
Everyone seems to think "comfort" is about "feelings." The point is it has nothing to do with how good we feel, but how good we make God feel by worshipping Him as He ordained and treating others as He has taught us.
Gabriel Garnica returns with a sobering question: Are you comfortable in your comfort zone? For the sake of your soul, let us hope you aren't. Too many have discarded the necessary hairshirts that made saints out of sinners; men and women who deliberately avoided temporal comfort to make them more comfortable in knowing their quest to attain everlasting comfort was the only way to Heaven. Lost are those self-immolating practices that reminded us we are nothing without God and that from dust we came, to dust we will return. How dare we waste the bodies God gave us by lounging around and looking for the easy way out. That has never been the Catholic way and if you do not agree with that, if you think you can embrace the world, the flesh and the devil and emerge unscathed, then you're not Catholic. That's another uncomfortable fact that countless souls will have to come to grips with sooner or later. The sooner the better, if you get the drift. Too often the ultimate epicurean comfort today, and in all too many homes, is the easy chair. That is not a malaprop. They don't call these plush stuffed single sofas "lazy boys" for nothing! It all starts so innocently: this comfort, that convenience, this delight, that pleasure and, pretty soon, if we do not discipline our senses, our senses will rule and that leads to each and every one of the Seven Deadly Sins. We all know where that leads. Enough said. If that makes you uncomfortable, it should as Gabriel tweaks consciences in his article If You Are Comfortable, You Are Not With God
All this past week the saints celebrated have had one commond denominator besides their holiness: they dedicated themselves to the sick and poor while converting countless souls. Today's saint is no exception.
There is a commemoration today of the holy confessor Saint Jerome Emiliani. In the Sixteenth Century God raised up a number of saints who by prayer, teaching and good works combated the influence of the pagan Renaissance. Among these was St. Jerome, who spent himself in the care of
orphans and the poor. He instituted homes for orphan children, and founded the Congregation whose object was to educate orphans. They are called the Somaschl, from Somascha, the little Italian town in which they were first
established. He died on February 8, 1531, from the plague which he contracted while burying the dead. It was related that St. Charles Borromeo, when going several years afterwards to make a pastoral visit at Somascha, became aware of the presence of the relics of a saint through the sweet perfume which emanated from his tomb. Asking for a thurible, St. Charles offered incense on the sepulchre, being thus the first to render public veneration to the saint.
For more, see Saint Jerome Emiliani


The truth never changes. What a giant of Tradition penned over thirty years ago is even more pertinent today.
Dr. Thomas A. Droleskey has been given permission from Father Martin Stepanich, OFM S.T.D. to republish the excellent series of articles that The Remnant so enthusiastically ran back in the seventies. Nothing has changed since then except for the fact that Fr. Martin is persona non grata to those who are presently floundering on the fence, flailing away in trying to justify a false pope and his Motu hoax. Nothing has also changed with those Feeneyites who tried to shout Fr. Martin down thirty years ago. They're still trying to villify a good man, this now 90 plus-year old giant of Tradition who was not "senile" or "out of touch" then nor is he now in continuing to exhibit the wisdom of saints, something so lacking in this era when Modernism stifles the quest for holiness. Most importantly, nothing has changed and never will on the solid Catholic truth he professes in this series to remind all that the First Dogma of the Church will always stand: Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus, but his opponents need to fully understand that the Church is composed of the Church Militant, Church Suffering, and Church Triumphant. Tom provides Father's brief, but comprehensive essays on his site with part one and two of seven parts from this outstanding Franciscan priest with Outside The Church There Is No Salvation
Three years ago, amidst all the emotional angst of the Terri Shiavo tragedy, some took offense to the strict moral theological stance of a few well-respected Traditional clerics. Tom asks Fr. Martin Stepanich to weigh in on whether the reaction of some in boycotting their Masses was wise.
 Dr. Thomas A. Droleskey has always been one to get to the truth and one he relies on greatly is a priest who has been around longer than anyone: Father Martin Stepanich, OFM S.T.D. Tom asked Fr. Martin Stepanich to weigh in concerning the death of Terri Schiavo three years ago. Because Bishop Donald Sanborn and Fr. Anthony Cekada considered the case from an objective practical, moral theological viewpoint rather than subjective, emotional view, some protested by no longer going to "their Masses." Fr. Martin illustrates quite clearly the folly of such action of reacting emotionally without understanding these good clerics are not being schismatic or unCatholic in anyway and for those who won't attend "their Masses" they should realize they have walked away from the truest gift they could have: the holy Sacraments merely because these good traditional sacerdotes differ on an opinion, not dogma or doctrine, but an opinion. Fr. Martin puts it so clearly and charitably in his letter to Tom Fr. Martin on Terri Schiavo
The Principal Points of the Principles holy Mother Church requires All to follow, and which must be applied to the Issue of Baptism of Blood and Baptism of Desire, Prove the Fallacies of Feeneyism
Continuing our surge of wiping out the insurgent heresy of Feeneyism, we launch today an old reliable that always hits its target with devastating and definite detonation. That would be the irrefutable artilllery, so fully packed and loaded with infrangible Catholic truth as compiled by one of the masters of Church Militant warfare, Father Anthony Cekada. Indeed, he was one of the first to counter the nasty guerilla tactics of those floundering in Feeneyism in the cult camp Feeney had festered while alive. In publishing on these pages last week the official excommunication decree of Feeney from the Holy Office under Pope Pius XII, we included the link where Fr. Cekada proves without a shadow of a doubt that the bell, book and candle was authentic. Since His Holiness never rescinded it, a good man-gone wrong died canonically (1917 Pio-Benedictine Codex Iuris) outside the Church he had so stubbornly and narrowly, and defiantly defended as needing Baptism of water to be saved with no exception. Let us pray that God made an exception and that Feeney's pride and stubbornness did not exclude him from passage to either the Church Suffering or the Church Triumphant. Today we provide an article Fr. Cekada wrote eight years ago this week detailing the Principles the Church requires us to follow in resolving the issue of Baptism of Blood and Baptism of Desire. He lays it out succinctly in Baptism of Desire and Theological Principles
Does anyone know the day, hour or minute of their visitation when they'll have no choice but to face the Supreme Judge and account for their stewardship on earth? Whenever that time arrives, and it definitely will, it will be too late to correct things if they did not choose wisely when they should have. Knowing how the Brown Scapular will protect souls entails knowing why. Ah, there's the wooly rub.
We've all heard the axiom, "there but for the grace of God go I", but how many of us really understand this? Today's guest contributor, Ava Bell, now a committed Traditional Catholic, relates how this hit home for her in her earlier days before her awakening, if you will, in the same manner that Saint Augustine wrote about when confiding his past sins in his landmark book "Confessions." Her experience is pertinent for our times, especially in this day and age when so many worship at the altar of the world, the flesh and the devil, not really thinking about each's own visitation when each one of us will stand before God at his or her Particular Judgment. Ava ties in the theme of this past Sunday's Gospel, the visitation of the Mother of God to the children of Fatima, and the significance of our Lady's promise for those who wear her Brown Scapular. Yes, it is most pertinent for this era, for this very week and day. While hordes of clueless Catholics with hormones at a peak gather for the conciliar version of Woodstock: Worldy Youth Days in Sydney this week, she presents a sobering story that should shake the timbers of our souls and wake the echoes of those who assume security when, in truth, there is only one way to secure eternal salvation and no amount of superstitions will stay the inevitable truth that for any sacramental to be effective, the one receiving it must be of good will and open to the grace of God, specifically Sanctifying Grace. Without this protection, all else is futile, fateful. She candidly explains in her article
The Brown Scapular is Not a Good Luck Charm
Each time we worthily assist at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in person, we gain graces that are placed in a "golden chalice", so to speak, and is offered to God to be weighed in substance when we stand before Him at our Particular Judgment. The more we have filled this chalice, the better will it go for our spiritual welfare in eternity.
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In this time of Epikeia when the true Church is in eclipse and so few true Masses available, when we pray the Mass prayers and make a spiritual act of Communion at home, graces are also received and placed in a "silver chalice", as it were, which, of course, is not as valuable as the gold one, yet is efficacious when the time comes to make an accounting for our lives.
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