SINS OPPOSED TO THE FIRST COMMANDMENT
Home-made translation of: Lesson 12 of The Catholic Moral. Editorial Luis Vives, 1954
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My comments in [ ].
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131. Sins against the First Commandment.- Sins against faith, against hope, against charity to God and against the virtue of religion are infractions to this commandment.
This negative aspect of the first commandment is expressed in the words: You will have no other God but Me. (Exodus XX, 3).
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In the practice, good Christians, that is, those who live piously, easily satisfy the precepts of faith, hope and charity by observing the other commandments.
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132. Sins against faith: Infidelity.- They are essentially contrary to faith: infidelity, heresy and apostasy.
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Infidelity is the lack of faith of the unbaptized, either because they have never heard of it (material infidelity), or because they did not embrace it despite knowing it (formal infidelity). The former are not guilty of sin of infidelity; the latter sin mortally, because knowing the faith they have an obligation to embrace it. There are also those who have lost it after having it, and they are all the more responsible the greater their negligence was in preserving it.
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Pagans, Jews, Muslims, deists, atheists, pantheists (who believe in various divinities), and rationalists [e.g., Scientology, Gnostics, etc.] are unfaithful.
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[They are called infidels and we know that they sin mortally, but we cannot say to them: “condemned”, because we, common faithful, cannot judge or condemn. We do have to tell them, like to anyone living in mortal sin (divorced and remarried to another, homosexuals, drug addicts, drunks that lose the consciousness, those who have sex without being married, or out of wedlock...) that they are living in a mortal sin and that if they do not repent, they will end in hell, where there is unbearable pain for the rest of eternity. The prophetic dreams that Heaven gave to St. John Bosco teach us, among other things, that we have to speak to them clearly and that we have to do it in the most effective and gentle way we can to convince them of what is best for them, that a pious life will give them joy and peace, if they abandon the life of sin and serve the True God: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Please, examine the Messages of Our Lady of the Roses and Her promises to the ones that visit Her sacred grounds in Long Island. ]
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133. Heresy.- It is the voluntary and persistent error of a Christian against the true faith.
Necessary conditions for the sin of heresy are voluntariness and stubbornness. Therefore it would not be a heretic if he denied a dogma out of ignorance, or if he is willing to rectify once he knows he is wrong, or if he discovers his error in confession.
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[If his heresy made others fall, his repentance must be made public to them.]
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Heresy can be internal or external, or both. The formal or true heresy is the internal, it is always grave sin.
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It is not enough to avoid heresies, the Constitutions and Decrees with which the Holy See forbids depraved opinions must be kept.
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Among modern heresies we must take into account the doctrinal Liberalism, condemned by Pius IX.
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A formal heretic would also be he who doubts positively, that is, with assent, truths revealed by God and proposed by the Church as an object of faith. Whoever fluctuates in a temptation against faith, without suspending his assent, may not sin, or sin slightly for not offering the proper resistance.
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134.- APOSTASY.- It is the total renunciation of the Catholic faith received in Baptism. It is always grave sin, because it implies grave contempt for God. It is not necessary to adhere to any sect, it is enough to profess freethinking, indifferentism, etc.
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[Note: presiding over or participating in a pagan ceremony as Bergoglio did in 2019, is to have contempt for the faith from its base].
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A cause of great sadness for the Church is the defection of some of its children who, out of cowardice, abandon it in times of persecution.
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135.- OTHER SINS AGAINST FAITH.- They sin against faith:
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1. The indifferent who live practically without worrying about the things of religion, as if they were not Christians, even if they were such in name.
2. The baptized who voluntarily doubt about any revealed truth. [Note: e.g. by asserting that all religions lead to God.]
3. Cowards who, out of human respect, are ashamed to appear as Catholics.
4. Those who voluntarily expose themselves to the danger of losing faith, with bad readings, or bad companies, etc.
5. Those who join secret and ungodly societies; e.g.: Freemasons. All these sects are condemned in a special way in the SYLLABUS of Pius IX, published in 1864. All adherents of Freemasonry, by the sole fact of giving their name to it, incur IPSO FACTO in the penalty of excommunication reserved for the Holy See (Can. 2.335).
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136. Sins against hope.- Two opposite extremes are opposed to hope: one is presumption, by excess; and the other is despair, by deficiency.
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PRESUMPTION is the excessive and rash confidence to achieve salvation, by one's own strength, without the grace of God, as Pelagianism intended; or to achieve it with faith alone, without personal good works, as Protestants say.
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Sins by presumption, he who hopes to get heaven by other means than those ordained by God, which are: faith, grace, and personal merits acquired with good works. God promises eternal life to the ones who keep His Commandments, but not to the ones who do nothing, who are just confident in His divine mercy.
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The best remedy against presumption is the reading of the Gospel. Indeed: the Lord repeatedly condemns in various parables and gospel passages the rash confidence trust: “How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!” (Mat. VII, 14)
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DESPAIR is a willful distrust of saving oneself. It comes to be a willful and stubborn renunciation to the hope of salvation. It is the final impenitence, it is God's punishment for certain abominable sins. It is a grave sin against the Holy Spirit. This sin, however, by imperfection of act, can be sometimes only venial.
Examples of despair: Cain, Judas Iscariot.
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137. Sins against charity.- As far as God is concerned, they are sins against charity: hate, oblivion and indifference.
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Hate against God, a characteristic of hellish spirits, is the most serious of all sins. To such a dreadful extreme of wickedness can come the man who surrenders himself to all vices.
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The oblivion of God manifests itself in the voluntary omission of religious duties and in coldness for divine things. This sin is not as serious as the previous one, but it leads to it and is the source of many others, such as angry complaints and blasphemy against God.
Those indifferent to God easily forget about Him and their religious duties, and look down on sacred things.
They also sin against charity to God, those who prefer creatures to God, and those who do not resign themeslves to His divine will, or complain about His Providence.
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138. Sins against the virtue of religion.- In two ways sins can be made against the virtue of religion: by excess, or superstition: when divine cult is given to what should not be given or in the way that should not be given; and by default, or irreligiosity.
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All of them are called sins of irreligion for opposing especially the virtue of religion, even if they are also contrary to faith, hope and charity.
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139. Superstition and its classes.- Superstition is any religious belief strange to faith and contrary to reason: it is any devotion opposed to the teaching and custom of the Church.
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There are two kinds of superstition:
1º A viciousness in the substance, for tributing undue cult to creatures, or attributing to an action or object a virtue that it does not have.
This group comprises idolatry, vain observance, divination, magic, and curse/spell.
2º Another kind of superstition is vicious in the way of giving cult to the true God, because it is inadequate, false, clumsy or futile, that is, different from the one that the Church has established, such as practicing Jewish cult, believing in false miracles, having ridiculous and absurd devotional practices.
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Superstition is ancient. It was known in very old times in different forms: magicians, sorcerers, augurs [now they call themselves "natural seers"], pythonesses and other inventions of the same sort. Unfortunately, it is still widespread and multifaceted; it is the effect of irreligiosity and ignorance, and many times the devil intervenes in those practices [there are many known cases of people who played the uija, the game of the cup, and their family had to take them to an exorcist priest because they ended possessed]. It is foolishness and lies [the devil is the father of lies, and to lie is a mortal sin, so the soul is left in darkness, the devil seeks darkness to go there]; it is often a form of scam or theft, which leads to crime and causes many misfortunes.
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140. Idolatry.- It is the *latria, or adoration, of idols or false gods. It consists, therefore, in giving to creatures cult that is due only to God. In this sin fell, for example, the Hebrews at the foot of Mount Sinai, while Moses was in the presence of God in the mountain and received the 10 commandments.
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Until the advent of Jesus Christ, most men were idolaters and even today there are hundreds of millions, especially in Asia and Africa.
Deep down in their life, however, it is not difficult to appreciate that there is a deity who deserves special preference and highest honors. From where monotheism is implicitly recognized, at least, in the midst of such enormous idolatric aberrations. It has also been observed, among some tribes of Africa, that the more primitive they are, the clearer they have the monotheistic idea.
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141. Vain observance.- It is the use of means unfit for the purpose that is attempted to achieve; for example, attributing to certain creatures a divine power; or to certain practices and false devotions, an effect or meaning that neither God nor the Church has attributed to them to achieve a common effect, such as health and success [crossing your fingers, starting with the right foot, touching wood, those are beliefs of people whose father the devil ate their brains, in a spiritual way, (as St. Francis of Assisi warns us in his First Admonition), because of having fallen into betrayal to God]; to believe that Tuesdays and Fridays are dark days, as well as number 13.
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142. Divination.- It consists of investigating, by disproportionate means, and sometimes even by the devil's means, hidden things. There are several genres of divination: *JUDICIARIA ASTROLOGY [the Spanish word has nothing to do with law or judges, or justice, the Spanish dictionary doesn’t give explanations, apparently it was the name of astrology before it came from under to sinful fashion] is called that divination which is based on the position and phases of the stars to formulate its assertions; OMINOUS watching and AUGUR, if the research is based on birds' songs or their flight [it is my not professional translation, maybe there are more suitable words in English for those sins]; *SORTILEGIO, if by means of attributing powers of luck/bad luck to things [the entries in the English Dictionary for that word are: sorcery, charm, spell, but those do not mean to “investigate” things, those are directly hard satanism] ; necromancy, if invoking the dead; palmistry, if observing the stripes of the hands; oneiromancy, if using dreams; metoposcopy, if done by guessing by the features of the face, etc.
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All these species of divination are sins severely forbidden by God in the Old Testament (See Deuteronomy, XVIII, 9-14). However, if they come from religious ignorance or simplicity, they do not reach mortal sin.
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[Divination has two completely opposite meanings in Spanish:
1) (This is not commonly used): Discovering by conjecture (judgment that is formed by clues or observations) something hidden or ignored. For example, this book says that “Divination is good and permissible when it is the fruit of the sagacity of talent, wit; typical examples are sometimes given in trials. Solomon discovered the true mother of the disputed living child by giving the order to divide him into two parts. Prophet Daniel proved the innocence of the chaste Susanna, separately asking the two old men under which tree they had seen her sin. By means of tricks of sharp wit, some judges discover thieves or culprits. Here those indications or observations (conjectures) lead them to obtain the evidence that is valid.”
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2) (This is the commonly used): To predict the future or discover the hidden. [For example, by means described in point 142]. It is a horror that words can have different meanings that misleads us if we hear them without clarification. Obviously it is the work of the devil and his ogres, witches, sons, etc.
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In the Old Testament it says "Can fresh and salt water come out of the same source?" It talks about the fact that blessing and curse (we must not curse) cannot come out of the same mouth. God can curse as the Righteous Judge that He is and because He administers perfect justice because He knows everything. And I think that this verse of the O.T also applies to the words we use, a word must not have a good meaning (of blessing because God likes us to have wittiness, understanding), or a meaning of damnation (divination in the meaning described in point 142.)
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Please, Examine the Messages of Our Lady of the Roses, Mary Help of mothers, for example, that given in 1975.August.05]
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143. Magic.- Magic is the art of achieving, by hidden means, some wonderful effect that surpasses or seems to overcome human forces. When it overcomes them there must necessarily be the intervention of the devil [that is why there do not exist “white magicians”]. Do not confuse magic with sleight of hand, which consists of sleight of hand made with skill or dexterity, or doing wonderful things with natural means.
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The magical act aimed at harming others is called curse, spell. It is a violation of charity and justice.
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144. Hypnotism.- Hypnotism and Spiritism have some relation with superstition.
Hypnotism is the art of producing a lethargic state in a person, called hypnosis, similar to sleep, during which other special phenomena related to hypnosis occur.
Hypnotism is illegal because of the enormous abuses to which it lends itself. However, there are times when hypnotic use is legitimized; for example, in the healing process, by suggestion, in certain pathological states, if there are serious reasons and any threat of abuse is previously eradicated.
[I never knew of any certain evidence that real, medical, well-founded hypnotism exists. It only seems to me that, if an unwary person puts himself in the hands of a scammer (who could be anyone or a doctor) and if he is naïve enough to go with the flow, the other would convince him to feel and think and remember what he does not feel, or think, or remember. María Concepción Gonzalez, the principal seer of Garabandal, when they wanted to separate her from the Apparitions of the Virgin of Garabandal, they took her to the city and the doctor who “studied” her said something like "get rigid that I'm going to hypnotize you", that wise girl laughed at the situation. Wonderful answer. Obviously the individual saw that the conditions were not given and did not dare to continue.]
145. Spiritism.- It is the art of listening and talk to the evil spirits or with the deceased, to know through them the hidden things.
Spiritism is inherently evil: it is partly the work of the devil, but it relies mainly on deception. Spiritualists often resort to reprehensible means of pure ability to deceive the ignorant or unwary, and to infiltrate anti-Christian doctrines. (1)
(1) Spiritism had its origin in 1846 as follows: in the house inhabited by a family in Hydesville, New York City, it could be heard, from time to time, blows on the walls and pavement. Furniture was moved from its place, and the tables and chairs oscillated. Thinking that, perhaps, it would be the work of a deceased person in the house, one day the mother had the chance to say: "If you are a spirit, give two blows," and two blows were heard. "Have you had a violent death?" –Two other blows. –"In this house?" –Two other blows. –"Does the killer live?" –Two other blows.
The youngest daughter, Catherine, laughing at her sister Margaret, asked, "Are you a man?" "Are you a spirit?" –The blows repeated. Later the two sisters discovered the deception; they were the ones who gave those blows with their toes.
At that time a niece of theirs who was 15 year-old lived with them, named Isabel, to whom Catalina and Margarita gave, days later, scares with their tricks.
With a fine thread they tied apples and made them run on the ground, pulling them from the thread, without Isabella noticing. They made clicks with the fingers of their hands and ordered the apples to do the same. Lying down they rested their feet on the bed boards; this acted as a sound amplifier and increased the noise produced by the toes.
But Elizabeth discovered the trap; she spoke about it to his mother, sister of Margaret and Catherine and, seeing in that scam a modus vivendi, she set out to exploit the credulity of her neighbors. She took the 3 girls to Rochester, where she lived, and put them to give sessions of supposed spiritualism, which gave her huge profits.
Spiritism began to attract a lot of attention especially since 1862.
It is forbidden to read books that deal with spiritism, and to attend meetings or sessions of it. This was declared, in 1917, by the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office.
In the practice of spiritism there is a lot of deception, it has been proven repeatedly.
1. Napoleon III, urged by his wife, attended in Biarritz a session of spiritism that the famous Daniel Home Douglas gave there. With much mystery the "medium" announced to the emperor that, if he extended his hand under the table, he could shake the hand of his mother Hortensia, who died many years before. Napoleon hold what he pretended to be a hand of “far beyond” so tightly that he did not want to let it go of it until, when the lights were on, the deception was discovered; and it turned out that the famous hand was the bare foot of the “medium” (2). This was enough for the Emperor to order the “spiritualists” to immediately pass out of the border.
[(2) Note that in Spanish the word medium means a person specialized in spiritism.. But in English "medium" has many other meanings apart from that. For example, it means "means to achieve something," or "means through which to express oneself” that are good things.]
2. The famous Polish spiritualist Guzik consented to allow himself to be scientifically inspected in the Laboratory of Experimental Biology of the Sorbonne, before very illustrious figures of the Faculty of Sciences of Paris and the College of France. Soon the traps of the spiritualist were discovered, because as soon as they hold the legs of the "medium", who always acted in the dark, neither the chairs moved, nor the trash can went around in the air, nor the spectators perceived in the back or in another part of the body those blows that previously impressed them.
After six weeks of observation, these wise men published an Official Report in which they revealed the traps and tricks used by Guzik and his "medium", and his imposture was exposed.
3. In 1881, the famous American Bastian, was skillfully discovered in Vienna, before members of the imperial family, that he himself exercised the office of spirit, barefoot and wrapped in a sheet. In that way he was the object of ridicule by the spectators.
4. In New York, in 1890, journalists arranged to discover the deception of a spiritualist lady. To this effect, they carried hidden electric lamps; in the best of the act they lit them and ipso facto the nonsense was discovered: it was this lady who made the fuss of the supposed spirits.
[It is strange how those people of the lie (children of the father of the lie) have the hard, or proud, face of the brainless (when the devil enters into a person, the first thing he does is to eat the brain, spiritually speaking, St. Francis of Assisi says in his Admonitions), they think that they are going to beat kings that have education, training; scientists and journalists who are trained to investigate. Satan seems to have gambling vice: those who always bet believing that they will "break the bank" and lose all wealth they have. The demon is the eternally defeated, but he doesn't want to notice that. And he seems to insist on his methods over and over again. It is noteworthy that by those years close to 1881, bad directed groups of people (socialism) began to weaken and make fall the monarchies, in 1859 Darwin published his invention of evolution without feet or head, unscientific, because there is no proof, on the contrary, and recently they expelled from a university in the USA a student who said that an XY man will always be a man because all his genes say so, they did not let him speak with scientific rigor and in these times the big media are controlled. It's like the devil with his slave ogres and witches and spiritually dead ones are trying to orchestrate the fall of everything that opposes lie. He may have convinced his followers that they are going to have power “governing the world” and now it is clear how the elections in Argentina, Spain and the USA are fraudulent. But there are still people who, when they explode against pseudo-democratic presidents (dictators) they say "we'll see you at the ballot box"... again: useless compulsive gamblers. Lives in a sin anybody that does not follow Jesus Christ. Sin makes people slave of Satan. Only if he follows Jesus, the Messiah, he can be saved.
People fall because they are not united to Christ, because they do not sincerely obey Him: read Saint John 14:21. “With Christ I can achieve everything” (Saint Therese of Avila), that is: loving Him, being faithful to Him, obeying Him. The Church will not be destroyed. And if you want a proof, already in the AT it says "the righteous disappears and no one seems to care", but there were the necessary righteous to receive Jesus Christ, and His Word is eternal, completely true: read Saint Matthew 16, 18. And Satan continues with his proud hard face. But Our Lady of the Salette tells us in point 33 of the Secret: “Here is the time; the abyss opens up. Behold the king of the kings of darkness. Behold the beast with its subjects, saying to themselves savior of the world. It will rise proudly in the air to go to heaven; he will be smothered by the breath of St. Michael the Archangel. He will fall, and the earth, which for three days will be in continuous evolutions, will open his bosom full of fire, he will be plunged forever with all his own into the eternal abysses of hell. Then water and fire will purify the earth and consume all the works of the pride of men and everything will be renewed: God will be served and glorified. ]
5. There are sleight of hands who have reproduced, through tricks, many of the phenomena of spiritualists, to demonstrate to the public the imposture of those who are dedicated to deceiving the unwary and ignorant. Among them is Father Heredia, Jesuit Priest.
146. Irreligiosity and its classes.- Irreligiosity is a special irreverence made to God, or to people and things consecrated to Him.
Its main species are ungodliness, temptation to God, sacrilege and simony.
Ungodliness is the sin of those who despise God and sacred people or things, or who mock religion and the Church.
Ungodliness, like all irreligiosity, is the fruit of ignorance and immorality. Let us see an example: A friend of Doctor Guepín was dying in Nantes. He went to visit him and found the patient's wife bursting into tears, who said to him, "Mr. Doctor, my husband is going to die like a damned, and you are to blame. "Certainly" Guepín replied, that we have both spoken badly against Religion, but now is not the time to remember it. Leave it in my hand."
He walked into the bed room and said to the sick man, "Friend, this is not going well, you have to put your issues right." "I have already left everything in order to my wife and children." "I'm not talking about that. I think you have to confess." –"How?, And after we have spoken so much against confession and against Religion?". "Yes, we have spoken, but we have not proven anything true against it; and… if we have been wrong?" –"It is true, said the ill man, previously insensitive to the pleas of his wife; I don't want to expose myself to eternal remorse. Call on my behalf the priest of St. Nicholas." And after reconciling, he died in a Christian way.
The famous Father Lacordaire said in one of his lectures in Paris: "At the age of twenty it is believed that Religion is false; at forty one begins to suspect that it may be true; at fifty there is a desire for it to be; at sixty there is no longer the slightest doubt that it is.
Light walks at the same pace as life; and death, disillusioning us with everything, completes this continuous revelation, which had begun for us on the lips of our mothers.
The child and the woman are the vanguard of God, the mature man is his apostle and his martyr; you, young people, are but the defectors of a single day"...
[Here we see how evil was increased over time. In the past good science told us that we could not be based on something without proof. In the first example, the individual was saved by the wisdom of good science. And in what Fr. Lacordaire says, now you don't have time to wait for the blessed crisis of the 40s to assess what is really important in life. And those who reach that age are so busy watching TV, and society gives them so many means to forget about the crisis and pretend that they are 20, that they do not know anything. In any point society is going to impose suicide. As most transgenders commit suicide at 34, realizing that with their paths of death of surgeries and hormones they neither found happiness nor solved their psychological problems. And none of them look for Jesus Christ sincerely.]
The writer La Harpe said to certain ungodly people: "I am a Christian because you are not Christians. A Religion that has as mortal enemies the greatest enemies of morality, virtue and humanity is necessarily a friend of morality, virtue and humanity, and is therefore good."
147. Temptation to God.- To tempt God is to test some of his attributes, especially his power, wisdom and goodness. It can be done in word or deed; asking or doing; openly, as when at the pinnacle of the Temple the devil said to Jesus Christ: “If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down” (Read the entire verse in Saint Mattew IV, 6); or covertly, as when the Herodians asked the Lord: “Tell us therefore what dost thou think, is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not? (Saint Matthew, XXII, 17).
The malice of this temptation is that divine perfections are denied or questioned, in that case it is always mortal sin.
Someone tempts God badly if, without just cause, exposes himself to danger of life, and it would be slightly sinning if, in sickness, he refuses remedies hoping for of God's healing. But it is not tempting God to ask for health for himself or for another, when human remedies are ineffective; neither it is a sin to ask for a miracle when there is great need or great utility.
Many ordinary expressions are formulas and ways that tempt God: "Don't they say that God is infinitely good?, So let Him heal me", "God is too good to condemn me". "Because God is so good, even though I sin, He will forgive me."
148. Sacrilege.- It is the desecration of person, thing or sacred place. Depending on the case, sacrilege is personal, real or local.
Sacred people are all those who are destined for divine cult, since the moment they receive the tonsure [first of clerical grades, they shaved their heads on the top as if they were bald, excellent step, since "our actions/manners/ways of clothing shape our mind and our mind models our actions"] and the sacred orders [from the beginning of this paragraph to here, only XY men can be that]; and those who are consecrated to God by religious vows [in this latter case nuns are included].
Sacred things are those used in divine cult, such as the Sacraments; vessels, vestments and sacred ornaments; the relics and images of the Saints, etc.; but not what is remotely related to the sacred ministry: recipients for the water and wine, vases for flowers, tapestries, etc., which are not blessed.
Sacred places are those which, by virtue of the consecration or blessing prescribed for this purpose by the Church, are intended for divine cult, such as churches, or for the burial of the faithful: cementerys. (Can. 1154).
All that is consecrated to God or His cult rises above its ordinary condition and is covered with a special holiness: the reverence they deserve is directed to God Himself.
Jesus Christ, so good and so meek, gave us an example of the reverence that we have to have in the Churches, when, arming himself with short cords, with lashes He threw the merchants out of the Temple, saying: My house is a house of prayer, and you have turned it into a cave of thieves (See the verses of Saint Matthew, XXI, 12-13).
[We could already begin to repair the horror of saying catholic temples "church" with lower case and the gathering of the faithful "Church" with a capital letter. What makes the Church sacred? The presence of Jesus in the tabernacle of the church, the Sacraments that are received in the church. And someone would ask what is more important, the church or the Church? –A Church that ignores the church is not doing well. A good word in capital letters must be chosen to designate the church.]
Sacrilege is in itself a grave sin, unless there is a lack of quantity or knowledge of the thing. The severity of a sacrilege varies according to the sanctity of the objects, following this order: The Most Holy Eucharist, the other Sacraments, the sacred vessels, the relics and images of the Saints, the sacred vestments and ornaments, and the goods intended for the sustenance of cult and priests. [As it is a crime against God, the lack of quantity or not should be irrelevant].
A case.- Sacrilege of desire.- [I say it in my own words: if someone allows himself to have desires to steal something sacred, holy, dedicated to cult, etc.,] he commits a sacrilege of desire; therefore, when he confesses, it will not be enough to accuse himself of the desire to steal, he will have to declare the aggravating circumstance of something sacred, and it is good that he adds the place, because it is sacred.
149. Simonia.- It is the purchase or sale of something spiritual, done with deliberate will, in exchange for money or other temporary good; or also the purchase or sale of something temporal attached to the spiritual, in such a way that the temporal cannot exist without the spiritual, as an ecclesiastical benefit, a canonry.
Simony takes its name from Simon the Magician, who intended to buy from St. Peter, with money, the gifts of the Holy Spirit (Acts, VIII, 4-24).
Is it simony to give money when a Mass is said? No; because it is not the Mass that is paid, but a stipend or alms are given for the support of the celebrant, as St. Paul said to the Corinthians: “Know you not, that they who work in the holy place, eat the things that are of the holy place; and they that serve the altar, partake with the altar?” (1st Cor., IX, 13)
[The sacrifices of the Altar of the Old Testament did not include money for any minister to participate. It is an atrocity that people, because Church does not demand the tithe that God commanded, give coins in the collection of Sundays and for those reasons we found that, for example, in 2019 in a diocese of Barcelona they asked 10 euros for naming a deceased in a Mass "because people give so little, we do not cover the expenses". We reached that point!!!
Read in Saint Matthew 10, 8 what Jesus commanded the apostles to do when they were sent in mission, and how to give. There was exercised the power to perform miracles, and much more is the Most Holy Miracle of the Eucharist.
When Saint Paul says that the Lord commanded those who proclaim the gospel to live by the gospel, he also says: “So also the Lord ordained that they who preach the gospel, should live by the gospel. But I have used none of these things. Neither have I written these things, that they should be so done unto me: for it is good for me to die, rather than that any man should make my glory void.” (1 Corinthians 9: 14-15)
Read Saint Luke 10,7 there Jesus tells us about the salary of the missionaries: Apostles and disciples.
That's what they must do first: apostolic work, real missionaries, 2d. the salary is very simple as you can see.
People must give the tithe, if they do not, it is an offence to God that brings disasters for the society and the Church. The Church stopped demanding the tithe in middle 1800… now they say we must “give what is usual by good Christians”… A good Christian (Catholic) must read all the Bible enlightened by Jesus Christ. In this spiritual war, we all must keep vigils, make sacrifice, prayer, penance, words, atonement, but we need an army of monks and nuns that make hard sacrifice, penance and prayer. If faithful do not support that army… the enemy enters in the house, as you can see nowadays. Tithe is not supposed to enrich the bishop, he MUST use it for the cult to God and true charity (remember that Jesus feed the Jews and the Pagans miraculously after theaching them during hours or days, respectively.
The words of our Lord Jesus Christ to His chosen and dearly beloved bride, Saint Bridget, about the proclamation of His most holy Incarnation and the rejection, desecration and abandonment of our faith and baptism, and how He bids His beloved bride and all Christian people to love Him.
Chapter 1
“I am the Creator of the heavens and the earth, one in Divinity with the Father and the Holy Spirit. I am the one who spoke to the patriarchs and the prophets and the one whom they awaited. For the sake of their longing and in agreement with my promise, I assumed flesh without sin and concupiscence, by entering the womb of the Virgin like the sun shining through the clearest gem. For just as the sun does not damage the glass by entering it, likewise the virginity of the Virgin was not lost when I assumed Manhood. I assumed flesh in such a way that I did not have to forsake my Divinity, and I was no less God - with the Father and the Holy Spirit, governing and upholding all things - although I was in the womb of the Virgin in my human nature. Just as brightness is never separated from fire, so too, my Divinity was never separated from my Humanity, not even in death.
Thereafter I allowed my pure and sinless body to be wounded from the foot to the head, and to be crucified for all the sins of mankind. That same body is now offered each day on the altar so that mankind might love me more and remember my great deeds more often. But now I am totally forgotten, neglected, despised, and expelled as a king is from his own kingdom and in whose place the most wicked robber has been elected and honored.
I have indeed wanted my kingdom to be within man, and by right I should be King and Lord over him, for I made him and redeemed him. However, now he has broken and desecrated the faith which he promised me in his baptism, and he has broken and spurned my laws and commandments which I prescribed and revealed to him. He loves his own will and refuses to hear me. In addition, he exalts the most wicked robber, the devil, above me and has given him his faith. The devil really is a robber, since he steals for himself, by way of evil temptations, bad councils, and false promises, the human soul that I redeemed with my blood. But he does not do this because he is mightier than me; for I am so mighty that I can do all things with a word, and so just, that even if all the saints asked me, I would not do the least thing against justice.
But, since man, who has been given free will, willfully rejects my commandments and obeys the devil, it is only right that he also experiences his tyranny and malice. This devil was created good by me, but fell by his own wicked will, and has become, so to speak, my servant for inflicting vengeance on the workers of evil.
Yet, even though I am now so despised, I am still so merciful that whoever prays for my mercy and humbles himself in amendment shall be forgiven his sins, and I shall save him from the evil robber - the devil. But to those who continue despising me, I shall visit my justice upon them, so that those hearing it will tremble, and those who feel it will say: “Woe, that we were ever conceived or born! Woe, that we ever provoked the Lord of majesty to wrath!”
But you, my daughter, whom I have chosen for myself, and with whom I now speak in spirit: love me with all your heart - not as you love your son or daughter or parents, but more than anything in the world - since I, who created you, did not spare any of my limbs in suffering for your sake! Yet, I love your soul so dearly that, rather than losing you, I would let myself be crucified again, if it were possible. Imitate my humility; for I, the King of glory and of angels, was clothed in ugly, wretched rags and stood naked at the pillar and heard all kinds of insults and ridicule with my own ears. Always prefer my will before your own, because my Mother, your Lady, has, from the beginning to the end, never wanted anything but what I wanted.
If you do this, then your heart shall be with my heart, and it will be inflamed by my love in the same way that anything dry becomes rapidly inflamed by fire. Your soul shall be so inflamed and filled with me, and I will be in you, so that everything worldly becomes bitter to you and all fleshly lusts like poison. You will rest in the arms of my Divinity, where no fleshly desires exist, but only spiritual delight and joy which fill the delighted soul with happiness - inwardly and outwardly - so that it thinks of nothing and desires nothing but the joy which it possesses. So love me alone, and you will have all the things you want, and you will have them in abundance. Is it not written that the oil of the widow did not decrease until the day the rain was sent to earth by God according to the words of the prophet? I am the true prophet! If you believe my words and follow and fulfill them, the oil - joy and jubilation - shall never decrease for you for all eternity.”]