Latest / The Uncensored Catholic / Show 35: The feast of Saints Peter and Paul - finding hope in troubled times

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Show 35: The feast of Saints Peter and Paul - finding hope in troubled times · The Uncensored Catholic

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Hey, y'all, welcome today's show. Today is a very special feast day
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in the Catholic Church. And if you're on my subject newsletter list, if
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you're a subscriber, which is free of course, if you would like to
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support my effort, there is an optional paid option, but it is it
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is free. Paid subscribers just gets a few extras, free books and such.
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Well, you would have received this morning my article that I wrote for
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Mizzio Day about this day, which is the feast of Saint Saints Peter and
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Saints Peter and Paul. Saint Peter and Saint Paul, very special day.
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Heard from a friend in Rome first thing this morning, wishing me a happy
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feast day. Apparently they celebrate it as a national holiday where she lives.
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We of course don't, which is a shame. But then again, you
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have to remember America was founded as a Protestant nation. Catholics were not allowed
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in most states in early America. The whole freedom of religion thing kind of
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a myth. Honestly, it really meant freedom to practice other Protestant religions than
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Anglicanism, but Catholics were still very much discriminated against, you know, as
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I mentioned a while back. We didn't even celebrate Christmas or have Easter parades
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or anything in America until the mid eighteen hundreds because it was considered to be
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a Catholic practice and it wasn't allowed. In North Carolina. Catholics weren't allowed
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to vote or own property unless they signed the Oath, meaning to renounce the
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Catholic Church. They were a little more tolerant in other states, believe it
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or not. Massachusetts was incredibly intolerant until the waves of Irish and Italian immigrants
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just kind of pushed him in that way. Maryland, of course, was
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the most tolerant, and that's where my ancestor was the first Bishop of Catholic
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Bishop of the United States, and I guess his father, his grandfather anyway,
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was the only Catholic signer of the Decoration of Independence here in the South.
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South Carolina was actually more tolerant than North Carolina, and Georgia actually welcomed
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in a limited number of Catholics. Irish Catholics settled a little inland from Savannah.
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They needed people, They need people to populate their states, and so
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they weren't quite as a stringent. But you know, Virginia was once very
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harsh and New York was very bad. But we should certainly celebrate this feast
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day. It's a great feast day. If you can go to Mass,
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certainly go to Mass if you haven't already. The only Mass I could have
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gone to it was at eight am, and I had a really awful night's
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sleep. My neck cramped up really badly in the night, and I was
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awake most of the night, so there was no way I was getting up
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in time for an eight o'clock Mass. But I'm definitely going to have a
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wonderful meal, good time to spend time with some families, say some extra
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prayers. As for my subject newsletter, you know, I normally sent out
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a notification of when each of these podcasts come out, and whenever I've written
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an article or anything, any of my Catholic writings you may enjoy. So
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if you're interested in that, you can go to my substat it's the Uncensored
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Catholic. There's a link for it right here in the show notes and sign
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up. You know, spread the word. Like I said, it's it's
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free if you want to be free, and hopefully, you know, hopefully
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eventually it's got to kind of take off, and we can get a lot
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more well, we can get the word out a lot more. You know.
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My article today from miss O Day was particularly well received. A lot
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of people said they needed to hear a message like this, a message of
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hope in some pretty dark times. Actually, so I am going to kind
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of synopsize the article in this podcast, or perhaps the opposite of synopsize.
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Actually, you know, you work for several years, many years, a
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couple of decades as a newspaper writer, a columnist, and in the publishing
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profession. I've owned a newspaper, a couple of magazines at various times.
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And I'm really my writing can be very concise, but y'all know me.
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I'm Southern and my talking is anything but so I'm probably gonna hit some of
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these bullet points and then just kind of ramble a bit because you know,
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I'm going to do that. But we do. We are living in some
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some really tough times, you know. All of the mass readings today are
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focused on these two Holy apostles, Saint Peter and Saint Paul. Mainly discusseds,
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their authority and suffering of these two saints who were martyred, who died
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were killed in run. As Christians, but really, as especially Catholics,
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we do need to meditate more upon the martyrs. Although all of Christianity that
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is really even slightly identifiable as Christian, I mean, there are some churches
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that are so far gone they're not even really Christian anymore. I won't name
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you my name right now, but you can probably said, we'll probably come
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to mind having their pride events and transgendered ministers and all that kind of stuff.
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But Catholics, we're all under attack. All Christians are under attack in
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our culture. Our culture is running against the current of the secular socialist insanity
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that is going on in our world right now, immoral, horrible things.
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But as Catholics, we're also under attack from forces within our own church.
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It's very troubling. You know. Just in the last few months, Father
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Frank Provone was defraud Father Provone is a very good man. I will continue
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to call him father, and I think it was incredibly unfair what happened to
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him. When I had my first newspaper some twenty some years ago, and
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it was a conservative I had just converted to Catholicism. It was ecumenically Christian
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conservative, but I definitely wanted to include the best Catholic political rights I could
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for the you know, the opits, and I contacted Father Pavun and he
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was more than generous. He contributed for free his articles to my publication.
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He's he's one of the best. And you know, the Vatican doesn't like
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him. Apparently, certain bishops and archbishops don't like him, because well,
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he was doing fine until he endorsed Nonald Trump for president. You know,
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President Trump was certainly no choir boy, and he certainly had his issues,
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but he did more for the pro life cause and for freedom, religious freedom,
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and for Catholics in this country than any president has ever done in the
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entire history of the United States, and far more than are so called Catholic
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president. Now, Joe Biden should be denied communion. Joe Biden should be
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excommunicated publicly. He is an evil, senile moron. He supports abortion,
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he supports every kind of gay mess, every bit of transgendered stuff. He's
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just a very corrupt bad man. And yet Pope Francis poles around with him.
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You know, he poles around with Joe Biden and Nancy Pelos. He
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thinks he's just great you know, so when Father Provone endorsed Donald Trump,
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well, wow, what do you know? Father Provone soon after his defrauct
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never mind, he worked for decades to get roversus wade overturned so we could
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end the slaughter of innocent children. And Donald Trump was very key in making
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that happen. Father Provone defraud for basically an excuse. I mean, you
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know, maybe he made a mistake one time, but if you read the
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details of it, it wasn't what it appeared to be. Okay, he's
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actually a very good priest, and I hope and pray one day, if
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he so chooses, he will be reinstated to the priesthood. Now, recently
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we've had Bishop Strickland. I think it's Tyler Texas. I could not remember
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that. The other day he is being chastised investigated by the Vatican perhaps what
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coincidentally not coincidentally, most likely because he was the only bishop to really stand
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up against that abomination of mocking Our Lord's crucifixion and promoting homosexuality and transgendered and
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degrading nuns that took place at Dodgers Stadium. Talked about this the other day
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on one of my shows about how he led a eucharistic procession in protests,
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and then suddenly the next day, well, here comes representatives of the Vatican
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to see if they can strip him of his bishopric. I guess one would
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say, defraud him. Who knows what else. We're definitely being attacked by,
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well, let's put it bluntly, communists within our own church. It's
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no secret. You can go back to the early nineteen hundreds. The Communists
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said specifically they were going to infiltrate the churches and the educational institutions, and
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then from their government they infiltrated the schools. He infiltrated the seminaries. Through
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the promotion of psychology and psychiatry, they encourage homosexuals to become priests, and
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thanks to that we have pedophile priests. You know, all those priests that
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molest children. It's generally young boys. They're not you can't call them pedophiles
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if you want, and they certainly are, or you could say they are
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predatory homosexuals who take advantage of children. I don't think it's any coincidence given
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the very well documented targeting of the seminaries and of the church by the Communists,
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and I mean David Horowitz wrote an incredible book on this years ago.
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I do not have the title of it in front of them in front of
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me, but you know, David Horowitz, Jewish guy, grew up in
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a communist family. When he saw the horrors when America pulled out of Vietnam
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and watched the slaughter of the Vietnamese people by the Vietcong and the Chinese who
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are backing them. They literally killed so many people began to have to ration
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bullets so they would force someone to dig their own grave, and they hit
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him in the head with a shovel. He realized he was on the wrong
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side. And he has documented thoroughly the infiltration of the churches and our secondary
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institutions by the Communist Party. They were not quiet about it. They said
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specifically, we're going to do it, and they did it. And yes,
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we have many Communists in our myths. They may call themselves Catholics,
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they talk about being all for social justice, but the fact is they may
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call themselves liberal. I don't know they're communists now. They may not actually
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be atheists. You know, one of the tenets of communism is being atheist.
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I wouldn't doubt if many of them are, but they definitely set up
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the entire pedophile priest scandal. They did it intentionally. They basically said they
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were doing it. At the time, they were encouraging parents to convince their
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homosexual boys to enter the priesthood, and they say it would be all right
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if they do, they'll have to be celibate. And then when they started
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because of their sinful, perverse proclivities taking advantage of children, specifically young boys,
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which so we should really call them homosexuals and not pedophiles, but we
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could call them maybe homosexual pedophiles, or we could call them groomers. Okay,
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the communists, the liberals within the church hushed it up. And that's
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also around the same time they began encouraging priests and not just get degrees in
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theology and such, but a secondary degree in psychiatry or psychology or sociology.
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The two are incompatible. You cannot take a Freud and Jung and all that
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and mix it with the Catechism of the Catholic Church and come up with anything
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that is true. Most I would not say most psychiatrist psychologists are bad people.
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Most have been very well meaning. Most of them have not been Christian.
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In fact, many of them are Jewish. Many of the very best,
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greatest thinkers are Jewish. I'm not criticizing Jewish people at all, but
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neither the Jew, nor the well Muslim, any other religion, or the
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atheists and agnostics, which actually make up even if they are Jewish by birth,
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most of the writers and thinkers of psychology and psychiatry have been agnostic or
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atheist. All of the above lacks the Holy Spirit, and without the Holy
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Spirit, they do not have the discernment that would say, you know what,
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we maybe shouldn't be cutting off children's genitals and convincing them that they are
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of a different gender than what they were born. And that's kind of extreme,
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But you have to remember the morality of the Western world has been continually
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degraded since psychology and psychiatry came to the four Everything about Freud, for instance,
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had a well almost everything has a sexual connotation, and it basically comes
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down to there is no right and wrong, do as you please. But
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at least until the seventies, homosexuality was still considered a sort of a mental
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disorder, gender dysphoria, so to speak. In the DSM at least,
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or what four, three or four. My mother's are psychiologists. You know,
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I grew up on this stuff. These were the books on the shelf.
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The whole transgender got to have your genitalia cutoff thing was considered a mental
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disorder, gender dysploy area. I mean, I think until the nineties.
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But the only way this stuff has been normalized is through psychology, psychiatry.
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And you have to remember that Freud's nephew was Edward Burney's who was the father
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of propaganda, who convinced women to start smoking cigarettes as actually he created the
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feminist movement to sell cigarettes for a company he was working for in advertising.
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He said, it's your right to smoke cigarettes. Be a new modern woman.
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And he actually created the feminist movement. The feminist movement is entirely communist
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at its core. Look at his founders always has been the eugenicists, the
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Margaret Sanger's so closely allied with Hitler, the propagandists like Gobbles and such.
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They were using the writings of Freud and early early other early psychiatrists to learn
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how to manipulate people. They've been hand in hand from day one, and
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you know, by nineteen fifties, sixties America, it didn't matter what your
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priest set if doctor so and so said it. Well, we had been
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taught through Edward Burney's to trust men in white coats. When he wanted to
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sell toothpastes. I believe it was toothpastes, could have been theodorate, could
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have been both soap. Even what he figured out was people would trust a
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doctor. So he started putting white coats on people, and they would say,
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three out of four doctors agree, and he would send out letters and
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he'd actually paid doctors to say that they recommended toothpaste as opposed to not brushing
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your teeth, and then he'd say three out of four doctors agree. Well,
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remember when Obama got Obamacare, that abomination past He had all these people
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in the audience and white coats. Well turned out none of them were doctors.
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It was that same propagandist methodology of putting him on white coats so the
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American people would accept it. Anyway, when I wrote my article to Day,
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this was all very much in my mind. And you know, long
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before I became a Catholic. I've only been a Catholic for twenty years or
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so. Now, Catholics used to chide each other. You know, when
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they someone would criticize the church and they say, well, do you think
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you're more Catholic than the Pope? I kind of tell you, in the
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year twenty twenty three, it's getting hard to honestly answer that, isn't it.
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I mean, Pope Francis seems to be a very nice man. But
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wow, but I didn't use my article to bout Pope Francis. In fact,
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not at all. I decided to talk out the office of the papacy.
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This being feast day of Saint Peter as well as Saint Paul, you
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know Matthew sixteen thirteen through nineteen. When Jesus went into the reason region of
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says Aria Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people say that the
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son of Man is? They replied, Some say John the Baptist, others
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Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. He said to them,
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but who do you say I am? Simon? Peter said in reply,
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you are the Christ, the son of the Living God. Jesus said
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to him, in reply, bless her to you, Simon, son of
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Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my
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heavenly Father, And so I say to you, you are Peter, and
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upon this rock I would build my church, and the gates of the nether
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world shall not profel against it. I will give to you the keys of
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the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever you bind on earth should be bound in Heaven,
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and whatever you lose on earth should be loosed in Heaven. In my
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conversion to Catholicism, I read every priest and argument against Peter being the rock,
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the first, the one whom the authority was given to bind and loose
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the keys of the kingdom, And it's all a bunch of nonsense. Although
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many of question the meaning of these words, are the centuries trying to find
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loopholes in the Greek language or twisting the plain words of Christ I mean something
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other than what he plainly said. The words he spoke in Aramaic were absolutely
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clear. Peter, although he was perhaps the second most flawed and weak of
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all his apostles, would be the rock upon which the Lord would build his
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church. Surely, Peter was not as flawed as Judas, but he was
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intemperate, weak, inconsistent, and the only one of the twelve recorded to
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deny Jesus publicly. Why would Jesus choose Saint Peter. Well, perhaps it's
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because through Peter he could show us that no matter how badly we get things
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wrong, he would forgive us and give us the grace necessary to do His
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will in spite of ourselves. And additionally, he proved that his church is
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a supernatural institution able to overcome human weakness and failing. After the resurrect sharing
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Lord asked Saint Peter three times if he loved him and would feed his sheep.
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His three affirmations were in remission for his prior denials. He then assumed
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the role of the first Pope, filled with the Holy Spirit, given the
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power to heal, cast out demons, read souls as in the case of
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Simon the Magician, and even past very absolute judgments, as when Antonias and
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Sapphira lied to him. Truly he had the power to mind and loose with
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all the authority God had promised. If you don't remember that passage, and
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Anias and sap Sapphira had pledged to sell a piece of property and give the
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money the church. They sold the property, but when we gave part of
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the money the church and they appeared before Peter one by one and lied to
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him, and they dropped dead. He said, why have you lied to
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the Holy Spirit? And they died. His word was final in all matters
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of faith and doctrine. All Christians deferred to him, even Saint Paul,
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who would not hesitate to argue with him publicly and chastise him. When his
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natural weakness resurfaced, sat well, let me explain that, you know,
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Saint Paul said, Peter, you know you are. You're giving in to
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the demands of the Jews who want all Christians to be circumcised. This isn't
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right. He called him out publicly. Saint Peter, it seems lacked natural
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courage and his character. You know, He said, Lord, I will
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never deny you. And then as soon as Jesus was arrested and things got
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bad and he was in danger, he denied Jesus three times. Eventually,
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Saint Peter would willingly die. The martyr's death is foretold by our Lord.
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Our Lord said to Peter, you will go where you do not want to
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go. Others will lead you. He was telling him he was going to
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be martyred, he was going to be killed if he assumed the role of
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the first Pope, but he didn't run from it. He did not compromise.
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According to legend, he asked to be crucified upside down and preached to
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the pagan Romans. As he was killed, the faithful collected his remains and
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is shrined them in the place sacred to the earliest Christians. Over this the
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Palate. Over this place, the Basilica of Saint Peter would be built,
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and the very altar that is the center of Christianity would be built over his
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boats. Quite literally, the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church is built on
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the rock that is Saint Peter, a man whose titles and attributes, and
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certainly his final courage, came not through his own merits, but by the
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very power of God. Saint Peter, by his nature, his human nature,
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would not have made a good pope and would not have been a martyr.
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Only through the grace and power of God did he become the rock,
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did he become Saint Peter. So in this time of confusion, we face
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what the early Church called white martyrdom. We may not have to die for
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our face, hopefully we won't, but we will be hated derioted, smeared,
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will lose friends, family, employment. Due to the refusal to abandon
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the morals and doctors of the Catholic Church. We may, even, like
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Bishop Strickland and Father Probone, be persecuted by the officers of the church.
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What can I say? You know, Jesus promised that very thing. He
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said, we would be hated for our Christianity. But he also told us
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that those who endure into the end will be saved. Perhaps to show us
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that persecution would often come from within, he chose Judases his apostle. He
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knew Judas was going to betray him, he chose him anyway. Perhaps Saint
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Peter and Judas even faced similar temptations, shared similar weaknesses, and either a
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man may have chosen well or poorly. Saint Peter's chose to be the faithful
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servant in spite of his weakness. Judas sold his loyalty for money, betrayed
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our Lord, and died the greatest villain in human history. But both were
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necessary, you know, I can't. I don't claim to know why our
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current struggles are necessary. I do believe, as a church teaches that God
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uses even evil and confused men for his purposes. He wills everything for our
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good and died on the cross to redeem even the worst of us who are
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willing to accepted. His words are the same throughout all time, and his
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love never fails. His church as a shining city set upon a hill,
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visible to all ages, and as people will always be persecuted in despised.
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Now big influence on me was Bishop Archbishop Fulton Sheen. He's now the Venerable
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Archbishop Fulton Cheen, and probably the only reason he hasn't been named a saint
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yet is because he was so vocally anti communist. Maybe once our church leadership
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gets along a little bit less well with the world, he will get his
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rightful honor and be declared a saint, he said. And this was just
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blew me away when I first read it this years ago. It left very
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little question in my mind that I needed to convert. He said. If
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I were not a Catholic and we're looking for the true church in the world
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today, I would look for the one church which did not get all along
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well with the world. In other words, I would look for the church
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the world hates. My reason for doing this would be that if Christ is
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in any one of the churches of the world today, he must still be
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hated as he was when he was on earth and the flesh. If you
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would find Christ today, then find the church that does not get along well
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with the world. Look for the church that is hated by the world,
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as Christ was hated by the world. Look for the church which is accused
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of being behind the times, as Our Lord was accused of being ignorant and
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never having learned. Look for the church which men sneer at a socially inferior
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as they sneered at our Lord because he came from Nazareth. Look for the
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church which is accused of having a devil, as Our Lord was accused of
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being possessed by beels about the Prince of devils. Look for the church which
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the world rejected because it claims it is infallible, as Pilot rejected Christ because
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he called himself the truth. Look for the church which, amid the confusion
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of conflicting opinions, its members love as they love Christ and respect its voice
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as the very voice of its founder. And that and the suspicion will grow
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that if the church is unpopular with the spirit of the world, then it
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is unworldly and if it is unworldly, then it is otherworldly. Since it
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is otherworldly, it is infinitely loved and infinitely hated, as was Christ himself.
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The Catholic Church is the only church existing today which goes back to the
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time of Christ. History is so very clear on this point. It is
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curious how many miss its obviousness. So I guess that's going to wrap it
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up. I can only say that everything going on in the world today is
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seems to be tending in the wrong direction. But we don't put our hope
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and our faith in daily events in mirror, men, we put our hope
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and our faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and in the church he founded through
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his apostles, especially Saint Peter the Rock and of course Saint Paul and all
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the Holy Apostles, and those who endure until the end will be saved.
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No sacrifice is too great. Hopefully we will never have to be tortured to
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death as saint Saints Peter and Paul were. I've certainly lost relationships. I'm
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single today because I chose to be Catholic. I didn't choose to be single,
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chose to be Catholic. I don't like it. I don't want to
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be single. I want to have a wife and kids. I want to
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have a family. So it's up to God, it's up to me,
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it's his wills. What matters. Lost friends, lost family members, been
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vocally publicly ridiculed, and it's no, it's just nothing. None of that
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is anything compared to the great privilege of being Catholic. So um, y'all
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pray, hope, and don't worry. As Saint Padre Pio says, enjoy
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this day. Enjoy this feast day, have a good meal, spend time
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with friends and family if you have them, and I'll talk to you more.