Hello TIA,

Here you have some confirmation of your comments on the death of Pope John Paul II.

Keep up the good work.

     In Christ Jesus,

     E.J.

TIA,

Both the two following links look like a clear message from God to me!

1. Rockin' Out at The Rock Church

2. The Rock Church Struck By Lightening and Burns

Gary Morella



Note from the Editor:

Several years ago TIA displayed pictures of dancers at the Rock Church, here. We also responded to an objection to our comments, here.

Dear Sirs,

I've been reading your wonderful section "Organic Society." I would like to know the origin of the articles from Dr. Plinio (in which magazine, paper, etc. where first published, date and original name) since I would like to get the originals.

     Thank you!

     C.F.



TIA responds:

Dear C.F.,

Thank you for your question. It gave us the opportunitity to include an explanatory note at the end of each article in the Organic Society section. We were planning to post this note for some time, and we did so yesterday.

Actually, those articles are based on trancripts of tapes and personal notes from countless lectures by Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, as well as conversations he had with friends about the principles that oriented Christendom in the past, and should apply for a future Catholic society.

After translating and making available more than 200 Saints of the Day, Atila Guimarães now is also posting articles based on Prof. Plinio's teachings about Organic Society.

At this moment, our plan is to post two Saints of the Day and two articles on Organic Society per month. If we had more spare time and auxiliaries, we could post more of this fascinating material.

You can see that most of this material comes from non-published sources. Alas!

     Cordially,

     TIA correspondence desk

TIA,

Greetings in Christ,

Your website has certainly come a long way in the last couple of years!

I am particularly interested in the Organic Society section, as this goes to the heart of the matter of the decline of Western Civilization today. My own theory is that reason, science, and SANITY was at its summit in the High Middle Ages, when the Church was producing the likes of Thomas Aquinas and Albert the Great.

In the future, I believe that the Enlightenment will be viewed by historians as the death of reason and organic society in the West. The REAL "Dark Age" of modernism is, in fact, the beginning of the end for Western Civilization. The Enlightenment essentially replaced Western Christian civilization with a culture of death.

Science, divorced from philosophy and morality, is the face of "god" in the "New Age." Technology is only the utilitarian tool of wealth and power (the state), and it has no conscience. The family is a real threat to this totalitarian manipulation of man, and so we promulgate the "culture of death" today, which in 'Newspeak' terms is called "choice," or "freedom," or "democracy," or "tolerance."

We think we are free, sophisticated, and enlightened, but we are only arrogant in our hedonism, ignorance, and nihilism. How deluded are we? A recent survey of Americans revealed that a majority believe the United States to be the greatest culture ever to exist in history! Never mind the genocide of millions in the womb, or the death of anything resembling education in our schools. Reason has been replaced by agenda.

In truth, I don't know that the United States has ever resembled an 'organic society,' and today, the total breakdown of neighborhoods, family, and morality, and the rise of corruption, criminal gangs, and violent crime should serve as a warning that our nation is in a state of serious decay and rapid decline that may not be reversible. It may already be too late. Once you throw God out of society, then the secular state (power and wealth) must be elevated to the status of god, and the family (and hence, the individual) is then seen as subversive to the utilitarian ends of corrupt social planners.

Science (natural philosophy) is separated from the rest of philosophy, and hence from theology and morality. It is viewed only as "technology," i.e., for its utilitarian value (how it serves wealth and power), and any moral questions are viewed as coming from a superstitious and unscientific mindset, a relic of the medieval "Dark Ages."

And now that modern dictators have learned how easy it is to "dumb-down" and manipulate public opinion through the latest technology and media, how they must LOVE democracy and the vote! The mass media are geared to divert and to tell the Big Lie, and to feed our vices (cult of the flesh), and thus to keep us satiated and our attention directed away from the corruption of the state and all the dead bodies. And anyone who points out the evil going on is guilty of a "hate crime" and intolerance.

The average Catholic parish in the United States is very far away from the notion of the contrada of Sienna, and most people don't have a clue (or care) who is in the pew alongside them. Mass ends, and it's a mad rush for the parking lot to get home in time for the big game. So much for the Church as a "family" united by any common bonds. At 'home,' there is a TV and a computer in every room, and so everyone is off doing their own thing. Dad is watching the big game, mom is on the internet, and the kids are busy destroying everything in some violent video game that's the latest rage. You'll be lucky to get everyone to sit down together at the dinner table to eat! And then they really won't want to talk to each other anyway. It's too boring...

So the question becomes how to restore that organic unity at the parish level? It must begin in the family, but the family social life must also be centered on the parish, and see it as their cultural neighborhood.

But how to counteract the invasive mass media, the cult of the flesh, and the large sports events that pull the family apart? These entertainments capture all our time, capture the parents and the children, and make them totally self-centered. Instant gratification is the name of the game, and so the intensity must always be increased to avoid boredom. It is a culture of ever increasing NOISE! We cannot stand silence (we just don't know what to do with ourselves when left alone with our OWN thoughts!), and so we are always cranking up the volume to the point of becoming deaf to one another! All reality is now virtual, and people themselves are no longer real, only a fantasy to fulfill the lust of the moment. Once they begin to bore, we dump them. They are expendable -- just like the child in the womb is regarded as inconvenient to one's 'lifestyle.'

So, I guess what I'm really getting at here is whether a "Catholic civilization" is even possible today, seeing that Europe and the United States seem intent on pursuing psychosis and suicide - a culture of death.

What we are seeing today is the direct result of the Protestant Revolt and the Enlightenment, and it is this "dark age" of modernism and the secular state that has produced the culture of death and nihilism that dominated the twentieth century -- the greatest century of genocide and death (and at the hands of the secular state, I might addd, not religious wars) in the history of mankind!

It seems to be the suggestion in the article "What is Organic Society" that the revival of any "Catholic civilization" is really dependent on Divine Providence:

This work of inspiration is fundamentally different from a planning committee. In a plan there is an extrinsic reality conceived as a model that must necessarily be followed. Someone reaches theoretical conclusions, systematizes them, and then tries to impose them on the entire society. For example, Socialists, Communists, Nazis and the like are all artificial planners.

The organic society of the future will sprout from the good seed of these principles sowed in the ground where Divine Providence finds receptiveness for them to grow. We should pay attention to where this receptiveness exists and help those peoples as much as we can, fortifying them in their good tendencies and helping them avoid falling into the many current abuses and errors, as well as into the mistakes and pitfalls of the past.

I think this is probably correct, as it does not seem that we are inclined to any such thing on our own initiative in this day and age.

While the Dark Age of the Enlightenment, of Modernism, alienation, nihilism, and the secular state, is now rapidly self-destructing, especially over the last century, the question is whether it will take the remnants of Western Christian civilization with it. It is, after all, a culture of death, and so, like Hitler in the bunker, it would sooner destroy everything else, along with itself, in a final nihilistic orgy and holocaust of death.

I will certainly place my hopes in Divine Providence rather than in man! The Church has survived all that history could throw at it, and so we must remember that the gates of hell will not prevail. That is our Catholic Faith, and it cannot be divorced from Hope and Love!

     Kind regards,

     R.M.

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  Something Is Fishy About the Death of JPII