May Day, May Day, May Day

Leo Tolstoy said that although Christian intellectuals rise to great heights in almost every branch of secular achievement, there is almost always a serious discrepancy between their academic achievement and their spiritual development. I have noticed this recently in the Catholic intellectuals who have been analysing and explaining Synodality in recent months. The steady drip, drip, drip, of the anti-Catholic theology that has been disseminated by  the modernists in Rome   might have otherwise  escaped us, if it were not for the vigilance and brilliant intellectual analysis of Catholic intellectuals.

However, when it comes to pointing to a positive spiritual way forward, they are unfortunately inhibited. For in most cases, the current decline in Catholic Spirituality has meant that their own spiritual growth has not grown in parity with their intellectual advancement. Its devotional simplicity may well be both orthodox and endearing, but it is far from what is necessary if they are to lead the faithful back to the profound Catholic spirituality given to us by Jesus  Christ.

It is not they who are to blame. Truth to tell, there has not been any simple, positive, Gospel-based spirituality made available to us from the shepherds to whom the laity once looked for guidance. The very few exceptions prove the rule. Even if there are some who could lead us, they dare not speak out for fear of being cancelled, as hundreds if not thousands of Catholic priests have been cancelled by the current regime in Rome and the ‘Eminence Gris’ with the iron hand in the velvet glove. Bishop Strickland is just the latest and will be by no means the last.

SOS – Lay Leadership Needed Now

It seems that leadership is now therefore left to the laity but can  lay leaders who have helped us to understand the takeover of our Church in Rome be expected to guide us spiritually  in these times of terrible travail. Yes, I believe they can, by deepening the ‘sensus fidelium’  that has already  guided them to defend the truth, they can now guide us to the fulness of truth which is Love. This love of God can only be retrieved by embracing once more, the profound  sacrificial prayer  of Jesus Christ. This prayer was central to the spirituality of early Christianity and last flourished in the Church in a spirituality that reached such heights in the years that followed the Council of Trent. Its full expression and glory was to be seen embodied in  the Tridentine Mass and the attendant Tridentine Spirituality that surrounded it for over a hundred years. This spirituality taught the profound sacrificial spirituality that had always taken place within the mystical body of Christ, as believers sought to travel onwards in search of divine union. St Paul called this divine union promised by God from the beginning,  ‘The Mysterion’.

Believers who sought to arrive at this sublime destination were called ‘mystics’ and the way upon which they travelled had come to be called ‘the mystic way’, because it took place in the mystical body of Jesus inspired by the mystical love of the Holy Spirit. The word mystical merely means hidden, secret, unseen, or invisible, from the Greek word Mysterion, which, as we have seen from St Paul was used to describe God’s hidden plan to share his life and love with us. However, I must warn against being misled by spiritual dilettantes, who abound everywhere today promising bogus and bizarre forms of mysticism to the unwary that are totally alien to true Catholic spirituality.

The Catholic Tridentine Spirituality, to which I have referred,  has for centuries been in serious decline since the condemnation of the pseudo-mysticism called Quietism in 1687. I have detailed the devilry done by the perpetrators of this heresy in my course on prayer and in my books, thanks to Monsignor Ronald Knox in his book ‘Enthusiasm’. Its malign influence down to the present day cannot be exaggerated, most particularly because few have ever heard about it.

Monsignor Ronald Knox and Quietism

After its condemnation, spiritual ignoramuses armed with the slogan ‘Mysticism begins in mist and ends in Schism’ have been throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Thus the mystical sacrificial spirituality given to the Church by Jesus has been all but totally extracted from Catholic mainstream Spirituality.   As the divine unconditional selfless loving, which pertains to the essence of Christ’s own personal redemptive spirituality has no longer been taught, there has been a void in mainstream Catholic Spirituality. This void has been filled by a plethora of ‘pick and mix’ devotional exercises that provide little more than a survival diet for the spiritually needy. The Mass still remains, however, but sadly it is no longer surrounded by the profound Tridentine Spirituality that last prevailed unimpeded in the seventeenth century, as shown by Monsignor Ronald Knox in his book ‘Enthusiasm’.

This was the spirituality that perfectly mirrored and reflected the profound sacrificial spirituality that was commonplace to all in the early Church. It was and still should be a spirituality where the only form of love is learnt that can unite us with God, namely unalloyed, selfless,  unconditional loving. As counterfeit mystical theology was once substituted for authentic Catholic mystical theology, now counterfeit loving or lust, has been substituted for true Christlike loving. Or at least this is what our anti-traditional ‘leaders in Rome’ are trying to achieve.

In the past, I have always felt incapable of describing in any detail this God-given spirituality that Christ introduced into the early Church in order to make my point in the space of a single article. Any attempts always appeared to be what they are bound to be,  banal and inadequate. However,  thanks to the essentialistpress.com I have been able to explain and develop this profound biblical spirituality in ten free lectures on ‘prayer to contemplation’. They are awaiting you now on the above-mentioned site.  In these talks, I have been able to detail the historical reasons why, over the last four hundred years or more this spirituality has been on a steady downward slope that has led to the moral malaise that we find in the Church today, from top to bottom.

If you think for a moment that I am exaggerating, then ask yourself why tens of thousands of Cardinals, Bishops, and priests have been indulging in horrendous cases of the sexual abuse of men, women and children for years with virtual impunity. Ask yourself why many more members of the hierarchy have been endlessly covering up these crimes. Ask yourself why hundreds of thousands of victims remain unheard and uncared for, to the present time and to the present Pope. Ask yourself why far from doing anything to stop sexual depravity it is being normalized and even sacralised.

Ask yourself why Our Lady has had to repeatedly return to call us to repentance. Ask yourself why she has warned of imminent divine intervention and punishment because no one is seriously listening to her. Even the best of us have been compromising. We think we can enjoy all the pleasures of this world while receiving all the graces of the world to come.

The Renaissance – The Birth of Modernism

After the Renaissance, and the birth of the modern world, a man-centred spirituality gradually took centre stage that pushed the God-centred spirituality that Christ gave us into the wings. The Credo of this God-given spirituality that Christ gave us is ‘I believe in God, in his Salvation through the wisdom that he had given us’. The Credo of the man-centred spirituality that man has given himself is ‘I believe in Man, in his Salvation, through the wisdom of the world that we have learnt for ourselves’. Without the selfless unconditional loving that Christ asks of us, and with the self-centred woke and wanton wisdom of the world taking centre stage, our Catholic spirituality is in dire straits.

If we can all begin again now to turn back to God and embrace the simple, but profound form of sacrificial spirituality that Christ has given to us, then a formidable remnant will be formed before the next round of  anti-traditional teachings are unleashed next year.

I appeal to all those good Catholic intellectuals, who have helped us to understand the pernicious takeover of our beloved Church, to take upon themselves a further role. By now, it should be realised, that despite their brilliant work, only God can help us in this, the last minute of extra time.

Prayer is merely the word we use to describe how we radically turn to him now and without delay. We need lay leadership to lead us all back to the deep sacrificial prayer first embodied in the prayer life of Christ, through which he redeemed the world. We look to these lay leaders for inspiration and spiritual guidance. We need to be reminded that for three hundred years, long before any religious orders were dreamt of, it was the family that was the basic spiritual powerhouse of the Church and the springboard for apostolic action.

It was this action, propelled by love generated in Catholic families by the Holy Spirit, that transformed a pagan Roman Empire into a Christian Empire in such a short time. We need to be taught again how to draw strength from the graces of married life and turn to prayer without delay. The main problem is that the word and the practice of prayer has been so depreciated and so devalued in the last three hundred years that even some of our most valued lay leaders fail to see its importance. That is why I have produced my course on prayer to which you are invited, which details how Christ himself prayed in order to sacralise each day by offering it to God, as an example to us all.

The Profound Sacrificial Prayer of Christ

I refer to the sacrificial prayer, as practised by Christ himself during his life on earth, which has been handed on to us by both word and example. God is now asking lay leaders to become, not just great journalists, commentators and analysts, but spiritual leaders too. With their professional expertise yoked to an ever-growing life of prayer, they can become the leaders that the Church so desperately needs today. By now it should be realised that, even with the most brilliant criticism, and the most bold presentation of truth to power, it is not enough. Only by the power of God’s Love working through us can we retrieve what has been lost and put back what needs to be reinstated. Prayer is merely the word used to describe how we receive it.

After over sixty years of studying and trying to live and write about the perennial Catholic teaching on prayer, I gradually came to realise that nobody was really interested. The prevailing spirit of Pelagianism is the besetting sin of Modernists has for too long made all too many believers think they can do for themselves what only the Holy Spirit can achieve, working through ‘the poor and humble of heart’.

A Free Course on Prayer

For those who have finally begun to realise that what is happening in Rome can only be undone, not by them, but by the Holy Spirit, I have produced my ten-part course on prayer, thanks to essentialistpress.com.  That victory will finally be won by Christ in the battle ahead is certain, whether or not we will be on his side to savour that victory is another matter. The course that is open to you now for free does not contain any gimmicks, nor is it my work, but the God-given sacrificial spirituality first lived and practised by Our Lord Jesus Christ before he gave it to his Church, through those first apostles, who unlike all too many of their successors today, died rather than deny it.