The Melchizedek Chronicles- Fallen Catholics – Where do they turn for help when they feel abandoned by their Church?

Are you becoming more like they want you to be than yourself?  If so, what are you going to do about it?

In a world dominated by fear, hatred, distrust and all those other tools of the Dark Side it is not surprising many are questioning whether they are being abandoned by a Church caught up in denial and a morality crisis of their own making.

First, we must consider if you are really a victim or are you a causal Catholic looking for an excuse to not participate actively in church activities.  If you are a true believer in the teaching of Jesus, then you are a true victim.  If you are a Catholic slacker then you have little to lose in the current church morality crisis.

What is a true believer?

Melchizedek, the overseer of God’s Creation for all Souls on Earth, not just Roman Catholics, sharply distinguishes between the institution of religion and the spirituality of God’ word.  There can be no more powerful weapon to protect you than to embrace the Creator’s Truth, because the Creator’s Truth is the Creator’s Will.  Embrace the Truth and you will live the Creator’s Will.

Knowing something is a uniquely human process.  We seek.  We find.  We validate.  We embrace.  Yet knowing, in and of itself, is a first step, not the answer.  Knowing the Creator’s Truth requires more than the first step.  It requires you to believe what you know is true in the eyes of God.

It requires unwavering Faith.  Only then can your knowing become the wisdom necessary to reinforce your Faith, and enlighten you to embrace God’s Will.  Many can know something, even the Creator’s Truth, but having Faith requires much more.

We must take that knowing and transform ourselves into living and sharing that Truth.  If we do not transform the Truth into our everyday lives it can only be a self-serving impulse, not a spiritual insight.

In other words, just knowing something to be true by using the intuitive and instinctive gifts God gave you is only half the battle.  Living it as an example and sharing it with others who cannot find it on their own is fulfillment of the Creator’s Will.

So, what are we supposed to know?

First, we need to understand we live in an imperfect world here on Earth.  Whatever we are experiencing in this time and place is but a snapshot in time.  It is the point we have evolved to but does not reflect where we are going or how to complete our journey.

According to Melchizedek, the essence of God’s Creation is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.  It is a never-ending spiral through time of learning, then knowing, then living the Creator’s Will.

It is the journey of the Soul through time and space yet the Soul is free of all the limitations of our physical world.  You stand in your physical world for a lifetime on Earth, what Melchizedek calls living “in time.”

Yet thanks to the spiritual nature of the Soul, you also stand in the spiritual world beyond time and space, what Melchizedek calls living “outside of time,” beyond the limitations of gravity, death and even your mind.

God’s Creation, which we inhabit, is a never-ending series of cycles through time, what Melchizedek calls the Human Life Cycles of Earth.  It is a time of constant creation, regeneration, evolution and procreation.

Our physical world is every bit as immortal as the Soul, because it keeps growing, expanding, creating and regenerating whether it be humans, plants, animals, planets, stars, suns or solar systems and galaxies.

Inherent within the Soul is the knowledge that we are all instruments of God’s Creation.  Your spiritual Soul knows, but it needs the power of the Holy Spirit to awaken your mind to your part in God’s Plan.

That is why God sent his Son to re-awaken us to our amazing potential as Creations of God.

You are not bound by anything in your time on Earth except sharing in the perfect love of the God who created you.  You are not a hostage to your DNA, bloodlines or any other genetic conditions because your body and mind are simply the vehicles needed to get you here on Earth.

Jesus was sent to teach you the path to redemption and salvation, and to show you your potential to transfigure, to resurrect from the dead, and to ascend into the Heavens to be One with your Creator.

Transfigure, resurrect and ascend, these are powerful, even miraculous abilities far exceeding our physical existence on Earth.  These are available to you because Jesus taught about it, that we are not a hostage to Earth because our Soul and Spirit transcend our physical life.

The Son of God came in human form to show our potential, even as humans.  He came to remind us God created us out of perfect Love, gave us a Soul and Free Will out of perfect Love, and in so doing gave us the means to find eternal life after death through Oneness with our Creator.

The wonders of God’s Creation, reflects all things spiritual and physical, for both are necessary to find our path home.  The human cycle of living and dying is the physical aspect, but it diminishes in importance when compared to your spiritual path, the Soul’s Journey, while in the Kingdom of Heaven.

That is what our Creator gave us.  To help us we were also given divinely inspired beings such as angels, saints to walk among us, adepts to stimulate powerful shifts in the direction of our spiritual evolution, and even spiritual beings to manifest as humans to help show us the way.  Jesus, his Mother Mary, even the Magdalen are divine spirits who walked the Earth to help us find our way back to the Garden, back to Oneness with the Creator.

So far I have not mentioned the religious institutions on Earth because nothing stands between your Soul and the Creator.  God gave you Free Will, the Soul and Spirit so you could make the journey home.

Religion is a human creation, or institution, an honest effort to provide structure for finding our path home, but an institution subject to all the flaws, temptations, fears and difficulties of the humans who formed or maintain the religions.

If people listened to their heart and Soul instead of their mind and the doubts it can generate there would be no need for any religion because all Souls are Created by the Creator.  Unfortunately, we let our logical mind dominate our enlightened Soul which results in spiritual chaos since the Soul alone is our moral and ethical foundation for God’s Plan.

We humans tend to overthink everything and this is no exception.  Jesus said it best.  He said only two commandments needed to be followed to achieve eternal salvation.  Love the Creator, and love our neighbors as ourselves.”  That is it!

The life of Jesus taught us how to live in the grace of God.  The pillars of God’s grace are measured by compassion, empathy, faith, hope, joy, selflessness, and the love expressed to others.  Spiritual wealth is measured by the Souls you touched on your journey and helped them on their journey.

That is the Will of God, the teaching of Jesus, and the reason for any religious institution to exist.  No religion can stop you from living the Will of God.  No religion can stop you from living in a state of grace.

Yet all religions can defy the purpose of God’s Creation if they become hostages to their own dogma, seek to become the judge of people thus usurping the role of God, or stop spiritually evolving toward God’s Truth.

Institutional bureaucracy is the inherent Achilles Heel to all religions.  If religions become complacent, if they think they know God’s Truth, they stop spiritually evolving, they become more concerned with self-preservation than saving Souls, then they have lost their way, not you.

When you accept your relationship with the Creator, learn from the teaching of Jesus, and use your Free Will in a manner consistent with the Creator’s Will, you will never feel alone or abandoned by God.

Jesus taught that “upon this rock I shall build my church.”  I do not believe he meant Peter, the Apostles, the pope, cardinals, bishops or priests.  Nor do I think he meant any basilica, cathedral, church or shrine.  He meant the Earth literally.

Every minute we spend on Mother Earth is spent in the Temple of God throughout our lives.  We do not pick and choose when we will follow God’s Will or not.  We must always follow the teachings of Jesus and live God’s Will.  Put your Faith in them and nothing can break your bonds with the Creator.

Faith is knowing God’s Truth.  The Christ Consciousness is living God’s Will.  

  

Finally, just remember that God forgives, not just you but all actions counter to God’s Will, the Truth.  If your religion, in spite of the troubles, truly can serve the teaching of Jesus and Will of God, it will recover, repent, regenerate and renew itself over time and through the grace of God.

Of course, if you are living in the state of grace of God’s Will, you will most likely want to help those wayward religious institutions heal so they can help other people find the path home.

Fatima mystery blends visions, miracles and supernatural

.

NICOLE WINFIELD and BARRY HATTON,Associated Press Wed, May 10 3:28 AM PDT 

VATICAN CITY (AP) — When Pope Francis travels to the Portuguese town of Fatima this weekend, he will be lending his blessing to a religious phenomenon that has captivated Catholics for a century: It involves visions of the Virgin Mary, supernatural meteorological events and apocalyptic prophesies of hell, Soviet communism and the death of a pope.

For doubters, the Fatima story is a trumped-up tale built around hallucinations. For believers, Fatima's message of peace, prayer and conversion from sin is as relevant today as it was 100 years ago, when three illiterate shepherd children first reported seeing visions of the Madonna.

The pope will canonize two of those children on Saturday and is likely to make his own Fatima message of peace and conversion as a weapon against secularism and the persecution of Christians today.

Here are details about Francis' Friday-Saturday trip to Fatima.

WHAT HAPPENED AT FATIMA?

The three shepherd children, siblings Francisco and Jacinta Marto and their cousin Lucia aged between 7 and 10 at the time, said the Virgin Mary appeared to them six times in 1917 and confided to them three secrets. The first two described an apocalyptic image of hell, foretold the end of World War I and the start of World War II, and the rise and fall of Soviet communism.

In 2000, the Vatican disclosed the long-awaited third secret, describing it as foretelling the May 13, 1981, assassination attempt against St. John Paul II in St. Peter's Square.

John Paul credited the Virgin Mary with saving his life. One of the bullets fired at him rests in the crown of the statue of the Virgin at the shrine.

Portuguese church officials initially doubted the veracity of the apparitions. Many doubters, though, became believers after the so-called "Miracle of the Sun" on Oct. 13, 1917. According to legend, the Fatima "seers" had predicted that the Virgin would perform a miracle that day, and tens of thousands of people flocked to Fatima and saw what witnesses reported was a vision of the sun "spinning" in the sky and zigzagging toward Earth.

The Portuguese church declared the visions authentic in 1930.

WHAT WAS GOING ON AT THE TIME?

At the time of the apparitions, Europe was still in the grip of World War I and Portugal's Catholic Church was facing a crisis after Portugal became a republic in 1910.

The republican government introduced a host of anti-clerical laws, including prohibiting religious teaching at schools. Priests and bishops were exiled.

In that context, the visions helped reinvigorate a persecuted church, giving it "a strong eruption of the supernatural in that difficult moment," said Monsignor Carlos Azevedo, who headed the commission that compiled 15 volumes of Fatima documentation.

Church officials point to the reported secrets about a Second World War, the dangers of Soviet communism and the persecution of the pope and Christians in general, as evidence of Fatima's prophetic message.

WHAT DO PEOPLE DO IN FATIMA?

Like the shrine at Lourdes, France, Fatima draws millions of pilgrims from around the world — about 6 million annually — to give thanks to Our Lady of Fatima, or to pray for help.

Many walk to the town, which is 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of Lisbon. Some complete the last few hundred meters (yards) on their knees. Others toss wax limbs into a fire beside the Chapel of the Apparitions as they recite prayers for healing.

The shrine also contains dozens of shops where trinkets are sold alongside rosaries, bibles and assorted images of the Virgin Mary, including one that changes color with the weather.

WHY IS THE POPE GOING NOW?

Initially, Francis had planned to travel to Fatima merely to mark the 100th anniversary of the apparitions. Francis added a bonus event to his visit by announcing in March that he had approved the miracle needed to make saints of Francisco and Jacinta Marto — who died of influenza within two years of the initial apparitions.

He will be the fourth pontiff to visit Fatima, after Pope Paul VI marked the 50th anniversary in 1967, John Paul came three times and Benedict XVI visited once, in 2010.

After becoming a nun, Lucia became the main raconteur of the Fatima secrets. She died in 2005. In February of this year, Portuguese church officials completed the first phase of her beatification cause by sending more than 15,000 pages of testimony and documentation to the Vatican for review.

WHAT WILL THE POPE DO IN FATIMA?

Francis arrives on Friday afternoon and meets privately with Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.

After a spin in his popemobile at Fatima, he'll pray at the chapel dedicated to the apparitions and send a greeting out to the crowd, which is expected to number up to 1 million people.

On Saturday, Francis meets with Prime Minister Antonio Costa and visits the basilica built on the site where the children reported the first apparition. He'll celebrate the canonization Mass in the main square, lunch with his bishops, and return to Rome in the evening.

Barry Hatton reported from Fatima, Portugal.

. 

Pope Francis Continues his assault on Global Capitalism - the Many Sides to the People's Pope

.

The People's Pope has stayed true to his message of social justice and continued to say capitalism as it is practiced today is a manipulation by the rich to control the lives of everyone else.  It is a message that undermines the flamboyant living of a number of Bishops of the Church, a number of whom have already sold off million dollar estates.

More important, it is a direct challenge to the political leaders of America to stop protecting the rich and start caring for the middle class and poor.  It seems odd that all those defenders of the people running for and holding political office are pretty much silent when it comes taking on capitalism.

Capitalism is not protected by our Constitution and did not even exist when our nation was founded in this country.  It evolved over time and as it became more and more of a force in the evolution of America those practitioners of capitalism seemed to create their own creed, their own constitution and their own priorities far disparate from those of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

Where our nation was founded on equal opportunity and individual freedom, capitalism was based on greed, power, accumulation and control.  Once upon a time our nation was the model for the world in terms of social justice and the good of the people was the goal of the nation and it led us into combining charity and government assistance into housing, medical practices, transportation, education and agriculture practices that transformed our country and was a beacon to the world.

But somewhere along the line serving the public good fell victim to the greed driven obsession of wealth, power and control.  It wasn't enough to have more money than everyone else, it became fashionable to protect your own wealth by denying it to others.

Our institutions of commerce became more and more exclusive until financial vehicles like the stock markets were thoroughly corrupted with the blind complicity of our very own government.  Corruption has seeped into nearly every aspect of capitalism from financing to banks, to markets, to manufacturing, distribution, sales, quality control and you name it.

The government, federal, state and local, became the way to legitimize corruption and all it took was the rich setting aside a small percentage of the trillions of dollars in our economy to lobby politicians, set up kickbacks, insider trading deals, political campaign contributions, arms deals and you name it as long as tax dollars were used and there were no restrictions on bonuses whether corporate executives or government employees.

When the dark side takes hold the talons run deep, straight to the heart, and both those people who were participating in corruption and those who were ignoring corruption became the normal, not the exception to the rule.

Total it takes a Pope from South America to point out the obvious to Americans because those here in America responsible for what goes on are caught up in the game and long ago lost their moral compass.

Long ago Jesus Christ went ballistic when he found the merchants peddling their wares in the Temple and he drove them away.  There is no Jesus today and instead of a Temple we have a nation that is full of corrupt and unethical practices.  Maybe instead of trying to fix economic problems caused by greed we should eliminate the instruments of evil used to cheat the people through capitalism and restore individual rights, freedom and equality.

As for the Pope, well he practices what he preaches.  Just check out the next article about how he has cleaned house in the Vatican Bank, a corrupt partner to the American banking system.  If only our elected representatives had the same guts for protecting the people.  Maybe the multi-million dollar bonuses earned by defrauding the American people and triggering a worldwide recession won't happen again.

Pope Francis Fires His Bankers…Again

By Rob Garver

.

Pope Francis Fires His Bankers…Again

When he took over as head of the Roman Catholic Church last year, Pope Francis made it clear that he meant to be the leader of a “poor church” – meaning that the Vatican would focus less on its own splendor and more on finding ways to use its vast financial resources to benefit the world’s poor.

It’s turning out to be more of a struggle than Francis may have expected; last week he found it necessary to fire all five directors of the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority – essentially the primary financial watchdog over the Papal State’s considerable financial operations.

The announcement on Thursday was only the most recent in a series of firings, replacements, and arrests that have rocked the Vatican’s financial hierarchy. It turns out that for Francis, casting the moneychangers out of the Temple has proven to be a time-consuming task.

Last summer, a number of senior officials with the Vatican Bank resigned around the time that one of its senior accountants, Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, was arrested and charged with conspiring to smuggle more than $20 million from Italy to Switzerland. Scarano, reportedly known in Rome as “Monsignor 500” for his habit of displaying a wallet full of €500 notes, has since been charged with multiple other offenses, including money laundering.

In January, Francis fired four out of the five cardinals on the commission overseeing the bank, known as the Institute for Works of Religion, or IOR in its Italian acronym. Supposed to serve only priests, nuns, and religious orders, the Vatican Bank has been implicated in money laundering schemes and other illegal activity. Francis made it clear that he was open to closing down the bank completely.

In February, by Papal edict, he laid out multiple new transparency requirements for the Vatican’s financial arm, and created a new Secretariat for the Economy, meant to act as an auditor general for the Vatican. The following month, he indicated that the Vatican Bank would survive, though in a vastly different form, as a large number of accounts not related to its central mission were shut down.

The edict, though, has not cleaned out all of the old guard who have made the Vatican’s financial system a laughingstock among law enforcement professionals and a haven for criminals.

Last week’s announcement came after Swiss money laundering expert René Brülhart, who was named to head the Financial Information Authority, complained that he was being obstructed by the board – made up of five Italians with connections to the Vatican’s old guard.

In years past, it might have been Brülhart, at one point the head of Liechtenstein’s respected Financial Intelligence Unit, who found himself out on the street.

To Francis’s credit, there is a new board on its way in oversee the Vatican’s financial watchdog Its makeup is remarkable only because of its international nature: it’s made up of four international experts, including former financial regulators – one from the U.S., one from Switzerland, one from Singapore and a fourth from Italy. It is also notable that the Italian member is a woman, insurance executive Maria Bianca Farina, making her one of the few women with significant authority in the Vatican.

.