getting ready to buy or sell a home do you want to help support pro-life organizations then you need real estate for Life get a top-notch real estate agent and support prolife causes go to Real Estate forlife.org to learn more [Music] [Music] in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost amen direct oh Lord all our actions by thy holy Inspirations and carry them on by thy gracious assistance so that every prayer and work of ours may begin from thee and by thee be happily to Christ Our Lord amen virgin most sorrowful Us in name of the father Son and the Holy Ghost amen so the series of conferences are it's I want to talk about virtues in relationship to uh what it looks like we're that's coming down the pipe not just in relationship to as the Civil situation that is the societal governmental that is the secular situation begins to or continues to decline um what virtues are going to play a key role in going forward in one sense can say they all will but in another sense there are some ones that I want to talk specifically about we're also going to see a significant degradation in the state of the church coming forward and by significant I mean stuff that would have been considered completely unimaginable and some of it already is um so uh I'm not sure if you saw the report but um the pronuncio chastised Bishop Strickland for teaching the deposit of Faith so of course Strickland I know Strickland he just like yeah whatever you know okay so but uh this gives you an indication that things are not in a good way um there are also Rumblings I'm not going to go into details about them only because they're rumors but they are usually that's the one thing I learned about in Rome is that um there are certain kinds of rumors that are usually true and some of the stuff that's be coming down the pipe could be pretty ugly so we have to basically be prepared on the level of of virtue going forward this is putting aside any discussion I mean we'll talk a little bit about that because I'm going to mention it here in just a minute of the CH of a possible chastisement that's coming because the chastisement I think people have a lot of misunderstandings about um their relationship to the chastisement so what I want to talk about in this conference is first to set a bit of the stage about what level of virtue we are going to need going forward not just if there's a chastisement but as I mentioned if there is uh or as the things be continue to decline if you look at it part of the reason that God is allowing us to decline is to see what man is like without God's grace when he retracts his grace this is what we become you know people want to become a different gender people want to you know the percentage of people becoming homosexual is drastically On The Rise Etc all this stuff that we're seeing is the result of God retracting his grace the Council of Trent says and the church has always said that we can actually act and pro uh according to the natural law without actual Grace but not consistently and for not very long period of time the council Trent states that no one can stay out of mortal no one that's any of us in here no one can stay out of mortal sin even for a short period of time without the aid of Grace so this is something to keep in mind that it's going to become a time in which our dependency on Grace is going to become uh much more important so I'm going to talk a little bit about Fidelity to Grace towards the end okay so obviously there's a variety of different um apparitions of our lady but I just want to stick with one that's actually approved that talks a little that's more recent that talks about the chastisement uh the chastisement of course was predicted very early on by Our Lady it's it all it appears in laet she said there will be a chastisement after which there will be 25 years of good harvest which is important because people think I'll just skape through the chastisement and think things will be wonderful well 25 years of good harvest which means that things will go well for 25 years it doesn't mean that it's going to be easy for the first 3 to five so um so at aita when our lady appeared AA to Sister Agnes this is in 1973 is when the apparitions began this is I'm just going to read some highlights from what our lady said quote in order that the world might know his anger okay so God isn't happy with us that's the first thing the heavenly father is preparing to inflict a great chastisement on all men mankind now here is something that's important one of the things that Co taught us is that there's nowhere on the planet that you're immune from possible things happening to you because they shut down things everywhere affected everybody everywhere if men do not repent and better themselves the father will inflict a terrible punishment on all of humanity so it's going to affect all of us this idea that you know well I'm going to prep I'll talk about that in a minute I'm going to prep and then I'll be good and then I'll just skate through this thing that is not what's going to happen fall fire will uh sorry it will be a punishment greater than the Deluge so we're talking about levels of suffering that are going to be extraordinarily difficult even for the perfect for the perfect so if you're not perfect well you got some suffering coming okay such as one will never have seen before so this is going to be something that is that will it'll be a historical event something that's never we've never seen anything like it fire will fall from the sky and wipe out a great part of humanity not the greater part so it's not going to be a majority of humanity will be D will be wiped out but a great part so there's going to be Mass death basically the good as well as the bad so uh sparing neither priests are faithful so it does not matter it does not matter how holy you are how good you are or what have you it does not mean you will be spared the effects of what's coming some of this is already true because spiritually we're already uh starting to see the precursors to the temporal punishment um that is going to happen the temple I mean in the sense of you know the physical punishments that we're going to be going through uh on a certain level that is uh going to um uh that is actually going to uh be pretty brutal but there's always the spiritual precursor which we're already starting to see as time goes on I predicted this and we're already starting to see it that the the indicators are becoming true so about 5 years ago I said if people don't stop receiving communion in the state of mortal sin God's going to God's going to pull the plug on people's regular ACC and sacraments then Co happened and by the way I was just unpacking the logic of this I have no gift of Prophecy I'm just unpacking the logic with how God works do then I said if people don't stop attacking the clergy you're not going to get regular access to priest that's coming we're going to start seeing that because we're already starting to see I mean we hear about the canceled priests we hear about all this stuff many Bishops are going after the priests that are Orthodox the number of priests leaving the number of priests leaving the priesthood is extraordinarily high right now A lot of people are unaware of that which we'll see here in a minute the point being is is that uh it's going to affect all of us by varying degrees how much the chastisement affects us even how much the current situation in the world affects us but how much the chastisement affects us and whether we get through it or not is entirely in God's choice we can pray for for it we can ask for it we can ask as we'll see this a little bit later cuz it does indicate that our lady says that we can pray and she'll uh if we have confidence and do certain things there's things that she might do for us Point providing it's in congr with God's will but we have to remember that this is something in which the um how much we're going to be affected by this it doesn't mean you shouldn't prepare that's just reasonable and prudent but you just have to be aware of the fact that that may may not s uh save you from the brutality of what we're going to go through in fact our lady says quote the survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will Envy the dead it's going to be so bad after the chastisement that the living will Envy the dead that's how that they wish they would that they had died in the process that's how bad it's going to be and that's all of us right it's not just um so if we manage to get through it then the fact of the matter and what degree again we suffer and that is ultimately at God's decision but in the end uh it's going to by desolate we basically mean I mean if you if you unpack that that means desolate not just spiritually in the sense of the church is going to have to the church is going to resurrect after that of course but it's going to be in a pretty bad state by the time it gets done but it also means that the infrastructure is going to go down and you're not going to have regular access to food you're not going to have regular access to clean water you're not going to have regular access to medical stuff or anything like this that what we what we have become accustomed to in this country is going to be no more right it's going to take some time for that to get back off the ground but it'll be very diff people will be literally in survival mode for a few years the work of the devil will infiltrate our lady says even into the church in such a way that when will see Cardinals opposing Cardinals and Bishops Oppo against Bishops we're already seeing that right I mean we just saw it this last year where uh the German Bishops were piping up saying stuff that's contrary to the teaching of the church and a couple of the Bishops actually formally wrote them and said you're speaking contrary to what the church teaches right so we're and it's also you're just seeing it even play it sou I think we're going to see that much more as time goes on the priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their confers churches and altars will be sacked you know all this graffiti and all these the people attacking the churches makes me wonder if that's not kind of a bit of a precursor to it the church will be full of those who accept compromises there's practically not a bishop I mean there's are there's a couple or a few I should say that are unabashedly Catholic and do not care what the rest of the Bishops and Priests think they are they're they're only con concern is what God thinks right which is what they should be so that being the case there's so few that ex that don't accept compromises and a lot of time the compromises is basically in not being willing to preach the faith um entirely because a lot of priests you know they won't there's certain things they won't preach preach about or the Bishops themselves simply won't do certain things um I just think the fact that the Bishops rolled over during Co was a total manifestation of the fact that they're compromised right and the demon and it says and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord so priests are going to be and religious are going to be under extraordinary diabolic attack which is actually true because as I mentioned the number of priests that are actually leaving um the priesthood is very high uh right now um and a lot there's all sorts of different reasons for it but this is something which uh uh the diabolic are really uh attacking the clergy you have to start praying for the protection of the clergy however you need to do that in a very specific way you do not want to the the way that you want to do it is simply pray to our lady give it to her and ask her to keep you hidden because if you don't when the demons see that the effects of your prayers are coming from you they're not going to be happy because they are particularly invest Ed in interest in their desire to take out the clergy okay the demon will be especially implacable against Souls consecrated to God if sins increase in number and gravity there will no longer there will be no longer pardon for them pray very much the prayers of the Rosary which is she something she's always said she said I alone am able to still save you from the calamities which approach that was in 1973 I'm not so sure that's the case now I mean she could I mean if God so lets our lady do it she can do it but uh I think that we're this thing Beyond human correction if you actually look at the state of the church um in the current moment when you have people at virtually every single level saying things that are contrary to the faith right those who place their confidence in me she says will be saved so that's a key thing going through not just the chastisement but what as the Civil situation or the secular situation begins to continue to decline we have to be prepared for the fact that the church itself is going to be under attack as Christ himself said um remember if they hate you they hated me before right so we know that uh as the world becomes more sinful there is an actual hatred that begins to develop a relationship uh to God on the side of these people St Thomas this is question um 1535 in his suuna suunde makes the observation that he talks about what's called the daughters of lust and he says when people give themselves over to sins against Chastity what happens is is over the course of time they begin the the final the final Fallout is hatred of God and that's actually what we're seeing right there's a there is a particular hatred they there's even been people who I'm sure you've seen the reports have actually called for the killing of Christians right and we're not talking about the Muslims we they they've always been doing that right here we're talking about people in our own culture so this is something which we have to keep in mind that uh they are going to become more antithetical to us and as time goes on when they feel they have the upper hand they'll just start doing it in some form or another however she says again those who place their confidence in her will be saved so we have to have perfect confidence in our lady okay it's from here that I want to start talking about a couple of things the main thing I want to talk about in this conference so what we're going to do is we're going to talk about the theological virtues but from a very very specific set of points of view in relationship to the types of suffering and things that we could be going through okay so confidence sometimes people use the word faith as a form of confidence and it can be used as that St Thomas talks about there's different ways in which the word faith is actually used but if you're talking about faith as a theological virtue it's not it's not confidence it leads to confidence and it helps us to have the intellectual framework to understand that we should have perfect confidence in our Lord and our lady when things are going ay it doesn't matter how bad they get ultimately we should have trust in our Lord that he's doing the right thing right so um and this is this is going to become more and more important especially as we get to as things get worse progressively get worse we're going to start seeing a lot of uh Christians and Catholics specifically start to fall out in relationship to their attendance at the church or belief in God and things of this sort so we're going to start the attrition rate is going to start to go up significantly and the number of people that are going to remain faithful will get less and less and less if for no other reason then things are just going to become extraordinarily difficult and you're going to have to have extraordinary faith hope and charity in order to get through it so Faith the definition of faith is it's an intelle it's a supernatural virtue which means it has God as its cause it's infused in the intellect it's not an emotion it's not how you feel and so this is one of the key things to keep in mind it doesn't matter how bad things are emotionally that we're going to go through that should have zero effect on your faith intellectually it doesn't matter how bad emotionally or crushing things we get intelle ually we know a that God predicted all this so well there it is but B that tells us that those things that he other things that he has said are true so this means that and he himself even said that because the Apostle says what is going to be like at the end of the world and he starts describing it he says I'm telling you all this so that you will know that I had told you beforehand right and so that it that from that we'll recognize that everything else he said is actually true okay so it's a supernatural virtue infused in the intellect which gives us the which uh gives the intellect the ability to give Ascent to the deposit of faith that is to Revelation okay let's unpacked that a little bit it is an infused virtue so it it's something that God puts in our intellect it gives the intellect St Thomas says a light and by that he means in the sense that when we hear some thing about the deposit of faith that is what Christ taught when we hear it formulated the intellect is able to see the truth of that proposition or statement this is one of the signs that people you can actually tell that people have kind of lost their faith to some degree um in the sense that um take let's just take let's just take a a a few things to give you an idea of how people there's an indic than people have lost their faith now sometimes people can be in error and so it's not so much that they've lost their faith they're just in error because they haven't formally chosen contrary to this virtue in their intellect because um but we have to always remember St Thomas says a single heresy so what that means is a single full consent to a rejection of a proposition of the Catholic church or a uh so in other words you reject what the church says is true or you believe something contrary to it just one St Thomas says corrupt your virtue of Faith you no longer have faith so then he says well what about these people that believe bits and parts of the church that we call them Catholic Catholics he says once they've lost the virtue of Faith then it's just opinion at that point and you can see that you just go online and people just throwing stuff all over the place but the point being is is that it's single heresy corrupt virtue of Faith this is one of the reasons why we're starting to see at the top all sorts of rejection so you can if you like I'll give you a few examples of areas where you can tell people have lost their faith if you just make the statement the Catholic church is the only divinely established means of Salvation how many Bishops would actually be willing to say that or even believe it um it doesn't mean that non- Catholics aren't saved just means are saved by means of the Catholic Church um based upon the principle of the intrical good if you pray or worship with non-catholics it's mortally sinful that was the constant teaching of the church up until 1950 constant constant teaching of the church it's in all the fathers it's in all the theologians it's in the popes the Vatican itself made the statements in fact they said that if if you pray with non Catholics they said it's something that you have to confess which means it's morally sinful and they said not even the pope can dispense from it because it's part of divine positive it's part of divine positive law and natural law they said so which means he doesn't have any authority over it this is just a few things here and there I mean you could go down a Litany of them of things that you know they just don't believe these things anymore um I was just talking to Father cver the other night but one of the other ones that you commonly see is a rejection of the teaching that if you're in the state of mortal sin none of your prayers have any Merit by that we mean they're good acts St Thomas says and the and the fathers and all the the Saints and theologians say they're good acts but they don't raise your place in heaven if you're not in the State of Grace part of that's because people have become semi-pelagian so uh another one is the rejection of Alexander iith statement that in regard to children who die before the age of reason he says quote we have we know of no other means of their salvation than baptism inray unquote inray is a technical Latin term which means by water okay that's rejected across the board okay so you just go down the whole Litany of things that people have just rejected okay so but let's get back to uh this this should not St Thomas says and actually it has to do with passive and active Scandal it doesn't matter how much people reject the faith doesn't matter if the people at the top of the church all the way to the bottom reject some particular article of the faith if it is something that the church has always taught then it's not then it's something that you should continue to hold to regardless of how countercultural or how counter it is to various um priests and things like that saying these things right your job is to remain steadfast in the the faith and continue to give Ascent to what is essential in the church's teaching so that's what you have to do okay so this virtue of Faith St Thomas says needs an act of the will though to move the intellect so even though the intellect can see the truth of it to actually give the ascent to the truth it requires a Grace on the side of the will to say yes I'll I believe that right so cuz sometimes people can actually see the truth or something it doesn't mean that they're going to accept it and this is uh what we tend to see quite a bit in the church especially in relationship to the church's moral teachings you know uh to give you an idea of how bad things are um statistically 98% is it 98 or 97 98 98% of couples cohabitate together before they're married generally that's in our population Catholic statistic is 97% hardly any difference right so this is an indicator and they think it's okay right and they just go right up to communion Etc that's another one that's a real be that people think it's okay to receive communion in the state of mortal sin didn't see any problem with it even though historically of course it's right in St Paul he says well then you're guilty of the same which is basically means it's morally sinful but it also the church had always said it was one of the greatest sacrileges that could be that could occur it is the greatest Sac that actually can occur in one sense okay so the faith we have to remain steadfast of faith it doesn't matter we're going to hear you're going to start seeing more and more and more Bishops say things that are contrary to the faith it's just it's coming right and you just have to say it doesn't matter what I have to do is remain faithful to what the church has always taught St Vincent of Lauren gave kind of the um it's called in his konori he gave what is the principle which guided the church from that point on pretty much even the popes recite this thing right and the basic phrase is what's been taught every everywhere always and by all so if something has always been taught by the church and it's been always taught by the popes Etc and uh everywhere in the church then de facto we know that that we have to give a sent to that and so this is one of the reasons why people say well father what am I supposed to believe I tell them well you need a solid catechism and read that and know this is what you're supposed to believe you can read the C catechism of the Council of Trent and that'll give you at least the framework of it okay this is what you have to believe in order to be saved all right so that everywhere always and by all brings up a particular thing that we're starting to see the in the phenomenon and this is something I want to talk uh about in this conference and it has to do with What's called the census fidelium because what's what what we're starting to see is as bishops get up there and say I don't see any reason why women can't be priests or when we see priests or bishops get up there especially and say you know well the church has to reconsider its position on homosexuality my question this is this is from being in Wyoming right my question is want to say how long have you had a problem with that very issue yourself because they don't push something that they themselves don't have a problem with usually right and so this is something which um as we go along this is going to become more and more of a problem we're going to see where people teaching these but the lay people will hear this stuff and like something wrong with that right okay so what is this because the virtue of faith is infused in the intellect and it gives a light which gives the intellect an ability to give Ascent to the deposit of faith it has a slightly different there's a slightly bit more to it than that and that's this it creates in the intellect an inclination just like any other habit or virtue towards performing specific kinds of acts right so if I have the uh the virtue of fasting then it gives it inclines me to fast and then when I do fast I get a certain delot out of it Etc or if I'm actually uh um if I have the habit of smoking too much right then it's going to Incline me to want to smoke right and so if our virtues are order towards a specific object and it inclines us to perform the acts that revolve around that particular object so in the case of faith it inclines the intellect to get to see what is true about the deposit of faith and then actually give a sent to it that inclination of The Virtue and it can also be actual Grace where God is enlightening the mind and strengthening the will but he's enlightening the mind to Incline us to see the truth about something so we some authors make a distinction between what they call the census FID and the census fidelian so the census FID is this this inclination of in the intellect in the faithful to recognize that certain things are true on a religious level and certain things are not but we have to unpack that a bit so I just got done saying if you don't believe a single thing one thing the church says you have to believe in order to be saved you no longer have the virtue of faith those people cannot be relied upon in order to think to have a sense of this is what we should or shouldn't believe right and so that means it's going to exclude a significant number of people in the chur church right now because a lot of the faith a lot of the people are not truly faithful right they don't have the virtue of Faith because they've rejected the church's teaching on a variety of different things and so as a result they don't have the virtue of faith that puts them in a bad situation we're already seeing Bishop saying things and Priests of course uh saying things contrary to the faith if you don't have the virtue of Faith you're not going to have that inclination of the intellect to to be able to discern this is true or not true right this is why so many faithful are just going off the deep and even in relationship to things like gay marriage right in fact statistically the number of Catholics that think gay marriage is okay I think it's 56% it might be maybe 65 but they think it's okay this is an indicator that that they don't have the ability to discern when they hear something erroneous they don't that they don't have that virtue of faith and so can't see there's something wrong with that right whereas if the person does have the virtue of Faith then it gives them the ability to discern like there's something wrong with that okay now how what whether they know exactly what's wrong with it and how strongly they know it is based on two things the first is the virtue of faith is by degree each time you make an Act of Faith then St Thomas says it disposes the intellect for an increase in The Virtue and then God infuses more of the virtue we are not the cause of The Virtue but we can we can actually perform actions which will dispose us more towards the reception of it so this means that the more acts of faith that you make in God you know God I I believe that you are a Triune God God I believe in your Incarnation Etc so if you make those acts just saying the Creed is an Act of Faith for making this act it will begin to increase that virtue in you and it therefore because it becomes stronger it will give you a stronger sense of when something's right and when something's wrong okay but since it's or so that's the virtue the strength of the virtues depend on how much we build it up if you don't do a whole lot to build up your faith when you're just not going to it's not going to give you the ability to really discern stuff too much and we see this even in people's lives a lot of this that I'm describing you can see it in very people cuz some people are like the minute they hear something like no that's not right right and then other times people are like it doesn't seem right but I'm not sure exactly what the story is and so there's varying degrees of how strong people's Faith are one of the effects of Charity and charity we'll talk uh in the next conference on charity is love of God and love of neighbor for the sake of God the stronger your charity is one of the fruits of the the uh Holy Spirit which is in other words the more charity you have the more the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity is and then as a result of that there's certain effects that arise as a as because of the presence of the of God in us and so as we begin to increase our sanctifying Grace and we begin to um become Holier the virtue of Faith begins to increase and we have greater certitude see that the strength of the virtue gives us the certitude about what we believe is true or not the reason I keep putting in the context of the intellect that is entirely different than the emotional security we get in believing something CU a lot of times people will you I'll be talking to people and they'll just say well I feel in my bones well that's fine you know God bless you but by the way you're a heretic but uh but anyway U which is another thing we need to resurrect the word heretic I don't know why it became such a bad word but anyway actually I do know why it became a bad word because Heretics took over the the helm and now they're they don't want being labeled for what they are all right so the point being is is that uh that certitude of your faith is going to be based again on these two things how strong of a virtue of your faith Faith so the more you love God the more certitude you're going to have of the truths of the faith the more you make acts of the fa acts of faith the stronger you're going to have that uh that inclination and this is going to give you the ability to recognize when something is according to the faith or not but it also gives you the ability to sustain trials much great more greatly because the the when things are absolutely clear in your mind this is the will of God or this is what God taught or this is what he's asking of those who suffer Etc the person can because they have that intellectual Clarity they can maintain the course a little bit more easily when as St Thomas says there's the toll Mal of the appetites when your emotions are being battered because of you know things that are happening in your family or in the world or in the culture so the more certitude you have about the faith then proportionately the more you're going to be able to sustain at least on an intellectual level walk into that with a proper framework so uh and so and this certitude can become it can be completely clear right to the individual who has it so I'll give you an I give you an example so one time during one of my sessions the demon says to me says I'm going to destroy your community before it ever gets off the ground so I just looked at him and I said because this was I had perfect clarity about that I said this is how this is this works if that's the mechanism by which our lady chooses to to stop the progression of our community then so be it but if it's not her will there's nothing you can do about it of course he just shut down right so CU they're they're always trying to get you to buy in their they're trying to get you to get into an argument right we see this all the time with people they they want to just argue rather than actually arrive with the truth okay the point being is is that it gives you certitude about what the church teaches so that and that's why you have to continue to build that virtue of Faith throughout the course of of your life one of the principal ways you're going to build the virtue of Faith then also has to do with the next thing which is you have to know your faith it is not you've heard me say this before you cannot rest on the catechetical training you got when you were a kid that ain't going to get you through it all it'll help you know but the fact is is you're going to that you're going to have to have greater knowledge of this if you're going to navigate the waters that are coming each time you study a truth of the faith and you give aent to it and you seeing the truth within that with greater precision and Clarity the more it increases the virtue of faith in you but then also the greater Precision becomes your judgment regarding these matters so for for example when when you hear Bishops say well you know we could the the the question about women um's ordination is still open to discussion right and you know you know from your faith that's just not true right but the more you study it you begin to realize that if you read the document ordino saric by John Paul 2 what John Paul 2 was saying in that document was that if you look at the history of the church that women were excluded from or ation and that it it started from the beginning and that it was the it was the it was the it was what was believed by the totality of the church throughout time which means it actually meant the require it met the requirements for ordinary magisterial infallibility right and that's basically the argument in fact they even asked the congregation with the doctrine of the faith later you know was the Holy Father arguing based on ordinary magistral infallibility and they said yes what that means is it cannot if you know ordinary maal infallibility means even though the Holy Father has not uh defined it it doesn't matter it is an irreformable teaching of the church it cannot change right so the more so when you hear this you know you immediately just realize okay this guy doesn't hold to these particular doctrines of the church you have very great Precision about how you know they're wrong in that particular thing or you know what the uh I mean some of of them are just absurd but there's different degrees of people's knowledge of the faith and sometimes people at the bottom like wow you don't even know that that's in scripture so you get the bishop you get these Bishops who are and I'm sure you actually saw it recently there was a bishop who said well you know uh the fact that Sodom and Gomorrah was wiped out had nothing to do with homosexuality because you know even at the time of the early church and they didn't even know what it was and I'm like I don't know what dope you're smoking but Paul talks about it right in his thing in in his Epistles and then top it off is that you know the reason that that uh they were so horrified was by virtue of the fact that that um uh lot even offered them his daughters to these guys they're like we don't want the daughters we want the guys you know and you're just like okay so you're just like but the point being is is that some people like oh I didn't know that it wasn't in scripture you're just like okay the point being is is that you're much more if you don't have specificity about this stuff you're more likely to be drawn into error now the problem the problem that we're living in right now is modernism it's the heresy that we're living in and modernism uh is the synthesis of all heresies which is why in the end I think that the only true antidote to modernism is our lady because she's the Conqueror of all heresies so she's the in one sense she is the solution right um and it's kind of interesting because you see this the priesthood have a strong Devotion to our lady even if there's some Er errors in their thinking um as soon as they hear the truth or know the truth they immediately shift and they say okay well then that's what I got to do right because it's it's more based on um just you know maybe a lack of training or formation than it is so much a matter of a matter of the will because there and that is an indicator of something that's very important so modernism the the foundation of modernism is called the principle of eminence which basically transposes the objective criteria for what is true where by mind conforms to reality from that to what that my experience what is my internal experience in relationship to whatever right so it's I become the standard of what's true and what's not true right you see this all the time online so people will say well I think this and I think that one time I had this one woman I was talking to her and somehow we ended up in discussion of God she just starts talking about God and for like 10 minutes I think this and I think that and I think this and I think and and so she just kind of at the end I didn't say thing and then she gets to the end of it she says well what do you think and I said well why don't we ask God what he thinks so then she's like well that's a novel idea I'm like no it's called Revelation right the point being is is that um once they transpose it from what the objective criteria it's Revelation is an objective reality Christ preached it we can read it in a in in a catechism Etc when the church's formal documents it's something that's external to us it's a standard to which our minds have to conform if our TR if we're going if our faith is going to be true or not right in other words faith is ordered towards the deposit of Faith the virtue of faith is ordered towards giving Ascent to what's in was have been revealed that means it's order towards something external to us and so the more we can get away from basing our religious practices and what we think from our own interior feelings and dispositions and thoughts and trying to conform it more perfectly to what the church teaches the more certitude that faith will have and the more it will increase and less likely it is to fall upon error but that transposition to where now it's people Bas it upon how they feel or think uh that's a bit of a problem that that the principle of imminence is actually if you look at the history of it through philosophy which we're not going to go into but basically what it was is it turned out to be the intellectual justification ation for part of the sin of Adam where he became the standard by which he was going to judge whether he was going to eat the fruit or not and so from that point on from the time of the Fall we all end up with a problem of selfishness which is in the will but then also intellectually a pron a a proness to erroring judging based upon our own experience and universalizing it or tending to thinking that that's true rather than the objective reality and from that point on so that now what we have is we have a heresy modernism that is founded on the the the whole heresy is founded on a fundamental disorder of original sin to which we're all prone this is why I tell people it's such a toxic heresy because without a tremendous amount of philosophical and Theological knowledge or without a phenomenally good faith your odds of not falling into it are practically nil I mean it's just it there's you know I usually tell people there's only a handful of people I've honestly met that uh didn't fall into some type of modernist error somewhere in their thinking right it doesn't mean that they're all Heretics it just me because sometimes people can have the right in attention I don't want I always want to adhere precisely to what Christ taught and what the church teaches but the problem is is that because it's so much in the atmosphere or some stuff sounds like it rings true when in point in fact it's just completely false right so uh and this is something which we have to keep in mind that we ourselves because of this defect of original sin we ourselves can be prone to judging the truth about something based upon our own interior States or how we feel rather than on reality why am I going into this because when it gets really brutal the interior interior experience of this is going to be extraordinarily painful and people have to be that's why faith has to be the corrective they have to recognize it doesn't matter how bad I feel God is always faithful he predicted all of this our lady predicted all of this that means everything he has said is absolutely true and that going forward it means it's going to be true if it's up to God is the author of life and that means if he doesn't want me to survive this then blessed be God right there has to be that attitude in fact one of the things I want to reprint I haven't gotten around to doing it is there's a little booklet that they used to put out which was Devotion to the man of death God has chosen how you will die before you were even born and that means that you can have a devotion not so much to the death but to why God chose the specific kind of death you're going to go through for your spiritual well-being so it's a Devotion to his piety in relationship to that okay so all that being said uh your faith how certain your faith is how certain you recognize the teachings of the Catholic Church even by the way this is one of them is that the Gates of Hell will not Prevail against it if the church visibly gets to the point there's always going to be a certain invisible aspect of the church because it's part of its intrinsic structure but when the church looks like it visibly implodes and when it looks like that things have gotten so bad that the church practically doesn't exist you if your faith isn't strong you're going to say well that was the end of that I guess whereas if your faith is absolutely clear you you will recognize I don't have to see the I don't have to see what God sees to know that what he told me is true about this I just later it'll become clearer right and so this is something the essentialist structure of the church will never completely be destroyed um it doesn't mean that it won't shrink drastically doesn't mean it won't get particularly bad on the interior of the among its members Etc it just means that there H they you're going to be able to have the faith to recognize it doesn't matter this is the Catholic faith this is what I'm going to believe regardless it also the and how will you know you're go you're getting there you're getting to that point do you compromise you know this is one of the things that you see people doing all the time people are saying oh I believe in the Catholic faith and then they'll go out and then you know it's time to pray before meals that they're at at a restaurant they're like looking around make sure no one's looking and then they do it you know you're like really you know my attitude is look things are so nutty out there they're so nutty people will just look at you and say oh you're just another one of the nuts so what difference does it make but yesterday when we went out to dinner all the priest are in CICS and I go into I go into the restroom and the guy walks in hey I kind of like your robe I'm like you know because people are not at least he didn't call it a dress he had up for that sense he seemed like a decent guy actually but the point being is is that is that it doesn't matter what happens externally you Faith helps us to keep our Focus where we're going in our internal Ascent to the truths of the faith it's going to get bad we're going to see a lot of people fall out because their faith is weak and they're going to think that the evidence is contrary to what the church has taught because their faith isn't strong enough to see the truth even in those things you see this commonly among people who suffer a lot because um in fact I have a friend of mine that's going through some tremendous suffering right now and he's angry with God I'm like you have no justification for being angry and it's really boils down to the fact that he he he can't keep his perspective because his emotions have gotten the better of him and as a result that he's actually acting contrary to his faith you know he doesn't believe that God is all good because it's kind of the whole Pro the um Prosperity Gospel well this person's getting this this this and this and this and I'm getting you know the shaft right and so where's God in all this in the shaft right the the point being is is that it's actually in the suffering the stronger of virt that we have of Faith the greater Clarity we have that the suffering is actually purifying us helping us and is actually getting us to where we need to be and it's actually the suffering is a sign of his love for us God your life we like to think that we have complete control over everything right we have virtually no control over stuff I mean we do make choices and stuff I'm not suggesting that we don't but the ultimate flow of History because God is the Lord of history the ultimate flow of history is entirely at his discretion literally not a single circumstance of your life isn't in your life unless it's part of his positive will or his permissive will literally every single thing and so this means that anything that comes down the pike even in relationship to suffering that he chooses specific sufferings for people to purify them but in order to make them holy so the Holier you the Holier he wants you to become it just means the more you're going to suffer you know and even if things are hunky dory on the externals like you've got money and your kids are going to the Catholic faith and go to Catholic church and they're living their faith and everything seems fine on the externals it doesn't mean that he's not going to start letting you suffer internally from stuff there can be a whole variety of different ways that he can tailor your suffering and it's ultimately for that the point being is that faith is the one that keeps us focused through the suffering St John of the Cross when he discusses the dark KN of the senses and the dark KN of the Soul what happens with the Dark Knight of the senses is he strips people of any emotional consolation uh any kind of um sensible consolation whatsoever in relationship to God he just strips them of it and the problem with us as human beings is that we tend to think oh God likes me because he's giving me the spiritual cookie right the difficulty is is when God gives you consolations that's normally a sign of imperfection because he has to give it to you because you're like the dog right so what's the dog so you can tell R roll over he just looks at you right you take the little Milk Bone dog biscuit and you go like this right and then he starts following it and rolls over right and then you give him the treat and then you keep doing that and you keep giving him the treat give give him the treat that certain point you don't want to give him the treat you just want him to do it right well if you're getting the if you're if you're getting the milk moan dog biscuits spiritually that's a sign that he doesn't see that you're where you need to be spiritually to be able to do it just by his prompting and so we have to be able to be able to become completely detached from the from the um the uh consolations so John of the Cross says once all those consolations are stripped from us because what happens we tend to make our those consolations the judgment about God's will now I'm not putting aside what St Ignatius is that you can kind of look at this consolations and desolations and that that can be used to uh with a proper interpretation you can see where God is leading you that's true however they're not that foundation for knowing exactly where you were at in your spiritual life if you're getting a lot of consolation that's usually a bad sign right spiritually whereas if you're suffering an awful lot then that's usually a good sign but it's not just suffering so sometimes people come to me and they're possessed and um I'll say I very often ask how much are you willing to suffer and they'll say I'm so I'm already suffering I'm like that's not what I asked you I know you're suffering the question is how willing is it and so if they're willing to suffer then they can actually the grind as it increases they can still maintain their focus but John of the Cross says when he's talking about in his writings when he's talking about going through the Dark Knight of the senses and The Dark Knight of the Soul so in the Dark Knight of the Soul he strips the person even of their ability to remember things about God their ability to um any in any in uh intellectual or uh volitional consolation all that stripped and the person seems completely blind right and he says it's in that moment and this is something which I think that the Desolation that's going to occur not just with the chastisement but as things can continue to go down in our culture because we're going to be watching the writing on the wall is they is these these people get more and more evil because there is no de U bottom to depravity as people get more and more evil we know eventually they're going to turn on us right we know it we know it's coming it's just a matter of time and so um and because this is what Christ predicted it's what's happened in the history of the church Etc we're not special God is going to take us down that same path he has everybody else as part of it has to do with just the structure and mechanics of how this stuff works so when that starts to happen we know this is where it's headed but that should not deter us or affect us at least in our understanding of in the end at all but at least in relationship to our understanding of the truth of what the Catholic church has said it doesn't matter how much the mainstream news media hammers on the church it doesn't matter how much even the people in the church hammer on the church or say things contrary to the church or it's Pro or it's true teachings none of that should matter because it doesn't matter because in the end we already know what the truth is because of our faith the more faith we have the more certain we will see their error the less likely we are to be affected by it and so the more we more we know our faith and study it and then give Ascent to it and also as I mentioned working on charity making acts of love of God at regular intervals the more our faith is going to become stronger and so when we see this we're going to naturally start to see ourselves separated from the world realize I'm not part of that you know that isn't who I am or me and I don't identif I don't identify that way right and so um the point being is is that we'll start to see ourselves separated because our Focus will be on God and it won't affect our faith none of that will affect our faith because of our the certitude so the sensus fiday is this uh the more virtue the faith you have the more sense so to speak that you have in knowing what the truth regarding the faith actually is and this is something you have to continue working on because it's going to get worse the sensus fidelium is based upon that so this sensus fiday is something that the individual person has and we have them by varying degrees so each one of us has a sense of faith and when people hear when we hear things that are either in congruity or not in congruity with what the church teaches then we can immediately see whether that is or is not true right and so and we give a sent to it or not based upon whether it's true or not and that's the sense that's in us as an individual as part of the virtue of Faith but then collectively and uh this is something that is has to be talked about too because we're starting to see stuff kind of go AR here in the way they're talking the census fidelium is the collective consensus so to speak or inclination you see in the totality of those who are truly faithful towards the truth of a particular proposition so for example pasas I 9th used the census fidelium as a foundation for one of one of the foundations for why belief in the Immaculate Conception was true because the faithful by and large give a sent to that this is actually true right and so basically what does that mean all Catholics who actually have the Catholic faith will just naturally as a sensus felian give aent to a particular proposition that the church has so in the case of the iMac conception before it was formally defined they intended to believe it right and so uh at least that that was his argument but you can actually see this in relationship to other things even just the fact that authentic good C Catholics always knew that you know homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered or that certain kinds of things are intrinsically disordered they just know it because collectively they see this and so the sensus fidelium can actually tell us and so the church will actually watch it right and say where what's how is God inclining the totality of the truly faithful towards a specific uh teaching or doctrine and that can give us a sense of how we know something is actually true the reason I'm bringing this up is because we're coming up against a time where they're going to start trying to use that against the church and Church's formal teachings so for example if you go back to 1900 let's just take that as a stop point and you asked the Catholics collectively was contraception morally sinful across the board the Catholics would say yes and they'd have certitude about it but now because there's so many Catholics uh engaging in contraception now there's certain people who don't believe what the church believes anyway are now starting to say well the sensus FID is is that maybe it's okay no these people don't have the faith they're not living the faith they're not most of them it's not just contraception is their issue there's all sorts of other issues in relationship to this right and so they're trying to they trying to claim that these are the faithful look look a group of people that claims to believe certain things doesn't constitute the faithful what constitutes the Faithful is the collection of those who actually have the faith and actually give a sent to what the church teaches this is a key thing and so I'm just putting that out there just realize if you start hearing that talk which we've heard a little bit of it already if you start hearing that talk it's no it's those who adhere because the virtue of Faith St Thomas says is one in everybody what does he mean by that the virtue of faith I have if you have and and if it's if I have the virtue of faith and you have the virtue of Faith the species or the nature of it is identical there's no difference it gives you the ability to give Ascent to the same teachings that I can give Ascent to so it's one in all it's not Vari varied by different people so when people say well that's just your faith that's just nonsense it's the faith and that's it right and this means that collectively the sensus fidelium who all have that faith will be inclined to give a sent to a very specific teaching now that means and I want to go back to what St Vincent of laoren said that means that when you watch and observe the census fidelium it's always in congruity with that principle of everywhere always and by all so the truly faithful throughout the entire history of the church even now will always give Ascent to the Incarnation the Blessed Trinity Our Ladies of Amica conception the her assumption Etc that now that they've been defined the point being is is that it it remains consistent throughout time it does not and cannot change because faith is one the faith that I received at baptism is the same one that St Paul got when he got smacked by Christ right and it's the same one that you got at your baptism it's the same one it's the same throughout the entire history of the church it does not change because why the virtue of faith is ordered towards moving the human intellect to give it aent to the deposit of faith and that deposit of Faith does not change okay so all that being said we have to continue working on faith your faith has to be extraordinarily strong because you're going to have to be able to keep your head it means you're going to have to don't think with your emotions when it comes to the faith or what's going on in the world you have to keep that perspective intellectually this is what we know to be true this is what Christ has taught us that's what I'm going to adhere to it doesn't matter what occurs externally to me this is what the church has always taught this is what I'm going to believe and so that the virtue of faith is one of the key virtues you're going to need going forward not just if there's a chastisement because when the chastisement hit you're not going to get through it without your faith being the foundation for your being able to sustain it you need you're going to have to have a very strong faith and the suffering you're going to is either going to increase your faith or it's going to tear it down you're going to lose it so it's better to start building it now so you're more likely to sustain it okay if you'll kneel I'll give you a blessing bened de omnipotentis p and at amen Midwest precious metals roll over your IRA today