Things the Devil doesn’t want me to do. Or what causes the most spiritual opposition in my life.
1) Knights of Columbus activities. Pretty much anything I do with the Knights. Even if it is something as simple as transcribing the minutes from the last meeting, all the way to a major event. Especially the weekend of the Rosary before Mass.
2) Praying the Novena; Nine Sundays in honor of the Divine Child Jesus.
3) Prayer and Adoration offered as intercession for certain individuals; specifically, when offering for our next Bishop, my sister-in-law and her boyfriend, and now even for my wife and kids.
4) Prayer and praise groups.
The spiritual opposition has changed since I first realized what it was and what was going on. When that happened I got really angry and took some drastic action. Since then the spiritual attacks have become much more subtle, subversive.
But whether it is an all-out frontal assault, or, as Saint Teresa of Avail says in her Inner Castle, the little annoying lizards, not too gross or bad when there are only one or two, but when they come from, many. many are coming and soon you are covered with thousands of tiny demons. It is still a spiritual assault. Ment to strangle you spiritually and render you useless in the service of God.
For a long time, I was embarrassed by the moral teaching of the Catholic Church. Like many people, maybe most Catholics, I made excuses for our moral teachings and at other times outright admitted to not believing them. I can recall more than one conversation about the sexual teachings of the Church, as outlined in Saint Pope John Paul’s II’s The Theology of the Body, where I tried to sidestep all the questions, leaving me and the person questioning me both a little frustrated.
Honestly, now I regret all this very much. I underwent a spiritual conversion, really an awaking, then, about three and a half months later I had a moral conversion. Since then I have totally accepted all the teachings of the Catholic Church. The moral teachings outlined in Humanae Vitae and reaffirmed in Veritatis Splendor are timeless and beautiful. I wish someone would have hit me over the head with them 25 years ago and made me learn them, accept them, and believe them then. My life would be much different, although now I see that God is leading me, I often wonder where I would be if I would have surrendered my will to Him back then.
Blessed Archbishop Fulton Sheen said, “Moral principles do not depend on a majority vote. Wrong is wrong, even if everyone is wrong, and Right is right even if no-one is right.”
Really, I don’t see how I could not have believed the moral teachings before, except for the fact that the Bible has many verses, at least seven or eight, Old and New Testament, that talk about being blinded by sin. At that time I really was in mortal sin all the time. My sin literally blinded me to the moral truth. What I couldn’t understand then, seems painfully obvious now, unmistakable.
Yes, I know, I am going all over the place with this post, but, just one more little rant. Reading the Bible I came upon Matthew 5:14-16 and then I read Matthew 16: 15-20. Now, if you take Jesus at his word, and not call Him a lier, then there is only one conclusion you can draw from these verses. The Catholic Church was founded by Jesus, set on the Rock, Peter the first Pope, and Pope Francis is his direct successor. The Catholic Church is the Church Jesus founded, or you are calling Him a liar. Plain and simple.
The Radical Catholic 