alive (and, they may be, living as tiny spirits in our mind), resent and resist being erased and overwritten, even when a better program is presented. The basic understanding of improvement is this: "All things work together for good". This does not mean that we should sin and that good will come of is, but it does mean that our sins, upon reflection, can be seen to have caused hurt. We must ask forgiveness for having hurt, and those memories can be used to help us avoid doing harmful things in the future. It that way, good can come from having done wrong. Still, we don't know exactly what's in those particles and how they got from outside us to inside us. All we know is that we can be and do better, and memories of past mistakes should be used to help us avoid the kind of thinking that led us into making them.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
As we further consider what it means to be "Made in the image of God", we see that our soul was given a God-like power, in much reduced form, to program and create its mind and body. When it gets older, our soul has the power to program many of the surrounding support structures around it. Similarly, God programmed the entirety of the Creation Program. He, within the vast Creation Program, is similar to the position of our own soul in the smaller, multi-trillion celled mind and body in which we spend our lives on earth. So, we are made in the image of God in that each of our souls rules a small piece of Creation. When we extrapolate from this, we may realize that our body may harbor destructive organisms. We may, for instance, have a tumor. Our soul, which is in contact with both the autonomous nervous system that is aware of such systemic errors, will have the body use its programmed defenses to destroy that which threatens its life. If the usual defenses, white blood cells, fevers, etc., won't work, our soul will alert the conscious mind to the problem, and further treatment will be sought. The best treatments destroy only the damaging agents, leaving the rest of the mind and body unharmed. When a tumor grows within the body politic, some people think about removing it. This is not a generally authorized procedure. The correct response is to ask The Programmer for help, much as we ask a doctor for help in curing otherwise overwhelming diseases. He can reprogram the unhealthy tissue, as He did when curing lepers, even when they represent a large part of the body politic. He will not do so unless we ask. Lots and lots and lots of heartfelt times.
Thursday, October 22, 2009 Why would God allow His people in Cuba and South Africa to be ravaged by corrupt governments? When we see the awful prison camps that Cuba and South Africa have become, we wonder "Why would God allow countries that have so much be brought so low? What did the people do to deserve this?" We have all committed so much sin that all but the saints among us deserve whatever punishment He imposes. But, the Cuban people never allowed abortion, had fought the good fight against birth control, and were a strongly Catholic country. Why were they reduced to bread lines and slavery? Why do they have to live in chains and poverty? Why were they, the richest country in Latin America, so thoroughly ravaged? In South Africa, the few million remaining Caucasians are similarly being dispossessed of life, safety, and property. Why would they, who made South Africa the richest country on that Continent, be destroyed? They provided more people with better medical care, food, and prosperity than any African nation. Still, they are being slaughtered daily by political factions who can provide no other means of support for their people than by looting the few remaining Europeans. It may be that God wanted to show all the nations in the world what could happen to them if He so desires. If He merely lifts a questioning eyebrow, countless angels seek to ascertain and do His will. His wishes are obeyed. If we open our eyes, we can see that, just as He turned His face from a Jerusalem that was twice destroyed, His displeasure can fall upon any of us in any nation. When we remember that Troy, the mightiest city in Asia Minor, was destroyed by a handful of Greek soldiers hiding in a wooden horse, we may also realize that He also allowed a very few to begin the destruction of the once great nations of Cuba and South Africa. There are few more important things we can do with a few minutes every day than to ask Him to spare us from such a fate, brought upon them as a reminder to us. We must pray, pray, pray that His retribution does not similarly sweep away what we hold dear, undeserving of His mercy though we are.
Friday, October 23, 2009 Can government be fixed? When we think of improving our government, we do well to reflect on Jeremiah 51;9 "We tried to cure Babylon; she has got no better." If the powers of Heaven can't cure a government as small and tiny as Babylon's, who are we to believe that we can "cure" our vastly larger governments of ills? We must remember that governments emerge from necessity. As groups get larger, they must protect themselves from destroyers, both within and without. When hundreds of millions of people are competing for goods, services, and the opportunities to profit by supplying them, some governing bodies are are widely believed to be necessary. Soon, those who supply goods and services are attacked by those who may not supply them as well, but who are able to politically influence who buys what and from whom. Bribes begin to replace quality and price as societies become more Babylonian. Soon, the very destroyers from whom the government once protected its people become the government. After nations are sufficiently Babyonified, they are destroyed as God's retribution falls upon them. We have little better to do than to beg The Programmer to provide the programming assistance necessary to avoid the coming of that awful, and deserved, retribution even as we plea for mercy for not having fought hard enough for truth and life.
Saturday, October 24, 2009 When we see the vast assortment of living beings, all classified into plants, animals, phylum, genus, and species, etc., we may apply that knowledge to the thoughts that live within our minds. Just as most of the living things ourside of us are classified as being either Plants or Animals, our thoughts are of two basic kinds; one sort of thought leads us closer to God, the other leads us away from Him. Every thought we think, word we say, and deed we do reflects our increasing or decreasing distance from the God Who loves we whom He Programmed.
Monday, October 26, 2009 The most important thing: Today's Scripture reading comes from Romans, 8;12: "For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, There are two types of human programs, those who live according to the flesh and will die and those who do not and won't. The souls of the former will go to Heaven, the fate of the latter has been adequately recorded. The entire Creation Program was written and downloaded to provide each one of us the freedom to choose. This passage clearly delineates the two types of us human programs and tells us the results of our choices. "If you live according to the flesh, you will die." pretty much sums up all that any human being needs to know to make the right choices for eternal joy. It's difficult for some to take that seriously because they've downloaded an operating system that helps keep their own program separated from He Who programmed it. The easy thing to think is "Too bad for them.", shrug our shoulders, and go on about our business.
Monday, October 26, 2009 The more we live according to the flesh, the more we're punished. It's one thing to tell a lie, but to do so in the face of overwhelming truth makes it much, much worse. The weather map pasted below from wattsupwiththat.com/ shows what the temperatures have been for October. Doesn't take much of a mind to see that temps are much lower than normal. On top of that, European temperatures are similarly far below average.
Month after month, these maps are made available and show lower, instead of higher, temperatures. It's amazing that so many willfully choose to ignore them. So, what causes the Global Warming lie? What makes people say and believe things that simply are not true? Their souls are lost. A passage from The Catholic Church's daily reading was posted immediately above: "If you live according to the flesh, you will die." Those who persist in living such lies as Global Warming have been warned. Earthly rewards are given to those who invent, propagate, and believe these lies. Those rewards all disappear at death, when the souls that embraced them go to Judgment. After each Judgment comes the Sentence, which is greatly feared by the wise.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009 Big lies abound among us. One of the handiest things about Catholic Fundamentalism is that it simplifies, boiling faith and science down to something far more understandable than the popular hodgepodge of confusion, contradiction, and complacency with both. The thinking behind "evolution" is one of the most convoluted thought patterns of all time. Within it, the age of the world has been extended anywhere from 20 billion years to eternity. Sub-consciously, it makes little sense to take seriously a God Who would dither endlessly, playing with His toys. And, that is the underlying thought desired to by placed within our minds by those who embrace such theories. Lost souls do not want other souls to be saved, and put forth endless amounts of claptrap to separate them from the God Who lovingly programmed each of us. Catholic Fundamentalists understand that God is a powerful Being Who has a far greater ability to program than we. Where we can program a movie, and make startlingly real two-dimensional representations of reality with two dimensional pixels, He can program actual objects with three dimensional pixels. His power has allowed Him to program an entire universe, with us in it; we are intentionally programmed in such a way that we really can't "prove" He did so. Faith, "the evidence of things not seen", is necessary for salvation in His Creation Program. One way to faith is to see that the current crop of lies is merely one of many, many such harvests. Lies are allowed to grow in every generation, to give all an equal opportunity to believe in God and His Church, or to deny both God and the possibility of salvation. When we see the lies of the ages spread out before us, we can also see a small light that's been burning since the beginning. When we get a "feel" for lies, and avoid them, life is easier and safer. We see that popular lies are similar in that they are automatically popular with political systems and the communications organizations controlled by them. The other side has, in every generation, its anointed experts to tell its lies for them, accompanied by accolades from its other such minions. The idea that we have "an ideal cholesterol level" is one such lie. Ignoring that cholesterol is produced by our liver in accord with directions from our brain, reducing such levels to an ever decreasing "ideal" has been a surprisingly lucrative source of income for many who embrace the lie. Earlier medicine men used to tell us that smoking was good for us. Others were rewarded for similar lunacies. One vicious liar received a Nobel Prize for slicing into peoples' brains, destroying them with the lobotomies by which he destroyed tens of thousand of people, confused into institutionalizable mental illness by the clouds of lies around them before the doctors' instruments turned them into far more primitive primates. Current lies include various demands for greater control and taxation of energy. The foundations for such lies run deep, and are said to be based on "concern for the future", always a popular idol among the lie community. The "environmental lies" are accompanied by a plethora of other falsehoods, including praise for "organic" food, "locally grown produce ", and various diets centered on plants. Interestingly, those best at telling such lies frequently convene in huge conventions, where their meals include far more exotic and expensive foodstuffs than they recommend, and work to mandate, for their neighbors. Participants are aware of the hypocrisy but feel, in their enlightened status, that they are far, far above being criticized for it. They often use such accusations of hypoicrisy to identify those who criticize them for it, putting them on some sort of "enemies list". Lies are learned in schools, both in the formal institutions that increasingly certify only those weak and hare-brained enough to believe and pass on the lies of the day. Such lies are reinforced by the endless barrage of lies from the state-run media. It's easy for those of little faith to get depressed when looking out on the oceans of frauds and seeing the endless waves of lies hitting the beach before us. One cure is to pray for the soul of each person we see telling such a lie, and ask God to let them see the emptiness of their lives without Him. When praying for their souls, it is important to realize that even the most professional liars, at some deep level, know that they are spending their lives on lies, and simply lack the courage to escape them except by embracing more sins to distract them from their coming doom. Therefore, we must ask The Programmer to download not only wisdom into their minds, but also, courage. What happens to prayers? The Book of Revelations tells us that prayers go to Heaven, and coalesce into actual form upon the Altar of God. Revelations, 8; 3-6: "A large quantity of incense was given to him to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar that stood in front of the throne; and so from the angel's hand, the smoke of the incense went up in the presence of God and with it the prayers of the saints." (emphasis added) From this, we know that our requests to The Programmer for programming assistance assume a real and actual presence, ending up, as they do, right in front of Him. He finds within each prayer part of a faithful person who will be joined with Him among that holy throng around the glassy sea if he but perseveres to the end.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 For whom should we pray? The short answer is "Everyone." First, we should pray for The Church, the Living Body of Christ, so that She may survive to provide us and future generations with The Sacraments. Then, we should pray to escape the retribution we, as individuals and nations, deserve for having disobeyed, and tolerated the disobedience of, so many of His Operating Instructions, from abortion-inducing birth control to actual abortions to euthanasia and all life-shortening behaviors. After we have prayed for The Church, our nations, and our families, our we should ask The Programmer to help lead our associates, friends, and neighbors to salvation, asking The Programmer to provide programming assistance for their souls and lives. Obviously, we should pray for our own soul and its life in this world and the next. Praying for deceased family members may be the only lifeline they have to let them escape the pains of Purgatory. We should remember to ask The Programmer to provide programming assistance to the living members of our family, and also ask Him to help those to come. We should pray for our enemies. Most of us do not bother praying for officials whose legislation makes us less prosperous and secure. People who thusly hurt us can thereby be most accurately described by no other word than "enemies". Our prayers for them are "spiritual bullets", fired into the souls of the lost to reverse their polarity, changing their natural inclination towards evil to good. Prayers for officials should focus on having the minds of those who choose evil to be re-programmed toward loving, rather than hating, their neighbors. Saying "God, please help Al Gore, Barney Frank, and Fidel Castro love truth and their neighbors." may seem as futile as throwing ping pong balls at tanks, but it shows that we understand just how much power The Programmer has. Reversing the spiritual polarity of a very lost soul is extremely difficult. God has to hear many prayers for that before He will do so.
Thursday, October 29, 2009 One of the best things about television and the internet is that we are able to see that many of our officials aren't really very bright. Many get into office simply by knowing or being related to someone who has gotten into a position to decide who will be a candidate by knowing or being related to someone who got that position by a similar process. Such selections go back for generations, and are not intended to do anything but make wealthy people wealthier. Most public appearances are carefully scripted to be sure that the illusion of mental ability is provided. With the internet showing information about how things really are, such appearances often do more harm than good.
Thursday, October 29, 2009 The prayers of the saints seem to be given special, if not sole, consideration before the Throne of God. We may reconsider the passage on prayer from Revelations, 8; 3-6: "A large quantity of incense was given to him to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar that stood in front of the throne; and so from the angel's hand, the smoke of the incense went up in the presence of God and with it the prayers of the saints." (emphasis added) This passage may be interpreted as teaching that our own prayers do not take actual form on the Altar that's before God's Throne, but only that the prayers of actual saints arrive there. It is common among older Protestants to refer to all the faithful, especially their co-religionists, as "saints". The weakness of that argument is that it implies that the prayers of polygamists, pro-abortionists, and others with similarly unorthodox beliefs will have the same access to God as members of their religion who renounce the propriety of such acts. It's hard to imagine that such a believer could reasonably be thought of as a "saint", implying that our prayers may not go directly from us to God, but through some sort of holy "Processing Station" where they are either passed on or rejected. Catholic Fundamentalists look at the Revelations passage and conclude that the surest, safest way to get our own prayers through to the Altar, where St. John says they appear right in front of God, is to ask a real, certified Saint to help get our prayers from here to there. We feel that when we pray a typical, Saint-invoking prayer, for instance, "O Jesus Who has said 'Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you.' through the intercession of Mary, Thy most holy Mother, I knock, I seek, I ask that my prayer be granted. (insert prayer reqests) ", we are actually having our prayer put before God by an actual, certified Saint, in this case, His own Mother. Can't beat that!
Friday, October 30, 2009 While the above post emphasizes the importance of asking the saints to intercede for us with the God to Whom we pray, we must remember that one "direct" prayer was given to us by no less an authority than the Second Person of The Trinity: "Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen." We see a both a distinction and a mathematical relationship between this prayer, which is also included in The Catholic Rosary, and the Intercessory Prayers, like the Hail Mary, of Catholics, in which we ask for an actual Saint to intercede for us so that what we request may be granted. The Lord's Prayer is a General Prayer. In The Rosary, it occurs 8.83 times less frequently than the Hail Mary. That indicates we should consider saying 8.83 times as many specific, Intercessory Prayers as General Prayers. It may also mean that if we say a lot of Novenas, which are heavy on the Intercessory Prayers, we should balance them out with some General Prayers so that we at least attempt to provide God with the impression that we're at making some effort to demonstrate an interest in things beyond our own needs. Prayers that request more specific Programming Assistance are best handled by the Heavenly specialists in the various departments. Catholic Fundamentalists believe that the process of asking and receiving, for instance, St. Anthony's help in finding something that we've lost, takes no "earth time" at all, since "Heaven Time" operates on totally different clocks. The Programmer appreciates those of us who follow "the chain of command" when requesting Programming Assistance. Doing so indicates that we respect not only His authority, but also, the authorities that He has put in place to handle things for us. Such an admission accrues favor for us. How often should we pray? Some monasteries and convents have holy men and women within them who pray nearly all day. Most of us are not so fortunate, and struggle to say a daily Rosary, often left unfinished and caught up later. We may progress to the point that we're saying several Novenas every hour for the nine hours prescribed for many of them. Googling "daily readings of the Catholic Church" leads us to web sites we can read every morning. Before noon, we should also say the St. Joseph's prayer. It's one of the oldest, dating from the 1st Century, and has the most remarkably complicated sentence structure many have ever seen. It's a powerful prayer, and can be "loaded up" with lots of requests for intercession. Prayers requesting St. Joseph's help are effective because he sustained God when He took human form on earth. He saved Jesus from Herod and did all for Him that a father could do. In that way, Joseph is our father, too, and he loves his children enough to ask His Son to help us.
Saturday, October 31, 2009 A very important prayer request is asking God to keep His wrath and retribution, deserved as it is, from falling upon us. We know from The Programmer's Logs that He has the ability to punish with death, disease, destruction, and enslavement, all of which He visited frequently on His chosen people when they strayed. Today, we see His wrath falling upon entire nations in the form of leftist tyrannies that grind families, faith, and freedom into dust. As the peoples of Europe leave God, He turns away from them. He is replaced, in both individuals and nations who abandon Him, by the less than tender mercies of tyrants, first Communists, now Moslems , who did, and do, everything possible to destroy their lives and souls. Cuba, England, mainland Europe, South Africa, Cuba, and Venezuela are among the once Catholic countries on which God's wrath has fallen. As we turn from Him, and as He turns His face from us, we see the scourge falling here, in the United States, bringing ever-larger numbers under the yoke. There's no question that we deserve it. We have ignored His Church's teaching on birth control, abortion, and euthanasia to such a degree that we no longer deserve His blessings. We may only pray for His mercy. When we see how He has let so many of us destroy ourselves, some wonder, "Why doesn't He just wipe out all the bad people? " He did that, at Sodom and Gomorrah. As we look around, we see that evil is still with us. Evil is, after all, choosing some sort of self-destruction that often spreads outside the self. Some prefer a delayed destruction over quick suicide, but, nonetheless, it is their preference, and living a little longer may give some a chance to ask for, and receive, forgiveness. As long as we have free will, some will choose evil, despite any number of destroyed Sodoms. Others ask, "Why doesn't He just straighten out, say, the worst people in the world? Even a dozen, or a hundred, or a thousand, or a million, or a billion of them? Why doesn't He send powerful angels into their minds and simply re-program them, as He did with Saul of Tarsus, so that they love Him and their neighbors? Then, we wouldn't have people leading us astray and we'd all be better." We do know that He re-programmed Saul, a vicious persecutor of early Christians, transforming him into St. Paul. Why not now? Each of us has the ability to ask Him to provide the re-programming necessary for evil people to renounce the wrong that they do. Have we?
Saturday, October 31, 2009 A Most Popular Delusion: Nearly every kind of governmental reorganization and plan has been tried, and most have failed. When legislators propose their latest endeavor, many point to the historical record, and demonstrate that it has failed in every place and time that it has been attempted. "It will be different, today.", is their invariable reply. That is accompanied by a chorus of supporting lies, "We will learn from their mistakes and not repeat them.", "Things have changed.", and the greatest self-delusion of all, "We know more, now."
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