Blog to discuss the book "The Apocalypse - Letter by Letter: A Literary Analysis of the Book of Revelation" and current events that point to the events described therein.
And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to be delivered; that, when she should be delivered, he might devour her son. [Apoc. 12:4]
It is explained in The Apocalypse - Letter by Letter by Steven Paul that this scene depicts the apostasy of one third of the college of cardinals. They are drawn to the False Prophet by his irresistible force. He has a charism that they are unable to resist and are willing to turn their backs on the Holy Pontiff, The Pope, in order to follow him.
In our own times, we see how easily the faithful are willing to cast aside the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ in order to follow their own desires. In the linked article, it says there is a new way of looking at the abortion issue in light of the overall Catholic teaching that allows Catholics to vote for a candidate who is "pro-choice".
This story is false on many levels, not the least of which is that the theory is not new at all. The idea of the "seamless garment" was used by Catholics 30 years ago for the same reason - they wanted to vote pro-abortion because the pro-abortion candidate reflected their ideals more closely.
The second big lie in this article is the idea that the pro-abortion candidate's policies would actually reduce the number of abortions. Can he defy gravity as well? In fact, his policies include support for the Freedom of Choice Act, which rescinds all restrictions on abortion-on-demand including parental notification, late term abortion, born alive act, and interstate restrictions.
The third big lie is that all pro-life Catholics want to is outlaw abortion but won't help young women with prevention of unwanted pregnancies or with prenatal and post natal care. In fact traditional, church-going Catholics have been feeding the poor, placing children for adoption, opening crisis pregnancy centers like Spring House, Visitation House and Birthright for years. While primary political emphasis is placed on voting pro-life, it is wholly consistent with everything the Church teaches that to care for the poor and to work against violence and social justice starts with the right to life.
Catholic teaching and pronouncements from the leadership also condemn the death penalty and war so long as there is a just alternative. No political party perfectly embodies Catholic moral teaching but certainly there is open hostility to the unborn, traditional marriage, abstinence programs, adoption with traditional families, and conscience protection for Catholic physicians and businesses in one party.
Catholics are free to vote for whomever they choose. But to claim that the pro-abortion candidate better fits Catholic moral teaching is just plain false. Since the people making this claim seem sincere, there is a possible reason for this. They have been pulled away from the Church by an irresistible force, a charism so strong they could not do otherwise. They were too weak to overcome it. This charism comes from a fresh, well spoken politician who has learned the power of his trade. Some have even asked if he is the Antichrist himself. That is not likely, but the ease with which he has swept Catholics away from their Church should be a dire warning.
The difference between how the Pope is treated in Europe compared to the cheering crowds and affection he finds in the USA has been on full display this week.
Only a few weeks ago, a university in Rome that was founded by a past pope effectively protested his impending visit there. Pope Benedict XVI cancelled and stayed home. And while there have been a few protesters along the route or outside the different venues this week, they have been few and largely marginalized.
In a particularly decent gesture, the Pope met with five people who had been caught up in clergy sexual abuse in Boston. He did so out of the spotlight and as a pastor and shepherd. It was no media event and was not announced ahead of time.
His meeting with Catholic college presidents likewise was much anticipated, especially by moretraditional catholics who have lamented for some time that the Catholic colleges had drifted too far from orthodoxy and actually were stunting the growth of religious faith. Details on that can be found at our sister site Ivory Tower Heretics and at The Cardinal Newman Society web page.
Everywhere the Pope went, you could hear affection from the crowds, from the thousands at the White House singing Happy Birthday, to the huge crowd at Mass at National's Stadium.
Contrast that with the reception he receives in Europe. When the Pope speaks there it is met with a yawn, indifference or scorn. Europe has lost its soul. The most striking rebuke was when the European Union Constitution was written and credited Greek and Roman civilizations for their contributions but omitted all mention of the Catholic Church and her 2,000 year imprint on Europe.
In the book Apocalypse - Letter by Letter, by Steven Paul, the author describes how the Book of Revelation speaks of a time when the forces of Antichrist will close in on the Vatican in Rome forcing the hierarchy to flee. She is the "Woman Clothed With The Sun." The "Woman" flees with the aid of the "Two Wings of the Eagle, The Great One" to the "Wilderness."
Paul explains that wilderness is a term for a non-Catholic country. Why would the "Woman" flee to a non-Catholic country? Perhaps because the Catholic countries have either apostatized or are under the control or influence of Antichrist.
This week's events make it seem more plausible that the USA would and will perform such an act of mercy as the rescue of the Woman. That team helped end Soviet communist domination over a billion people and will work again to keep the world free.
Note: The book "The Apocalypse - Letter by Letter: A Literary Analysis of the Book of Revelation", by Steven Paul essentially makes the same claim as this wacko from Hamas, that Rome will eventually be overrun by the kingdom of Antichrist and the Church will have to flee for safety. Isn't it ironic that this member of the Palestinian Parliament, an sort of oxymoron, sends this message while the pope is in the US?
Hamas Cleric Predicts 'Rome Will Be Conquered by Islam' Monday , April 14, 2008
A sermon last Friday by a prominent Muslim cleric and Hamas member of the Palestinian parliament openly declared that "the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital," would soon be conquered by Islam.
The fiery sermon, delivered by Yunis al-Astal and aired on Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV, predicted that Rome would become "an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread though Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, even Eastern Europe."
"Allah has chosen you for Himself and for His religion," al-Astal preached, "so that you will serve as the engine pulling this nation to the phase of succession, security and consolidation of power, and even to conquests through da'wa and military conquests of the capitals of the entire world. "Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesized by our prophet Muhammad," he added.
Al-Astal last June preached how it was the duty of Palestinian women to martyr themselves by becoming homicide bombers.
"The most exalted form of jihad is fighting for the sake of Allah, which means sacrificing one's soul by fighting the enemies head-on, even if it leads to martyrdom," he said in a June 23, 2007 interview.
"When jihad becomes an individual duty, it applies to women too, because women do not differ from men when it comes to individual duties," he said, calling Jews "the brothers of apes and pigs" who should "taste the bitterness of death."
Friday's rant repeated that theme: "Today, Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam, and has planted the brothers of apes and pigs in Palestine in order to prevent the reawakening of Islam.
"I believe that our children, or our grandchildren, will inherit our jihad and our sacrifices, and, Allah willing, the commanders of the conquest will come from among them.
"Today, we instill these good tidings in their souls – and by means of the mosques and the Koran books, and the history of our Prophets, his companions, and the great leaders, we prepare them for the mission of saving humanity from the hellfire at whose brink they stand."
Note: It would be easy to dismiss the Bin Laden statement as hubris from a reclusive, dying man and a reclusive, dying ideology if not for the knee-jerk reaction to burn things and chant in mindless protest in much of the backwards Muslim world. Photos like the one below could be taken in any of a dozen or so countries anytime one of the jihadi leaders points out a new grievance or whips up an old one. It would be better for the media to ignore them if not for the real and present danger they present for unsuspecting westerners caught in the cross-fire.
Vatican Blasts Bin Laden's Claim of Pope's Anti-Islam 'Crusade'; CIA Is 'Confident' Voice Is Terror Leader's
Thursday , March 20, 2008
VATICAN CITY - The Vatican said Thursday that Usama bin Laden's accusation that Pope Benedict XVI had played a role in a worldwide campaign against Islam is "baseless," as the CIA said it was "confident" that the voice on the tape is in fact the terror leader's.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said it was not surprising that bin Laden had mentioned the pope in a new audiotape posted late Wednesday on a militant Web site -- which the CIA believes is authentic, a U.S. intelligence official told Reuters.
"He was already named in previous messages," Lombardi said in a telephone interview. "It is absolutely baseless (to accuse) the pope of contributing to a lack of respect toward Islam" and its prophet, Muhammad, Lombardi said.
In the tape, bin Laden warned of a "severe" reaction for Europe's publication of cartoons of the prophet and said they were part of a "new Crusade" against Islam in which Benedict had played a "large and lengthy role."
Lombardi noted that the pope and the Vatican have criticized the cartoons on several occasions. In 2006, after the caricatures were first published in a Danish newspaper, the Vatican said the cartoons represented an "unacceptable provocation," and that the right to freedom of expression "cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers."
The pope later said religious symbols must be respected, but he also condemned as unjustified the violent protests in Muslim countries that followed the publication of the cartoons. Benedict has recently taken steps to improve relations with moderate Islam.
In November he will meet Muslim religious leaders for a seminar that was organized after 138 Muslim scholars and intellectuals wrote to Benedict and other Christian leaders to encourage Christians and Muslims to develop their common ground of belief in one God.
In a 2006 speech in Germany that angered many in the Muslim world, Benedict cited a medieval text that characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as "evil and inhuman," particularly "his command to spread by the sword the faith."
The pope later said he was "deeply sorry" about the reactions his remarks sparked and stressed that they did not reflect his own opinions.
1 And a great sign was seen [ophthe] in the heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet and upon her head a crown [stephanos] of twelve stars, 2 and holding in womb, and she cried out having birth pangs and being put to the test to bring forth. 3 and there was seen another sign in the heaven, and behold a great fire-colored dragon having seven heads and ten horns and upon its heads seven diadems, 4 and its tail dragged by force [syrei] the third of the stars of the heaven and cast out them unto the earth, and the dragon took his stand in the presence of the woman the one about to bear, so that when she bore it might devour the thing born of her [to teknon autës]. 5 and she bore a son virile [yion arsen], who was about to shepherd all the nations with an iron rod. and snatched away was the thing born of her to the God and to his throne. 6 and the woman fled unto the wilderness, where she has therein a place prepared by the God, so that therein they may nourish her [trephosin auten] for days one thousand two hundred sixty.
A long time ago, in a mind far, far away, there sprang an opinion. Since then, many hundreds of millions of people have propagated that opinion and perpetuated it into an inveterate tradition throughout the Church, to wit, that the "woman clothed with the sun" is the Blessed Virgin Mary.
I would gladly agree with the many hundreds of millions who assert that 12:1 describes Mary, if I could with impunity take that verse out of its context. But, John warned rue not to add one word to the prophecy and not to subtract one word from it, as stated in 22:18-19; and, surely, what applies to one word in the prophecy must apply to a whole verse.
Let the reader please note the little comma after the noun "stars" at the end of verse 1; that comma is followed by the connective kai at the beginning of verse 2; and the "period," which ends the sentence composed of verses 1 & 2, comes after the infinitive "to bear" or "to bring forth" [tekein]. This all means that the contents of verse 2 are connected to and simultaneous with the contents of verse 1. Hence, according to the many hundreds of millions, the Blessed Virgin Mary, who has already died and been assumed, body and soul, into the glorified state and has been crowned Queen of Heaven, is again pregnant--in heaven above, no less!--where, according to Christ, there is no marriage.
Perhaps, the many millions are tacitly asserting that Mary became Queen of Heaven before Jesus was born, and that, therefore, either Mary or Saint Dominic confused the order of the glorious mysteries in the Rosary, so that the Coronation should precede the Assumption. Frankly, I find it a mystery that such an opinion about 12:1 has become the first reading in the Mass celebrated on the Feast of the Assumption. In Apocalypse 1:19, Christ told John,
"Now write the things that you saw and the things that are and the things about to come into existence after these things."
In 4:1, John is told,
"Come up hither, and I will show you the things that must come into existence after these things."
In 1:19, the term, "after these things" [meta tauta], refers to "the things that you saw and the things that are..." in 4:1; the term, "after these things," refers to the seven letters, i.e., 'the things that are." Hence, the term, 'the things that are about to come into existence," or, 'the things that must come into existence,' unmistakably refers to future things, things that would happen after the Apocalypse was copied and circulated by the year, say, 100 AD. Chapter 12 belongs to those future things, and, therefore, it has absolutely nothing to do with describing the birth and death and ascension of Jesus, the Holy Family's flight into Egypt, etc. So, the argument up to this point, alone, suffices to refute the opinion that the woman is Mary.
Now I will reason from the given information in the text to the woman's real identity, keeping alert to John's practice of using physical things as symbols of spiritual things, and paying attention to context, the context that does not extend merely to the whole Apocalypse, but to the whole Bible. After all, the Apocalypse is the culmination of Biblical prophecy. John could have begun Chapter 12, typically, thus,
"And I saw a woman clothed with the sun, ..."
Instead, he wrote,
"And a great sign was seen in the heaven, ..."
With this introduction, John immediately gave the reader general instruction concerning the particulars that would follow. To call the reader's attention to this instruction, he repeated it in verse 3,
"and another sign was seen in the heaven, ..." [I trust the reader has learned that John did not employ idle repetition.]
Now, the prophetic term "sign" was mentioned often in the New Testament:
(1) The Apostles asked Jesus about the "sign" of his coming. [Mt. 24:3] (2) The Pharisees demanded that Christ prove his divinity by a 'sign from heaven." [Mt. 16:1] (3) Saint Paul warned about 'signs and false wonders" worked by evil powers. [2 Thes. 2:9] (4) Saint John mentioned signs performed by the False Prophet. [Apoc. 13:13, 16:14] (5) Simeon in the Temple prophesied of the infant Jesus: "This child is destined to be the downfall and the rise of many in Israel, a sign that will be opposed... so that the thoughts of many hearts may be laid bare." [Lk. 2:34-35]
From the aforegiven instances may be drawn the idea that "a sign is someone or something VISIBLE to the naked human eye." Therefore, according to John's instruction, the woman in Chapter 12 will be an entity that people CAN SEE; thus, the phrase, "in the heaven," must signify 'in the Church as VISIBLE organization."
Many a "sign" is prophetic. In Chapter 12, the woman, as 'sign," is also prophetic, for she is herself and points to something else: she is the 'GREAT sign" that alludes forward to THE GREAT DAY OF ALMIGHTY GOD. But this 'great sign" is not just the woman. Understand that this "sign" includes the son she will bring forth, and, thus, also the activity he will initiate in the Church.
Note: This "crisis" among the Bishops and clergy is one of the most striking examples of how the Church can be derailed from its mission by sin. The premise of the book is that the underlying cause of the "crisis", homosexuality, has not been dealt with and remains ready to continue its slaughter of souls through deceit and lying until the faithful no longer trust anyone in the Church hierarchy at all. This is an apostacy of immense proportions!
Paved with the Skulls of Bishops
By Richard John Neuhaus Friday, February 1, 2008, 6:54 AM
That's a grim metaphor, maybe too grim. It's from an endorsement of Philip F. Lawler's book, to be published next week, The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston's Catholic Culture (Encounter). The endorsement is by Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska, who says: "Lawler's masterful analysis is sobering and provides an urgent incentive for authentic renewal. If St. John Chrysostom is correct when he says that the road to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops, it would be a mistake for any bishop or priest to miss this book." Bishop Bruskewitz and Philip Lawler obviously think that Chrysostom was correct.
One might suggest that the book is really two books, one about what has happened to Catholicism in Boston and the other about the sex abuse scandal in the Church in America. Boston is the synecdoche for the telling of the much larger story. It is admittedly a very big synecdoche, but much of the book takes leave of Boston altogether in order to examine what happened and is still happening in dioceses around the country.
The account offered is devastating and the blame is clearly laid at the door of the American bishops. Lawler is outraged, but, to his credit, his outrage is controlled. His judgments are sometimes harsh, but, in view of the evidence, they could hardly be otherwise. Throughout, one senses his palpable love for the Church, his solid orthodoxy, and his yearning for spiritual and moral renewal. Lawler was long the editor of Catholic World Report and for several years, under Bernard Cardinal Law, editor of the archdiocesan newspaper The Pilot. His treatment of Law, who was compelled to resign as Archbishop of Boston in December 2002, strikes one as an exemplary exercise in trying to put the best possible construction on the indisputably indefensible.
"The thesis of this book," writes Lawler, "is that the sex abuse scandal in American Catholicism was not only aggravated but actually caused by the willingness of church leaders to sacrifice the essential for the inessential; to build up the human institution even to the detriment of the divine mandate." Bishops again and again responded to the crisis as institutional managers, employing public relations stratagems to evade, deceive, and distract attention from their own responsibility. Lawler several times invokes the terse observation of St. Augustine, "God does not need my lie." The bishops lied, says Lawler, and many of them are still lying. This is offered not as an accusation but as a conclusion that he believes is compelled by the evidence.
"The first aspect of the scandal, the sexual abuse of children, has been acknowledged and addressed," Lawler writes. "The second aspect, the rampant homosexuality among Catholic priests, has been acknowledged but not addressed, and later even denied... The third aspect of the scandal has never even been acknowledged by American church leaders." The third aspect, the malfeasance of bishops, "is today the most serious of all."
Over 80 percent of reported cases of abuse were with teenage boys. That does not include, of course, uncounted instances of sex with men who are of age, since those cases, as several bishops have opined, constitute no problem for the Church, meaning no legal or financial problem. Spiritual and moral problems apparently do not enter the equation. The name for this is corruption. Lawler quotes at length an article, published in 2000, before the scandal in Boston made national headlines, by Father Paul Shaughnessy:
If we examine any trust-invested agency at any given point in its history, whether that agency be a police force, a military unit, or a religious community, we might find that, say, out of every hundred men, five are scoundrels, five are heroes, and the rest are neither one nor the other: ordinarily upright men who live with a mixture of moral timidity and moral courage. When the institution is healthy, the gutsier few set the overall tone, and the less courageous but tractable majority works along with these men to minimize misbehavior; more importantly, the healthy institution is able to identify its own rotten apples and remove them before the institution itself is enfeebled. However, when an institution becomes corrupt, its guiding spirit mysteriously shifts away from the morally intrepid few, and with that shift the institution becomes more interested in protecting itself against outside critics than in tackling the problem members that subvert its mission. For example, when we say a certain police force is corrupt, we don’t usually mean that every policeman is on the take-perhaps only five out of a hundred actually accept bribes-rather we mean that this police force can no longer diagnose and cure its own problems, and consequently, if reform is to take place, an outside agency has to be brought in to make the changes.
Lawler adds: "Homosexual influence within the American clergy was not in itself the cause of the sex abuse crisis. The corruption wrought by that influence was a more important factor." He very gingerly addresses a theory proposed by a number of commentators on the crisis, namely, that bishops engaged in cover-ups and other deceptions because they were threatened with homosexual blackmail. He cites a number of instances in which this appears to be the case and bishops were permitted to resign when their misdeeds could no longer be denied. "The blackmail hypothesis," he writes, "provides a logical explanation for behavior that is otherwise inexplicable: the bishops' willingness to risk the welfare of the faithful and their own reputations in order to protect abusive priests."
The subject of the sex abuse crisis lends itself to sensationalism, but Lawler strives to resist that temptation. His is a generally sober account of a crisis that brought to light a larger pattern of episcopal fecklessness in the Church's accommodation to, and complicity in, the forces of cultural decadence. As readers know, the sex abuse crisis-its sources and ramifications-is a subject regularly addressed in First Things. And I will likely be returning to The Faithful Departed in the magazine.
I differ with Philip Lawler on a number of points in his telling of the story. For instance, his treatment of the 1940's conflict between Father Leonard Feeney and Cardinal Cushing is, I think, too uncritical of Father Feeney. Feeney was out of line in the way he pressed the claim that only Catholics can be saved. And, despite his critique of cultural accommodationism, Lawler betrays a nostalgia for the old Boston Catholicism that has "collapsed," even though it was, in its way, a massive instance of cultural accommodation, albeit an institutionally successful instance.
Those and other caveats aside, The Faithful Departed is the best book-length treatment of the sex abuse crisis, its origins and larger implications, published to date.
Note: The hostility shown the Pope right in Rome itself portends bigger things to come. This may be a small group of radicals and academics now but their numbers will grow as a sterilized Italy rails against God. In the book, 'Apocalypse - Letter by Letter: A Literary Analysis of the Book of Revelation', the author describes a time when the Church is forced to flee Rome.Watch the signs of the times... Vatican calls for rally backing pope in science row
Agence France-Presse Posted date: January 16, 2008
ROME -- The Catholic diocese of Rome called on the city's faithful Wednesday to back Pope Benedict XVI against academics who fault the Church leader for positions seen as anti-science. A burgeoning protest against a planned appearance by the pope, who is also the bishop of Rome, at the secular La Sapienza university here prompted Benedict to cancel the engagement, which had been set for Thursday.
Lamenting the "sad events" that led to the cancellation, Rome's vicar Camillo Ruini urged "all believers, but also all Romans," to stage a show of support during the pope's Angelus prayer on Sunday in St Peter's Square.
Already on Wednesday some 5,000 pilgrims attended the pope's weekly general audience, many chanting "freedom."
"The Church of Rome expresses its solidarity with its bishop, the pope, and bears witness to the love, confidence, admiration and gratitude of the people of Rome towards Benedict XVI," Ruini said.
Many scientists criticize the intellectual, conservative pope, a respected theologian, for a series of positions he has taken that they say subordinate science and reason to faith.
The protest against the visit was spearheaded by physicist Marcello Cini, a professor emeritus of La Sapienza, who wrote to rector Renato Guarini complaining of an "incredible violation" of the university's autonomy.
Sixty-seven professors and researchers of the sprawling university's physics department, as well as radical students, joined in the call for the pope to stay away on Thursday, the start of the university's academic year.
Students opposed to the visit kicked off "an anti-clergy week" on Monday by showing a film on Galileo, the 17th-century physicist who ran afoul of Church doctrine by insisting that the Earth orbits the Sun.
Prime Minister Romano Prodi led unanimous denunciations of the protest by Italy's political class, echoed widely Wednesday by the country's main dailies.
Radical students launched a series of protest events, showing a film on Monday about Galileo, the 17th-century physicist convicted by the Inquisition -- the predecessor of the Vatican's doctrinal watchdog that the pope formerly headed as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
It was the first cancellation in the pope's diary since his election in April 2005.
The daily La Repubblica devoted its front page to the issue, bemoaning the fact the pope "can no longer speak to his home-town university in this mediocre Italy of 2008."
Benedict's predecessor John Paul II was loudly heckled when he spoke at La Sapienza in 1991.
Who cares? Well in Chapter 12 of Revelation, there is a scene described as "The Great Sign". In it a woman clothed with the sun is in great travail to bring forth a son. A dragon is depicted as sweeping away 1/3 of the stars with his tail. In Apocalypse - Letter by Letter, the author claims that the "woman" is the Church and the tail of the dragon is the False Prophet that will cause many in the Church to apostatize. The third of the stars is one third of the episcopate. God will allow one third of the College of Cardinals to throw in with the False Prophet but will never let enough of them be able to control a papal election.
Pope Benedict, by reestablishing the 2/3 majority rule, sets the stage for the final battle, and the Great Sign, a papal election.
