✣ Highlights from the week online
Why the Devil can’t stand normal Catholics “What does the Devil hate?” asked Fr Dwight Longenecker at his blog. The answer was “supernatural normalcy”. “Satan loves everything that is perverted, twisted, destroyed and diseased.” Therefore he hates “all that is natural and free and good and wholesome and normal and fine and happy and whole. “He hates good Catholic families. He hates ordinary Catholics who work hard, pray hard, laugh hard and who love God, love life, love one another and live life to the full.” There were many everyday saints, hidden in the world, who had “a certain grace”: “They are naturally interested in other people, and don’t give two hoots about themselves.” They had become real. They had become supernaturally normal. Accepting that the Pope is the Pope At the Coming Home Network, Jean Koneazny Pollock described her journey out of sedevacantism – the belief that post-Vatican II popes are false popes. Pollock and her family became convinced, through friends, that the “new sacraments” were not valid. “Any man who had become consecrated a bishop or ordained a priest after the sacraments had been changed was not a real bishop or priest. Not only that, but because they accepted Vatican II and its heresies ... they were ipso facto excommunicated.” What changed Pollock’s view was a 2015 article with the title “Deposing a Heretical Pope”. It was disconcerting, she recalled: “This article was proving, by using Church documents and quoting saints, that even if a pope became a heretic, no one could depose him, and (the kicker) he remains pope.” A journey back to the Church began, as she began to accept that the pope could be pope and the sacraments could still be valid. Today, Pollock trusts that God is guiding the Church. “I don’t pretend to have all of the answers concerning everything that has come out of Rome. “And I can keep in mind the very real truth that no one, not even the Pope, is impeccable in their decisions. They can be imprudent. “But I have changed my whole way of looking at things since I have been given the grace to return to the bosom of the Church.” The true way of all your loves upon earth At Aleteia, Philip Kosloski described JRR Tolkien’s “greatest love”. The Lord of the Rings author wrote two significant letters to his son Michael on the Eucharist. In the first, he wrote: “Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament … There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth.” It’s not surprising that “within Tolkien’s Middle Earth there was a special type of bread called lembas, which sustained Frodo and Sam as they reached the place where their journey ended”.
