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.

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

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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

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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.

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Rio de Janeiro Welcomes Papa Francesco & 3 million Youth to Copacabana Beach Mass

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Under the ever watchful eye of the Christ the Redeemer statue looking down from the mountains surrounding Rio de Janeiro Papa Francesco, Pope Francis, ended World Youth Day with over 3 million of the faithful on the Copacabana Beach.

 

As far as the eye could see there was a mass of humanity, many who camped out on the beach overnight to share this moment with Papa.

 

 

Finally even the western media in the US had to cover the story, I mean three million peaceful people in one place is quite a story in this day and age.  The fact the vast majority were youth makes it a better story.

 

Here in America we get a daily dosage of money, murder, drugs and demons it seems but during his stay in Brazil the past few days  the Pope actually defined the false gods of today and told the youth they must work to stop edifying such idols of evil.

 

 

Pope Francis led his first large mass on Wednesday since returning to his native Latin America, decrying "ephemeral idols" like money and power at Brazil's most revered shrine.

 

"It is true that nowadays, to some extent, everyone, including our young people, feels attracted by the many idols which take the place of God and appear to offer hope: money, success, power, pleasure," he said at the Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida basilica.

 

 

"Often a growing sense of loneliness and emptiness in the hearts of many people leads them to seek satisfaction in these ephemeral idols," he said.

 

 

In a meeting with bishops and cardinals from South America he talked about the loss of Catholics in Brazil.

"At times we lose people because they don't understand what we are saying, because we have forgotten the language of simplicity and import an intellectualism foreign to our people," he said. "For ordinary people the mystery enters through the heart."

The pope also warned the bishops against assimilating fashionable values of secular culture.

"People today are attracted by things that are faster and faster: rapid Internet connections, speedy cars and planes, instant relationships," he asked. "Is the church herself caught up in the frantic pursuit of efficiency? Dear brothers, let us recover the calm to be able to walk at the same pace as our pilgrims, keeping alongside them, remaining close to them, enabling them to speak of the disappointments present in their hearts and to let us address them."

Among the pope's specific recommendations for the church in Brazil were deeper engagement by bishops in national debates on such "pressing concerns" as "education, health and social harmony"; and more attention to collegiality within the episcopate, downplaying "central bureaucracy" in favor of "local and regional elements."

He gave special attention to the needs of the Amazon basin, in terms of both ecological protection and the training of indigenous clergy to serve indigenous peoples there.

"'Pastoral care' is nothing other than the exercise of the church's motherhood," the pope said. "She gives birth, suckles, gives growth, corrects, nourishes and leads by the hand.

"So we need a church capable of rediscovering the maternal womb of mercy," he said. "Without mercy we have little chance nowadays of becoming part of a world of 'wounded' persons in need of understanding, forgiveness and love."
 

Pope Francis told leading Latin American bishops that all Catholics must renew the Church with a “missionary spirit,” acknowledging that he and other bishops are “lagging somewhat” in spiritual renewal.

 

“Bishops must be pastors, close to people, fathers and brothers, and gentle, patient and merciful. Men who love poverty,” the Pope said.

 

He praised bishops with “simplicity and austerity of life,” urging them not to act like “princes” or to be “ambitious” in seeking to lead another diocese.

 

Rather, bishops should be “pointing the way” for their people, preventing them from “being scattered” while “ensuring that no one is left behind.” They should be men capable of guarding and protecting their congregation while also instilling hope “so that light will shine in people’s hearts,” the Pope said July 28.

 

 

The Pope criticized pastoral plans that “clearly lack nearness, tenderness, a warm touch” and are incapable of sparking “an encounter with Jesus Christ” and with other people.

 

“Christ’s followers are not individuals caught up in a privatized spirituality, but persons in community, devoting themselves to others,” the Pope said.

 

Pope Francis focused on two challenges to missionary discipleship: the “inner renewal” of the Church and dialogue with the world. He noted the Second Vatican Council’s guidance in engaging modern life.

 

“Responding to the existential issues of people today, especially the young, listening to the language they speak, can lead to a fruitful change, which must take place with the help of the Gospel, the magisterium, and the Church’s social doctrine,” the Pope said.

 

 

He noted the need to engage the many subcultures of the modern city on their own terms.

 

“If we remain within the parameters of our ‘traditional culture,’ which was essentially rural, we will end up nullifying the power of the Holy Spirit,” he warned. “God is everywhere: we have to know how to find him in order to be able to proclaim him in the language of each and every culture; every reality, every language, has its own rhythm.”

 

Pope Francis praised the spread of Bible groups, ecclesial base communities and pastoral councils. He said these advance the responsibility of the laity and help overcome “clericalism.” He particularly praised expressions of popular piety as a “healthy thing” that shows greater lay autonomy.

 

He also warned against several temptations that are false visions of the missionary spirit.

 

He said clericalism, an excessive lay dependence on or privileging of priests, is “a temptation very present in Latin America.”

 

 

“The phenomenon of clericalism explains, in great part, the lack of maturity and Christian freedom in a good part of the Latin American laity,” he said.

 

Both laity and priests take refuge in clericalism “because it is easier,” he lamented. This causes some Catholics to fail to grow in Christian life or to take refuge in ideology.

 

The Pope warned against turning the message of the Gospel into an “ideology,” whether it is “market liberalism” or Marxism.

 

He said the psychology-focused tendencies of some spirituality courses and spiritual retreats reduce the encounter with Jesus Christ to “self-awareness,” a “self-centered approach” that “has nothing to do with the missionary spirit.” He mentioned the new age practice of the Enneagram as one example.

 

 

He criticized the “gnostic solution” of elite groups of “enlightened Catholics” who offer a “higher spirituality.” He said some advocates of ordaining nuns to the priesthood or of giving communion to the divorced and remarried fall into this error.

 

He also warned against the “Pelagian solution” that seeks a “purely disciplinary solution” through “the restoration of outdated manners and forms which, even on the cultural level, are no longer meaningful.”

 

 

Repeating his previous criticisms, he warned against reducing the Church to “the structure of an NGO” focused on quantifiable results, statistics, and a business-like organization. He said some bishops’ conferences open more and more departments that do not help the mission of Church.

 

Concerning the inner renewal of the Church, Pope Francis stressed the need for “pastoral conversion” focused on “Jesus Christ as the bearer of God’s Kingdom” and trust in the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

 

He posed many questions to the bishops for their own self-examination.

 

He said bishops should ask whether they and their priests are working to ensure that their work is “more pastoral than administrative” and whether they serve “the People of God as a whole” rather than “the Church as an organization.”

 

 

He asked the bishops to examine whether they “manipulate” or “infantilize” the laity.

 

“In practice, do we make the lay faithful sharers in the mission?” he asked.

 

He said bishops should not simply react to complex problems, but should promote opportunities to “manifest God’s mercy.”

 

The Pope concluded with an exhortation: “I beg that we take seriously our calling as servants of the holy and faithful people of God, for this is where authority is exercised and demonstrated: in the ability to serve.”

 

Pope Francis addressed the bishops hours after celebrating Sunday Mass for millions of World Youth Day pilgrims gathered on Rio’s Copacabana Beach.

 

 

In spite of security concerns Papa Francesco has safely returned to Rome.

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