The precious image of the ever Virgin Mary, Mother of G-d, in the manner as she is today kept in the Temple at Tepeyacac, which is named Guadalupe. The gold rays, stars and border of the mantle, the gold crown, the gold fleur-de-lis on the robe, and the Moon and Angel at her feet are late nineteenth-century additions to the original image produced on Tuesday, 12 December 1531 A.D.
Although there are, of course, several equally excellent ways in which one may slice a cake, I do rather like Doctor Jim McDonnell's listing of "the essentials" in Communication as: Identity, Purpose, Audience/Public, Message, Channels/Media, Barriers and - perhaps most challenging of all - Evaluation. (Cf. Bishop Reinhold Stecher's "Challenge to the Church”.)
Justice just IS:…
"Do not be disarmed by malice; disarm malice with kindness."Romans 12:21
Re-Member: Memory is the key to our Cosmic Resurrection I+N Love NOW...
"Truth does not need people to understand it, but people need truth in order to really live."
Peter Plichta, God's Secret Formula, ISBN 1-86204-014-1 hardback, 1-86204-358-2 paperback
"La foi est puissante, parce qu'elle laisse peu de place au reste."
as prayed by His Holiness Pope John-Paul II in St. Peter's Square on 25 March 1984:
We have recourse to your protection, Holy Mother of G-d.
Mother of individuals and peoples, you know all their hopes, you who have a mother's awareness of all the struggles between good and evil, between light and darkness which afflict the modern world, accept the cry which we, moved by the Holy Spirit, address directly to your Heart. Embrace with the love of the Mother and Handmaid of the Lord, this human world of ours which we entrust and consecrate to you, for we are full of concern for the earthly and eternal destiny of individuals and peoples.
In a special way we entrust and consecrate to you those individuals and nations wluch particularly need to be entrusted and consecrated. We have recourse to your protection, HoIy Mother of G-d, despise not our petitions in our necessities. Mother of the Church, enlighten the people of G-d along the paths of faith, hope and love! Enlighten especially the people whose consecration and entrusting of themselves, you are awaiting.
Help us to live in the truth of the consecration of Christ for the entire human family of the modern world. In entrusting to you, O Mother, the world, all individuals and peoples, we also entrust to you this very consecration of the world, placing it in your motherly heart.
Immaculate Heart, help us to conquer the menace of evil, which so easily takes root in the hearts of the people today and whose immeasurable effects already weigh down upon our modern world and seem to block the path towards the future!
From famine and war, deliver us!
From nuclear war, from incalculable self-destruction, from every kind of war, deliver us!
From sins against the life of man from its very beginning, deliver us!
From every kind of injustice in the life of society, both national and international, deliver us!
From readiness to trample on the commandments of G-d, deliver us!
From attempts to stifle in human hearts the very truths of G-d, deliver us!
From the loss of awareness of good and evil, deliver us!
From sins against the Holy Spirit, deliver us, deliver us!
Accept, O Mother of Christ, this cry laden with the sufferings of all individual human beings, laden with the sufferings of whole societies. Help us with the power of the Holy Spirit to conquer all sin - individual sin and the sin of the world, sin in all of its manifestations. Let there be revealed once more, in the history of the world, the infinite saving power of the Redemption - the power of merciful love! May it put a stop to evil! May it transform consciences! May your Immaculate Heart reveal for all the light of hope! Amen.
Individual responses to questions about the healthy development of interpersonal relationships within our contemporary context are sometimes complicated by the hardships many have experienced already in the past when attempting to reconcile the content of a Vatican Decree issued on 30 June 1952 under the specific authority of His Holiness Pope Pius XII (DS 3907) with the inner promptings of their own heart as well as of that of their partner in love.
Frequent visitors to this website may be surprised to learn that the learned Vatican experts who had at that time urged the Pope to condemn any sort of so called "reserved embrace" (amplexus reservatus) were, by and large, themselves quite without any relevant experience.
Several questions relating to this issue have recently been put to me, and I sincerely believe many women and not a few men may still find it very helpful to read and discuss with some person they feel they both know and trust the "new and revised" 1903 edition of Doctor Alice B. Stockham, M. D.'s 140-page 1896 book, Karezza - Ethics of Marriage (R. F. Fenno and Company, 18 East Seventeenth St., New York), a record of the publication of which was, of course, entered in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at that time.
"The institution of marriage becomes ideal when the desire and pleasure of the wife calls forth the desire and pleasure of the husband - when a single code of ethics governs their relation. When offspring is desired, then surely it is for woman to command and man to obey.
Henry C. Wright, a noble defender of the rights of women, and children, said: 'Man, in begetting a child without regard to the wishes and condition of his wife, heedless of the physical and spiritual well being of his offspring, commits the greatest outrage any human being can perpetrate on another. Motherhood should be a privilege and an opportunity, not a penalty or misfortune.' " (p.69).
(ISBN 0 904693 55 4)
This book is a prayerful historical and metahistorical anti-Jesuit and anti-Vatican anthroposophically based meditation, the original text of which is dedicated to the thousandth anniversary (988-1988) of the coming of Christianity to Russia and the English translation of which is dedicated to Owen Barfield, but I don't know whether to think of it as beginning where my predecessor, the anonymous and posthumous author of Meditations on The Tarot - a journey into Christian Hermeticism (Amity House/Element Books, New York 1985)'s book leaves off, or vice-versa. James Webb's The Flight from Reason (London, Macdonald, 1971), later reissued as The Occult Underground with a companion volume The Occult Establishment (La Salle, Illinois, Open Court, 1974 and 1976) explores the background to much of H.P. Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner and their contemporaries' approach to this and related matters.
The Future of the East-Slavic People and the Spiritual Tasks of Central Europe
"… However, in order that this might actually be accomplished amongst the East-Slavic people, that spiritual life of Central Europe for which Rudolf Steiner fought throughout his life's work will have to nourish it not only in the course of the coming centuries but for one and a half millennia, that is until the end of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. For this is what Rudolf Steiner calls the 'will of world wisdom': 'Adding two thousand years to 1400 we get the approximate time [around 3500] when something will emerge in the evolution of the Earth that has had its seeds in the German life of the spirit, ever since there has been such a life of the spirit… The 'will of world wisdom', the wisdom of the historical Sophia, is that the East-Slavic people be given as their guide until the beginning of the sixth epoch the light of the true spiritual life of Central Europe, which can lead them to an individual, and not a national, group-knowledge-and-experience of Christianity, to a fully conscious, and not instinctive, relationship to the Christ-impulse.
And what Central Europe is able to give Eastern Europe in this respect, the Orthodox Church - which has remained at the stage of a group spirituality - will never be able to give it… 'In the Greek Orthodox Church there was a good spirit until the 6th or 7th century, but what at one time is a good spirit changes into a luciferic spirit if it is kept on beyond its time. To hold on to the Orthodox religion is to be in the claws of Lucifer.' For the true path of world evolution, and the only right path into the sixth cultural epoch, leads from the old group-experience of Christianity to an individual experience of it, and from the latter again to a group-experience, though now on a completely different level of development, which is attainable only as a result of passing through the individual stage and which can then be fully compatible with the principal of human freedom… 'We seek community above us, the living Christ within us'… sobórnost - a word that cannot be translated into any other language. (This Russian word sobórnost comes from the noun sobór, which means both 'ecclesiastical edifice, cathedral' and also 'large spiritual gathering, council'. Both meanings are also associated with the verb sobirat'sa - to come together, to gather. The word sobórnost refers to a higher, social community of human beings, one that is founded on the spirit. In other words, both "church" and "ecclesia", properly understood, are exact translations!) Its meaning can be conveyed to some extent only with the help of the image or comparison that everyone enters a spiritual temple or town out of an individually apprehended spiritual impulse and that in such a place he can, nevertheless, unite in full freedom with the others who have been guided and fulfilled by the same spirit in a common experience of the mystery of the future universal Whitsun, when the Holy Spirit will descend upon each person as an individual spirit and nevertheless will be the higher, common Spirit of the whole gathering and, in future, of all mankind…" (pp.335-7)
If Rudolf Steiner, as Prokofieff presents him throughout this book, is right, Roman Catholic teachings were appropriate during the Middle Ages and Western scientific rationalism has been appropriate since the Renaissance, but it is to the credit of the Eastern Orthodox clergy and faithful that, post-Tridentine and still continuing Vatican and Jesuit ecclesial and political machinations notwithstanding, they have never forgotten that human persons are constituted of body, mind and soul and not merely of a body and a mind-soul, as the Fourth Council of Constantinople dogmatically taught in 869, exactly 1000 years before the First Vatican Council's disastrous confirmation of this blasphemous error as eternally 'true' by adding to it in 1869 an equally blasphemous dogmatic definition of Papal Infallibility.
As it happens, what the Fourth Council of Constantinople condemned as heretical on 28 February 870 was any teaching that human persons each have not only one soul but two souls, and when Papal Infallibility was 'defined' on 18 July 1870, that is exactly what happened - the Pope's 'infallibility' was not 'extended' but 'defined', i.e., limited and set within dogmatically clear boundaries. Any other human being is naturally infallible regarding any judgment of truth whatsoever, provided that judgment is properly made upon evidence, which is why Doctor Peter Plichta is entitled to feel Mössbauer badly let him down; the Roman Pontiff, however, when considered not as a potentially universally infallible ordinary human being but precisely as Head of The Church established by Jesus Christ, is - unlike the rest of us - only 'infallible' when his pronouncements satisfy the stringent conditions laid down by the First Vatican Council (cf. DS 3065-75).
It is clear, therefore, that Steiner and Prokofieff each exhibit that typically Eastern insouciance in respect of material facts which the latter, indeed, lauds as the great Russian people's saving protection against soulless Western materialistic rationalism (allegedly the quintessence of Jesuitry within both the Vatican and Freemasonry), but this is not to say that the issue they focus is not today our primary challenge. If universal clairvoyance is tomorrow our destiny, are post-Steiner anthroposophists our only salvation? Does the protection of Mary's veil extend only over Russia? For me, these are now rhetorical questions - but the issue is vital and each one of us needs, at the proper moment, to achieve Freedom.
As is clear from all that stands written within these webpages, and as is also evident from any dispassionate study of my Lonergan papers in the Ottawa Archive, I share that distinguished Jesuit's mode of understanding both divine and human personhood. Maturity of growth, however, in my experience, does not only require that we disentangle ourselves from the schizoid snares of post-Cartesian life-styles; we also need to learn how best effectively to transcend the limitations of both rival Christian models above mentioned. Both Max Freedom Long's and Robert Masters' elsewhere more in detail mentioned accounts of Ancient Egyptian traditional teaching as regards both the differentation of two souls (the perishable SOKHIM and the practically immortal BA) and the integration of five bodies (AUFU, KHU, KA, HAIDIT & SÂHU) within the sphere of influence of One Life Force (SA) are in this respect especially helpful.
According to The Tablet:
Pope Paul VI asked his English-speaking secretary, Father John Magee: "What makes for a good diocese?"
Fr. Magee countered: "Well, what do you think, Holy Father?"
The Pope replied that there were three things of importance:
9 October 1993, page 1293.
8 June 1996 (p.756):
“Fr Leonard Boyle, the Irish Dominican who [until recently was] Vatican Librarian… it would not be long, he claimed, before the whole of the 26 million volumes in the United States Library of Congress could be held on a computer chip no bigger than” a 20p piece…
16 March 1996 (p.365):
Lord John Habgood, 18 The Mount, Malton, North Yorks YO17 0ND
3 August 1996 (p.1031):
“The general secretary of the World Council of Churches, which brings together 350 Christian Churches with a total of some 400 million members, has suggested a council of all Christian Churches in the year 2000 to discuss controversial questions. Dr Konrad Raiser felt the present bilateral dialogue with the Catholic Church was no longer adequate, and a new approach was needed…”
24 August 1996 (p.1105):
The Revd Jeremy Caddick, Dean, Emmanuel College, Cambridge CB2 3AP -
25 May 1996 (pp.691-2):
Henry Chadwick's review of David Bird, E. Rozanne Elder, William Franklin, Joan McGuire OP, Dennis Mikulanis, Emmanuel Sullivan SA, Receiving the Vision: the Anglican-Roman Catholic reality today (Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, $14.95) -
1 June 1996 (p.728):
John Brown, lately Anglican Bishop of Cyprus and the Gulf, 130 Oxford Street, Cleethorpes DN35 0BP -
25 May 1996 (p.695):
Benedict Heron's review of Peter Hocken, The Glory and the Shame: reflections on the twentieth-century outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Eagle Press, £7.99) -
3 February 1996 (p.146):
John Court's review of J. L. Houlden, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (SCM Press, £9.95) -
16 March 1996 (pp.365-6):
Stratford Caldecott, Centre for Faith & Culture, Westminster College, Oxford OX2 9AT -
14 October 1995 (p.1313):
Fr Roman Cholij, Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral, 12 Binney Street, London W1 -
26 August 1995 (p.1081):
Fr Oliver McTernan, St Francis of Assisi, Pottery Lane, Notting Hill Gate, London W11 -
30 September 1995 (p.1337):
Fr Michael Manning, Millstreet, Co. Cork, Ireland -
3 February 1996 (p.144):
L. O. Dorn SJ, Niels Steensens Kollegium, Sankt Kjeldsgade 3, DK-2100, Copenhagen, Denmark -
21 October 1995 (p.1345):
Fr Edmund Hill, Blackfriars, Buckingham Road, Cambridge -
18 May 1996 (p.651):
Elizabeth McTaggart, 25 Pine Drive, Thornhill Park, Southampton SO18 5RQ -
17 February 1996 (p.227):
A. Owsianka, 324 Malden Road, New Malden, Surrey KT3 6AU -
9 December 1995 (pp.1581-2):
Fr Humphrey O'Leary CSsR, 2 Glen Oaks, Glendowie, Auckland 5, New Zealand -
9 December 1995 (p.1582):
Francis Jackson, 2 Old Chapel, Church Street, Market Drayton, Shropshire TF9 1AF -
PRAYER OF SAINT TERESA OF LISIEUX, DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH
(Sister Teresa of The Child Jesus & The Holy Face)
Jesus Who I+N Thy bitter Passion didst become the reproach of men and the Man of Sorrows, I venerate Thy Holy Countenance on which shone the Beauty and Gentleness of Divinity. I+N those disfigured features I recognise Thine infinite Love, and I long to love Thee and to make Thee loved... May I behold Thy Glorious Face I+N Heaven!
Copy of a photograph of the Shroud of Turin taken by a scientist employed by the U.S. National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA).
"Your admission among Masons in a state of helpless indigence was an emblematical representation of the entrance of all men on this, their mortal existence. It inculcated the useful lessons of natural equality and mutual dependence. It instructed you in the active principles of universal beneficence and charity, and taught you to see the solace of your own distress by extending relief and consolation to your fellow-creatures in the hour of their affliction. Above all, it taught you to bend with humility and resignation to the Will of the Great Architect of the Universe; and to dedicate your heart thus purified from every baneful and malignant passion and fitted only for the reception of truth and wisdom, as well to His Glory as to the welfare of your fellow-creatures…
Proceeding onwards, and still guiding your steps by the principles of moral truth, you were led in the Second Degree to contemplate the intellectual faculty, and to trace it from its development, through the paths of heavenly science, even to the Throne of God Himself. The secrets of Nature and the principles of intellectual truth were then unveiled to your view…
To your mind, thus modelled by virtue and science, Nature, however, presents one great and useful lesson more. She prepares you, by contemplation, for the closing hour of your existence; and when, by means of that contemplation, she has cornducted you through the intricate windings of this mortal state, she finally instructs you how to die. Such, Brother A.B., is the peculiar lesson of the Third Degree in Masonry, the chief object of which is to teach the heart to seek for happiness in the consciousness of a life well spent, so that when the shadows gather around, an unseen arm may sustain the sinking head, and Death create not a captive but a conqueror; it invites you to reflect on this awful subject, and teaches you to feel that, to the just and virtuous man, Death has no terrors equal to the stain of falsehood and dishonour…
Let me now beg you to observe that the light of a Master Mason is darkness visible, serving only to express that gloom which rests on the prospect of futurity. It is that mysterious veil of darkness which the ey e of human reason cannot penetrate, unless assisted by the light which is from above… Let the emblems of mortality whrch lie before you lead you to contemplate your inevitable destiny, and guide your reflections into that most interesting of all human studies, the knowledge of yourself. Be careful to perform your alloted task while it is day, for the night cometh when no man can work. Continue to listen to the voice of Nature, which bears witness that even in this perishable frame resides a vital and immortal principle, which inspires a holy confidence that the Lord of Life will enable us to trample the king of terrors beneath our feet, and lift our eyes to that bright Morning Star whose rising brings peace and salvation to the faithful and obedient of the human race…
And may the blessing of the Most High rest upon us, and upon all true and faithful Brethren throughout the world; may brotherly love prevail, and every moral and social good cement us."*
* Readers unacquainted with Freemasonry of the AngloSaxon sort may learn from Joseph Fort Newton's The Builders - A Story & Study of Masonry (Allen & Unwin, 1918, reprinted 1919, 1922, 1924, 1927, 1934). Consider, for instance, this passage he cites from C. R. Kennedy's The Servant in the House:
"I am afraid you may not consider it an altogether substantial concern. It has to be seen in a certain way, under certain conditions. Some people never see it at all. You must understand, this is no dead pile of stones and unmeaning timber. It is a LIVING thing.
When you enter it you hear a sound - a sound as of some mighty poem chanted. Listen long enough, and you will learn that it is made up of the beating of human hearts, of the nameless music of men's souls - that is, if you have ears to hear. If you have eyes, you will presently see the church itself - a looming mystery of many shapes and shadows, leaping sheer from floor to dome. The work of no ordinary builder!
The pillars of it go up like the brawny trunks of heroes; the sweet flesh of men and women is moulded about its bulwarks, strong, impregnable; the faces of little children laugh out from every corner-stone; the terrible spans and arches of it are the joined hands of comrades, and up in the heights and spaces are inscribed the numberless musings of all the dreamers of the world. It is yet building - building and built upon.
Sometimes the work goes on in deep darkness; sometimes in blinding light; now under the burden of unutterable anguish; now to the tune of great laughter and heroic shoutings like the cry of thunder. Sometimes, in the silence of the night-time, one may hear the tiny hammerings of the comrades at work up in the dome - the comrades that have climbed ahead."
Resurrection means freely preferring Life to death, Wakefullness to sleep, Memory to forgetfulness. No surprise then that all my predecessors have been, or now that I so unashamedly as well as kairotically, polyphrenically and synæsthetically remain a Jackdaw with Reams for dreams…
- Shalom & Welcome! -
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