Real Catholic Blog

In his fifth and final part on a special series about progressives and their infiltration of The Church, Michael Voris of Real CatholicTV.com explains how to achieve victory over this element that is polluting The Church. If you missed the first four parts, we highly recommend you view (or review) them. They are excellent and clearly explain the internal threat to The Church — a threat that already has marginalized many protestant denominations — and which won’t stop until it also transforms Catholicism into a secularized social justice appendage of the government. Click here for parts one and two and here for parts three and four.

Victory will come when we each take responsibility to learn more about The Faith and become more engaged in our parishes.

Great news! Many of our readers will remember the drummed up controversy by an atheist group Freedom From Religion Foundation protesting the U.S. Postal Service issuing a stamp in honor of Mother Teresa. For a brief spell it looked like the USPS might reconsider. However, 138,000 people signed a national petition urging the Post Office to stick to its guns. Last week, it did! Thanks to all of you who signed the petition.

Roy Betts, a spokesman for the Postal Service, told CatholicVote.org last week (click here to read more from CV):

The stamp will be dedicated September 5 [at] the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. Feel free to post information about the stamp, the image and the dedication ceremony on your website. Thanks!

The push to stop the stamp was nothing more than anti-religious and, specifically, anti-Catholic bigotry. So, it’s never too late to show support for a great cause like this. If you haven’t signed the petition, please do (by clicking here). CatholicVoteAction.org has done a great job with the Stamp Out Bigotry Web site. In fact, the more people sign in the days ahead, the better the chance of making this a forever stamp. Why not? As one commenter put it, Mother Teresa’s spirit and work are enduring.

Most importantly, be sure to buy and use the Mother Teresa stamp. The Postal Service is like any business — if you buy a certain product a lot, it will keep making it! Show your devotion to the Church through one of its modern servants, Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

Coming soon, on an envelope in your mail! Mother Teresa’s spirit endures in many forms including, in the very near future, a new U.S. post stamp.

One of the things I have remarked to my own mother, father, and other Catholics, who are part of what I will refer to as the “Bill O’Reilly generation of Catholics,”  is how different my experiences were growing up Catholic as compared to theirs.

Growing up in Richmond, Virginia in the 1970’s, I had what I will call a somewhat  “watered down” Catholic experience as compared to the generation before – and well – frankly, it  has left me feeling somewhat “gypped…”  Let me explain.

This is certainly NOT a testament to the Catholic schools in Richmond, for which I am most thankful to have received an excellent education NOR is it some kind of condemnation of my own parents as good Catholic parents!   It is simply this:  having been born in 1969,  I was coming along after the moral and societal tsunami of the  1960’s.

What does that mean?  For me, after having read my own family history book, Bill O’Reilly’s book, and Tim Russert’s book – I became aware rather quickly of the fact that many of the really beautiful small things talked about by that generation of Catholics –  the really sacred little things were cast aside, or perhaps fell through the cracks as people were being told to “get with the times.”

What kinds of little things?    And who cares?  Well,  a lot of things, and frankly I care.  Because I think the “little things” were really reflections of the “big things” – the “BIG IDEAS” that made Catholics, Catholics.

For Instance – here’s something very small (BUT BIG) … my grandfather, Peter Belton, would write “JMJ” atop every piece of paper he touched before writing anything.    My dad remarked that EVERY piece of paper laying around the house growing up  – even down to a scrap paper torn out of a book with a phone number scribbled on it in my grandfather’s handwriting – would have JMJ above it!    Similarly, my dad said, that when he was going to Catholic school, the nuns and Benedictine monks would have them write “Ad maiorem dei gloriam” atop every school assignment they handed to them.   In other words, BEFORE YOU EVEN WRITE YOUR OWN NAME, you write “for the greater glory of God.”  So why is this small thing such a big deal?  Well, in a word, HUMILITY.

I think the subtext of such an exercise (writing JMJ or AMDG) BEFORE your own name – or before anything else —  is to admit, and to plainly glorify the fact that  THERE IS SOMETHING BIGGER THAN YOU.   This practice says by the user, “I am remembering that I am here for the blink of an eye, and that the Glory of God and Christ have been before me, and will come after me.   Whatever I am to write (either in this classroom), or as part of my busy day – I am pausing before I begin to honor God, to remind myself that HE IS BIGGER THAN I AM.”

This, to me, explains a lot about why the generation before me and their parents were so traditional and different from my generation and those coming after mine.   They had those devoted monks, nuns, and other mentors and parents who INGRAINED in them the importance of humility, using these very types of methods.    Through something as simple as the consistent practice of putting what is most important “AT THE TOP”  of your heart and your mind, at all times before beginning even the smallest task.

I was deeply moved by this sentiment, and have been so happy to have had the chance to compile and read stories of my family in this book my father and I completed.   It has enlightened me about so aspects of how the “faith of my fathers”  shaped their lives and made them who they were day to day.

I think the WORST lie of the 60’s (which prevails today politically in my opinion), is this overriding message of:  “this is not my father’s oldsmobile.” The message that basically ANYTHING OLD;  traditional religion, social issues, history, and traditional personal conduct is “so very yesterday.”   This generation of liberals has successfully passed off the idea that –  “if it’s old – it’s outdated – ‘throw it out’ –  it’s NO LONGER OF USE.”   But what if much of what is OLD is Truth?  What if much of what is OLD contains WISDOM?   “ ‘CHANGE’ is not always just intrinsically good.  Is it?”

This example of the old practice of writing JMJ or AMDG symbolically illustrates a worldview, a  mindset, a practice and devotion, that keeps SELF in check.   It is a symbolic recognition that,  WISDOM has come before me.  I am standing on the shoulders of something bigger than myself.   I honor and recognize that.

In my opinion, the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater.   If these sweet and simple, “old fashioned” methods and practices of remembering those truths have been poo-pooed as outdated and discarded, might we be surprised to find that sometimes the truths that came along with those practices have gotten stripped from their rightful place as well?    FROM THE TOP?

Erin Belton Lilly is a parishioner at St. Bede’s Catholic Church in Williamsburg, Virginia where she resides with her husband, Michael, and two children, Jordan and Jacob.   She attended St. Bridget’s school and parish growing up in Richmond, and was married in downtown historic St. Peter’s Church.  Her father, grandfather and uncles attended Benedictine High School, and her grandmother, mother, and aunts attended St. Gertrude’s High School.  Erin was married by Father Adrian Harmening, who evidently also quite regularly disciplined her mischievious father and uncles at Benedictine High School many years earlier.

In April, we posted the first two videos of Michael Voris’ series on progressives in the Church for RealCatholicTV. Here are parts three and four. Very informative, but very disheartening and disturbing at the same time. However, to reinvigorate the Church, we must first face the certain facts and truths. Please watch and let us know what you think. I’ll post his final installment in this series this week.

If some says he or she is a “progressive Catholic,” he or she is no Catholic at all. 

By the numbers: We, as Catholics, are not doing our job and progressives are the major roadblock.