Sunday, August 15, 2021

Faithful Feet Don't Fail Me Now!

No one wanted to go to the beach with me. So it was to be more-or-less two-weeks of bohemian solitude there at Bethany Beach, Delaware. (You know, “Delaware,” The Bumbler-in-Chief’s adopted home state.) My youngest sister has a comfy beach house there and she had offered to let me use it.

Throughout my life, most of my travels have been solitary ventures. So nothing new there. Yet lately there is a sense of doom in the air that's coloring many souls, mine included. Thus, I thought some alone time for soul-searching was quite in order and would, in fact, be therapeutic. 

When the day dawned for me to leave I was packing my car in the wee hours. I had to make one more trip inside the house to fetch the last of my things when I somehow twisted my right foot. It was the weirdest thing. Out of nowhere, this tremendous pain shot up from that foot. It was all I could do to walk. But by putting my weight mostly on the back ball of my right foot I was able to hobble along. Undaunted, and determined to get to sun, sand and surf, I limped into the house, grabbed the last of my stuff, then went back to my car, got in, and drove away. But some background information is in order.

In the preceding months I finally realized a 17-year desire to erect a shed on my property. It was mainly so I could have a place to put my big, dual-blade, walk-behind lawn mower. But, just before I had finished the shed, my lawn mower had broken down. <= Murphy's Law. I tried to fix it but couldn't and had to drop it off at a repair shop.

So, by the time I left for the beach my one-acre lawn was turning into a jungle. As fate would have it, on my way to the beach I stopped to visit at that same sister's farm on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Wouldn't you know, without my brother-in-law even knowing about my lawn being uncut for over a month he offered me his old lawn mower. Fate intervenes! I was quite thankful and told him I would pick it up on my way back from the beach. (It would fit nicely into the rear of my trusty old '95 Honda Accord station wagon.)

Anyway, I got to the beach and was having a fine time. But at the half-way point I thought, what the heck, I think I'll head back home, pick up my brother-in-law's mower along the way, go mow my lawn, and then come back to the beach. My right foot still bothered me. But, after a week of being immersed in salt water and hot sand, it was improving enough that I thought I could manage this weird task on behalf of my family.

On Sunday t about 7:30 in the morning I arrived back and began mowing my lawn. It took me 4½ hours because the mower was so small and the grass so high. But as I was limping along, finishing the mowing, the mower blade picked up a rock and creamed the hell out of my left foot. At that point I could hardly walk.

Undeterred, I got up the next morning at 3:00 AM, schlumped into my old Honda, and returned to the beach. (I was back in time to limp across the sand for my daily sunrise swim at 5:45 AM.)

But a curious thought began forming in my mind. Because each foot had gotten injured when it did, I wondered whether these mishaps were some sort of message for me to "stay put." The more I dwelt upon this, the more a premonition began forming in my mind that I should cut my vacation short, pack it up, and return home. In fact, I actually decided that that's what I was going to do. But...

After further cogitation I decided to stay. There is something magical about lingering there where land meets the water and the salty air; it’s a place that stimulates body, mind and soul. After all, I rationalized, maybe it was meant as a message for me to "stay put," but to stay put at the beach. I love being at the beach and I'm glad I stayed. 

Perhaps herein lies a moral applicable to the greater soul-searching now going on in the nation and the world as relative chaos and darkness is descending upon us. All is not necessarily gloom and doom; rather, it depends upon how we interpret events. The gut feeling I have is that this world-wide communist takeover attempt in the guise of a "pandemic," while frightening, can very well signal the final death rattle of the old, corrupt world falling away. In its place will rise a new, blessed era spawned by a revolution of soul, a fresh Aquarian consciousness, and a love-crowned world wherein We the People finally welcome Jesus as our King. (And if you don't know what I'm talking about there then go ask Andrew Torba.)

Sunday, August 8, 2021

Faith During Pandemonium

The other day, as I was searching for "vaccination" and "testing" exemptions, I found what I was looking for on a certain church website — The Marcionite Christian Church site, to be exact. It perked some interest. You can find it here.  (Thoughts about this Church, Marcion of Sinope, and their "Very First Bible" theology are welcome...)

It has been sad witnessing almost all Christian churches kowtowing to this Marxist plague masquerading as a pandemic. There is a distinct lack of backbone; no standing up to government mandates and goon squads preventing assemblies of the faithful. Of course given the long slog of infiltration and subversion it shouldn't be surprising. But it's hideous to see when it happens none-the-less. Then there are the attacks on churches, the burnings and defacings  another sign of these sick times wherein nothing is sacred anymore.

The evil-doers are dead-set on destroying Christianity, not just because of the values it harbors. They want people to laugh at the existence of Satan and demons as if they can't and don't exist. But evil entities exist just as surely as God and angelic entities exist. Kill belief in both and irrationality reigns; injustice runs rampant; society dies on the vine.

Witnessing the vagaries of our current, global Communist revolution is knocking sense into people and reawakening their spiritual sensibility. And so I think we can note a very real trend toward a desire to preserve, protect and defend — to conserve the values inherent in the Good, not to mention the True and the Beautiful; a conservatism of what is time-tested, real, authentic — and to accept no substitutes (to include "AI/transhumanism"). This means a wholesale rejection of those who would sell out their home land (even their own bodies), betray the public trust, lie, cheat, steal and act out of a hideous self-interest instead of mindful "Christian virtue." In this respect the nobility of Novalis' statement becomes ever clearer: "There is no religion that is not Christianity."

As to whether or not we'll see a "reverse reformation" — we're definitely in for some big changes. The revolution of consciousness is also a revolution of Spirit, of soul, of love; it's being waged from the nano-level to the kosmos with the complicating, in-between factor of AI-enhanced super-computing and the obliteration of our ability to have surety on our grasp of what is real. That is, with reality busted wide open: with the conspirators' lies and deceptions revealed and the counter-conspirators (controlled and otherwise) counter-poised, We the People are caught between a rock and a hard place. Thus it is that we have only our Faith to guide us. 

Oh, by the way, during my online sleuthing I also found the following Catholic exemption-from-vaccination letter:

--------------------------

Date:  

 

From:

     

 

To ______,

 

In that I am a member of the Catholic Church ------------, I am exercising my right to receive a religious exemption for vaccination.  First and foremost, the vaccines I oppose include the current COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and the Jansen vaccine which are produced with aborted fetal cell lines.

 

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the Jansen vaccine, uses retinal cells from a fetus that was aborted in 1985 and treated in a lab since; the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines test the mRNAs on an aborted fetus from 1973.[1]

 

In regard to using such vaccines, the Vatican has instructed the faithful that:

“As regards the diseases against which there are no alternative vaccines which are available and ethically  acceptable,  it is right to abstain from using these vaccines  if it can be done without causing children, and indirectly the population as a whole, to undergo significant risks to their health.”   (Moral Reflections on Vaccines Prepared From Cells Derived From Aborted Human Fetuses, Pontifical Academy for Life, June 2005).

 

Therefore as a faithful Catholic, I cannot according to the Church tenets on conscience which are outlined below, use any product that takes its origin in abortion. The Vatican document I outline below:

 

“They should take recourse, if necessary, to the use of conscientious objection  with regard to the use of vaccines produced by means of cell lines of aborted human fetal origin.”  “Such a duty may lead, as a consequence, to taking recourse to “objection of conscience” when the action recognized as illicit is an act permitted or even encouraged by the laws of the country and poses a threat to human life. The Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae underlined this “obligation to oppose” the laws which permit abortion or euthanasia ‘by conscientious objection.’

 

“It is up to the faithful and citizens of upright conscience (fathers of families, doctors, etc.) to oppose, even by making an objection of conscience, the ever more widespread attacks against life and the “culture of death” which underlies them.”  “[T]here is a grave responsibility to use alternative vaccines and to make a conscientious objection with regard to those which have moral problems.”  As regards those who need to use such vaccines for reasons of health, it must be emphasized that, apart from every form of formal cooperation, in general, doctors or parents  who  resort  to the use of these vaccines  for their children, in spite of knowing their origin (voluntary abortion), carry out a form of very remote mediate material cooperation, and thus very mild, in the performance of the original act of abortion, and a mediate material cooperation, with regard to the marketing of cells coming from abortions, and immediate, with regard to the marketing of vaccines produced with such cells.  However, in this situation, the aspect of passive cooperation is that which stands out most. It is up to the faithful and citizens of upright conscience (fathers of families, doctors, etc.) to oppose, even by making an objection of conscience, the ever more widespread attacks against life and the “culture of death” which underlies them. From this point of view, the use of vaccines whose production is connected with procured abortion constitutes at least a mediate remote passive material cooperation to the abortion, and an immediate passive material cooperation with regard to their marketing.” 

 

Further, the Catechism of the Catholic Church which Pope John Paul II declared to be the “sure teaching norm of the Catholic Church” contains the tenets of our faith and our duty to adhere to these teachings regarding the right of conscience objections states:

 

1776    Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment…. For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God…. His conscience is man’s most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.

1777    Moral conscience, present at the heart of the person, enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do good and to avoid evil. It also judges particular choices, approving those that are good and denouncing those that are evil. It bears witness to the authority of truth in reference to the supreme Good to which the human person is drawn, and it welcomes the commandments. When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking.

1778    Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed. In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right. It is by the judgment of his conscience that man perceives and recognizes the prescriptions of the divine law: 

Conscience is a law of the mind; yet [Christians] would not grant that it is nothing more; I mean that it was not a dictate, nor conveyed the notion of responsibility, of duty, of a threat and a promise….   [Conscience] is a messenger of him, who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by his representatives. Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ.

1779    It is important for every person to be sufficiently present to himself in order to hear and follow the voice of his conscience. This requirement of interiority is all the more necessary as life often distracts us from any reflection, self-examination or introspection.

Return to your conscience, question it…. Turn inward, brethren, and in everything  you do, see God as your witness.

1806   Prudence is the virtue that disposes practical reason to discern our true good in every circumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it.  Prudence is ‘right reason in action,’ writes St. Thomas Aquinas. It is called auriga virtutum (the charioteer of the virtues); it guides the other virtues by setting rule and measure. It is prudence that immediately guides the judgment of conscience. The prudent man determines and directs his conduct in accordance with this judgment.

We are also taught through the teachings of Papal Encyclicals that conscience is the Divine Law which is inscribed into the heart and soul of man by God.  For example: “The natural law is written and engraved in the soul of each and every man, because it is human reason, ordaining him to do good and forbidding him to sin…But this command of human reason would not have the force of law if it were not the voice and interpreter of a higher reason to which our spirit and freedom must be submitted.” (Leo XIII Libertas Praestantissimum, 597)

“On his part, man perceives and acknowledges the imperatives of the divine law through the mediation of conscience. It is through his conscience that man sees and recognizes the demands of divine law. He is bound to follow this conscience faithfully in all his activity so that he may come to God, who is his last end. Therefore he must not be forced to act contrary to his conscience. Nor must he be prevented from acting according to his conscience, especially in religious matters.  The reason is that the exercise of religion, of its very nature, consists before all else in those internal, voluntary and free acts whereby man sets the course of his life directly toward God. Acts of this kind cannot be commanded or forbidden by any merely human authority.” (Dignitatis Humanae, Pope Paul VI, 1965).

Synod of Bishops’ address to the United Nations October 2, 1979:
“In accordance with their dignity, all human beings, because they are persons, that is, beings endowed with reason and free will and, therefore, bearing a personal responsibility, are both impelled by their nature and bound by a moral obligation to seek the truth, especially religious truth. They are also bound to adhere to the truth once they come to know it and to direct their whole lives in accordance with its demands” (Dignitatis humanae, 2). “The practice of religion by its very nature consists primarily of those voluntary and free internal acts of conscience by which a human being directly sets his course towards God. No merely human power can either command or prohibit acts of this kind”

Pope Paul VI, 1965  Gaudium et Spes:   “For its part, authentic freedom is an exceptional sign of the Divine image within man. For God has willed that man remain “under the control of his own decisions, so that he can seek his Creator spontaneously, and come freely to utter and blissful perfection through loyalty to Him. Hence man’s dignity demands that he act according to a knowing and free choice that is personally motivated and prompted from within, not under blind internal impulse nor by mere external pressure.”  Fourth Lateran Council:

“The Divine Law,” says Cardinal Gousset, “is the supreme rule of actions; our thoughts, desires, words, acts, all that man is, is subject to the domain of the law of God; and this law is the rule of our conduct by means of our conscience. Hence it is never lawful to go against our conscience; as the Fourth Lateran council says, ‘Quidquid fit contra conscientiam, aedificat ad gehennam.'” [“Whatever is done in opposition to conscience is conducive to damnation.”]

 

The Centers for Disease Control, which is responsible for declaring public health emergencies, has not attested to any sort of significant risk to the health of the community at this time that would preclude our right to abstain in accord with this teaching.  According to the Section 564 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, a lawful application of the terms of a lawful emergency use authorization ("EUA") pursuant includes the right of informed consent and the option to refuse[2].  The FDA’s guidance on the right to informed consent and the option to refuse is highlights the right of informed consent and the option to refuse governing the administration of Emergency authorized “unapproved products.”  https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/vaccines/emergency-use-authorization-vaccines-explained

 

Therefore as a faithful Catholic, opposed to abortion and raised in the old school catholic ways, I cannot according to the Church tenets on conscience which I outlined use any product that takes its origin in abortion. 

 

In that the use of these vaccines would be both a violation of Catholic doctrine on the duty to adhere to moral conscience and also in contradiction with the instruction of the Vatican, therefore, under the teachings of the Catholic Church to which I follow, am religiously and morally bound, I submit this exemption for vaccination.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

 



[1] Fetal Cell Lines Were Used to Make the Johnson & Johnson COVID Vaccine—Here’s What That Means, 3/4/2021, MSN.com

[2] 21 USCS § 360bbb-3