An encounter with the diabolic is strange by it's very nature. I was listening to an interview with Amanda Grace an evangelical "prayer warrior" and she described a similar encounter in the grocery store. She rebuked the spirit in Jesus's Name and the man tore out of the store.(cue in twilight zone music)
God Save your People. Procession and prayers pleading for God's Mercy from the Virus. From Belgrade, Serbia. Why isn't this happening in every City on Earth? Where are our Catholic Western Bishops and Pope? Social Distancing and putting in new orders for Perspex screens, face masks, that's where. It should be obvious to even the cats and dogs by now that only God can save us. Somehow this seems to have escaped them. Somehow.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/hw-the-catholic-church-betrayed-the-dying How the Catholic church betrayed the dying Of all the sad and surreal things to happen in the past few months, the Catholic church’s decision to abandon the dying was, for me, the worst. The Church of England abandoned its churches, forbidding first congregants then priests from setting foot in them, making it clear that in fact it actively dislikes church buildings. But the Catholic church in England betrayed the people who needed it most: the men and women who found themselves in the awful eye of the storm, dying of Covid-19 without family and, as it turned out, without even the possibility of a priest. As our infection rate begins to rise again, and with talk of a second wave in Europe, it’s worth looking at that sequence of events in April, and at the mind-boggling response of the English Catholic bishops, so that perhaps they might think better next time — or at least not play us so much for fools. On 5 April, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales issued a statement entitled ‘Revised Hospital Chaplaincy Advice’, which after a paragraph of prevarication produced one clear sentence: ‘Priests and chaplains must follow the visiting instructions from hospital and trust authorities.’ Given that the visiting instructions in hospitals were not to visit at all, this, for the most part, put paid to anointing of the sick (or extreme unction), the sacrament that we’re told has the effect of uniting the sick person with Christ, giving them the strength, peace and courage to endure suffering, forgiving their sins and preparing them for eternal life. Priests can offer telephone support instead, said the bishops. Always good to chat when you’re on a ventilator. One of the many depressing things about the decision was that it was unnecessary. Priests were already anointing patients safely, wrapped in PPE, using a cotton bud dipped in holy oil. This is the way it’s being done all around the world. So why is the English church so uniquely risk-adverse? I imagine they made the decision by committee, in a Zoom meeting, where no one need ever catch another’s eye. I imagine, after decades of promoting the sorts of people who take their commitment to health and safety very seriously, it’s not the thing to point out when they’ve gone too far. The bishops were afraid, of course they were. At that point in April, 90 priests had died of the virus in Italy. But we were all afraid, and if there was ever a time we needed the church, this was it. ‘The word cowardly comes to mind,’ wrote Damian Thompson on Twitter in response to the statement. Other words come to mind too. Like: catastrophically self-defeating. You’re perfectly entitled to think that the idea of magic oil is daft, but the bishops are supposed to believe in it. They’ve told their flock to order their lives around the sacraments; they wouldn’t be bishops without them. When they abandon the sacraments, they destroy their own credibility. If it’s too much hassle for a chaplain to put on a protective suit, if it’s not really worth the risk, just to anoint someone with oil, then why, when you think about it, bother with baptism? What’s so special about holy water? If blessing down the phone works just as well for the dying, why lay on hands during ordination either? Come to think of it, why do we need the physical presence of a priest at all? After the own goals came the unattractive buck-passing. On the face of it, Catholic bishops in England were just as keen as the rest of the country to praise the NHS. Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of West-minster, began a series of Thursday masses in its honour, starting at 7 p.m. and ‘ending in time for the clap for our carers’. Health workers, said the Cardinal in a Thursday homily, follow a tradition which ‘bears the hallmark of the Christian faith… its commitment to caring for all, especially the poorest, sprang from the determination to follow the teachings of Christ’. By the Cardinal’s own definition, our medics have been better Christians than our bishops. Yet just as they blamed the government for the decision to shut churches, so, almost imperceptibly, bishops laid the blame for deserting the dying on the NHS. The whole tone of that 5 April statement suggested that hospitals had been lobbying the church to suspend visits from chaplains. Its author, Bishop Paul Mason, explained that giving access to chaplains is tricky; doctors don’t want priests to become ‘links in the chain of infection’ and it wouldn’t be right for priests to use masks meant for medics. Has any single NHS hospital ever contacted the Catholic church to complain about the presence of chaplains? I’d love to know. I’m also keen to find out, given how concerned the church is about scarcity of PPE for medics, what provision they’ve made since April. I wrote to the bishops last week asking if I might see their plans for the winter. I assume they’ve been stockpiling priestly PPE and testing young, fit clergy for antibodies, assembling a crack team of corona chaplains. No answer yet. More depressing even than the 5 April statement, if you can bear it, was a report in the Catholic Herald on 9 April, which mentioned that though the Vatican had itself suggested the introduction of ‘extraordinary hospital chaplains’, the bishops here still felt that it would be unwise. Clergy ‘with long experience of the NHS, all of whom asked not to be named’ explained to the reporter that this whole business of preparing distraught souls to meet their maker was all just too tricky at the moment. Think of the things a priest needs, they said. Think not just of the oil, but of the prayer books. Because of the rules about moving potentially infected items between rooms, any special hospital chaplains would have to either commit the words in the prayer book to memory, or write them on a piece of paper that he then left behind in the room. See? Littering. Who could countenance such a thing?
Interesting video about the coming CovidPass - health, travel, and event passports. The Chinese social credit score apps were the test bed for a world wide push to control everyone, everything, everywhere. https://twitter.com/wef/status/1288882047017254912
She was steaming already and if weren't half deaf I probably would have heard her shrieks or at the least been able to understand had I been able to see more than just her eyes with these darn burkas everyone is wearing. In all seriousness though I think you have a good idea with carrying some sacramentals and blessed objects with us when we are out and about. Maybe here in the US we will compete with all the people carrying concealed pistols! We could start a campaign in fact.
Well, she is in for a treat because this morning at Mass on First Saturday I will be offering her up to Our Blessed Mother to pray for. May she come to know the Peace of Christ through the workings of the Holy Spirit.
Interesting isn't it how simple it is to bring something of such magnitude to bare on so many? A good time to learn or further refine a skill or some sort of trade.
Yes, I agree completely AED and was thinking about that very thing last weekend. Our parish had a blessing of sacramentals after mass last week and it reminded me of this and how every time I come into the parish I look to or reach for the Holy water and the font is bone dry. It saddens me a bit because I think about how much I took it for granted.
I was wondering if you were wearing a scapular? Andy has written of some experiences of his wearing the scapular, those that are not of God hate it. What was in her recognized in you what is in you-Jesus. For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens.
No Sam, I wasn't but normally I am. I did have my rosary in my pocket however and thank you for mentioning it, I took my scapular off and left it in my truck when we went to the lake on our camping trip. I forgot where I put it on our return home. I also ordered some blessed medals from walkingword.org for this very reason. We all have sacramental medals but it never hurts to have some backups. You never know also who else may need one.
Yes, we can never have too many sacramentals. Just recently I was prompted to put my scapular on. I have been wearing a blessed scapular medal but I truly believe the cloth scapular is preferable.
More conspiracy...... Spotlight Grows on Mysterious ‘Suicide’ of Dr. Fauci’s Right-Hand Man at NIAID; Dr. Judy Mikovits Says Top Scientist Was “Suicided” to Silence Him Top virologist Dr. Judy Mikovits is shedding some well-needed light on the mysterious death of top scientist Kuan-Teh Jeang, who was second in charge under Dr. Anthony Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the time of his controversial death. Mikovits detailed on the Thomas Paine Podcast that Jeang, who was 54, was poised to blow the whistle on falsified government research, fake clinical data and widespread vaccine fraud that was killing Americans before his untimely demise. https://truepundit.com/spotlight-gr...dy-mikovits-says-top-researcher-was-suicided/
