God Never Messes with Our Heads

Our Lady of Fatima pilgrim statue in Boise, 2007.
Photo by Jim Nourse.

When one breaks weeks of silence, one casts about for the best subject with which to do it.  One runs one's mind over affairs both temporal and spiritual, from the government shutdown to the Pope's Big Interviews that have caused such a ruckus.  Today the big news item in the Catholic world was the Holy Father's consecration of the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, on this, the 96th anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, witnessed by tens of thousands of believers and non-believers over a large area of Portugal.  To my way of thinking, this is only the third really comforting thing Pope Francis -- whom I believe can rightly be described as the Pope of our punishment -- has done so far in his reign, the first being the worldwide hour of Eucharistic adoration in June, and the second being the day of prayer and fasting for peace in Syria last month.  All of his talk about Mary and about the reality of hell and the devil is good, but not surprising, since, the Pope, no matter who he is, cannot do otherwise than reaffirm authentic Catholic doctrine.

Which brings me to one theme that has underlain my thoughts in recent days: God does not mess with our heads.

In a world saturated in the despairing infidelity of modernism, in which being manipulated by government, media, Madison Avenue, each other, and even ourselves is a daily way of life for nearly all of us, it pays to remind ourselves of this.  God is Truth and Justice, and can no more deceive than He can be deceived.  The beauty and order of creation, from galactic superclusters to the inner workings of the subatomic, testify to the existence of a Creator Who is all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful and all-good.  The laws of nature communicate truths about how creatures function and interact, and we try to traduce these laws at our peril.  The very best and highest authority that any proposition can have is that God revealed it.  On that basis alone, it would deserve to be believed and not doubted, even if we do not like it or cannot understand it.  

So how can we know that a proposition comes from God?  We can know it if it has the backing of the Church founded by Jesus Christ, endowed with His authority, under the headship of His Vicar, the Pope.  He gave us a clearly visible and recognizable institution to teach us all that we need to know in order to save our souls, and He has guaranteed it against error in matters of faith and morals.  No matter who the Pope is, no matter how many disconcerting things he may do -- even if he is an unabashed public sinner like Alexander Borgia, or hopelessly incompetent as an administrator, like St. Celestine V -- the Pope could not change even the tiniest particle of doctrine, even if he had all the armies that have ever existed at his back.  When it comes to the most critical business of our lives -- our eternal salvation -- God does not leave us to puzzle things out for ourselves, or pull a bait-and-switch on us.  His justice demands this.  Since He does not leave us without a lamp for our steps, He also does not leave us with any excuses for persisting in darkness.  God does not mess with our heads.

God will not mess with our heads even after we are dead.  Contrary to popular depictions of the afterlife in movies and books, there will be no confused period of wandering disembodied on the earth, no haunting by human spirits of houses or old battlefields, no mistaking hell for heaven, or heaven for hell.  In the very place where we die, we will be judged.  By the time others have figured out that we are dead, we will have already been completely undeceived about ourselves and about God, and about where we deserve to spend eternity -- and we will have already gone there.  At the end of time, all flesh will be confronted with all truth, and all obscurity and confusion will disappear.  We need not allow ourselves to be deceived by charlatans claiming to be the Second Coming.  They aren't.  The real Second Coming will leave us in no possible or impossible doubt as to its authenticity.  Some things really are that simple and straightforward.  God does not mess with our heads.

Since God does not mess with our heads, we can and should allow ourselves to derive consolation from both our Faith and its wholesome outward expressions that, in this modernist age, have been derided from within and without the Church as childish superstition.  We have allowed ourselves to become inured to believing bad news over good, but the Gospel really is good news, and is really true -- more true than anything that bears the stamp of the world, however plausible.  Beauty really is truth, and truth really is beauty: we need not be prisoners of the lie we have been conditioned to believe, that only the gray, the banal, the flat-footed and the pedestrian are real.  The forces of evil may seem to have the upper hand in our age, and in many places, but the truth is that they have already lost, and their time is short.   Jesus really is the Son of God, and really did die on the Cross to save us, and really did rise from the tomb and ascend into heaven.  He really did give us His Immaculate Mother to be our mother.  That is why we can expect good to come of the Holy Father once again consecrating the world to her Immaculate Heart.

We may deceive ourselves and each other.  We may play psychological games, and manipulate, and create frenzy and precipitate crises, one after the other, in order to control others.  The devil may also do this to us in order to lure us into hell.  But God never does any of these things.  If we find ourselves caught in these webs, God is not behind that.  Perversity and sadism are not attributes of God.  God never messes with our heads.

Autumnal Equinox

Today was the first day of Autumn.  Today we have equal periods of light and darkness -- hence the term "equinox" -- and after today, the periods of darkness will exceed in length the periods of light.

It is unfortunate that, based on no discernable mandate from the Second Vatican Council, the post-conciliar Church tried to throw out the Ember Days, penitential days that mark the changing seasons.  The purpose of the Ember Days is to thank God for His bounty in nature, and to remind us to use His gifts in moderation and assist those in need.  As I have pointed out in this space, the changes of season are freighted with spiritual significance.  The vernal equinox coincides with the Feast of the Annunciation, the beginning of the end of the winter of Satan's reign.  It also coincides with Easter, which marks the decisive defeat of Hell, and takes place on the first Sunday on or after the first full moon on or after the equinox.  The summer solstice, when the days begin to shorten, coincides with the Nativity of John the Baptist, who said that he must decrease while the Savior increased.  The winter solstice coincides with Christmas, when the Light of the World enters the world and the days begin to lengthen.   

There is no precise correspondence between the autumnal equinox and any major feast; but since the autumnal equinox does coincide with the time of harvest, my own personal speculations lead me to connect it with the harvest of souls that will take place at the End of Time.  Our business in life is to strive to come out on the right side of that harvest: to be  in with the wheat that is gathered into the barn, and not with the tares that are bundled up and go to be burned.

The Still, Small Voice

Weekend before last, I went down to Ogden to visit the grandparents.  Among other things, Sunday the 8th was (a) my birthday, and (b) the date set for Missa Cantata at St. James the Just, the inimitable Fr. Erik Richstieg celebrating, and Michael Wooden directing the schola cantorum.  It was a great treat to be able to attend Mass in the Extraordinary Form on my special day.

Meditating on this beautiful Mass gave rise to some reflections.   My attention was drawn to the professionalism of Michael, the altar server, in all his movements.  He did not look stiff and rigid, but on the other hand, there was nothing lazy or sloppy in how he carried out his duties.  I particularly noticed how, whenever he passed in front of the tabernacle, instead of just walking across the front of the altar, he descended to the bottom of the steps, stopped directly in front of the tabernacle, genuflected, then re-ascended the steps and continued on his way.  He was clearly committed to striving for excellence at the altar and doing everything exactly right.  There is an almost military precision to the traditional Mass, and the ministers in the sanctuary who love it, like Michael and Fr. Erik, work hard to be faithful to it.  There is a rubric to govern everything they do at the altar, and it must be done in a particular way.  Part of the purpose of all this strict ritual is to shield the people from the distraction of having the priest's personality intrude on the Mass; to safeguard the priest from feelings of self-importance; and to remind us all that the Mass is the work of God and not of mere men.  So crucial was -- is -- fidelity to the ritual that it was once considered a mortal sin for a priest deliberately to deviate from it.

Things are more relaxed for the people in the pews in the traditional Mass.  Except for genuflecting during the Credo and the Last Gospel, standing for the Gospels and kneeling for the consecration --  instinctive for believing Catholics -- there seem to be no set rules to what the people are supposed to be doing.  My 1962 Missal has a loose-leaf cheat sheet with a table that tells you generally when to sit, stand and kneel, but in practice, one just does whatever is done in a particular place.  You can never go wrong by kneeling through the whole Mass if you want to, but you don't have to; and if you want to sit after Communion, there's nobody to tell you you can't.  Nor are you required to sing, or say any responses, or make gestures.  You can just listen, and watch, and be, and quiet your soul, and leave all the heavy lifting to the alter Christus in the sanctuary.  That is what he is there for.

One can't help contrasting this order of business with the way things are done in most places with the Mass of Paul VI.  The New Mass is supposed to be an expression of the New Spirit of Freedom and Openness...and yet have you ever noticed how strictly regimented we in the pews are?  We are expected to say our parts, and sing the songs, and generally busy ourselves with doing a bunch of stuff.  We have ushers to keep us in line, and priests and deacons to lecture us sternly on our failures of "active participation" if we do not keep up with our many appointed tasks.  We are essentially driven like cattle through a noisy, fast-paced proceeding that leaves us no time to pray or recollect ourselves or remember that we are at the foot of the Cross.  Meanwhile, many priests do pretty much whatever they want at the altar, whatever the books may say.  

And this is what is known as the "golden age of the laity."

Personally, I envision the Golden Age of the Laity as something more along the lines of what I got on September the 8th.  I would much rather let the priest be the priest, and have him let me be me, and shut out the din of everyday life and listen in silence for the still, small voice.

Morton's Fork

I emerge from underneath my rock long enough to comment on the business of Barack Obama versus Vladimir Putin.

I must say, I am rather alarmed by the admiration a lot of people on my end of the political spectrum seem to have for Vladimir Putin, and their readiness to yield to the temptation to compare him favorably to Barack Obama.  There is no doubt that Barack Obama has utter contempt for the rule of law, the free market, the integrity of the family, Western Civilization in general and the Catholic Church in particular, and that he is making the United States a laughingstock on the world stage.  But let us not forget that the Soviet Union, Putin's old stomping ground, was a Machiavellian world of lies, intrigues, betrayals, and assassinations, and that persons did not flourish in such a world by being nice.  We should not be quick to embrace as "Leader of the Free World" a man who rose to the rank of Lt. Colonel in the KGB.  

We should also keep in mind that great evils frequently come in pairs, so that, seeking to oppose one, the undiscerning are driven into the arms of the other. We had a striking example of that during the last century.  Nazism and Communism were both atheistic, materialistic, religion-hating, tradition-hating, totalitarian ideologies; yet some people joined the Communist Party in order to oppose Nazism, and others became Nazis in order to fight the Communists.  All were wrong, and millions paid the price.

Today we live in equally confused times.  We are sure to pay the price for having deliberately unmoored ourselves from our Christian heritage.

Get. This. Book.

This book.  Right here.  Get it.
Now you know what it looks like.
You have no excuses.

I remember driving to work the day after Obamacare passed.  I thought about the obnoxious Hillary Clinton pushing nationalized health care nearly 20 years earlier, and how widely -- and rightly -- derided she and her pure federal power grab were then.  I thought about this immense bill, read by nobody, containing God-knows-what, being ramrodded through Congress with little or no deliberation and without regard to what the American people thought about it.  I thought about the unconstitutionality, and even anti-constitutionality of this bill that purports to give the federal government sway over every crack and crevice of our lives, far beyond its constitutionally enumerated powers.  Driving through downtown Boise, I looked around at the shops and restaurants and other little businesses that line Main Street, and the people walking or biking or driving to work.  Everything looked the same as before.  But it was not the same.  The country was not the same.  The realization lay like a dead darkness on the heart.  A line had been crossed.  We had been edging closer and closer to that line for at least the last century, until the Reagan Era, when we retreated from it for a while; but then, after Reagan left office, we hurtled back toward it.  Now, on March 24, 2010, we had crossed it.  We had crossed over into territory that looked like the America we had grown up in, but really was not.

Of course, even the America that my Generation X grew up in was nothing like as free as the one the previous generation grew up in, which was nothing like as free as the one the generation before knew.  Thanks to the New Deal and the Great Society, the burgeoning administrative state was already going full bore by the time Generation X came along.  Now, as GenXers approach middle age, the statists no longer even bother with the rhetoric of liberty.  After decades of pushing abortion and contraceptives, breaking up the family, clearing the way for us to indulge our lusts without restraint, and training schoolkids in veiled Marxist ideology and the Marxist version of history, they consider it safe to proceed openly with their takeover of our lives, without caring what we think about it.  This is the judgment we have brought upon ourselves for scorning the laws of God and man, unmooring ourselves from our Christian and constitutional roots.

In other words, we had it coming.  But does that mean we should just give up, resign ourselves to the punishment, and let our nation be destroyed?  By no means.  Indeed, we have a duty to try to extricate ourselves from our current predicament, exhausting every lawful means available short of violence.  Mark Levin's new book, The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic, points out a solution that our Founding Fathers left us, foreseeing a day when the federal government would get to be too big for its britches.

Article V of the U.S. Constitution contains procedures for amending the Constitution.  It provides (emphasis added):

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article [dealing with powers denied to Congress]; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

Levin proposes a convention, called by two thirds of the states, for the purpose of proposing amendments to the Constitution.  This means of amending the Constitution has been attempted, without success, on numerous occasions, and currently lies dormant.  But the Framers included it, precisely so that the States could have recourse against a federal government run amuck.  The Article V convention is not a constitutional convention that makes the whole Constitution up for grabs: the Constitution itself does not provide for its own abolition.  But then, the Constitution is effectively already up for grabs, and has been for decades.  Large swathes of it, such as the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, have been completely laid waste; other parts, such as the Commerce Clause, have been distorted beyond all reason and sense until they are wholly alien to what the Framers intended.  The point of Levin's plan is to restore the Constitution as a guarantor of liberty instead of the curtailer of it that the statists have made it; to breathe life back into its now dead letters; and, above all, to restore the sovereignty of the States, and rescue them from their current status as mere vestigial appendages of the federal government.

Levin is careful to point out that his plan is not meant to be a panacea, or definitive.  His plan does not address important social and moral issues that could, and should, be the subject of proposed amendments to the Constitution, such as the legal personhood of the unborn and the definition of marriage.  Instead, though not incompatible with the foregoing, it focuses on systemic, root problems that have overthrown the Framers' carefully constructed system of checks and balances and led to the consolidation of tyrannical power in Washington and the diminution of individual liberty.  In broad outline, he proposes the following amendments:

-- Term limits on members of Congress

-- The repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment (popular election of Senators)

-- Term limits on Justices of the Supreme Court and supermajority legislative overrides of Supreme Court decisions

-- Restrictions on federal spending

-- Restrictions on federal taxation

-- Restrictions on the federal bureaucracy

-- Restrictions on Congress' power to regulate commerce

-- A requirement of compensation for regulatory takings 

-- Authority for the States directly to amend the Constitution

-- A State check on acts of Congress

-- A voter fraud amendment

Levin makes no bones about how difficult and time-consuming it will be to get a State amendment convention going; nor does he ignore the problem of blue States.  But, fortunately, the level of society where the process must start is also that which is most accessible to us: first ourselves, then our families and friends, then our local communities.  A huge part of the strategy of totalitarians is the isolation and atomization of individuals: to keep us at each other's throats by means of imaginary grievances; to abolish long-standing mores and traditions; and to remove any and all institutions -- family, Church, local government, State government -- that stand as a buffer between centralized government and the individual.  We need to begin the work of restoring these.  People who live in liberal-dominated wastelands like Detroit have got to decide they are tired of living in a hell-hole, and then do something about it; those of us whose cities do not yet look like Detroit need to decide we don't want to see ourselves heading in that direction, and do something to avoid it.  When we have turfed the liberal bums out of our local and state governments, and replaced them with politicians who revere the rule of law and the Constitution, the momentum toward a convention will grow.  We should not be deterred from having recourse to this method of amending the Constitution merely by the fact that it has never been done before, or by the fear of a runaway convention.  The reality right now is that we already have a runaway federal government, and something has got to be done about it, before it destroys us.

On the eve of the Battle of the Bulge, General George S. Patton said there are three ways men get what they want: planning, working and praying.  Some of us have been praying, and there needs to be a lot more of that going on.  Levin's book gives us a pretty good start on the planning.  Now is the time to start working.

A Hole in Three in One

That's one less modernist stained-glass window!  Pic courtesy of Br. Peter Hannah, O.P.

Meet the Rev. Br. Peter Junipero Hannah, O.P., transitional deacon, who we hope will be one-sixth of the future founding fathers of Idaho's first Dominican priory.  The Bl. Margaret of Castello chapter just had Br. Peter come here and give us a world-class retreat, along with Fr. Vincent Kelber, O.P., whom we'd like to have as another Idaho one-sixther.  Despite the fact that it was late July, with temperatures at over 100, and our swamp cooler was not working very well, Br. Peter gave us conferences in full habit, including the heavy black cappa and capuce.  His talks were so good that he did not require the club to guarantee our undivided attention.

But Br. Peter wasn't always aware of a religious vocation, or on the track to the priesthood, to which he will be ordained next May.  He didn't even start out as a Catholic.  His prime ambition before entering the Catholic Church was...golf!

Read the whole story of how God plucked Br. Peter Hannah from the fairway and set him in The Way here.

The Great Communicator...

They just don't make 'em like this anymore.

Prayer for Those Who Have Committed Suicide

Almighty God, Our Heavenly Father, we understand that Thy fifth commandment, “Thou shalt do no murder,” includes self murder. But in Thy divine mercy, we beg Thy forgiveness especially for (name), who have been so confounded by the pressures of this life that they felt there was no way they could continue. Grant, we beseech Thee, that they be forgiven their terrible sin and accepted into Thy divine providence, and that they may come to understand Thy ways and Thy nature. We ask this in Jesus Christ’s name. Amen.

When I was in high school, the brother of one of my classmates committed suicide.  I did not know him personally, but I did know that he had been having problems for a long time.  His tragic death haunted me for a long time.  I pondered what could make someone seek such an irreversible solution to his problems.  I thought about his friends and family blaming themselves, replaying over and over again in their minds all their dealings with him, and what they could possibly have done differently, or said differently, or not done or said, so that he would not have taken himself away from them forever.  I hoped, and still hope, that his will and reason were so impaired and overwhelmed as to mitigate or even remove his guilt.  I hope this any time I hear about someone taking his own life.

Years later, I had someone tell me he was planning on killing himself at some indefinite point in the future.  All I could think to do was to tell him that there is a hell, and if he murdered himself, he would go there, and that, once there, there would be no escape or reprieve for him, ever.  I do not know whether that was the right thing to say.  But I felt convinced that he needed to be convinced that suicide is indeed murder, and that eternal damnation was a possible and very real outcome.  I suspect there are many people to whom this has never occurred, for no other reason than that nobody has ever told it to them.  There is hardly anyone, even in the pulpits, willing to gainsay our materialistic culture that celebrates death as the solution to everything from depression to unwanted pregnancies to terminal illness.  We are given the impression that our lives and our bodies are mere chattels to save or spend as we please, and that there is neither punishment nor reward after this life.

But there is a Final Judgment.  There is a Heaven.  And there is a Hell.  

Thanks to Marge Fenelon for publishing this prayer.  Pray to Mary, Untier of Knots, to intercede for those contemplating suicide.

I, Pencil

Why do command economies consistently fail? Because radical egalitarians, lofty in their disdain for free people enjoying an industrialized leverage on life, consistently fail to learn the lesson of the lowly pencil.

I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me—no, that's too much to ask of anyone—if you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson to teach. And I can teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical dishwasher because—well, because I am seemingly so simple.

Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Especially when it is realized that there are about one and one-half billion of my kind produced in the U.S.A. each year.

Read and ponder the rest of "I, Pencil: My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read" (1958) to find out more about the amazing history of a single pencil and how it relates to human freedom.

H/T Mark Levin.

The Cruise Ship of Peter

The modern world, which denies personal guilt and admits only social crimes, which has no place for personal repentance but only public reforms, has divorced Christ from His Cross; the Bridegroom and Bride have been pulled apart. What God hath joined together, men have torn asunder. As a result, to the left is the Cross; to the right is the Christ...The Western post-Christian civilization has picked up the Christ without His Cross. But a Christ without a sacrifice that reconciles the world to God is a cheap, feminized, colorless, itinerant preacher who deserves to be popular for His great Sermon on the Mount, but also merits unpopularity for what He said about His Divinity on the one hand, and divorce, judgment, and hell on the other. This sentimental Christ is patched together with a thousand commonplaces....Without His Cross, He becomes nothing more than a sultry precursor of democracy or a humanitarian who taught brotherhood without tears.  

Ven. Fulton J. Sheen, Life of Christ

This weekend, I had the joy of attending Low Mass in the Dominican Rite, for the feast of St. Vincent de Paul; then a Novus Ordo Vigil Mass for Sunday celebrated ad orientem.  But it all had to be paid for this morning, when I found myself at a Mass with muzak-like campfire ditties played on piano and bass guitar and bongos and cymbals and tinkly chimes; girl altar servers with loose hair and flip-flops; people encouraged to socialize with each other instead of getting recollected for Mass; a priest improvising Mass parts; the canon gone through hastily and almost carelessly; and applause at the end for Murph and the Magictones, followed by raucous yakking inside the church.

Such is the Cruise Ship of Peter, the favorite fantasy of so many Catholics, even in the hierarchy.

Unlike the Barque of Peter, constantly under assault and in danger of sinking, yet manfully plowing forward through rough seas, the Cruise Ship of Peter is nice.  Its worship is uncontroversial.  It is bland.  It is insipid.  It is jejune.  It is decadent.  It is effeminate.  It kindles no fires, stirs no ardor, pricks no consciences.  Its lifeblood is mediocrity.  It docks at any old port, and will strike any old compromise to do so.  It insulates man from the uncomfortable mystery of the supernatural, and protects him from transports of zeal.  There is little enough to distinguish it from any other organization calling itself a church, or even from secular society: its very furnishings are precisely those of a posh country club.  That is why it always has smooth sailing, at least for as long as this serves the purposes of the prince of this world.  Even when sailing is not smooth, the ship is so grand and luxurious that nobody on board notices.  One leaves the liturgy on the cruise ship feeling as though one has just been to a really nice wine and cheese reception.  With its affluence and its amphitheater layout and its cushioned pews and its polished wood and its orchestra pit next to the sanctuary and its soothing, tranquilizing liturgy, the Cruise Ship of Peter is all ordered, down to the smallest detail, with a view to sealing up Catholics in a soft, warm cocoon of niceness and upper-class comfort, making them forget, or even filling them with friendly feelings toward, the pirates and cutthroats that smile back from their little boats that nevertheless daily increase and close in.

All are welcome aboard the Cruise Ship of Peter -- they even have a song about it that they sing at the beginning of Mass! -- all, that is, except anyone who might rock the boat.  What might the Cruise Ship do, one is tempted to wonder, with a Francis of Assisi, or a Dominic de Guzman, or a Catherine of Siena, or an Alphonsus Liguori, or a Fulton Sheen?  Would they have to walk the plank?  How much has the Cruise Ship liturgy to do with immemorial tradition?  Does it inspire missionaries and fortify martyrs?  Does it remotely resemble the Masses of Aquinas, wrapped in awe; or those of the Recusants in Elizabethan England, where it was death to be a priest; or of Father Willie Doyle on makeshift altars in the muddy trenches of the First World War; or of the Cristeros in their secret refuges from the Masonic Mexican regime; or of the first and only Mass celebrated by Bl. Karl Leisner, secretly ordained in Dachau on Gaudete Sunday, 1944, desperately ill yet on fire for souls?  Can one picture Father Augustine Tolton on board, his soul blazing like a beacon from the crumbling lighthouse of his overworked body, his trembling hands raised amid the mellow strains of "On Eagle's Wings"?

Is it worth it to try to trade the Barque of Peter in for this new luxury model?  Does the Cruise Ship of Peter connect Catholics to their illustrious past?  Does it prepare Catholics to meet their adversaries in battle in these increasingly stern times?  Is it counter-cultural?  Does it provide Catholics with a distinctive identity apart from the secular society?  Does it actively promote unity, rather than Balkanization, of Catholics of differing ethnic and linguistic backgrounds?  Does it make Catholics know that we are not of the world, though we are in it?

Or does it merely fatten and soften up the sheep for the slaughter?

You decide.