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14 US Cities Initiate New Globalist Climate Plan In Partnership With Soros & The Clintons |
Posted by: Stone - 08-23-2023, 05:51 AM - Forum: General Commentary
- No Replies
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14 US Cities Initiate New Globalist Climate Plan In Partnership With Soros & The Clintons
ZH [adapted, slightly edited] | AUG 22, 2023
Authored by Jack Hellner via AmericanThinker.com,
The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group is a globalist enterprise with at least 14 partners right here in the U.S., and, they have set an "ambitious target" to convince the masses to give up meat, dairy, and private car ownership, as well as almost all flights, to supposedly save the planet and control temperatures forever around the current level.
From RedState yesterday [emphasis mine]:
Quote:Fourteen major American cities are part of a globalist climate organization known as the 'C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group,' which has an 'ambitious target' by the year 2030 of '0 kg [of] meat consumption,' '0 kg [of] dairy consumption,' '3 new clothing items per person per year,' '0 private vehicles' owned, and '1 short-haul return flight (less than 1500 km) every 3 years per person.' ...
The organization is headed and largely funded by Democrat billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Nearly 100 cities across the world make up the organization, and its American members include Austin, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Seattle.
So 14 leftist cities in the U.S. have signed on to this commitment to take away freedom of choice from their citizens, while people suffer under rampant crime and children perform poorly in schools, but their priority is to take away milk, meat, and gas-powered cars.
Got it.
Major funders and partners of the organization include George Soros's Open Society Foundations, the Clinton Foundation, and The World Bank.
Michael Bloomberg, the president of the group, is himself transported via gas-guzzling private jets and limousines, to his many mansions around the world. From Fox News:
Quote:Flight records show that Bloomberg's private jets took more than 1,700 trips and emitted at least 10,000 metric tons of CO2 from August 2016 to August 2020, a Business Insider analysis found. A typical car emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide in one year.
Bloomberg has access to multiple private jets, but he wants to limit us to one short-haul flight every three years.
He probably pretends he cares about his carbon footprint by buying worthless pieces of paper called carbon credits. His real estate portfolio consists of "at least 11 homes," and he owns a fleet of luxury personal vehicles:
Quote:To suit his luxurious fortune, he owns a Mercedes-Benz Maybach sedan. His Audi R8 is the one that shows athletic personification. Like a mandated SUV in the home of every celeb, Cadillac Escalade is tuned in black color. After not getting satisfied with one, he owns another fullsize SUV from Chevrolet.
Bloomberg and other green pushers tell people their gas-powered cars are destroying the planet, yet he has a massive car collection of gas-guzzlers.
They want to outlaw milk; does that include breastfeeding? Pretty sure that's a dairy product, and women and babies breathe out that vicious CO2, a non-pollutant, clear gas that makes plants thrive.
These billionaires generate massive pollution and pollute people's minds with talking points to indoctrinate the people to fall for pure propaganda.
What you will never see in these articles or in these policies is scientific data that show a direct correlation between milk and temperature, cars and temperature, meat and temperature, the population and temperature, crude oil consumption and temperature, or CO2 and temperature. The temperature fluctuates no matter what the other variables do.
You will also not see any correlation between any of these variables and storm activity or sea levels.
When there is no correlation, you can't assume causation. It is all a scam.
The sole purpose of these big government policies by leftists is to control our lives.
These billionaires and other leftists pretend they care about the poor and middle classes and small business, but every day, they show that is a blatant lie. They are extremely dangerous to our survival as a great and prosperous country, as are all the journalists who regurgitate the talking points without asking questions or doing any research.
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Prayers in Honor of Our Lady's Immaculate Heart |
Posted by: Stone - 08-22-2023, 06:30 AM - Forum: In Honor of Our Lady
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Devotion to the Heart of Mary is but the consequence of the devotion due to the Heart of Jesus. It is a consequence of that boundless love of Jesus for his most holy Mother, which leads him to share with her all the riches and honors, so far as they can be communicated to a creature. The Church never disassociates the Mother with her Divine Son in the festivals which she celebrates in his honor. If she celebrates the mysteries of the Savior, from his Incarnation to his Ascension, she celebrates likewise all the mysteries of Mary, from her Conceptions to her Assumption. The feast of the Sacred Heart of Mary (Immaculate Heart of Mary) is, therefore, but the natural consequence of the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Let us love and honor these two Hearts, so intimately united; let us go to the Father through the Heart of Jesus; let us go to the Savior through the Heart of Mary. Let us render to God the Father, through the Heart of Jesus what we owe to his infinite justice and goodness, and let us render to God, the Son, through the Heart of Mary what we owe to his mercy, and all his benefits to us. We shall obtain everything from the Father and the Holy Ghost through the Heart of Jesus, and we shall obtain everything through the Heart of Mary.
It is customary with many pious persons to dedicate the first Saturdays of the month to the particular honor of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, as the first Friday is devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Prayers to Our Lady for All Saturdays
Ant. O glorious Mother of God, Mary, ever virgin, who alone wast found worthy to bear the Lord of all, and though a virgin, to nurse the King of angels; be graciously mindful of us, we beseech thee, and pray to Christ for us, that we, being upheld by thy care, may deserve to attain to the heavenly kingdom.
V. Holy Mary, Mother of Christ.
R. Hear thy humble servants who implore thee.
Let us Pray.
Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord God, that we, Thy servants, may enjoy continual health of mind and body; and that through the glorious intercession of blessed Mary, ever Virgin, we may be delivered from present sorrow, and herafter enjoy eternal happiness. Through Christ our Lord. Amen
INVIOLATA
Thou art inviolate, undefiled and chaste, O Mary.
Thou has been made the resplendent gate of heaven,
O loving and dearest Mother of Christ,
Accept our devout acclamations in praise of thee.
That our minds and bodies may be pure,
Devoted hearts and lips now implore thee.
Through thy sweet sounding prayers,
Gain us pardon forever.
O kind one, who alone didst remain inviolate.
MEMORARE
Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession, was left unaided, Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother! To thee I come; before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy, hear and answer me. Amen.
Act of Reparation to be recited on the First Saturdays
Most holy Virgin and our Mother, we listen with grief to the complaints of thy Immaculate Heart surrounded with the thorns which ungrateful men place therein at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. Moved by the ardent desire of loving thee as our Mother and of promoting a true devotion to thy Immaculate Heart, we prostrate ourselves at thy feet to prove the sorrow we feel for the grievances that men cause thee, and to atone, by means of our prayers and sacrifices, for the offenses with which men return thy tender love.
Obtain for them and for us the pardon of so many sins. A word from thee will obtain grace and amendment for us all.
Hasten, O Lady, the conversion of sinners, that they may love Jesus and cease to offend the Lord, already so much offended, and will not fall into hell.
Turn thine eyes of mercy towards us, that henceforth we may love God with all our heart while on earth and enjoy Him forever in heaven. Amen
Litany of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, hear us.
Christ, graciously hear us.
God the Father of heaven, have mercy on us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy on us.
God the Holy Ghost, have mercy on us.
Heart of Mary, pray for us *
Heart of Mary, according to the Heart of God,*
Heart of Mary, united to the Heart of Jesus,*
Heart of Mary, organ of the Holy Ghost,*
Heart of Mary, sanctuary of the Divine Trinity,*
Heart of Mary, tabernacle of God incarnate,*
Heart of Mary immaculate from thy creation,*
Heart of Mary, full of grace,*
Heart of Mary, blessed among all hearts,*
Heart of Mary, throne of glory,*
Heart of Mary, abyss of humility,*
Heart of Mary, holocaust of divine love,*
Heart of Mary, fastened to the cross with Jesus crucified,*
Heart of Mary, comfort of the afflicted,*
Heart of Mary, refuge of sinners,*
Heart of Mary, hope of the agonizing,*
Heart of Mary, seat of mercy,*
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world,
Spare us, O Lord,
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world,
Graciously hear us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world,
Have mercy on us.
Christ, hear us.
Christ, graciously hear us.
V. Immaculate Mary, meek and humble of heart.
R. Make our heart according to the Heart of Jesus.
Let us pray:
O most merciful God, Who, for the salvation of sinners and the refuge of the miserable, wast pleased that the Immaculate Heart of the blessed Virgin Mary should be most like in charity and pity to the Divine Heart of Thy Son Jesus Christ; grant that we, who commemorate this most sweet and loving Heart, may, by the merits and intercession of the same blessed Virgin, merit to be found according to the Heart of Jesus. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen
Heart of Mary, refuge of sinners, pray for us.
(Indulgence 300 days)
O Heart most pure of the Blessed Virgin Mary, obtain for me from Jesus a pure and humble heart.
(1943 Raccolta--Indulgence 300 days)
Sweet Heart of Mary, be my salvation.
(1943 Raccolta--Indulgence 300 days)
Chaplet of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
V. O GOD, come to our assistance.
R. O LORD, make haste to help us.
V. Glory be to the FATHER, etc.
I.
IMMACULATE Virgin, who, conceived without sin, didst direct every movement of thy pure heart to GOD, ever the object of thy love, and who wast ever most submissive to His will, obtain for me the grace to hate sin with my whole heart, and to learn of thee to live in perfect resignation to the will of GOD. PATER once, Ave seven times. Heart of Mary, pierced with grief, set my heart on fire with the love of GOD.
II.
Mary, I wonder at thy deep humility when thy blessed heart was troubled at the gracious message brought thee by Gabriel the Archangel how that thou wast chosen to be Mother of the SON of GOD Most High and didst still proclaim thyself his humble handmaid; in great confusion at my pride, I ask thee for the grace of a contrite and humble heart, that, knowing my own misery, I may obtain that crown of glory promised to those who are truly humble of heart. PATER once, Ave seven times; Heart of Mary, etc.
III.
Sweetest Heart or Mary, precious treasury, wherein the Blessed Virgin kept the words of JESUS whilst she thought on the high mysteries which she had heard from the lips of her Son, and whereby she learned to live for GOD alone; how does the coldness of my heart confound me! Dearest Mother, obtain for me grace so to meditate within my heart upon the holy law of GOD, that I may strive to follow thee in the fervent practice of every Christian virtue. PATER once, Ave seven times; Heart of Mary, etc.
IV.
Glorious Queen of Martyrs, whose sacred heart was cruelly transfixed in the bitter Passion of thy Son by the sword foretold by the holy old man, Simeon, obtain for my heart true courage and a holy patience to bear well the troubles and adversities of this miserable life, and, by crucifying my flesh with its desires in following the mortification of the Cross, to show myself truly thy son. PATER once, Ave seven times; Heart of Mary, etc.
V.
O Mary, Mystic Rose, whose loving heart, burning with the living fire of charity, accepted us for thy children at the foot of the Cross, whereby thou didst become our most tender Mother; make me feel the sweetness of thy maternal heart, and thy power with JESUS in all the perils of this mortal life, and especially in the terrible hour of death, that so my heart, united with thine own, may love JESUS now and throughout all ages. Amen. PATER once, Ave seven times; Heart of Mary, etc. Let us entreat the Most Sacred Heart of JESUS to inflame us with His holy love.
O DIVINE Heart of JESUS, I consecrate myself to Thee, full of deep gratitude for the many blessings I have received, and daily receive, from Thy infinite charity. I thank Thee with my whole heart for having also vouchsafed to give me thine own Mother to be my Mother, consigning me to her in the person of the beloved Disciple. Grant unto me that my heart may ever burn with this love of Thee, and so may find in Thee its peace, its refuge and its happiness.
(1943 Raccolta--Indulgence of 3 years)
Prayer to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
O Immaculate heart of Mary, I have nothing in myself to offer thee that is worthy of thee; but what thanks ought I not to pay thee for all the favors which thou hast obtained for me from the Heart of Jesus! What reparation ought I not to make thee for all my tepidity in thy service! I desire to return thee love for love; the only good that I possess is the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which thou thyself hast given me. I offer thee this treasure of infinite price; I cannot do more, and thou dost not deserve less at my hands; but, receiving from me this gift most precious in thy sight, be pleased, I beseech thee, to accept my heart, which I here offer to thee, and I shall be forever blessed. Amen.
Morning Offering
O Lord Jesus Christ, in union with that divine intention with which Thou, whilst on earth didst give praise to God through Thy most sacred Heart, and still dost continue to give praise to Him in the Sacrament of the Eucharist everywhere, even unto the consummation of the world, I, wishing to imitate the most sacred Heart of the ever Immaculate Virgin Mary, most willingly offer to Thee during this whole day, not excepting the smallest part therefrom, all my intentions and thoughts, all my affections and desires, all my words and actions. Amen
Novena to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
O Heart of Mary, Mother of God and our Mother; Heart most worthy of love, in which the adorable Trinity is ever well-pleased, worthy of the veneration and love of all the Angels and of all men; Heart most like to the Heart of Jesus, of which thou art the perfect image; Heart, full of goodness, ever compassionate toward our miseries; deign to melt our icy hearts and grant that they may be wholly changed into the likeness of the Heart of Jesus, our divine Saviour. Pour into them the love of thy virtues, enkindle in them that divine fire with which thou thyself dost ever burn. In thee let holy Church find a safe shelter; protect her and be her dearest refuge, her tower of strength, impregnable against every assault of her enemies.
Be thou the way which leads to Jesus, and the channel, through which we receive all the graces needful for our salvation. Be our refuge in time of trouble, our solace in the midst of trial, our strength against temptation, our haven in persecution, our present help in every danger, and especially at the hour of death, when all hell shall let loose against us its legions to snatch away our souls, at that dread moment, that hour so full of fear, whereon our eternity depends. Ah, then, most tender Virgin, make us to feel the sweetness of thy motherly heart, and the might of thine intercession with Jesus, and open to us a safe refuge in that very fountain of mercy, whence we may come to praise Him with thee in paradise, world without end. Amen.
(An indulgence of 500 days--1807)
Prayers of St. Alphonsus Liguori to the Blessed Mother
Prayer to Beg Graces through the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary
I humbly salute and praise thee, holy Mary, most merciful, pure, holy, and blessed Lady, powerful Queen of Angels, Patriarchs and Prophets, most glorious of Apostles, most courageous of Martyrs, wisest and most faithful of Confessors, purest of Virgins, true Mother of our God. Thou knowest my misery, my wounds, my weakness, poverty and nakedness; behold my desires and my groans are before thee, look on me and pity me. Thy servant Richard of St. Victor, says that as, according to the Scripture, Wheresoever the body shall be there shall the eagles also be gathered together, so wherever misery is found, thy mercy hastens to give help, nor canst thou know of wretchedness and not assist. Behold I, kneeling before thee, humbly call upon thee, O Refuge of the miserable, and implore of thy maternal heart, by the love which thou bearest to thy Divine Son, and by the charity with which thou didst accept us for thy clients and unworthy children, to obtain for me full forgiveness of all my sins and a true hatred of them, and worthy fruits of penance in this life, together with a generous mortification of all my senses and affections, and a complete victory over all temptation.
Obtain for me an increase of faith, a more trusting hope, a more perfect charity, an entire resignation to the Will of God, complete purity of intention, and an affectionate devotion to my crucified Jesus, to the most holy Sacrament, and to thee, my ever-blessed Mother: obtain also for me obedience to my superiors, affability and meekness to all, profound humility, patience in adversity, and finally the gift of perseverance, and of a happy and holy death. I beseech thee, most blessed Lady, to be with me at the hour of my death, and shelter me from the terrors of God's Justice, for thou art my beloved Mother and Queen, and I resolve, with thy help, to promote devotion to thee by every means in my power. Amen.
An Act of Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Holy and spotless Virgin, Daughter of the Heavenly Father, Mother of the Word Incarnate, Spouse of the Holy Ghost, Queen of Angels and of Saints, I acknowledge thee and choose thee for my Sovereign, my Mother, my Advocate with Jesus Christ, thy beloved Son: be thou honoured in Heaven, revered on earth, and feared in Hell. Most holy heart of Mary, inseparably united to that of Jesus, I offer thee my heart, and I consecrate it to thee, wishing that thy place in it may be next to that of Jesus, my God; thou shalt ever be the object of my veneration, love, and trust; I will daily offer thee my sincere homage, and will joyfully celebrate thy festivals; I will publish thy greatness and thy blessings, and will spare no pains to obtain for thee the homage which is so justly due to thee; I will endeavour to conform my sentiments to thine, and I will constantly study how I may imitate thy virtues, especially thy humility and purity.
Deign, O most holy Virgin, to open thy heart to me, and receive me into it, among thy children and faithful servants: obtain for me grace to imitate thee, as thou didst imitate Jesus; help me in all my necessities; assist me in every danger; console me in affliction, and teach me to make a good use of the pleasures and sorrows of this life, but above all help me, most blessed Lady, in the hour of my death. Amen.
Another Short Act of Consecration
Holy Mary, Mother of God, and my Mother, I commend myself, body and soul, into thy holy keeping, this day, and every day of my life, and especially at the hour of my death: to thee I commit all my hopes and consolations, all my trials and sorrows, my life and my death, that, through thy holy merits and intercession, all my actions may be directed and disposed according to the most holy Will of thy Divine Son. Amen.
Prayer to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
To which an indulgence of 60 days, to be gained once in a day, has been attached.
Heart of Mary, Mother of God, and our Mother, heart deserving of all love, and most pleasing to the blessed Trinity, worthy of the affection and veneration of Angels and of men, heart most resembling the Heart of Jesus, of Which thou art the most perfect image, heart full of goodness and compassion for our wretchedness, we beseech thee to soften our icy hearts, and help us to turn completely to our Divine Saviour. Inspire us with a love of thy virtues, and inflame us with the holy fire with which thou burnest; embrace and guard the holy Church, and be ever her sweet asylum, and her impregnable fortress against the attacks of her enemies; be thou our guide to Jesus, and the channel by which we may receive all the graces necessary for our salvation; be our help in our necessities, our comfort in affliction, our support in temptation, our refuge in persecution, our aid in every danger, but especially in the struggles of our last moments, when Hell will be let loose against us, to snatch our souls. In that fearful moment on which our Eternity depends, then, O most blessed Virgin, let us experience the goodness of thy maternal heart, and the greatness of thy power with the Heart of Jesus, by opening to us a secure refuge in that Source of all mercy, that so we may bless Him with thee in Heaven for ever and ever. Amen.
An Act of Atonement to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
O Mary, Mother of my Saviour, chosen before all ages to crush the head of the infernal serpent, how can there have been men capable of insulting thy name, thy images, and thy glorious privileges, and even of abolishing all devotion to thee! How can there ever have been hearts so unnatural as to despise and hate thee, who so fully deservest the utmost respect, and the most tender affection of angels and of men! Prostrate at thy feet my august Queen, I grieve for such insults, which have afflicted thy heart; and to this heart therefore I offer my atonement. Accept, O Mary, this act of reparation; I wish to feel for thee all the respect, love, and gratitude, which are so justly due to thee; I offer thee my homage, my praise, and my grief, regretting that I cannot by these sentiments make reparation for the contempt, hatred, and blasphemies of thy enemies. Amen
Prayer of Reparation to the Blessed Virgin Mary
How do I grieve, O holy and spotless Virgin, when I reflect on the insults thou hast received, and still receivest every day from the malice and ingratitude of men! Thou hast been outraged by heretics, and insulted by bad Catholics: how could any heart have been so hard and impious? Alas! even some Catholics are cold and indifferent towards thee, and do not in the least endeavour to show thee their love and gratitude, neglecting to honour or invoke thee, or to deserve thy protection. I myself have many times afflicted thee, most holy Virgin, by offending thy Divine Son, Whom thou lovest a thousand times more than thyself: my sins have pierced thy heart with a two-edged sword! What return have I made, what gratitude have I shown for all thy goodness to me, my beloved Mother? How have I tried to imitate thee, or what zeal have I felt for thy service?
Mother of mercy, I should not dare to lift up my eyes to thee, if thou wert not the Refuge of sinners: oppressed by the weight of my crimes I cast myself at thy feet, to implore thy pardon for my ingratitude, and for that of all mankind, Mother of sorrows, who wert appointed our Mother on Mount Calvary, I implore thee to forget our past conduct, which I most earnestly wish to atone for, as far as possible. I offer thee my homage and praise, and I profess aloud my conviction that thy glory exceeds that of all creatures; with the Church I revere thy immaculate conception and thy glorious assumption; I believe that thy power and thy perfection are such as suit thy dignity of Mother of God; I joyfully acknowledge thee for my mother, my Advocate, and my Refuge; and as long as I live I will be among the most devoted of thy children, and will endeavour to win souls to thy love. Most holy Mother be pleased to accept my desires; bless and protect them, that so, by copying thy virtues, I may deserve to see thee in Heaven for all Eternity. Amen.
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Gates: 1 billion will have global IDs in a decade and it will bring equity and 'maximize inclusivity |
Posted by: Stone - 08-22-2023, 06:13 AM - Forum: General Commentary
- No Replies
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From the Gates Foundation [adapted]:
Digital IDs are an effective tool against poverty.
A global solution is making them available to millions.
PART ONE: Our global identity problem
If a person cannot prove who they are, can they take advantage of all of the opportunities society has to offer?
For the 850 million people around the world who lack any acceptable form of legal identity, the answer is no. Proof of identity enables people to fully participate in the economy. It eases access to employment and education as well as services such as banking, government programs, and health care.
People living in low- and middle-income countries are more likely to go without ID. More than half of those without proof of identity are children whose births were not registered. One in two women in low-income countries do not have ID. And even among those whose identity can be verified, many lack documentation that is suited to the digital age.
This means many of the resources that could help them improve their quality of life are out of reach.
Fortunately, a formidable solution has emerged: an open-source, customizable digital ID system called Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP) that is available to all countries for free.
A small but mighty team in India developed this technology for creating national digital ID systems, with funding from our foundation. Since 2018, 11 countries, nine of them in Africa and two in Asia, have signed memoranda of understanding with MOSIP to pilot the system. More than 90 million people have been registered for MOSIP-based IDs in the Philippines, Ethiopia, and Morocco as part of national deployments. MOSIP is a powerful example of how low- and middle-income countries can harness open-source technology to improve lives and accelerate development.
Digital ID is a critical piece of digital public infrastructure
Digital ID systems are one of the three pillars of what’s known as digital public infrastructure (DPI); the others are digital payment systems and data exchange systems. By connecting people and making it easier to move money and share information, DPI is in many ways the modern-day equivalent of the roads and bridges that helped reshape economies in the 19th century. Researchers say that DPI can help low- and middle-income countries leapfrog traditional stages of development, lift millions out of poverty, and spur economic growth.
Explainer: What is digital public infrastructure?
Digital public infrastructure (DPI) is a powerful tool for reducing poverty. Our expert explains what it is and how it’s transforming economies worldwide.
A digital ID system is critical because people need a verified identity in order to tap into DPI’s other benefits, from digital bank accounts and instant payments to mobile phone accounts and personal data management.
The original inspiration for MOSIP was India’s national digital ID system, Aadhaar, which launched in 2009. This ambitious effort would eventually enroll over 99% of all Indian adults.
S Rajagopalan, a professor at the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-Bangalore), was sure that Aadhaar would be transformational. In the early 1990s, he had worked on technology for people living in poverty in rural areas of India. He saw that access to services was a recurring problem because the villagers didn’t have IDs. They needed an intermediary to vouch for them when they went to a hospital, for example, or when they wanted to access subsidized rations like wheat, pulses, or sugar. This issue especially affected women living in poverty.
“Accessing what is rightfully due to people became a problem because they were not able to prove whom they are.” - S Rajagopalan, Co-founder MOSIP
True to Rajagopalan’s prediction, Aadhaar transformed life for people across India. Access to an inclusive digital ID system meant that people no longer had to rely on intermediaries. The system also made life easier in other important ways. Within a decade, bank account ownership in India more than doubled, to 78% in 2021, and brought millions of Indians, especially women, into the formal economy. This achievement would otherwise have taken 45 years. The system has broadened the reach of social safety net programs, reduced waste, and made the government more responsive during times of crisis.
Rajagopalan and a team of programmers at IIIT-Bangalore wanted the benefits of a system like Aadhaar to reach a global audience. So they set out to build MOSIP—a flexible, inclusive, and trusted digital ID system that any country could customize to meet its specific needs.
PART TWO: An open-source solution
MOSIP offers a digital ID solution that any country can adapt and use
The success of Aadhaar in India triggered a surge of interest in digital ID technologies around the world. By 2018, more than 60 countries were trying to develop such a system, including every country in sub-Saharan Africa.
But countries could not simply copy and use Aadhaar—or other national digital ID systems like those in Estonia and Singapore—because those systems were owned by the governments that developed them. They instead turned to commercial vendors, making costly investments that yielded frustrating results because the systems suffered from “vendor lock-in.” Commercial vendor software was proprietary, which meant governments could not customize it without tying themselves—financially and functionally—to a given vendor. Countries ran the risk of having to start from scratch when their needs evolved beyond a vendor’s capabilities—such as when they needed to reach specific populations or connect to a different government system to disburse welfare payments.
When MOSIP launched in 2018, it offered governments an alternative. MOSIP is a digital public good, which means that everything about the technology is open. All of the code and documentation is publicly available. Anyone is free to use the software and build on top of it. The use of open standards means that other systems can easily plug into MOSIP.
Quote:Resham Chugani: Now once you have the ID, how is it actually important? Why is it important? Because once I have the ID, I can avail services. Now in a country, let's say for example, you go to any African country or you go to Philippines or you go to Morocco. Today, if you want to deliver services, it's easier to identify an individual uniquely with his or her identity, authenticate them since we are capturing their biometrics. So you're sure that this person is who he claims to be, and then you provide the service. And in this case, you're also avoiding double-dipping. So you don't render the same service twice to the same person because you're validating against the biometrics of the ID system that the ID system holds and you're actually delivering services to individuals.
MOSIP alone does not do it all – for the system to be fully functional, governments also need biometric device vendors, deduplication software providers, card or credential printing machines, and system integrators, all of which require additional investment. If a digital ID system is a car, MOSIP is the engine, and these ancillary items are the wheels, seats, steering, and lights.
So the MOSIP team made it easier for governments to build the car. MOSIP developed a thriving ecosystem of more than 80 commercial vendors to provide those ancillary services so that adopting governments had choices. More competition helps keep prices low, so MOSIP provides free training to commercial partners, local and international alike, and created a marketplace where partners could showcase products and services to governments. MOSIP also oversees an independent certification process for commercial partners, ensuring small and large players could compete.
By 2021, six countries had adopted the MOSIP system, three times more than the team had expected. Success stories flooded into MOSIP’s offices at IIIT-Bangalore. In one African country, 550,000 students started receiving government benefits after the MOSIP team wrote a tool that imported their existing biometric data from the education department into the ID system. In one Asian nation, the government issued bank account numbers when people registered for the country’s ID system, resulting in 8 million bank account applications.
PART THREE: Inclusion for adaptation
MOSIP’s keys to success: security and inclusion
Success was not inevitable. MOSIP’s biggest challenge was meeting demand. Morocco signed up before the MOSIP programmers had written a single line of code, and others eagerly lined up. Many nations wanted to expedite their adoption after the COVID-19 pandemic exposed huge systemic vulnerabilities, including governments’ inability to identify who needed help and how to quickly send them aid.
Then there was the anxiety the team felt, on a deeper existential level, about what it would mean for the future of digital ID systems if MOSIP failed. They worried that it would stymie future development. “It was a situation that gave us a lot of pause,” said Arun Gurumurthy, MOSIP’s head of strategy and resourcing.
There was good reason for their nerves. No one had ever attempted to build a system like MOSIP, which sought to register the entire population of a country regardless of its size, geography, or cultural characteristics. The system had to be flexible enough to accommodate a country as small as 5 million people and as large as 100 million or more people. It had to be able to enroll a population spread across 7,500 islands, as in the Philippines, or across mountains and deserts, as in Morocco. With every country adoption, the team encountered new challenges. And it had to be secure, as it managed peoples’ sensitive data.
But the MOSIP team had one big advantage: Because they were based at a university, their decisions weren’t driven by business objectives. This allowed them to make inclusivity, safety, and user feedback high priorities. They engaged in research collaborations with global institutes like the Alan Turing Institute and Carnegie Mellon University, with the aim of co-creating state-of-the-art technologies incorporating security and privacy as key design principles. They built an international advisory group of experts in identity that brought a global perspective to how the technology is designed, developed and disseminated.
Together, they anticipated challenges, sought feedback from the field, and modified the software in response.
The Philippines was MOSIP’s first large-scale deployment. The country had spotty internet connectivity in remote places, so MOSIP worked with vendors to engineer special field kits that let enrollment officers travel door-to-door to collect people’s information and then upload the data into the system in batches later, when they had connectivity. MOSIP also made the ID credential a digitally signed QR code so it could be verified offline—a feature that is now standard in the system.
In Africa, where almost two-thirds of people still use feature phones, the MOSIP engineers had to figure out how to enable authentication despite the limited functionality of the devices. They also sped up pilot testing, which initially took so long that governments would sometimes change before they finished. The team retooled the model to shrink the pilot period from 18 months to three months. To make the pilot implementation more affordable for countries, MOSIP supplied biometric devices and other elements of the pilot so countries only had to spend a few thousand dollars. Within four months of a successful trial in Togo, four other countries signed up to run pilots.
To maximize inclusivity, the team gave people several options for sharing their biometric data, including scans of their fingerprints, iris, or face. This was helpful in places like Ethiopia, where few people had ever had their fingerprints scanned. One day, an elderly man at a registration center talked excitedly about how his new ID would enable him to access services without having to give a cut to a middleman. But as he placed his fingers on the scanner, his hands shook so much that the machine was unable to get a clear scan. The man worried that he would not be able to get his ID. The dozens of other people in line—mothers holding children, other elderly people—looked on, wondering if they, too, would encounter the same problem.
The operators switched to an iris scanner, which worked. “The gentleman was very happy,” said Krishnan Rajagopalan, MOSIP’s head of country implementation, who was visiting the registration site that day.
PART FOUR: Reaching the rest of the world
The next step for MOSIP
MOSIP illustrates how technology that can be harnessed for good on a massive scale. The MOSIP team hopes that the system will register 1 billion people over the next decade, while they work on ways to integrate it with other systems to make life easier for people.
Every year on February 14, which the team has dubbed “MOSIP Open Source Day,” they celebrate their latest accomplishments and, above all, the millions more people who are benefiting from the system.
The team feels “a sense of satisfaction on the one hand, but it also shows us that we have billions more to cover out there,” says Ramesh Narayanan, MOSIP’s chief technology officer. “And that drives us.”
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Opinion: What Does the Asch Conformity Experiment Tell Us? |
Posted by: Stone - 08-22-2023, 06:01 AM - Forum: General Commentary
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What Does the Asch Conformity Experiment Tell Us about Francis, the 2020 Election, and the Covid-19 Atrocities?
![[Image: c33cfc609794104185dfcd3e6fe153fe_L.jpg]](https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/media/k2/items/cache/c33cfc609794104185dfcd3e6fe153fe_L.jpg)
The Remnant Newspaper | August 18, 2023
While it has always been the case that fallen human beings are prone to both lying and believing lies, many of us have observed a remarkable increase in the propensity of seemingly intelligent people to believe preposterous lies in recent years. In many instances, those of us who have refused to believe those lies have been ostracized by family members, colleagues, and those we had considered friends. How, we must ask, do these otherwise normal people not only believe these preposterous lies but also defend them as though their lives depended upon it?
Undoubtedly there are many contributing factors to this increase in preposterous lies, but one significant factor has been the ability of today’s powerful coalition of liars — including Francis and those responsible for the Great Reset — to exploit human weaknesses related to conformity. Once we view today’s preposterous lies from that vantage point, we can better understand how we arrived at our current perilous situation, and perhaps we can also see the way out of it.
On the topic of conformity, we can look to a psychological study described by Professor Cass Sunstein, a legal scholar who has held positions in the administrations of Presidents Obama and Biden — most of us would not agree with his political views, but we need to understand his insights because those reshaping our world understand them. In his 2019 book entitled Conformity, Professor Sunstein described the famous “Asch Conformity Experiment” which took place in the 1950s:
Quote:“Some famous experiments, conducted by Solomon Asch, explored whether people would be willing to overlook the apparently unambiguous evidence of their own senses. In those experiments, the subject was placed into a group of seven to nine people who seemed to be other subjects in the experiment but who were actually Asch’s confederates. The simple task was to ‘match’ a particular line, shown on a large white card, to one of the three “comparison lines” that was identical to it in length. The two nonmatching lines were substantially different, with the differential varying from an inch and three quarters to three quarters of an inch. In the first two rounds of the Asch experiments, everyone agrees about the right answer. ‘The discriminations are simple; each individual monotonously calls out the same judgment.’ But ‘suddenly this harmony is disturbed at the third round.’ All other group members make what is obviously, to the subject and to any reasonable person, a clear error, matching the line at issue to one that is conspicuously longer or shorter. In these circumstances, the subject, in almost all cases showing initial confusion and disbelief at the apparent mistakes of others, has a choice: he can maintain independent judgment or instead accept the view of the unanimous majority. What would you do? As it turns out, a large number of people end up yielding at least once in a series of trials. They defy the evidence of their own senses and agree with everyone else. When asked to decide on their own, subjects erred less than 1 percent of the time. But in rounds in which group pressure supported the wrong answer, subjects erred no less than 36.8 percent of the time. Indeed, in a series of twelve questions, no less than 70 percent of subjects went along with the group and defied the evidence of their own senses, at least once.”
If the subjects made their decision based simply on their own powers of observation, they almost always arrived at the obvious answer; but when their decision-making process was skewed by the interactions with seemingly honest people who gave the wrong answers, they frequently yielded to the erroneous majority.
Given this understanding of human nature, how would a bad actor exploit the human weaknesses associated with conformity to lead otherwise rational people to adhere to clearly fallacious positions? Tragically, we have numerous devastating case studies from which to draw lessons, but we can limit the analysis to three: the Covid-19 atrocities, the 2020 United States Presidential election, and Francis and his anti-Catholic initiatives. After briefly highlighting some obvious (red flag) problems associated with each of these three situations, we can evaluate the ways that bad actors have exploited the lessons from the Asch Conformity Experiment.
Covid-19 Atrocities. As we now know, both Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine have been effective in treating some cases of Covid-19. Many of us knew that in 2020, but policy makers and the medical establishment worked hard to prevent Covid-19 patients from having access to those potentially life-saving treatments. At the same time, these leaders approved and mandated the deployment of the Covid-19 vaccines, largely based on the false assumption that there were no effective treatments for Covid-19. Even after those vaccines were proven to be ineffective and dangerous, they were still mandated for many people. Now that the experts have been proven wrong about almost everything connected with Covid-19, why are they still the experts? And why are they not being held accountable for their apparently criminal behavior?
2020 Presidential Election. Leading up to the election, both Trump and Biden warned their supporters about the potential for wide-spread election fraud. Even though President Trump’s supporters were suspicious that Biden’s supporters would steal the election, many went to bed on election night elated to see that Trump had developed an overwhelming lead in voting tallies. We awoke on the following morning to learn that the voting had been inexplicably stopped in the middle of the night in certain key jurisdictions in which Trump had a comfortable lead; when voting resumed in those jurisdictions, the tide had turned, and Biden would ultimately be declared the winner. Biden himself had warned about widespread election fraud, so why is it forbidden to ask questions about the many anomalies?
Francis and His Anti-Catholic Initiatives. In recent years, a relatively small but growing number of Catholics have realized that the man reputed to be pope is actively trying to destroy the Catholic Church. He has called into question almost all of the Church’s moral teachings, praised the merits of various non-Catholic religions, unhesitatingly supported the anti-Catholic initiatives of the Great Reset, and repeatedly denounced Catholics for trying to adhere to what the Church has always taught. If Francis is correct in denouncing the Church’s theological traditions, then there is no logical basis whatsoever to believe that the Church teaches a true Faith; and yet his supporters still insist that no Catholic can criticize the man without abandoning the Faith. [Note, this is yet another example of focusing solely on the errors of Pope Francis while white-washing the many, many errors of the previous Conciliar popes. A little critical thinking and a decent memory shows that this is not realistic or factual. - The Catacombs]
Those with eyes to see ought to be able to recognize the glaring problems associated with these three situations or, at the very least, comprehend why reasonable people might doubt the “official” explanations. But that is not the case to a large extent. Instead of seeing the preposterous lies for what they evidently are, far too many people act like the duped subjects in Asch’s Conformity Experiment.
Even worse, these situations and many others all contribute to the so-called Great Reset, which threatens to fundamentally reshape the way of life for the world’s entire population. In each case, we see that the following five aggravating factors make it much more likely that those with eyes to see will blind themselves — through some combination of self-doubt, cowardice, and the desire to avoid conflict — and conform with the clearly false beliefs of their neighbors.
Faux-Expert Opinions. With Covid-19 and the 2020 election, we saw “experts” on both sides of the political spectrum insist that we accept the official narratives. With Francis, we see a growing number of critics, but there remains an overwhelming majority of bishops and priests who defend all of his anti-Catholic initiatives. In each case, those who might otherwise see the truth have been pressured by faux experts to abandon common sense to conform with the official opinions.
Amplifying the Messages of the Conforming Leaders. Thanks to their ability to completely dominate the media, those who have promoted the preposterous lies associated with the Great Reset have been able to not only showcase their chosen “experts” but also amplify the voices of the conforming majority. In Asch’s experiment, the test subjects were persuaded by the wrong answers of a handful of those who were part of the test, but in real life we are inundated with messages telling us that everyone (other than extremists) supports the official narrative.
Censoring the Testimony of Non-Conforming Experts. In each of these situations, those wielding the most power have worked to censor the expert opinions of those who have questioned the official narratives. The censorship of those who question the Covid-19 and 2020 election narratives is most evident, but even with Francis we see heavy-handed censorship in the form of penalties for those bishops and priests who raise questions.
Consequences for Non-Conformity. In the case of Francis, those who fail to conform are threatened with “schism,” as well as the loss of certain rights to practice the Faith without harassment from Rome. In the secular sphere, those who do not conform are threatened much more broadly by a wide array of punishments, ranging from those imposed by “cancel culture” to expanded definitions of what might constitute domestic terrorism. The message is clear: if you like your bread and circuses, and want to avoid landing on an FBI watch list, you must not question the official narratives.
The Magnitude of the Lies. The enormity of the lies can cut both ways: while they may eventually become so preposterous that people open their eyes, the process of accepting gradually bigger lies makes it impossible for some people to turn back to reality. With Covid-19 and the 2020 election, many people are reluctant to even consider that the skeptics are right because the consequences are simply too grim — how could we ever recover from such treachery? Similarly, Catholics may think that the Church’s promises of indefectibility would be void if Francis truly is as bad as he seems. It is easier for many people to deny reality altogether and hope for the best.
These five aggravating factors help the bad actors gaslight and intimidate otherwise reasonable people into abandoning their accurate assessments of what is truly happening in the world today. This, in turn, makes it much more likely that others will conform by accepting the preposterous lies. How do we escape this disastrous situation?
We ought to trust our intuitions more than the chorus of fools who accept and defend the official narratives. If ever we are inclined to doubt this, it should suffice to recall that those who promote these lies about the Great Reset are the same people who tell us we are bigots if we do not believe that men can become pregnant.
First of all, Catholics must realize that the immutable Catholic Faith cannot be abandoned without having catastrophic effects not only for the Church but all of society. As the architects of the Great Reset know, a strong Catholic Church is their most formidable opposition because faithful Catholics adhere to objective moral standards and would rather die than cooperate with the anti-Catholic initiatives of the New World Order. If, as has been the case since Vatican II, there is some corruption that causes an apparent divide between Faith and authority, we must always fight for the unadulterated Catholic Faith. Otherwise, we contribute to dimming the light of God’s holy truth, with which He wants to illuminate the world.
Second, we must have the courage and conviction to stand up for the truth, especially when the bad actors in society tell us to accept their lies. This obviously does not mean we need to loudly proclaim every conspiracy theory we encounter, but we ought to trust our intuitions more than the chorus of fools who accept and defend the official narratives. If ever we are inclined to doubt this, it should suffice to recall that those who promote these lies about the Great Reset are the same people who tell us we are bigots if we do not believe that men can become pregnant.
Finally, because this is a spiritual battle, we must turn to God and trust that He will shelter and reward us if we earnestly seek to do His will. This does not mean we will not suffer (we will), but fighting for the truth is assuredly the best path for our own salvation and the good of our neighbors. We may have doubted this a few years ago, but today we see the tragic consequences of capitulating to their lies. We have all suffered because the liars have grown powerful through peddling their lies without effective opposition. We can no longer hope to escape this problem by hiding, we have to fight.
God has permitted this great crisis in the Church and world for a reason. And He has also created us to live in these times for a reason. If He is permitting this crisis to continue, surely He wants those who see His truth to help others do the same. We need to be the ones who break the chain of conforming with those who promote the preposterous lies of the Great Reset. But, first things first: we must overcome the lies in the Church that threaten to send souls to hell before we can hope to overcome the lies that threaten our material well-being. If we are ready to die for God’s holy truth, we can become worthy of His intercession. If not, we deserve what the Great Reset liars have planned for us.
Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!
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St. Patrick Wins the Right to Judge Ireland |
Posted by: Stone - 08-22-2023, 05:49 AM - Forum: The Saints
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St. Patrick Wins the Right to Judge Ireland
Adapted from William B. Morris, The Life of St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland, London: Burns and Oates, 1878, Appendix, pp. 208-212
TIA | March 22, 2014
Leaving Roscommon, St. Patrick went up northwards to Sligo, baptizing many on his way, and founding churches for his converts; then descending, he passed to the West, through Mayo, until he reached that high mountain, now bearing his name, which looks to the North on Clew Bay, and to the West over the Atlantic.
A statue of St. Patrick sets at the base of Croagh Patrick, where the Saint fasted and prayed for 40 days
Among the many monuments built by God and now named after St. Patrick, Cruachan Aigle, now Croagh Patrick, is the most eloquent.
There we read the Saint’s history in the pathways worn on its rugged sides by those pilgrims who, for 14 centuries, have climbed Ireland’s “holiest mountain” – praying and fasting, some in their bare feet – to honor the great St. Patrick. This pilgrimage takes place each year on the last Sunday of July, called Reek Sunday or Garland Sunday.
It is hard to tell how much of the details of what passed between God and His servant on this occasion are authentic history, for no one supposes that there was any human witness present at the time. It is certain that for 40 days and nights he was alone upon the mountain wrestling in prayer with God that his pleas for Ireland might be granted.
No food or drink passed his lips, and his heart was wrung out before the throne of God while he prayed for the salvation of the Irish people. The living fire of his words, now so familiar to us, tells us what was the character of that prayer.
It is said that, while an Angel acted as his messenger, St. Patrick prayed and wept until his tears drenched his monastic cowl, and that, among other petitions, he prayed that the barbarian - by which is understood the unbeliever - should never, by consent or force, hold Erin while he was in Heaven.
Also, it is said that he made a demand, which faith alone can appreciate, to the effect that seven years before the day of doom, the waters should cover the Island that he loved. Our Lord’s words explain the meaning of this prayer when He tells us that, Unless these days had been shortened, no flesh should be saved: but for the sake of the elect those days shall be shortened (Mt 24: 22).
Each year 15,000-20,000 pilgrims climb Croagh Patrick on Reek Sunday to honor the Apostle of Ireland
![[Image: H122_pilgrimage2.jpg]](https://traditioninaction.org/religious/images_F-J/H122_pilgrimage2.jpg)
Then, says the writer of the Tripartite, he called on God to grant this demand: that on the day that “the twelve royal seats shall be on the Mount, and when the four rivers of fire shall be about the Mount, and when the three peoples shall be there - that is, the people of Heaven, the people of Earth, and the people of Hell - I myself shall be judge over the men of Erin on that day.”
The Angel told him that this thing could not be obtained from the Lord.
Then Patrick said: “Unless this is obtained from Him, I will not consent to leave this Cruachan (mountain) from this day forever; and even after my death there shall be a guardian for me there.”
Then the Angel left him and Patrick went to say the Mass. The Angel came again in the evening.
“How now?” asked Patrick.
“Thus,” answered the Angel, “all creatures, visible and invisible, including the twelve Apostles, entreated, and they have obtained what you have requested.”
“Strike thy bell,” the Angel continued, “you are commanded from Heaven to fall on your knees, that it may be a blessing to the people of all Erin, both living and dead.”
“A blessing on the bountiful King that gave,” said Patrick; “the Cruachan shall be left.”
It was on Holy Thursday in the year 411 AD, according to Jocelyn, that the Saint came forth from his solitude and returned to his people.
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A Medieval Hymn of St Bernard |
Posted by: Stone - 08-20-2023, 09:49 AM - Forum: The Saints
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A Medieval Hymn of St Bernard
NLM | August 20, 2023
Here is a very nice medieval hymn for the feast of St Bernard of Clairvaux, which is used in the Cistercian Divine Office at both Vespers of his feast. According to the Analecta hymnica, the great catalog of medieval liturgical hymns, both the author and the date of composition are unknown, but it appears in several Cistercian sources in the 13th century, and has been in continual use within the order ever since. (It does not seem that any of the great translators like Neale or Caswell ever put their pens to this, so we must be content with my poor English prose translation.) This recording from the abbey of Marienstatt in Germany also includes the versicle that follows the hymn, “Ora pro nobis, sancte Bernarde”, in a more solemn tone which is different from the Roman one.
Bernardus Doctor inclytus,
Caelos conscendit hodie,
Quem attraxit divinitus
Splendor paternae gloriae.
Bernard, the renowned doctor
ascends the heavens today
Whom the splendor of the Father’s
glory drew from on high.
Exsultet caelum laudibus
De Bernardi consortio,
Quem conjungis caelestibus,
Jesu, nostra redemptio.
Let heaven exult in praises
for Bernard’s company,
Whom You join to the citizens
of heaven, Jesus, our redemption.
Rufum dorso per catulum
Praefigurasti puerum
Fore Doctorem sedulum,
Conditor alme siderum.
By the figure of a dog with a red
back, you showed that the boy
would be a zealous teacher,
O maker of the stars.
Nascentis ei claruit
Clara Christi nativitas,
Hoc a te donum habuit,
O lux, beata Trinitas.
For him shined most brightly
The glorious birth of Christ;
This gift he had from you,
o light, o blessed Trinity.
Arcana sacrae paginae
Declarat, et mysterium
Quod effecit in Virgine
Deus, creator omnium.
He set forth the mysteries
of the holy book, which God, the
creator of all things, wrought
in the Virgin.
Rore perfusum gratiae
Monstrat dulcor eloquii;
Per te fons sapientiae,
Summi largitor praemii.
The sweetness of his speech
showed him to be filled with grace,
though Thee, o font of wisdom,
giver of the highest reward.
Detentos a daemonibus
Sanat, morbos languentium
Curat, confert doloribus
Magnum salutis gaudium.
He heals those held by devils,
he cures the ailments of the sick,
and gives the great joy of salvation
to their griefs.
Vita vivit feliciter
Cum Maria Christifera
Cum qua degustat dulciter
Aeterna Christi munera.
Happily he lives (eternal) life
with Mary, the bearer of Christ,
with whom he sweetly tastes
the eternal gifts of Christ.
Summae Deus potentiae,
Tibi sit laus et gloria:
Da post cursum miseriae
Beata nobis gaudia. Amen.
God of highest power,
to thee be praise and glory:
after the way of wretchedness
give us blessed joys. Amen.
There are some interesting things to note. The hymn is an acrostic, the first letters of each stanza spelling his name BERNARDVS. The meter is the iambic dimeter, that of the original hymns of St Ambrose and other early Christian poets, short and long syllables alternating four times for a total of eight. (Substitutions are very common, especially since vowel quantities were already weakened in the 5th century, and hardly perceived as such in the High Middle Ages.) As such, it could in theory be sung in any one of a great many melodies, and other common hymns in this meter were often sung with different music from one church to another. However, it was an essential characteristic of the medieval Cistercians to keep a strict uniformity of observance in all their houses, and it is almost certain that they would have all used the same music.
The words of the third stanza “By the figure of a dog with a red back” refer to an episode recorded in the life of St Bernard. When his mother Aleth was pregnant with him (the third of her seven children, of whom four others are Blesseds), she dreamt that she was carrying a barking white dog with some red hair on its back. A religious man whom she consulted explained this dream to mean that the child she bore would be like the dogs mentioned in Psalm 67, “The tongues of your dogs lick the blood of their enemies”, guarding the house of God against its enemies, a preacher, and a healer of souls. This latter idea derives from St Gregory the Great’s symbolic interpretation of the dogs that licked the sores of Lazarus (hom. 40 in Evang.), in a passage which is read in the Roman Breviary on Thursday of the second week of Lent. “A dog’s tongue heals the sore which it licks; and so do holy teachers, when they instruct is in the confession of our sins, touch the sores of our souls by their tongues (i.e. their speech).” The following stanza refers to a vision of the Child Jesus which Bernard himself had when he was a boy, and fell asleep while waiting with his family to go out to Matins and the Midnight Mass of Christmas.
Christ Embracing St Bernard, ca. 1625, by Francisco Riablta (1565-1628). Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.
Medieval hymnographers loved the trick performed by the author of this hymn, in which the last line of each stanza is the title (i.e. first line) of another hymn. (A similarly constructed piece is sung in the proper Office of St Anthony the Abbot.)
Splendor paternae gloriae – an original hymn of St Ambrose himself, which the
Cistercians sing at Sunday Lauds, the Roman Office at Monday Lauds.
Jesu, nostra redemptio – from the feast of the Ascension, pre-Urban VIII
Conditor alme siderum – from Vespers of Advent, pre-Urban VIII
O lux, beata Trinitas – Saturday Vespers, pre-Urban VIII
Deus, creator omnium – the Ambrosian hymn for Sunday Vespers
Summi largitor praemii – a hymn for Lent sung by the Cistercians at Matins;
also used at Sarum, but not in the Roman Office.
Magnum salutis gaudium – processional hymn for Palm Sunday
Aeterna Christi munera – Matins hymn of the Apostles.
Beata nobis gaudia – Lauds hymn of Pentecost.
In addition, the first line of the second stanza, “Exsultet caelum laudibus”, is the title of the pre-Urban VIII version of the Vespers hymn of the Apostles. (Like all the religious orders that retained their own Uses of the Divine Office, the Cistercians never adopted Pope Urban VIII’s reform of the hymns.)
The difficulty of this trick is to integrate the titles into the words of a new composition in a new sense. Some of the expressions in the vocative case, such as “Jesu, nostra redemptio,” could be interchanged with any of the others, (I do not say this as a critique of the author; medievals valued originality far less than we do,) but the last three are particularly well chosen.
The Cistercians were founded at the very end of the 11th century as “strict constructionalists” of the original Rule of St Benedict, which they felt had been unhappily compromised by later developments and customs that emerged within the Cluniac monastic empire. The term which St Benedict uses for “hymn” in the Rule (capp. 9, 12, 13 and 17) is “ambrosianum”, since it was St Ambrose who first introduced the use of hymns into the West. This led the Cistercians to the believe that St Benedict’s original intention was not merely that monks should sing “a hymn” at certain Hours, but that they should use the specific corpus of hymns used by Ambrose himself. This corpus would be found, as they thought, in the Ambrosian Divine Office; they therefore sent people to Milan to copy out the Ambrosian hymnal then in use, and bring it back to Citeaux. It was incorporated into their Office to the despite of many hymns which at that point had long been in general use within the broad liturgical family of the Roman Rite. This was very controversial, even for an age in which there was a great deal of liturgical variation, and the Order was eventually pressured into adopting the traditional corpus of hymns, with some variations. This is why some of the original Ambrosian hymns such as “Splendor paternae gloriae” are given a more prominent place within the Cistercian Office than they were elsewhere.
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Prayer to the Most Holy Mary to Obtain the Pardon of Sins |
Posted by: Stone - 08-20-2023, 08:30 AM - Forum: In Honor of Our Lady
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Taken from The Glories Of Mary by St. Alphonsus Liguori
Prayer to the Most Holy Mary to Obtain the Pardon of Sins
BEHOLD, oh mother of God, at thy feet a miserable sinner, the slave of hell, who has recourse to thee, and trusts in thee. I do not even merit that thou shouldst look upon me, but I know that having seen thy Son die to save sinners, thou hast the greatest desire to aid them.
Oh mother of mercy, look on my miseries, and have pity on me. I hear thee called by all: The refuge of sinners, the hope of the desperate, the help of the abandoned. Then thou art my refuge, my hope, my help. Thou must save me by thy intercession. Succor me for the love of Jesus Christ. Give thy hand to a poor fallen sinner who recommends himself to thee. I know that thou dost find consolation in helping the sinner when thou canst; help me then, for thou canst help me. I, by my sins have lost the grace of God and my own soul, now I place myself in thy hands; tell me what I must do to return to the favor of my Lord, for I will do it, without delay. He sends me to thee, that thou mayest succor me, and he wishes me to have recourse to thy mercy, that not only the merits of thy Son, but also thy prayers may aid in my salvation.
To thee then I have recourse; thou who dost pray for so many others, pray also to Jesus for me. Ask him to pardon me, and he will pardon me; tell him that thon dost desire my salvation, and he will save me. Make known the good that thou canst do to those who confide in thee. Amen; thus I hope, thus may it be.
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St. Alphonsus Liguori: Daily Meditations for Twelfth Week after Pentecost |
Posted by: Stone - 08-20-2023, 07:39 AM - Forum: Pentecost
- Replies (7)
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It would seem that, on the day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin into Heaven, the holy Church should invite us to mourn rather than rejoice, since our dear Mother has quitted this world and left us deprived of her sweet presence. But no: the holy Church rightly invites us to rejoice, for Mary is going to possess a kingdom and to be crowned Queen of Heaven. Let us therefore rejoice in the glorious triumph of our Mother.
I.
It would seem that on the day of the Assumption of Mary into Heaven the holy Church should rather invite us to mourn than to rejoice, since our sweet Mother has quitted this world and left us deprived of her sweet presence. St. Bernard says "It seems that we should rather weep than rejoice." But no; the holy Church invites us to rejoice: "Let us all rejoice in the Lord, celebrating a Festival in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary." And justly so; for, if we love our Mother, we ought to congratulate ourselves more upon her glory than on our own personal happiness. What son does not rejoice, though on account of it he has to be separated from his mother, if he knows that she is going to take possession of a kingdom? Mary is to be crowned Queen of Heaven; and shall we not keep it a festival and rejoice if we truly love her? Let us rejoice, then; let us all rejoice! And that we may rejoice, and be consoled the more by her exaltation, let us consider how glorious was the triumph of Mary when she ascended to Heaven.
After Jesus Christ our Saviour had completed, by His death, the work of Redemption, the Angels ardently desired to possess Him in their heavenly country; hence they were continually supplicating Him in the words of David: Arise, O Lord, into thy resting-place, thou and the ark which thou hast sanctified (Ps. cxxxi. 8). Come, O Lord, come quickly, now that Thou hast redeemed men; come to Thy kingdom and dwell with us, and bring with Thee the living ark of Thy sanctification, Thy Mother, who was the ark Thou didst sanctify by dwelling in her womb. Precisely thus does St. Bernardine make the Angels say: "Let Mary, Thy most holy Mother, sanctified by Thy conception, also ascend." Our Lord was at last pleased to satisfy the desire of these heavenly citizens by calling Mary to Paradise. But if it was His will that the ark of the old dispensation should be brought with great pomp into the city of David -- And David and all the house of Israel brought the ark of the covenant of the Lord with joyful shouting, and with sound of trumpet (2 Kings vi. 15) -- with how much greater and more glorious pomp did He ordain that His Mother should enter Heaven!
II.
The Prophet Elias was carried to Heaven in a fiery chariot, which, according to interpreters, was no other than a group of Angels who bore him off from the earth. "But to conduct thee to Heaven, O Mother of God," says the Abbot Rupert, "a fiery chariot was not enough; the whole court of Heaven, headed by its King thy Son, went forth to meet and accompany thee."
St. Bernardine of Sienna says, that "Jesus," to honour the triumph of His most sweet Mother, "went forth in His glory to meet and accompany her." St. Anselm also says, that "it was precisely for this purpose that the Redeemer was pleased to ascend to Heaven before His Mother; that is, He did so, not only to prepare a throne for her in that kingdom, but also that He might Himself accompany her with all the blessed Spirits, and thus render her entry into Heaven more glorious, and such as became one who was His Mother." St. Peter Damian, contemplating the splendour of this Assumption of Mary into Heaven, says that "we shall find it more glorious than the Ascension of Jesus Christ; for to meet the Redeemer, Angels only went forth; but when the Blessed Virgin was assumed to glory, she was met and accompanied by the Lord of glory Himself, and by the whole blessed company of Saints and Angels." For this reason the Abbot Guerric supposes the Divine Word thus speaking: "To honour the Father, I descended from Heaven; to honour My Mother, I reascended there": that thus I might be enabled to go forth to meet her, and myself accompany her to Paradise.
Spiritual Reading
TO THEE DO WE SIGH, MOURNING AND WEEPING, IN THIS VALLEY OF TEARS!
1.-THE NECESSITY OF MARY'S INTERCESSION FOR OUR SALVATION.
That it is not only lawful but useful to invoke and pray to the Saints, and more especially to the Queen of Saints, the most holy and ever blessed Virgin Mary, in order that they may obtain us Divine grace, is an Article of Faith, and has been defined by General Councils, against heretics who condemned it as injurious to Jesus Christ, Who is our only Mediator. But if a Jeremias after his death prayed for Jerusalem (2 Mach. xv. 14); if the Ancients of the Apocalypse presented the prayers of the Saints to God (Apoc. v. 8); if a St. Peter promises his disciples that after his death He will be mindful of them (2 Pet. i. 15); if a holy Stephen prays for his persecutors (Acts vii. 59); if a St. Paul prays for his companions (Acts xxvii. 24; Eph. ii. 16; Phil. i. 4; Col. i. 3); if, in fine, the Saints can pray for us, why cannot we beseech the Saints to intercede for us? St. Paul recommends himself to the prayers of his disciples: Brethren, pray for us (1 Thess. v. 25). St. James exhorts us to pray one for another: Pray one for another, that you may be saved (James v. 16). Then we can do the same.
No one denies that Jesus Christ is our only Mediator of justice, and that He by His merits has obtained our reconciliation with God. But, on the other hand, it is impious to assert that God is not pleased to grant graces at the intercession of His Saints, and more especially of Mary, His Mother, whom Jesus desires so much to see loved and honoured by all. Who can pretend that the honour bestowed on a mother does not redound to the honour of the son? The glory of children are their fathers (Prov. xvii. 6). Whence St. Bernard says: "Let us not imagine that we obscure the glory of the Son by the great praise we lavish on the Mother; for the more she is honoured, the greater is the glory of her Son." "There can be no doubt," says the Saint, "that whatever we say in praise of the Mother is equally in praise of the Son." And St. Ildephonsus also says: "That which is given to the Mother redounds to the Son; the honour given to the Queen is honour bestowed on the King." There can be no doubt that by the merits of Jesus, Mary was made the mediatress of our salvation; not indeed a mediatress of justice, but of grace and intercession; as St. Bonaventure expressly calls her, "Mary, the most faithful mediatress of our salvation." And St. Laurence Justinian asks -- "How can she be otherwise than full of grace, who has been made the ladder to Paradise, the gate of Heaven, the most true mediatress between God and man?"
Hence the learned Suarez justly remarks that if we implore our Blessed Lady to obtain us a favour, it is not because we distrust the Divine mercy, but rather that we fear our own unworthiness and the absence of proper dispositions; and we recommend ourselves to Mary, that her dignity may supply for our lowliness. He says that we apply to Mary "in order that the dignity of the intercessor may supply for our misery. Hence, to invoke the aid of the most Blessed Virgin is not diffidence in the Divine mercy, but dread of our own unworthiness."
That it is most useful and holy to have recourse to the intercession of Mary can only be doubted by those who have not the Faith. But that which we intend to prove here is that the intercession of Mary is even necessary to salvation; we say necessary -- not absolutely, but morally. This necessity proceeds from the will itself of God, that all the graces He dispenses should pass through the hands of Mary, according to the opinion of St. Bernard, and which we may now with safety call the general opinion of Theologians and learned men. The author of the Reign of Mary positively asserts that such is the case. It is maintained by Vega, Mendoza, Paciucchelli, Segneri, Poire, Crasset, and by innumerable other learned authors. Even Father Natalis Alexander, who always uses so much reserve in his propositions, even he says that it is the will of God that we should expect all graces through the intercession of Mary. I will give his own words: "God wills that we should obtain all good things that we hope for from Him through the powerful intercession of the Virgin Mother, and we shall obtain them whenever (as we are in duty bound) we invoke her." In confirmation of this, he quotes the following celebrated passage of St. Bernard: "Such is God's will, that we should have all through Mary." Father Contenson is also of the same opinion; for, explaining the words addressed by our Lord on the Cross to St. John: Behold thy Mother! (Jo. xix. 27) he says: It is the same thing as if Jesus had said: As no one can be saved except through the merits of My sufferings and death, so no one will be a partaker of the Blood then shed otherwise than through the prayer of My Mother. He alone is a son of My sorrows who has Mary for his Mother. My Wounds are ever-flowing fountains of grace; but their streams will reach no one but by the channel of Mary. In vain will he invoke Me as a Father who has not venerated Mary as a Mother. And thou, My disciple John, if thou lovest Me, love her; for thou wilt be beloved by Me in proportion to thy love for her.
Evening Meditation
CONSIDERATIONS ON THE PASSION OF JESUS CHRIST
I.
Jesus upon the Cross was a spectacle which filled Heaven and earth with amazement -- the sight of an Almighty God, the Lord of all, dying upon an infamous gibbet, condemned as a malefactor between two thieves. It was a spectacle of justice -- the Eternal Father, in order that His justice might be satisfied, punishing the sins of men in the person of His only-begotten Son Who was loved by Him as Himself. It was a spectacle of mercy, when His innocent Son died a death so shameful and so bitter, in order to save His creatures from the punishment that was due to them. Especially was it a display of love, in a God offering His life to redeem from death His slaves and enemies!
It is this spectacle which ever was, and ever will be, the dearest object of the contemplation of the Saints, who have counted it little to strip themselves of all earthly pleasures and goods, and to embrace with desire and joy both pain and death, in order to make some return of gratitude to a God Who died for love of them.
Comforted by the sight of Jesus derided upon the Cross, the Saints have loved contempt more than worldly people have loved the honours of the world. At the sight of Jesus naked and dying upon the Cross, they have sought to abandon all the good things of this earth. At the sight of Him all wounded upon the Cross, while the blood flowed forth from all His limbs, they have learnt to abhor sensual pleasures, and have sought to afflict their flesh as much as they could, in order to accompany with their own sufferings the sufferings of the Crucified. At the sight of the obedience and conformity of will practised by Jesus Christ to the will of His Father, they laboured to conquer all those appetites which were not conformed to the Divine pleasure; while many, though occupied in works of piety, yet, knowing that to be deprived of their own will was their most welcome sacrifice to the Heart of God, entered into some Religious Order, to lead a life of obedience, and subject their own will to that of others. At the sight of the patience of Jesus Christ, in being willing to suffer so many pains and insults for the love of us, they received with satisfaction and joy injuries, infirmities, persecutions, and the torments of tyrants. At the sight of the love Jesus Christ has shown to us in sacrificing to God His life upon the Cross for us, they sacrificed to Jesus Christ all they possessed, -- their property, their pleasures, their honours, and their life.
II.
How is it that so many Christians, although they know by Faith that Jesus Christ died for love of them, instead of devoting themselves wholly to love and serve Him, give themselves up to offending and despising Him for the sake of brief and miserable pleasures? Whence comes this ingratitude? It comes from forgetfulness of the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ. And, O my God, what will be their remorse and shame at the Day of Judgment, when the Lord shall reproach them with all that He has done and suffered for them?
Let us, then, never cease, O devout souls, to keep before our eyes Jesus crucified, and dying in the midst of torments and insults through love of us. From the Passion of Jesus Christ all the Saints have drawn those flames of love which made them forget all the good things of this world, and even their own selves, to give themselves up wholly to love and please this Divine Saviour, Who has so loved men that it seems as if He could not have done more in order to be loved by them. In a word, the Cross, that is, the Passion of Jesus Christ, is that which will gain for us the victory over all our passions, and over all the temptations that hell will hold out to us, in order to separate us from God. The Cross is the road and ladder by which we mount to Heaven. Happy he who embraces it during his life, and does not put it off till the hour of death. He that dies embracing the Cross has that sure pledge of eternal life which is promised to all those who follow Jesus Christ.
O my crucified Jesus, to make Thyself loved by men Thou hast spared nothing; Thou hast even given Thy life in a most painful death; how, then, can men who love their kindred, their friends, and even animals from whom they receive any token of affection, be so ungrateful to Thee as to despise Thy grace and Thy love, for the sake of miserable and vain delights! Oh, wretched me, I am one of those ungrateful beings who, for things of no worth, have renounced Thy friendship, and have turned my back upon Thee. I have deserved that Thou shouldst drive me from Thy face, as I have often banished Thee from my heart. But I know that Thou dost not cease to ask my heart of me: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God (Deut. vi. 5). Yea, O my Jesus, as Thou desirest that I should love Thee and offerest me pardon, I renounce all creatures, and henceforth I desire to love Thee alone, my Creator and my Redeemer. Thou dost deserve to be the only object of my soul's love.
O Mary, Mother of God, refuge of sinners, pray for me; obtain for me the grace to love God, and I ask for nothing more.
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Abandonment to Divine Providence |
Posted by: Stone - 08-19-2023, 07:45 AM - Forum: Resources Online
- Replies (23)
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Abandonment to Divine Providence
by Reverend Jean-Pierre de Caussade S.J.
Translated and Edited by Reverend J. Ramiere, S.J.
1940 by Bruce Pub. Co., Milwaukee, US.
NIHIL OBSTAT: Anscar Vonier, O.S.B., Abbot; Dom Dunstan, O.S.B.
IMPRIMATUR: Joannes Ep. Plym.
Translated and Edited by the Reverend J. Ramiere, S.J.
Introduction by Dom Arnold, O.S.B.
Dedicated to St Joseph: “The one chosen shadow of God upon earth.”–Father Faber.
“Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones. Yea Father, for so hath it seemed good in thy sight:”—Matt. xi, 25, 26.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PUBLISHER
INTRODUCTION
BOOK I
BOOK II
SECOND PART
FIRST BOOK
SECOND BOOK
THIRD BOOK
FOURTH BOOK
FIFTH BOOK
SIXTH BOOK
SEVENTH BOOK
INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES
INTRODUCTION
The Rev. Jean Pierre de Caussade was one of the most remarkable spiritual writers of the Society of Jesus in France in the 18th Century. His death took place at Toulouse in 1751. His works have gone through many editions and have been republished, and translated into several foreign languages.
The present book gives an English translation of the tenth French Edition of Fr. de Caussade’s “Abandon ‘a la Providence Divine,” edited, to the great benefit of many souls, by Fr. H. Ramiere, S. J.
A portion of this remarkable work in English has already appeared in America, but many readers, to whom this precious little book has become a favourite, will welcome a complete translation, especially as what has already appeared in the English version may be considered as merely the theoretical part, whilst the “Letters of Direction” which form the greater portion of the present work give the practical part. They answer objections, solve difficulties, and give practical advice. The book thus gains considerably in value and utility.
It is divided into two unequal parts, the first containing a treatise on total abandonment to Divine Providence, and the second, letters of direction for persons leading a spiritual life.
The “Treatise” comprises two different aspects of Abandonment to Divine Providence; one as a virtue, common and necessary to all Christians, the other as a state, proper to souls who have made a special practice of abandonment to the holy will of God.
The “Letters of Direction,” now for the first time translated into English, were addressed to Nuns of the Visitation at Nancy. Fr. de Caussade had been stationed in this town for some time, and when later he was called away, his letters to the Nuns carried on the powerful influence he had exercised over them. They were treasured and preserved with religious care, and thus have come down to our own days. Fr. de Ramiere, S. J., collected these letters, and edited them with painstaking labour.
These “Spiritual Letters” are completely suited to the present time; Catholic spiritual life being ever the same, there is nothing in them which might require alteration or revision. Directors of souls will find them an answer to the daily and constantly recurring difficulties and trials of the interior life, from the initial difficulties of beginners to the hidden trials of souls of great sanctity. Whilst the “Letters,” from the fact that they were originally written for the direction of Nuns, are chiefly intended for Religious, yet earnest people living in the world will derive from their perusal a most efficacious means for the attainment of resignation and peace in the midst of the worries and anxieties of life.
The leading idea in the letters of Fr. de Caussade is abandonment, complete and absolute, to Divine Providence. This was the mainspring of his own spiritual life, and the key-note of his direction of souls. He promises peace and holiness to every soul, however simple, that follows his counsel, if it has an upright intention, and a good will.
The following extract is from Fr. H. Ramiere’s preface to the Letters:
“That which renders Dr. de Caussade’s letters especially valuable, and makes them useful in an eminently practical manner, is the circumstance that they are, for the most part, addressed to persons suffering under different kinds of darkness, desolation and trials; in a word, to those whom God designs for a high degree of sanctity. To all the doubts submitted to him, and to all the sufferings exposed to him by his correspondents, the holy Director applied but one and the same solution and remedy–abandonment; but, with perfect tact he adapts this practice to the particular nature of the trial, and proportions its exercise to the degree of perfection to which each soul has attained. The same method of direction he applies in a hundred different ways, and therefore this correspondence can be justly compared to a ladder by which the soul ascends by successive degrees from a still very imperfect state, to one of the most intimate union with God, and to the most heroic abandonment. To whatever degree a soul has attained we can safely promise that it will find in these letters suitable advice and a solution of the difficulties by which it is beset. Even those who look upon the spiritual life as an inextricable labyrinth will receive from the hands of Fr. de Caussade the clue which will enable them to escape from the darkness that envelopes them, and to enjoy peace in the midst of their uneasiness. May it prove this to all those poor souls who are troubled, and who tremble for fear where there is nothing to fear.’ (Ps. 13). May this book realise the message of the Angels, and bring peace to souls of a good will.”
The “Abandonment to Divine Providence” of Fr. de Caussade is as far removed from the false inactivity of the Quietists, as true Christian resignation is distinct from the fatalism of Mohammedans. It is a trusting, childlike, peaceful abandonment to the guidance of grace, and of the Holy Spirit: an unquestioning and undoubting submission to the holy will of God in all things that may befall us, be they due to the action of man, or to the direct permission of God. To Fr. de Caussade, abandonment to God, the “Ita Pater” of our Divine Lord, the “Fiat” of our Blessed Lady, is the shortest, surest, and easiest way to holiness and peace. Fr. de Caussade’s work must be read with a certain amount of discretion, as naturally every advice he gives does not apply to all readers indiscriminately. Some of his counsels may be appropriate for beginners; others for souls of a more advanced degree of spirituality. No one, however, can fail to recognise in his writings the sure tone of a “Master,” who has united practical to theoretical knowledge of his subject.
Every page is redolent with the unction of the Spirit of God, and readers will find in his doctrine a heavenly manna, a food of unfailing strength for their souls. The present work has been carefully translated into readable English, and more regard has been paid to the meaning than to the literal exactness of the sentences. The elevated, noble style of the author has been preserved throughout. It is a real contribution to the spiritual literature of England.
I am aware that our English word “Abandonment” does not adequately render the meaning of the French word “Abandon,” but we have no better expression. The translation has been undertaken solely for the purpose of helping souls to follow the hidden paths of the spiritual life, and to surrender themselves entirely to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Dom Arnold, O.S.B., Buckfast Abbey.
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YouTube Greatly Expands Its Medical “Misinformation” Policies |
Posted by: Stone - 08-17-2023, 06:30 AM - Forum: Health
- Replies (1)
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YouTube Greatly Expands Its Medical “Misinformation” Policies
New rules, largely determined by the WHO.
![[Image: ytc-rules.jpg]](https://reclaimthenet.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/ytc-rules.jpg)
reclaimthenet.org | August 16, 2023
YouTube, the titan of online video content, has expanded its Covid misinformation policy to cover what it calls all forms of medical misinformation.
YouTube has also declared its plan to delist videos promoting “cancer treatments proven to be harmful or ineffective,” effectively disallowing content creators from encouraging natural cures.
The platform pledges to implement its medical misinformation policies when a topic exhibits high public health risks, is supposedly prone to misinformation, and when official guidance from health authorities is accessible to the public.
The changes also see YouTube recommitting to groups such as the WHO and other health bodies on what information is deemed to be acceptable for people to talk about on the platform – despite these institutions having recently received major blows to their credibility.
According to the policy update, YouTube will no longer host content that:
- Misinforms about prevention techniques or contradicts current health authority guidelines, including inaccuracies regarding the safety or efficacy of approved vaccines.
- Promotes treatments that local health bodies or the WHO have neither approved nor recognized as safe and effective. Moreover, it bans content that advocates for harmful substances or practices that have been scientifically proven to be detrimental.
- Denies the existence of specific health conditions.
As stated in its blog post, YouTube intends to punish content promoting not only what it believes to be overtly harmful treatments but also unproven ones that are audaciously offered as replacements for recognized alternatives.
For instance, influencers suggesting vitamin C supplements or garlic for cancer may have their content removed, the post states.
This marks a substantial escalation in the Google-owned platform’s ongoing crusade against what it believes to be the dissemination of medical misinformation, heavily catalyzed by the controversial experience of battling narratives about themes such as COVID-19 and vaccines, something YouTube was heavily criticized for as truthful content ended up being censored on the platform.
YouTube had targeted vaccine “misinformation,” such as demonetizing and deleting vaccine skepticism, thereby refining their approach in response to the global pandemic situation.
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Cardinal Cupich to appear at ecumenical conference coordinated by Wiccan priestess |
Posted by: Stone - 08-17-2023, 06:23 AM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
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Cardinal Cupich to appear at ecumenical conference coordinated by Wiccan priestess
The Parliament of the World’s Religions conference, first held in 1893, was condemned by Pope Leo XIII in 1895, at which time he also forbade Catholics from attending any of the organization's future events.
Cardinal Blase Cupich at 2018 Vatican Synod briefing
Diane Montagna/LifeSiteNews
Aug 16, 2023
(LifeSiteNews) — Left-wing Cardinal Blasé Cupich is set to appear at a scandalous ecumenical event in Chicago this week. The conference is coordinated by a Wiccan priestess and features more than 6,000 representatives of various forms of pagan and non-Catholic sects.
The 2023 Parliament of the World’s Religions is being held at McCormack Place convention center from Tuesday, August 14 until Friday, August 18. Its theme is “A Call to Conscience: Defending Freedom and Human Rights.”
Cupich will appear on a “luminary” panel alongside Presbyterian minister Jennifer Butler and Rashad Hussain, who serves in Joe Biden’s State Department and who previously worked in the Obama administration.
United Nations Secretary General António Guterres as well as dissident Catholic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi are also scheduled to address the conference.
The event’s first meeting was held in 1893, also in Chicago. Cardinal John Gibbons of Baltimore controversially attended that gathering along with several other liberal U.S. clergy who later came to be associated with what then-Pope Leo XIII called “the heresy of Americanism.”
In 1895, two years after conservatives voiced their opposition to the meeting, Leo condemned the conference and forbade Catholics from attending future ones out of fear it would give the impression the Church viewed other religions to be true or good in themselves.
Phyllis Curott serves as the program chair for this year’s event. A self-described “Elder Witch” and author, Curott took a not so veiled swipe at former President Donald Trump, as well as at other politicians who refuse to go along with the Deep State agenda.
“This existential, expanding and global scourge [of authoritarianism] is manifesting in tyrants and strongmen who commit crimes against humanity, suppress essential freedoms, subvert democracies and murder the truth with lies,” she said at a press conference ahead of the gathering.
“They are fostering hate and the resurgence of antisemitism and Islamophobia, misogyny and racism. They are attempting to misappropriate religion to justify the unjustifiable,” she added.
On her YouTube Channel, Currot has posted videos that explain her love for Tarot cards and that show viewers how to cast spells.
In an article posted on the Chicago Archdiocese’s website, Cupich said that this year’s gathering is an opportunity for Catholics to “live out the Holy Father’s teaching that a core part of our identity as Catholics involves building friendship between members of different religious tradition.”
Social justice workshops are being held at the conference
On Tuesday, August 15, a “climate repentance ceremony” was conducted at the meeting.
Also on Tuesday, Yael Eisenstat, vice president of the left-wing Anti-Defamation League’s Center for Technology & Society, called for stricter policing of free speech on social media.
We need an “inclusive online” environment that will “amplify women and underrepresented voices,” she demanded
So-called Dharma Masters from the New York-based Tzu Chi Buddhist Center participated in the conference’s opening ceremonies while a “Parade of Faiths” was held in downtown Chicago to kick off the gathering on Tuesday.
The World Parliament of Religions is a global non-governmental organization affiliated with the United Nations Department of Public Information. Its board of trustees is composed of people of all religious backgrounds. It acts, more or less, as the spiritual arm of the United Nations in that its primary purpose is to promote the green agenda, wokeism, and other liberal policies.
The last time the Parliament of the World’s Religions met in Chicago was in 1993. Then-Chicago Archbishop Joseph Bernardin, also a notorious liberal like Cupich, spoke at the event as well.
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Faithful Catholics who disrupted ‘LGBT Mass’ at World Youth Day could face one year in jail |
Posted by: Stone - 08-17-2023, 06:15 AM - Forum: General Commentary
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Faithful Catholics who disrupted ‘LGBT Mass’ at World Youth Day could face one year in jail
‘I just want people to fight for Christ,’ Rafael da Silva, who organized the protest, told LifeSiteNews.
Church of Our Lady of the Incarnation
Wikimedia Commons
Aug 16, 2023
(LifeSiteNews) — A group of Catholics who protested an “LGBT Mass” during World Youth Day in Lisbon are facing up to one year in jail for their actions.
Twelve traditional Catholics held a reparation prayer in the Church of Our Lady of the Incarnation on August 3 in protest of a heterodox “LGBT Mass” taking place in the Catholic church. Police removed the group, and its members now face up to one year in prison for disrupting an act of worship.
Rafael da Silva, the protest organizer, confirmed to LifeSiteNews that he and his 11 companions are being criminally charged for their actions.
“We are facing a criminal investigation,” da Silva told LifeSiteNews. “We are being accused of disrupting a cult action.”
He said that they were unaware that their protest would constitute a crime.
Da Silva stated that some media reports wrongly claimed that the group “invaded” the church during the Mass. However, his group had already been inside the Church for a while before the service started. He recalled that when Fr. James Alison, an openly homosexual priest, entered the church, they “started praying the Rosary in Latin.”
Da Silva told LifeSiteNews that the police and the Portuguese secret service are now tracking their “phone, messages, and activities.” However, he currently does not believe that they will be put in jail. He instead thinks that the police are just trying to scare people to “stop the movement from expanding” and that they will end up with a fine at most.
Da Silva said that he and the other 11 Catholics involved in the protest are not too bothered by the criminal charges at the moment and that they are just “living life normally.”
The “LGBT Mass” held on August 3 was part of the series of heterodox events at World Youth Day organized by the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics and a local Portuguese LGBT group.
Fr. Alison, one of the “celebrants” at the event, has lobbied the Vatican for many years to be relieved of his clerical celibacy, arguing that he joined the priesthood based on a false acceptance of the Church’s teaching on homosexuality.
The prominently pro-homosexual priest received a letter from the Congregation for Clergy around 2010 in which he was informed of his eventual laicization after refusing to cooperate in previous attempts to laicize him.
Angered by this decision, he wrote to Pope Francis, requesting to ignore the Congregation’s decision. Francis subsequently called Alison, appearing to give his approval to the homosexual priest, saying, “I want you to walk with deep interior freedom, following the Spirit of Jesus. And I give you the power of the keys. Do you understand? I give you the power of the keys.”
READ: Openly gay priest claims Pope Francis affirmed his homosexuality in private phone call
Pro-LGBT priests ‘do not represent the Catholic faith’
When asked about his motivation to organize the protest, da Silva said, “I think they just crossed a line” by celebrating a “blasphemous Mass.”
Da Silva recalled that he was filled with “holy wrath” when he heard about the plans for the heterodox Mass in the news and that he felt like it was his “duty as a Catholic to do something.”
He told LifeSiteNews that the Catholics who attended the “LGBT Mass” “are not enemies; they are being used by the enemies to push an agenda that is anti-Christ.”
While he did not blame the attendees of the heterodox event, da Silva scolded the priests who celebrated the “LGBT Mass,” stating that “they hate Jesus Christ, they hate the Catholic Church.”
“They do not represent Jesus Christ; they do not represent the Catholic faith,” he continued.
Da Silva said his message to the self-proclaimed Catholics who are promoting heterodoxy and organizing events like this “LGBT Mass” is: “We’re coming, we are the faithful, and just like in the Arian crisis, we will restore the faith, and we will get our churches back because people deserve the truth, people deserve Catholicism, not this catastrophic new religion founded in Vatican II.”
“They forgot about real sins; they forgot about the ten commandments. They are killing souls every single day,” he stated.
“Just like the 12 apostles of Christ, we were there for some reason,” da Silva told LifeSiteNews when discussing the group of 12 Catholics who prayed loudly during the “LGBT Mass.” “God knows what he has in store for us.”
Da Silva said that he and his friends did not expect that they would receive so much media attention for their protest.
“We don’t want to be famous; we never thought that the media would cover us in such a way; we never thought this would have this big of backlash, to be quite honest.”
Rather than achieving fame, his goal is to “go to heaven,” Silva said. “I just want people to fight for Christ,” he stated.
Da Silva started the “Restore Portugal by Prayer” movement in June, together with his wife, for which they “go to places” in Portugal to “pray for a specific cause.”
He told LifeSiteNews that the best way that people can support him and his companions is by offering up prayers for them.
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New Covid vaccines are on the way as 'Eris' variant rises |
Posted by: Stone - 08-15-2023, 06:37 AM - Forum: COVID Vaccines
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New Covid vaccines are on the way as 'Eris' variant rises
NEW YORK, Aug 14 (Reuters) - A new COVID vaccine is due out next month, but health experts and analysts say it is likely to be coolly received even as hospitalizations from "Eris", a variant of the Omicron form of the coronavirus, rise around the country. [Eris was the Greek goddess of strife and discord. - The Catacombs]
Some public health experts hope that Americans will welcome the new shot as they would a flu jab. But demand for the vaccine has dropped sharply since 2021 when it first became available and more than 240 million people in the U.S., or 73% of the population, received at least one shot.
In the fall of 2022, by which time most people had either had the COVID virus or the vaccine, fewer than 50 million people got the shots.
Healthcare providers and pharmacies such as CVS Health (CVS.N) will start next month to offer the shot, updated to fight the Omicron version of the virus that has been dominant since last year.
They will be fighting declining concern about the virus, as well as fatigue and skepticism about the merits of this vaccine, Kaiser Family Foundation Director of Survey Methodology Ashley Kirzinger said.
"Public health officials, if they want to see a majority of adults get these annual vaccines, they're going to have to make the case to the American public that COVID isn't over and it still poses a risk to them," Kirzinger said.
The top reason vaccinated people gave in KFF surveys earlier this year for eschewing annual shots was they believed they had protection from the virus because of previous shots or infections, she said.
COVID-19 vaccine makers have pared back expectations for this fall's vaccination campaign, with Pfizer – the largest maker of mRNA shots with BioNTech – recently warning that it might need to cut jobs if it does not do well. Its biggest rival, Moderna, conceded demand could be as few as 50 million shots.
Last year, Pfizer and Moderna's vaccine sales topped $56 billion worldwide; analysts project around $20 billion for this year.
Jefferies analyst Michael Yee said he does not expect the autumn campaign to reach last year's.
"Take a look at what happened last winter. It was 50 million in the US, and it seems likely to be lower than that, given that there's less concern about COVID this year than last year," Yee said.
POST PANDEMIC VACCINE
The COVID public health emergency ended in May and the government has handed much of the duty of vaccinating America to the private sector. Over 1.1 million people in the United States have died from COVID, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
CDC Director Mandy Cohen said last week in a podcast that she expects the shots - which still need to be authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and recommended by the CDC - to be rolled out in the third or fourth week of September. She suggested Americans should view these shots as an annual measure to protect oneself, in line with the annual flu shot.
As with the flu, Pfizer (PFE.N)/BioNTech SE (22UAy.DE), Moderna (MRNA.O) and Novavax (NVAX.O), have created versions of the COVID vaccine to try to match the variant they believe will be circulating this fall. The shots are aimed at XBB.1.5, a subvariant that is similar to EG.5 and also a sub-lineage of the still dominant Omicron variant.
COVID-19 related hospitalizations are up more than 40% off of recent lows hit in June, but are still more than 90% below peak levels hit during the January 2022 Omicron outbreak, according to CDC data.
THE EVIDENCE
Some doctors suggest that annual shots should be targeted at the elderly and other high risk people, who are most likely to have dire outcomes if they catch COVID-19.
Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases specialist at Vanderbilt University and a liaison to the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization practices, said it is possible that the ACIP could make a weaker recommendation for younger, healthier people. That could also affect demand.
"Should children really receive this booster?" Schaffner said. "Should the average person with no underlying illness who is a younger adult receive this vaccine or should this vaccine now be a more targeted vaccine?"
The CDC recommended children get a single dose of last year's updated vaccine for those aged 6 and older.
Dr. David Boulware, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Minnesota, said that according to research he has published, people who are boosted have less severe symptoms for a shorter duration.
"When you look at what you can do to reduce your duration of illness, even if you do get sick, being boosted is going to be the best way to do that," he said.
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Australian archbishop: ‘Highly likely’ Rome will end celibacy for indigenous priests |
Posted by: Stone - 08-15-2023, 05:53 AM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
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Australian archbishop: ‘Highly likely’ Rome will end celibacy for indigenous priests
While Archbishop Mark Coleridge claims indigenous people will only become priests if the celibacy requirement is lifted, other clerics consider that possibility to be inadequate and ‘inappropriate.’
Archbishop Mark Coleridge
Archdiocese of Brisbane/YouTube screenshot
Aug 14, 2023
(LifeSiteNews) – An Australian archbishop declared that it is “highly likely” Rome will end the requirement of celibacy for indigenous priests.
In an interview with The Australian published Saturday, Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge, former president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC), declared that the requirement of celibate priests must be lifted for any hope of the ordination of indigenous priests.
Coleridge claimed there is “no way you’re going to recruit a celibate clergy in those cultures.”
While the archbishop said he wouldn’t describe an end to clerical celibacy for indigenous communities as “inevitable,” he said he believes that the development is “highly likely.”
“I don’t know quite when or how, but the … question is certainly not going away,” he told The Australian. “And I think there will come a point of maturation when it will look kind of the natural next step and not sort of an artificial or dramatic or untimely overturning of what’s been a very long tradition.”
Coleridge sees such a change as especially needed because he excludes the possibility of priests from “outsider” cultures ministering to indigenous communities as unviable.
“You can’t have the whitefella providing leadership; you’ve got to provide leadership from within the indigenous communities,” the archbishop was quoted as saying.
Coleridge noted he has been “calling loud and clear for some time” for a “new way to imagine and engage with the indigenous peoples,” and that the issue has been discussed informally among members of the country’s bishops’ conference.
Other bishops concede that recruiting priests from among indigenous peoples around the world remains a difficulty, but believe a different solution is needed.
For example, Peruvian Bishop Rafael Escudero told Amazonian Synod participants in 2019 that the people of the Amazon region need adequate evangelization rather than married priests.
Escudero called on his fellow bishops to work harder on training catechists and pastoral workers, saying, “From a people that has been evangelized and well formed, there will come charisms and from among these will come celibacy for the priesthood.”
“It would be important for evangelizers to live among them,” he said, “and therefore understand them in the midst of their culture and customs.”
During the same synod, Venezuelan Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino objected that the possibility of married indigenous priests is not only unhelpful but inappropriate.
“There are many serious questions regarding the ordination of these good elder married men,” Cardinal Urosa wrote in an article in Portuguese at ACI Digital, adding, “And this will not resolve the problems of the current situation. I don’t see it as being appropriate nor useful.”
At the time, the cardinal also questioned whether the requirement of priestly celibacy would be done away with only in the Amazonian region or impact the Church practice around the world.
The question of married, incelibate priests is now relevant as ever to Vatican officials, as shown by the Synod on Synodality Instrumentum Laboris (IL), or working document, issued on June 20. The IL explicitly posed the possibility of married priests, raising the question, “As some continents propose, could a reflection be opened concerning the discipline on access to the Priesthood for married men, at least in some areas?”
While proponents of married priests often hearken back to the early days of the Catholic Church — when married priests were permitted — to support their position, such advocates rarely mention that even during that period priests were expected to remain completely celibate while married, as Father Christian Cochini has pointed out in his book ‘The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy.”
Father Joseph Fessio, S.J., founder of Ignatius Press, explained the Roman Catholic perspective on clerical celibacy in an e-mail to LifeSiteNews:
“The frequently heard statement that priestly celibacy is “not doctrinal but only disciplinary” is not only misleading, it is false. False because there is no Cartesian bright line between doctrine and discipline,” Father Fessio wrote.
He noted that there is a “very variegated spectrum” between questions of pure “doctrine” and of pure “discipline,” and that “clerical celibacy is much closer to doctrine than to discipline on this spectrum.”
“The fundamental reason is Christological. A priest has expropriated himself to be united in a unique way to Christ the High Priest. The priesthood is not merely a function. It is a sacramental, ontological, mysterious union with Jesus Christ … Christ did not marry an individual woman because he is also the Bridegroom who is totally surrendered to his Bride the Church in a fruitful union that brings forth his Body the Church,” Fessio continued.
“And if I may douse with some very chill water on some of the overheated enthusiasms of those clamoring for a return to “primitive tradition,” I remind that all those “married priests” in the early Church had to have the agreement of their wives and make a vow of continence before they could be ordained.”
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