Family Approach to the Global Environment

The Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI reminds us that the family and not the individual is the basic cell of society. It is in the family that the individual learns the basic skills for life in society. In the family we experience justice and love between brothers and sisters, the role of authority expressed by parents, the loving concern for the members who are weaker because of youth, sickness and old age, mutual help in the necessities of life, readiness to accept others and, if necessary, to forgive them.

The ‘school house’ of the family equips us for getting on with one another in wider society. Society will only function well with “the generous consent of all its members.” Where contemporary society acts like a family there is little need for state intervention.

When it comes to global environmental issues, the Holy Father encourages us act as “the human family, which dwells in that common house which is the earth”. Families strive for generous consensus and not brutal coercion. He encourages us to be “uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions.” I take that to be a reference to the agents of the New World Order, who are backing one-sided scientific conferences, who are saying that we are only one species among many others, and who want to drastically reduce the world population with evil means.

In that ideology, the individual and not the family is the basic cell of society. Like Communist Russia and China, the politico-economic power will undermine and take over the God-given work of families. By trying to make the individual paramount, they are really trying to make themselves paramount.

In confronting the issue of global warming, we need to draw on our own experiences of the family way of doing things, encourage the beleaguered parents in contemporary western society and use the approach that we are all one family sharing a global home.

Click here to see the Holy Father's message for the World Day of Peace on 1 January 2008

"Practicing the Presence of God"

Recently, when I hit a “brick wall” put up by agents of the New World Order, these words came to mind, “Whoever abides in me, as I abide in him, bears much fruit; for cut off from me you can do nothing.” (Jn 15:5) The Lord is exactly right. We can get so caught up in recognizing and analyzing “the increase of lawlessness” that “love in most people will grow cold.” (Mt 24:12) It is more important to put time into relating with God than in trying to solve the problem by ourselves.

“Practicing the presence of God” is even more important for us when we are confronting the evil that is trying to destroy Christian civilization. In the brutality of Calvary, the image of St John and the Holy Women reminds us of gentility of the abiding love of the Lord. In fact this image is an ‘icon’ of Christian civilization in a hostile world.

The New Testament provides three approaches to abiding in Christ, one for the reflective mode, another for the active mode and the third for the endurance mode:

1. There is the heart-to-heart abiding in Jesus. We show Jesus what is happening in our hearts and we let his words permeate our hearts. (See Jn 15:1-17) This fits very well when we are meditating, or ‘day-dreaming’.
2. There is the step-by-step following of Jesus. We imitate what Jesus did, adapting it to our situation. Our pray is, “Jesus, give me the grace to do what you would do here.” (See Mark 8:34-35)
3. There is the beyond-the-horizon awareness of cosmic Christ that St Paul expresses, so well in the Colossians hymn (See Col 1:15-20; also 2 Cor 5:17). When we are simply enduring the overpowering force of the enemy, being aware that “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) puts the enemy into perspective and maintains our communion with God.

Practicing the presence of God needs discipline. One exercise I do when I am walking is to set my mind to walk with Jesus to the next corner, then the next and then the next. (Distance runners will know what I am talking about.)

Another exercise is when I take a break, during the daily routine, I ask our Lord, “How am I doing?” Then I thank him when I have got it right or ask forgiveness when I got it wrong and then thank him.

Obviously when we “make the sign of the Cross” we are putting ourselves in God’s presence. And things like grace-before-meals should do the same.

It would be interesting to read of some of your practices.

An inspiration to many is a French lay-brother who lived in the 1600s. You can read about Brother Lawrence at http://www.catholictreasury.info/Presence/Default.htm

Ultimately practicing the presence of God is not about particular methods or techniques but an abiding relationship with the Blessed Trinity. Like any personal relationship, we have to work on it. So when we stand firm against the NWO we will “go out and bear the fruit that will last.” (Jn 15:16) There is no winning formula; but there is a winning relationship.

The Pagan Influence of Carl Jung

This picture is of the trinitarian fountain of pagan dieties Diana, Bacchus and Theseus united under the protecting hand of Apollo. It is across the road from St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney. Carl Jung would have been pleased with the symbolism !

Thirty years ago we were in the heady days of renewal. I was hearing expressions from our spiritual leaders like, “Get in touch with your shadow self”, “You have got to love yourself first”, “Pay attention to your dreams”, “Active imagination”, “Journalling” and we were all-abuzz with combinations of letters, INFJ and ESTP from the Myers-Briggs personality-type questionnaire. Swept aside from Catholic spirituality were expressions like “purgative, illuminative and unitive ways”, “discerning the will of God” and “being formed by the Word”.

Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychotherapist, was the main influence in this shift. He sounded spiritual and good. He provided us with a spirituality with which we could have ‘meaningful dialogue’ with the world. What we were not told was that he hated the Catholic Church, that his mother was a psychic and his paternal grandfather was an illuminated freemason.

We were not told that he had a falling out with Sigmund Freud because Freud wanted to keep religion out of psychotherapy and Jung wanted Christianity to be replaced by psychotherapy as the religion of Europe. He wrote to Freud ‘Religion can only be replaced by religion’ and he induced his clients to emotionally experience pagan myths. This meant that they were to attain an illuminated state in which they were to experience themselves as a god. Obviously, the word ‘illumination’ has a very different meaning from its use in Catholic spirituality, where it means living by the light of faith.

We were not told that Jung was suicidal and kept a loaded pistol beside his bed because he was so depressed with many of his followers turned away from him rather than turn away from Christianity.

Carl Jung signed one of his works as “Philemon’s Gateway.” If you use a search engine on the words ‘Jung’ and ‘Philemon’, you will find that Philemon was Jung’s familiar spirit. In his writings that he claimed were inspired by Philemon he taught that Salvation is found in coming to terms with oneself and not with matching up with an external rule.

“Active imagining” is a popular activity we learnt from Carl Jung. It means getting into an imaginary scene and inter-acting with the characters in our mind. This activity has been encouraged from the pulpit and in Catholic retreats. What most of us don’t know is that this is an occult way to get in touch with familiar spirits.

Through Jung’s influence the occult has come into Catholic practice. A book that I have found very helpful is The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung by Richard Noll and written in 1997 (ISBN 0-679-44945-0). Noll wrote on page 130:

"Yet the ancient pagan mysteries continued to occupy the imagination of humankind in an only nominal Christian Europe. Throughout the centuries their symbols and initiatory rites, their gods and goddesses, daemons and genii all found their way into the occult underground in the traditions of Gnosticism, Hermeticisim, alchemy, astrology, the Kabbalah, the Tarot, ritual and ceremonial magic, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, and especially in the occult revivals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They live on in the works of C.G. Jung and those who practice therapy in his name."

This is not to say that all these things are practiced in the Church. But it does mean that we need to be alert to spirituality with a focus on oneself instead of on God, with integrating one’s “shadow” instead of admitting our sins, with engaging in “active imagination” instead of imagining Gospel scenes, with recognizing psychic energy instead of recognizing the Spirit of Christ.

Carl Jung is the darling of the ‘one world religion’ advocates within the New World Order. They must drain Christian spirituality out of the Catholic (i.e., Universal) Church to make the one world religion a success. So, we have a challenge right in our midst.

As quickly as they drain Christian spirituality out we need to refill the Church. Through the centuries God had provided us with many streams of spirituality, such as the Augustinian, Benedictine, Carmelite, Franciscan and Ignatian which cater to different personality types and all of them stress the way to find God is through the cross, “per crucem ad lucem”. We have a rich heritage to draw on, but beware of modernizers who adulterate the original teaching with psychology.

Some websites I have found helpful with recognizing Jung’s influence on the Church are:
http://www.catholicculture.org/library/view.cfm?recnum=545
http://theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2006/07/carl-jung-beware.html
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/palette/187/session11.html

Manly Virtues Required

Cities used to be built around Cathedrals

The agents of the New World Order have been rather successful over the last 40 years in destroying family life, marginalizing the Church and making citizens more dependent on the State in what we once called “Christian countries.” If the Catholic (i.e., Universal) Church is neutralized, there will nothing to oppose the enslavement of the world by the Super-rich. Manly virtues, such as far-sighted assertiveness, courage in the face of danger and self-sacrifice for the common course, are called for if the Church in our time is going to liberate and defend people from this clear and present evil. (See the previous blog)

Our Lord Jesus Christ, as he was portrayed in the Gospels was a man of such virtue. He, himself, described his actions as those of a liberator. He was like a plunderer who broke into a strongman's house, tied him up and took his possessions. (See Mark 3:27) He described himself as a defender when he spoke of himself as a "good shepherd". A good shepherd would risk his life in confronting a wolf, unlike a hireling or a thief, who would run away. (See John 10:14) He carried that attitude into building his Church to be like a battering ram that the "Gates of hell could not resist" (Matthew 16:18)

In carrying out his mission, Jesus gave a great example of manly virtues: he identified with his sinful people when he insisted on being baptized by John; he confronted evil in the loneliness of the desert; he ‘called a spade a spade’ in verbal confrontations; he took the fight to the enemy when he cleansed the Temple; he liberated others from various forms of evil; he treated women sensitively; he loved children; he stepped over restrictive boundaries at social gatherings; he had a special concern for the weak and dispossessed; he gathered and prepared disciples for conflict and they eventually did him proud; he made a few good friends; he sacrificed his life for his nation in such a way that a Roman centurion saluted him with the words: “Truly, this was an upright man.” (Luke 23:47)

The arena of manly virtues involves politics, economics and warfare and Jesus made his mark in that arena. Politically he was labelled "King of the Jews" and he had to die "for the sake of the people. " He confronted the Pharisees with their greed for money. And, of course, he was betrayed for 30 pieces of silver. Militarily, he taught his occupied nation how to avoid destruction and to undermine their Roman oppressors by turning the other cheek (i.e., taking the insult along with the injury) and carrying a soldier's luggage two miles instead of the prescribed single mile. (See Mt 4:8-10; Jn 18:14; Lk 16:14; Mt 5:41)

The struggle in the political, economic and military arena is essentially spiritual. It is part of the primordial battle between good and evil (See Genesis 3:15) and of allegiance to God or Satan, for mastery of the world (Luke 4:4-8).

In a past age, when the terms “western civilization” and “Christian civilization” were used inter-changeably, it may have been safe to downplay the manly virtues of Jesus. But it is disastrous now. With the undermining of Christian civilization by the New World Order, we need people who will master their fear, identify where the threat is coming from and confront it collectively. We will only get that when God’s People, men and woman, renounce themselves, take up their crosses and follow Jesus of the Gospel, who portrays masculine virtue.

On a personal note, if anyone has the impression that I think women are weak, I come from a family where the women have outshone the men in heroism and they have put before me manly models of virtue.

My impression of Sunday sermons is that we have psychologised and emasculated the Gospel. Our priests need encouragement to preach the masculine aspects of Christ’s mission. In our personal lives we need to keep a balance between the Church as “mother” and the Church as “militant”. Then God will truly have a Church that can be the “Universal Sacrament of Salvation” (See Catechism of the Catholic Church 774-776).