The Girl, the Woman, the Jews, the Separated Christians and the Two Witnesses
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Liberal Christianity is bent on making this world a better place physically. It is soft both ways: soft-hearted and soft-headed.
Pharisaical Christianity is bent on spiritual truth and sin, which they confound ad infinitum. It is hard both ways: hard-headed and hard-hearted.
When the devil mocks these conditions into secular counterparts, he does a Freaky Friday:
1. Communism is also bent on making the world a better place physically. But it is not soft-headed and soft-hearted, like its liberal origin. Rather, it is hard-headed and hard-hearted. How? Well, atheism is its mantra: unlike the confusion of Protestantism, it is a rigid "certitude" that nothing is true other than a despairing non-existence of any spiritual realm. There are no God or gods, only a brute materialistic existence, and the aim of life is physical sustenance and accomplishment. And we must therefore impose a cruel and crushing mold upon everyone to make ends meet. A sinister totalitarian regime.
2. Relativism is oriented toward ideas, ideologies, morals, and the meaning of life, all of which are confounded like Pharisaical Christianity, yes. But it is NOT hard-hearted and hard-headed like its self-same conservative origin. It is rather soft-hearted and soft-headed. How would this be? Clearly, the devil would mock the presumptuous hereitc approach to chaos in doctrine and sin by setting up the most desirable solution to the conundrum: retain the hurricane that nevertheless flows from Pharisaical Protestantism, but absolve everyone from culpability: RELATIVISM!
This is exactly what the devil has done in our modern times. It works like this: We have seen that the Pharisee has a hard head and a hard heart. What is wrong with this is not the hard head, which is good, but that our hearts should be SOFT, not hard. So the Pharisee is good in one way but not the other, just like the liberal is good in being soft-hearted but bad in being soft-headed. So what does the devil do? He flips it to its opposite! He pulls a freaky friday! In other words, he creates an approach to chaotic religion and ideology that is soft-hearted, but soft headed, meaning, he, rightly, asserts the realization that culpability can be lacking in persons to some degree some times but that, NEVERTHELESS, WRONGLY, THERE REALLY IS NO WAY TO KNOW THE TRUTH! Then, NO ONE is culpable for anything! EVERYBODY Is right and should just be left alone!
This can be seen in the following ways also: just as the presumptuous Protestant claims to know ALL the answers to the chaos and presumes he is SAVED, and just as the despairing, fearful Protestant, who is victim to the Pharisaical Protestants, cries out that he has NO answers to the chaos and that he is most likely DAMNED, the relativistic society claims that EVERY PERSON has ALL the answers and EVERYONE IS SAVED, even though they are all in contradiction!
But where does that leave the authentically religious person? In the dust, since authentic religion, regardless of type, must always, by reason, admit absolute truth. It follows that, in this relativism, a person of sincere goodwill will be persecuted for claiming that there is absolute truth that can be acquired to the applicable degree possible when one searches, even if he admits, in accord with the relativistic society, that innocently ignorant or wounded persons can have diminished culpability in the truth. Hence, a person who desires to live in reason must vehemently attack the idea that myriads of competing ideas can all simultaneously possess full truth.
The counterpart with communism is that atheism is also against reason, like relativism, but in a different way, namely, that monotheism can be known from natural logic. In this mode, then, the authentic religious person agrees that physical needs should be sought to be provided for, but they disagree on the means: totalitarian, atheistic socialism. Rather, man must live the Gospel with faith in God and in solidarity with his brother.
So, here, then, we have two beasts, two godless ideologies, both fully wicked but different: one, a total, rigid denial of all religious truth and a cruel, hard-hearted imposition of the "corporal works of mercy,", and this, in the land of the East; the other, a wild and crazy amalgam of myriads of conflicting opinions, all regarded as equal in veracity, and yet, insanely enough, in the name of the pursuit of spiritual and moral truth, and this, in the West.
This is incredible by typology in several dimensions.
First, just as the East broke from the West a millennium ago in schism, with the East taking 4 of the 5 Apostolic Sees with them, leaving the remnant See of Peter behind in West--yet Peter being the ultimate spiritual ruler—so, in the Old Testament, the North broke from the South in schism and took 10 of the 12 tribes, yet the remnant South being the true Kingdom. And get this, both North and South would go on to experience chastisements in maturity of their condition: the North first by Assyria and the South later by Babylon.
Bingo, both schismatic and true kingdoms of Old and New each have their own beast: For North/South, it is Assyria/Babylon, and for East/West it is Communism/Relativism. A century ago, much of the Northeastern portion of the world went under a horrible scourge of atheistic and matieralistic communism. The West remained largely free of religious persecution for this amoutn of time, and had a great space to repent of her ever-growing secularism. But she HAS NOT, just as the South, who had even, presumably, more time, DID NOT! So the South went under Babylon, and the West is now entering, most likely, an age of green persecution: relativism! Bake this same sex wedding cake, or lose your business. Provide these immoral, anti-life services in your insurance, or shut down your business. Participate in this abortion, or lose your job. Make this website that goes against your conscience, or be fired. Take a class and solemnly declare some immoral behavior licit, or do not graduate from college.
Morever, consider the further profundity: Christian disunity in the land of the East is more stable spiritually than the West, since its primary affliction has been schism, because the Orthodox are very close to the Church (they pretty much have all of our faith sparing Peter and some minor heresies.) On the other hand, The same Christian disunity in the West is far more grievous, being heresy, or Protestantism.
Now, we remember how this was seen in the loaves and fishes article here: Sacramental Ecclesiology in the Loaves and Fishes
More specifically, the 5 loaves and 2 fish symbolized heresy, which splits up the sacramental life: heretics lose the 5 sacraments that absolutely require the priesthood or bishopric, and retain only 2, baptism and marriage, noting that these two "fish" are indicative of the heretical kingdom that must get its sustenance from the sea, a place of chaos where they are tossed to and fro by every wave of doctrine.
On the other hand, the seven loaves and few fish symbolized schism: the Orthodox retain valid Apostolic Succession, and so have all seven sacraments, but “fish” a little with some minor instablities of doctrine.
Amazingly, regarding our 4/5 East/West comparison, the land of 5|2 combo was fed to 5,000, and the 7|few combo was fed to 4,000. Hmm, 4|5. Well, the 4 makes sense for the Orthodox but it actually would make more sense if it was 4|1, since Peter is by himself and is only one Apostolic See, not 4. But, aha! The whole infallible Apostolic Deposit resides in Peter all by himself in that he alone possesses the fullness of the charism of infalliblity within his singular self. So Peter, though only 1 numerically, is like 5 supernaturally! Rock and roll! Now we have another mindblowing loaves and fishes profundity: each sacramental mystery scene is fed to the corresponding geography from whence it rises: in the East--the land of 4 Patriarchs [the East]--the primary form of separation is schism, where seven sacraments are retained—7 loaves to 4,000; and in the West, the land of the singular but supreme fullness of Apostolicity, the authority of all 5 Sees in one, the primary form of rift has been heresy, where 5 sacraments are lost and only 2 retained—5 loaves, 2 fish to 5,000.
This actually can extend the depth of our analysis. How? Well, note, from above, the land of the East is fairly stable spiritually, with only mainly schism there. And which of the two godless spiritual beasts took root there? The chaotic relativism or the “stable”, atheistic communism? The latter! Stable for stable! Ditto on the West! The West was plagued with a chaotic and stormy heresy, and out of it arises a self-same turbulent godlessness, relativism! Turbulence for turbulence! Indeed, the devil knows what he is doing!
In conclusion: the liberal heretic has a soft heart and a soft head, and lives for the corporal works of mercy, but the devil's secular mockery of him, which is communism, is hard-hearted and hard-headed; and the conservative heretic has a hard head and a hard heart, but the devil's mockery of him, which is relativism, has a soft heart and a soft head!
See this huge essay for more:
I am a Catholic revert. I desire to share deeper theology about the Catholic Church that is admittedly speculative but that makes perfect sense from Catholic doctrine and church teaching.
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