What is the Solution to the Crisis of our Time of which the Occult and Secular Psychology Culture are only Symptoms?
I found an insightful post on the dangers of the occult called
Therapeutic Religion by Carrie Tomko. (Carrie’s article is posted
below.) She showed, using an article that I wrote on how secular
psychology lead to the sex abuse scandal, that the real battle of our
epoch and every epoch is spiritual.
Tomko explains:
“Since
Eden nothing has changed. The serpent still whispers; and like Eve,
sometimes we listen. The conscience can be silenced so that the only
voice we hear is the voice of our own sinfulness. This voice of
sinfulness was let loose without brakes when psychology invaded
religion.”
Secular psychology which is the new religion of
America promotes a mindset that denies our need for a relationship with
God. Sometimes Oprah or Dr. Phil gives a nod to God, but the message is
always the same:
“ What is needed are not God and His Forgiveness, but for a self to reach the fullness of its self.”
Oprah
and Dr. Phil have many good things to say, but if those things put God
in second place then they are as St Paul would say “dung.”
What
is the solution to the crisis of our time of which the occult and
secular psychology culture are only symptoms? I will share words that I mediate
on at least once a week. Here are the words of Sister Lucia dos Santos
know better as Lucia of Fatima:
-“The only important thing for us
is to do the will of God; to be where He wants us to be, and to do all
that He wants of us, but always with humility.”
-“Let times be
lacking for everything else, but never for prayer, and you will
experience the fact that, after prayer, you can accomplish a lot in a
short period of time”
-“We can receive our strength from God alone”
-
“I am convinced that the principal cause of evil in the world, and the
falling away of so many consecrated souls, is lack of union with God in
pray.”
Prayer is the only answer for our age. If you pray humbly, you will be part of the solution.
A
great priest whom I was blessed to know who accomplished many things said what was the most important thing to do to accomplish things. He made a monument that may last centuries, he
created programs that helped the poor, he helped bring numerous souls
to prayer and much more. How did he accomplish so much? What is the most
important thing?
In page 21 of my book Hidden Axis, my friend pro-life leader Ginny Hitchcock answered those questions:
“The
most important thing is what [the retired pastor of Our Lady of Peace
in Santa Clara, California] Fr. [John] Sweeny drilled into me. He said
if you don't pray, don't do it at all."
THERAPEUTIC RELIGION
by Carrie Tomko
Can the source of the sexual abuse scandal be traced to a shift in our spirituality? One writer, at least, believes it can.
Fred Martinez reports in "Nietzsche and the Church Scandals" at the Catholic Educator's Resource Center website that
Therapeutic
approaches have a basic assumption that is not Christian. Their
starting point is not the Christian worldview...The denial of original
sin and personal sin is, in large part, behind the headlines of the
Boston catastrophe and other dioceses. ...
One must remember that
whenever someone talks about values in modern America--family values or
religious values or place-the-blank-in-front-of values--they are saying
there is no real or objective right or wrong--only opinions of the self
and its will to power.
That "will to power" is the heart and
soul of occultism. There is a reason why so many of the women religious
talk about "empowerment" and seek ordination. Once you throw out God,
all that is left is you. Answering to no one puts you totally in
control. What does a person want when they are totally in control but
that their own will be done. The person becomes a sort of mini god in
their own mini universe. The occult magician's mindset was coined by
Aleister Crowley: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."
It's a short hop from the desire to the deed, and the deed is
accomplished, or at least attempted, in magic rituals which intend to
procure the will of the magician. The pinnacle magic ritual experience
is evocation. The accomplished magician brings a spirit into
materialization where the sensory response validates that the will has
been accomplished. If a spirit is at your beck and call, you are a
success.
This thinking is contrary to the way God made us. It is
not unusual for the magician to be driven into insanity through this
process. Spirits tend to have a mind of their own and power over the
magician, as many have learned a little too late. The spirit the
magician intended to own ends up owning him.
As chaos magician Peter J. Carroll puts it:
Works
on the level of trance, vision, imagination and dream. It opens the
magician's subconscious by negating the psychic censor with various
techniques. The magician faces considerable danger on this level and may
have frequent recourse to sorcery techniques or banishing ritual if it
threatens to obsess or overwhelm him.
In spite of the danger,
Catholics are being taught at retreats to attempt a sort of trance state
by seeking to silence their mind in meditation. Guided meditation can
be found in Catholic courses on spirituality. Can Catholics be sure that the benefits outweigh the risks?
The
Martinez article continues, quoting philosopher Allan Bloom's summation
of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy as it appears in Bloom's book THE
CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND:
Commitment values the values and
makes them valuable. Not love of truth but intellectual honesty
characterizes the proper state of mind. Since there is no truth in the
values, and what truth there is about life is not lovable, the hallmark
of the authentic will is consulting one's oracle while facing up to what
one is and what one experiences. Decisions, not deliberations, are the
movers of deeds. One cannot know or plan the future. One must will it.
This
is the occult mindset--the thinking behind the occultism of Carl Jung
and Roberto Assagioli--the thinking that is derived from a source other
than the Trinitarian God. Martinez continues:
Unlike the
Christian worldview, the therapeutic starting point is that the
individual must overcome personal unconscious forces, in Freud, and in
Carl Jung the person must unite to the collective unconscious, which is
shared by all humans.
In both cases, the therapist assists his
client to change himself to 'become his real self.' Forgiveness and
returning to God are not needed. What is needed are not God and His
Forgiveness, but a therapist assisting a self to reach the fullness of
its self.
Freud, under the influence of Nietzsche, moved
psychiatry away from the mechanistic and biological to the previously
"unscientific" model of the "symbolic language of the unconscious."
Freud's pupil Carl Jung took the symbolic language of the unconscious a step further.
Whether
you call it the "collective unconscious" or the "Akashic Record," and
even if you seek knowledge by channeling a spirit, ultimately the
ability to remake yourself (or renew yourself) is contained within you.
Martinez says that
Christian
therapist Leanne Payne considers Jung "not a scientist, but a
post-modernist subjectivist. Jung's active imagination therapy is
hostile not only to the Judeo-Christian worldview, but to all systems
containing objective moral and spiritual value. Within this world the
unconscious urge becomes god. What the unconscious urge wants is what is
finally right or moral. These psychic personae [complexes] are
literally called 'gods' (archtypes); and so an overt idolatry of self
follows quickly."
Within the modern French Nietzschean schools of
thought, a type of Jungian unconscious urge is replacing the old
existential conscious self who chooses. The post-modernist is moving
from the idolatry of self to the idolatry of autonomous inner "beings"
that, according to Payne, are similar to pagan "gods."
Since Eden
nothing has changed. The serpent still whispers; and like Eve,
sometimes we listen. The conscience can be silenced so that the only
voice we hear is the voice of our own sinfulness. This voice of
sinfulness was let loose without brakes when psychology invaded
religion. Martinez writes:
By using Christian symbols and
terminology, Jungian spirituality has infiltrated to a large extent
Christian publishers, seminaries, even convents and monasteries.
There is little doubt that it has infiltrated the parish renewal programs. Martines continues:
Many
Christians are using Jung's active imagination as a method of prayer.
Psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover, D.D., thinks this is dangerous "because
this fantasy life has no moral underpinnings, because it helps to
reinforce an experience of autonomous inner 'beings' accessible via the
imagination, and because it is a defense against redemptive suffering,
it easily allies with and quickly becomes a Gnostic form of spirituality
with powerfully occult overtones.
The concept of self-actualization or "will to power" that has become commonplace
in the retreats and renewal programs offered throughout Catholicdom are
precisely the opposite in concept from Christ's prayers in Gethsemene:
"Lord not my will but thine be done."
We all must choose
whether we will be in control or whether we will surrender to the One
who made us. This is the nature of free will which our Maker gave us. If
we choose to reject Him, there are other powers to seek; and those
powers are eager for our business. There is a reason why we are
repeatedly warned in Scripture to leave occult powers alone. God knew
the temptation to self-will would be hard to resist. His experience with
His first creation, the angels, demonstrated it. Today as the Christian
worldview fades into memory in many places, we are seeing it
demonstrated in our day to day encounters, and we have seen it
demonstrated in the Catholic priesthood with devastating results.
"Do not go to mediums or consult fortune-tellers, for you will be defiled by them. I, the Lord, am your God." Lev. 19:31
"Let
there not be found among you anyone who immolates his son or daughter
in the fire, nor a fortune-teller, soothsayer, charmer, diviner, or
caster of spells, nor one who consults ghosts and spirits or seeks
oracles from the dead. Anyone who does such things is an abomination to
the Lord, and because of such abominations the Lord, your God, is
driving these nations out of your way." Deut. 18:10-12
"For thus
says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, 'Do not let your prophets who
are in your midst and your diviners deceive you, and do not listen to
the dreams which they dream. For they prophesy falsely to you in My
name; I have not sent them.' declares the Lord." Jer. 29:8-9
[Incidentally, this passage has been eliminated from the NAB. I checked
three different Bibles and it was not there. I had to turn to a
Protestant New American Standard Bible to find it even though it is
referenced in the CCC.]
"Now the Spirit explicitly says that in
the last times some will turn away from the faith by paying attention to
deceitful spirits and demonic instructions through the hypocrisy of
liars with branded consciences." 1 Tim. 4:1
"Beloved, do not
trust every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they belong to
God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is
how you can know the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges Jesus
Christ come in the flesh belongs to God, and every spirit that does not
acknowledge Jesus does not belong to God. This is the spirit of the
antichrist that, as you heard, is to come, but in fact is already in the
world." 1 John 4:1-3
"I saw three unclean spirits like frogs
come from the mouth of the dragon, from the mouth of the beast, and from
the mouth of the false prophet. These were demonic spirits who
performed signs. They went out to the kings of the whole world to
assemble them for the battle on the great day of God the almighty." Rev.
16:13-14
If those passages do not convince, read Ezekiel 13.
We have been warned.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
Francis Notes:
- Doctor
of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt
the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church
in such a situation:
"[T]he Pope... WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See."
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said "the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church."
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]
- "If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?": http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html
- "Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?": http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html
- LifeSiteNews, "Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial
weight behind communion for adulterers," December 4, 2017:
The AAS guidelines explicitly allows "sexually active adulterous couples
facing 'complex circumstances' to 'access the sacraments of
Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'"
- On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:
"The AAS statement... establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia
has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense."
- On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:
"Francis' heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the
Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters
magisterial documents."
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.
Election Notes:
- Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: "212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted...Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden" [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]
- Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times "Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003": http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html
Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God's Will and to do it.