+JMJ+ I’m working on a post about Fatima but I’m not ready to publish it on the blog yet. So tonight I’m going to link to a couple of posts about Fatima from a series I did a while back, Something About Mary Every Day in May.
Continue reading “Our Lady of Fatima”May is the month devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary. I’m doing a post each Monday in May about the Blessed Virgin. Last week I began to share something Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen wrote in his 1948 book, Communism and the Conscience of the West. It’s just as relevant today as it was then. In fact, it’s downright prophetic. Here, then is part two of a two-part series on Our Lady of Fatima and the errors of Russia. I’m re-posting the link to the video of Archbishop Sheen wherein he talks about some of the same things he wrote about in the book. (You can read part one here.)
Continue reading “Our Lady of Fatima and the Errors of Russia, Part 2”
May is the month devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary, so I’m doing a post each Monday in May about the Blessed Virgin. I want to share something Archbishop Sheen wrote in his 1948 book, Communism and the Conscience of the West. It’s just as relevant today as it was then. In fact, it’s downright prophetic. Here, then is part one of a two-part series on Our Lady of Fatima and Russia. (You can read part two here.)
Continue reading “Our Lady of Fatima and the Errors of Russia”
I never got to watch Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen when I was growing up. I think I’d only heard about him and I’d seen photos of him. Sometime around my conversion (give or take a few years) I saw his program, Life is Worth Living, on EWTN and realized what I’d been missing. (Video of Bishop Sheen below, links at the end of this post.)
At that time I still didn’t now what to make of Marian apparitions and it would be some years before I would dip my toe in the water. But now that I have, one apparition in particular means a lot to me. In Catholic-speak I would say I have devotion to Our Lady of Fatima. This talk by Archbishop Sheen will go some way in revealing why I like him so much and why Fatima means so much to me and not just me but countless others. And to the world, whether it knows it or not. Especially now.
Continue reading “Bishop Sheen, Fatima, and the Conscience of the West”A sobering and chilling inside look at the workings of the Communist Party USA in the early to mid 20th century
School of Darkness, by Dr. Bella Dodd, is a thoroughly riveting account of a young girl who was born into a nominally Catholic family and hungered for meaning and direction, only to get sucked into the empty, destructive, and ultimately self-destructive, Communist path. The Party chewed her up and spit her out when she began to realize that it was not what it pretended to be. She dared to ask questions, which was unforgivable. Bella Dodd was a true believer in the Cause for many years only to realize that she had given her life to a phantasm. Nothing about Communism is real. Except its aim of total domination and its resulting (and inevitable) soul-crushing despair. But the Lord is always searching for His lost sheep and no one is beyond the reach of His helping hand. (Links to the ebook and to the Angelico Press edition at the end of this post.)
Bella was living in a “world of men who were determined to create new types of human beings who would conform to the blueprint of the world they confidently expected to control.” (Page 162. See note below for more.)
After immersing myself in that tale of unions, violence, and strikes, delusions and deceits, nihilism and other things I’m not used to, I felt shaken and sad. Glad that Bella’s story ended well. (Imagine receiving instruction in the faith from–oh, wait. If you don’t already know, I don’t want to spoil it for you.) Sad that so many thousands, tens of thousands–who knows how many?–were and will be so profoundly misled. But my study of this nightmarish cult of the collective has had one good result: my studies of the apparitions at Fatima have received new energy and urgency. I am more convinced than ever that Fatima holds the key to defeating Marxism. And that the only remedy for godlessness is God Himself. (I’d like to take credit for that wonderful line, but I think I read it recently. I’ll let you know when I track down the source.)
Update: Silly me! The line is from School of Darkness, though not the way I wrote it. Here’s the proper quote with context.
“Those devoted to progressive education and to preparing youth to live in the “new socialist world” are abstractly sure of what they want, but they seem not to know that they work with human beings. Aside from teaching that children must learn to get along with other children, no moral or natural law standards are set. There is no word about how our children are to find the right order of harmonious living. I, too, had to learn by hard experience that you cannot cure a sick soul with more buildings or more playgrounds. These are important, but they are not enough. Abraham Lincoln, schooled in a one-room log cabin, received from education what all the athletic fields and laboratories cannot give. All his speeches reflected his love for his Creator. He knew that God is the cure for godlessness.” Bella Dodd, School of Darkness, end of page 136.
Much more on this and related subjects in the works.
Note
Dodd, Bella (2014-12-16). School of Darkness. The Kindle edition I quoted from is no longer listed on the Amazon site. Here are two other links for the book.
School of Darkness: Paperback. (Amazon affiliate link: I may make a small commission at no cost to you if you buy the book using my link. Thank you for helping support the site and to spread the word about the threat to the Church.)
School of Darkness: ebook in various formats at archive.org.
Want to read the full text of the infamous manifesto that gave the weathermen their name? Search no more. You Don’t Have to Be a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows is at the Internet Archive. Look on the left sidebar for several different formats for free download. I downloaded the Pdf (read with the free Adobe Acrobat Reader) and the Mobi (read with various ebook readers, including the free Kindle app for various electronic devices, including Mac and PC).
“Originally published in New Left Notes June 18, 1969 (as noted on the document’s page at the Internet Archive)”, the ideas enshrined therein are still alive and well and living in various “community organizations” with strong ties to the White House and our current administration. You may have heard Beck or someone else talking about this on TV or the radio…no, well, probably no one else is mentioning this on TV. Maybe Michael Voris’s RealCatholicTV and others with a much smaller audience than Beck. I’d like to see Voris have the reach that Beck does. There’d be ruffled feathers all over the place, deserving of much ruffling, and I, for one, would be delighted. Continue reading “We don’t need another weatherman, not the radical revolutionary terrorist kind anyway”
What could one possibly build with just ten little planks? I suppose it depends upon the planks and one’s imagination. (Or lack thereof.) If they’re wide planks, one might build a desk, a table, a bookcase or a doghouse. Or, sawing the planks into smaller pieces, one could build several somethings. But the ten planks I’m writing about today are not made of wood and they aren’t used for building, for construction. They’re used in tearing down, for destruction, as in whole societies. As in our society. As in freedom and the rights of the individual. Keep in mind recent events as you read these, the Ten Planks, as they appear in the Communist Manifesto.* Continue reading “What can you build with ten little planks?”
Isn’t this interesting? I just found an entire section on Communism on a site called MedLibrary.org, which purports to be a site about medications and drugs. Looks like they’ve reproduced the series on Communism at the Wikipedia. Strange, is it not? (View larger image below. See the Communism section on MedLibrary’s website. Continue reading “Why does a medical library site have a wiki on Communism?”
Catholic Heart and Mind 
