One of Catholic Fundamentalism’s tenets is that: European, Asian, and North American Caucasians are descended from the 10 Northern Tribes. They migrated into Europe after their exile to the north from Samaria in 720B.C. Retaining some tribal identities, and splitting frequently into various Celtic and Gothic tribes that coalesced in their ancestral lands, they were, and are, the peoples of Europe. Today’s Old Testament Reading is from Jeremiah 23: 5-8. It includes the following:
“Therefore, the days will come, says the LORD,
when they shall no longer say, “As the LORD lives,
who brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt”;
but rather, “As the LORD lives,
who brought the descendants of the house of Israel
up from the land of the north”–
and from all the lands to which I banished them;
they shall again live on their own land.”
The children of Israel, once rescued from the land of Egypt, have been scattered to the “lands of the north”. The Prophet Jeremiah is telling us very specifically that Jesus will re-unite them in The Catholic Church. The disciples spread that Word throughout the exiled tribes. They saw that the testimony of the prophets was specific and fulfilled in the coming of Jesus.
The tribes that had migrated throughout Europe and the Middle East gradually converted to Catholicism.
The devil sent various disruptive forces to destroy The Church. The might of Nero, the power of Diocletian and the vast power of The Roman State behind them failed. Then, the devil sent confusing doctrines and vain men to bring schism. North Africa was lost by the followers of Donatus. They divided The Church and allowed North Africa to be taken twice, first by Vandals, then by Moslems.
Soon, the Greeks left, unwilling to bow the head and bend the knee to the legitimate successors to St. Peter, to whom Christ said, “Thou art Peter and on this rock I build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
Today, North Africa and nearly all the lands held by Constantinople are still under the Moslem thumb. Later schismatics divided less faithful souls into the thousands of Protestant splinters, each claiming “We have the way to Heaven!” All who have abandoned the Catholic Church remain in, or have returned to, exile.
Jesus, the passage makes clear, still unites we of the Lost Tribes through The Catholic Church, “their own land”. Its vast territory stretches from earth to Heaven, itself.
Life boils down to this, the greatest risk of all: Those who stay outside the Catholic Church are in exile, forever.
The best choice is that which is safest for our soul.
