Is holiness temporary loneliness?

Did not Christ tell us we must give up even mother, father, and friends?  It is temporary loneliness because as Christians; as attempters of virtue, we are alone in a world of natural men; in a world of slaves to baseness.

How many lived the disciplined life?  How many even attempt it?  How many have the will for it?  How many are able to avoid, have the strength, to disallow the boozy, gluttonous stench of modernity to seep into their pours?

None. Not one.

Christianity demands perfection -- a final cause that self-creators are incapable of -- and few have the strength to even attempt to live it.

The further I get in the spirtual life; the more I follow the One True example of Humanity; the more human I become, the lonelier I get.  The more I let the Spirit dominate the flesh, the less I have in common with my old friends; with my old ways; with natural men.

Out here on this perimeter there are few animals.  Out here there is the One.  Out here, there is temporary loneliness.  Loneliness until we realize the thing that is magis intimum.

I have not the strength for virtue, but He has it to give.  I need merely ask.  The road is rough and lonely, but the lashings are but temporary.  Tomorrow shall be ours.  Tomorrow shall be mine.  Look to that dawn; Ecce Homo!  Ecce Deus in essentia ipsius!

Knowledge may be temporary solitude; philosophy isolates those who think; Catholic theology puts the active follower on an island. It is temporary, though, as ours is a comedy.

We know the champion.  Ecce Homo! Behold Christ!

If ignorance is bliss...

then I no longer wish to smile.  Today while at work I had a taste of modern stupidity in all its glory.  While preparing my truck to go out on deliveries, I caught the tail end of some anti-Catholic bigotry; I caught wind of the popular nihilism of our day; I caught wind of the stench of modernity in all its cess pool glory.

A Protestant worker made some anti-Catholic claim, which unfortunately I missed.  All I heard was, "Just kidding, a lot of the best people I know were Catholics."  Then, a scrawny "rock 'n' roll" looking person, who wears Satanic rock shirts on the job, said, "Some of the worst people I know were Catholics."  Ha!  Stupidity in its pomp!  Nothing could be more ignorant, more vain, more self-aggrandizing, more idiotic, more trendy; nothing is more fashionable.  John Paul II and Mother Theresa were such horrible people!

As I pondered the conversation, the thought crossed my mind that these poor ignoramus'; these poor slaves; these poor unthinking dogmatists are only haters because they've never open their mind's to a contemplative outlook.  They worry themselves with sex slavery, food slavery, desire slavery, hunger slavery; God hands them over to punishment in their own members.  The thought crossed my mind that the modern hater, so conditioned by the torrents of custom, has not the strength for Christianity.

Obeying our lower desires because some self-made god, uneducated rock star, claims that anti-Christianity; anti-Catholicity, is a means to strength and power.  What pretenders!  What phonies!  How long must cowardice parade as strength?  How long must slavery parade as freedom?

Fools!  The rebirth of virtue; the rebirth of reason; the rebirth of a contemplative outlook is strength.  It is freedom!  Listen, then, to the uneducated elite who have never taken the time to think; listen and follow them into the pit.  When the blind lead the blind, the end is always the same.

We prefer to be dust chasing dust than to be the eternal beings we are.  Ignorance is sadness!  Ignorance is death!  Our lack of contemplation is our nihilism; our lack of God is our lack of humanity. 

Wake up to the new dawn!  The dawn of reason and the dawn of the resurrection.  Look to the horizon for the daybreak of life and forget the nihilist haters who prefer the slavery of ignorance to Christ; who prefer ignorance to Truth;  who prefer to march ignorantly to their own death.

A new breed of philosopher...

...needs to be called forth!  The modern intellectual has become nothing else than a "natural" man, having no knowledge because he has failed to look through the prism of God's love.

How many times have we seen 'elites' advocate reformulated pagan ideologies in the guise of progress?  How often have we heard that man's existence must be limited because of a chimera of "overpopulation"?  How often have these 'elites' advocated nihilism and death because they fail to recognize the principle of life in the High Priest of creation?  Anyone else tired of worrying about Fido and would prefer to worry about the millions of aborted human children?

We now have -- unfortunately because of the death of philosophy -- a positivist world that champions ignorance!  The genius stroke of the Enlightenment was to paint itself anti-dogmatic, and the most dogmatic moral neutralists have convinced us that they aren't dogmatists!  What a noble lie! 

The ignorance of God has left us in a world of Kantian metaphysics.  Our intellectuals, long ago, took their hands out of the dirt, and now they are proving and disproving everything because most have never walked a day in practical reality.  Give me a philosopher trained in philosophy, but with real world experience.  Then you will see a true philosopher; a new philosopher -- only new because he's so old -- who looks around and names things as he knows them rather than knowing them as he names them.

The modern intellectual is problematic because his speculations are impractical -- completely divorced from reality -- and so we get 'elites' who think of humans as monsters and dogs as kings. 

Ultimately, the divorce from reality is caused because they fail to know Being.  They fail to know Him because they've outlawed philosophy and theology at the hands of bad philosophers.

So, I hereby call forth a new breed of philosopher; new because he's old; a real Aristotelian; a real Thomist; someone that does not dress up ignorance in the guise of sophistication; someone who has actually lived life; someone who keeps reality real; someone who fears God.

Dusk has now settled in on the West.  My God!  My God!  I cry in the face of the impending darkness!  How long until the new dark ages end?  How long until reason reconquers the members?  How long until the rebirth of wisdom?  How long until we know and fear our God?  How long, my Lord, until daybreak?

Whom is it safe to call tyrants?

The new ignorers of the Constitution?  The somehow "new" followers of a 200 year old political philosophy that has proven to be nothing but nihilism?

As Catholics we ought ask one simple question of our politicians.  What is the status of the embryo?  What is the status of the fertilized egg?

Whether Republican or Democrat, if you cannot afford the embryo -- the weakest of humanity -- the dignity of personhood, you fail the litmus test of those who seek to preserve democracy.  As John Paul II made clear in Evanglium Vitae, the underlying  values of democracy are undermined if we deny human dignity to any member of the human family.  Democracy rests upon the recognition of the dignity of the individual, and this is denied by any politician who denies the personhood of the unborn and aged.

No politician should receive a Catholic vote if they are willing to allow the destruction of our country's weakest members.  So as we gear up for the "tea party express," we must ask one question of all those who would represent us: is the embryo a person?  If the answer is no, then they are unworthy of democracy.  The freedom such individuals represent is the tyranny of the strong over the weak; this is not freedom, but the whisper of tyrants.

So we must question with boldness our politicians.  Indeed, our president is a tyrant.  When politicians fail the fundamental question about the value of the human being, they fail absolutely on all questions of the common good.  Do not let the lying progressives fool you; it is not okay to overlook the grave injustice of abortion and claim you are democratic.  Personhood of every individual is the basis of democracy; anyone who claims differently is a tyrant.  We have been ruled by the tyrants for too long!  Let us eliminate the pollution; let us put our heels to the heads of the serpents within the Church and without; let us demand the recognition of personhood before democracy dies the death it has been slowly dying.