Its that time of year again. Here is what the late, great theologian Fr. John Hardon had to say about Halloween. Below are a few excerpts from the full article, which is linked below as well. I recommend reading it. The bold type is my emphasis. Enjoy!
From Fr. John Hardon's "The Real Meaning of Halloween"
The bottom line is that Halloween is a return of unqualified paganism into cultures where Protestantism has de-Catholicized a nation and removed one of the clearest signs of an authentic Catholic mentality, namely, the veneration of the Saints.
I have a short paragraph conclusion: Our responsibility. Halloween has become so built into our national culture that it is simply taken for granted. Almost nobody knows or seems to care about this return of a pagan custom into what was once a Christian nation. Our responsibility is to do whatever we can to restore Halloween. What am I saying? And I’m being taped, to top it off: To restore Halloween to its Catholic place in the Church’s calendar. How? Know the Saints. As John Calvin wrote and he is the genius behind Protestantism: there are no saints, there are no saints. To invoke the saints - this once so called Protestant confession after another - to invoke the saints is blasphemy!
Know The Saints: Promote Their Writings
Our Catholic responsibility: Know the Saints who we do believe in and at least, even one small book on the life of, either a saint or, of the saints, say, of the calendar year. Know the Saints. Promote the writings of the Saints. They have written extensively. Publicize the Lives of the Saints. This is not an exaggeration. Before my ordination, and it’s just as well I did not have a Xerox machine or some other way of making copies; I would write them out on little cards that I would, then, use as I have over the years - over 5,000 quotations from the saints before my ordination.
Use Halloween to Restore Saints in Our Lives And in History
And one last recommendation: Use the occasion of Halloween to restore Saints to their place in our lives and National History. And I thank you for the opportunity of speaking on Halloween, as Halloween really should be spoken of - as the Vigil of All the Saints. Thank you for listening. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
9 comments:
The magesterial Prots are restoring their own kind of saint worship to your hollow weed. They've renamed the day as Reformation Day and use it to worship Martin Luther and John Calvin. And of course they use it to get drunk and participate in debauchery to celebrate justification by faith alone. But Catholics engage in drunkenness and debauchery too, just instead of doing it to celebrate faith alone they celebrate the confessional booth (which amounts to the same thing). You should read my three posts on Reformation Day. Its riveting stuff.
Frankly I could care less about your "riveting" stuff. You are too far out of reality to converse with.
When you can find the prophecy "he shall be called a Nazarene" anywhere in the Old Testament or prove that Isaiah 7-8 is not about Mahershalalhashbaz being born of a virgin as a sign of when Pekkah and Rezin would be defeated by Assyria, then and only then will you have any ground to stand on in labeling Marcion a heretic. Until then, your editor who made up false OT prophecies and twwisted real ones to contsruct the birth story lies is proven to be the real heretic, and Marcion is vindicated. I say the same to the Prots, especially to Turretinworshipper.
Keep living with your conspiracy theories. I go with the truth.
You are ignoring the obvious fact that you cannot be a Christian without beliving in one conspiracy theory or another about the scripture. Either you believe Tertullian's conspiracy theory that Marcion removed the birth narratives or you believe in the Marcionites' conspiracy theory that Catholics added the birth narratives. You can't get way from believing one of these conspiracy theories!!! So, what I am saying is instead of choosing which one to believe based on which church had the most wicked Imperial tyrannical wordly carnal and impious government authority and secular brute force behind them, you should instead actually evalute the evidence. The made up and twisted prophecies used to prop up the Catholic view in Matthew show that the Marcionites were right. You can sit there smugly saying "the power of the wicked Roman emperors and centuries of Inquisitions have established what I believe and I will not be shaken by evidence" or you can be a rational human being rather than an animal that worships carnal power and bloodshed, and you can look at the evidence. Establishing you views by making a pact with Satan to have him send his armies to kill everyone who disagrees with you does NOT make you right. Quite the opposite.
You are delusional. Please don't comment on my blog anymore. You are not rational. Thanks in advance for co-operating.
You know how in Germany its illegal to deny that the Holocaust took place? Well it ought to also be illegal to deny the Inquisition took place. You're as nutty as Ackmadinajad going around denying the Holocaust when you deny the Inquisition. You're delusional.
Who said anything about the Inquisition, loser? Go away.
Matt, please do not delete this guy's comments. He makes me laugh. It would be hard to make this stuff up. I applaud him for his creativity.
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