It was Christ who said, Thou art Peter and upon this rock I shall build My Church". However, He is seldom able to remain in His Church anymore. We have now seen Christ exiled from His Church except for a few brief moments each week due to the desire to make His Church acceptable to those who have not been given the faith its members have". "If those of us who have received the Gift of Faith permit Christ to be exiled from His Church and do not obey the laws of His Church or avail ourselves of Confession, we have misused that Gift, a Gift from Providence, for the abuse of which we will be deeply answerable. However, those who have not received the Gift of Faith might be bound only by their mature judgment and their conscience for the abuse of which they will be deeply answerable".
Two Treatises on God and Man
The Exile of Christ from His Church and the Attempt of Man to Alienate his Inalienable RightsBy Ronald E. Kowalski, Sr. Blumie R. Derfel-KowalskiiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 Ronald E. Kowalski, Sr. with Blumie R. Derfel-Kowalski
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4620-5023-9Contents
Dedication.........................................viiForeword...........................................ixAcknowledgements...................................xiiiFirst Treatise On God And Man......................1Second Treatise On God And Man.....................23The Supranatural Journey...........................71Epilogue: Veritas..................................75About The Author...................................77
Chapter One
FIRST TREATISE ON GOD AND MAN THE EXILE OF CHRIST FROM HIS CHURCH
This work was in preparation when I had a seizure for unknown reasons. Although the medical profession does not know the reason, I do. It was because Sister James Edward did not teach me quadratic equations so I could teach my son in order for him to pass a remedial mathematics class at Daytona State College, or as it was known back when I was in high school, Mary Karl Vocational School. Or it might be because the Quonset hut in which the Sisters taught us has been replaced by a politically acceptable building with the staff and curriculum indistinguishable from its public counterpart.
I find it difficult to blame a teacher of fifty years ago for failing to teach me quadratic equations so I might be able to teach my son because his "teachers" failed to teach what they expected him to learn. Had the Sister known, I have no doubt that she would have asked Mike Hanley to teach it to me because she would have neither the knowledge nor enthusiasm to teach it nor the dishonesty to "teach" that which she did not understand. Although Mike was a grade below me, Sister James Edward had previously asked him to teach me some trigonometry. I felt that, as a Father, I had an obligation to do what the school system failed to do.
Of course, the Sister's knowledge of science was also limited so I took General Science during the summer at Mainland High School with Coach Tabscott who told us, "If you read the book, you will know more than I." He did not have the "knowledge" of today's teachers who hide their lack of knowledge and establish and maintain their superiority with excessive verbosity.
Saint Paul's High School was in a Quonset hut in the Church parking lot and had a teaching staff of three Sisters who were always in habits. In my four years there, the only other uniforms I saw near our school were those of the law enforcement officers I would sometimes observe at the public school on the other side of U.S. 1, also known as Ridgewood Avenue. In our school the nuns could keep the peace even if Mike, Danny or Bobby brought a motorcycle into the large entry room in which classes were not conducted. I guess the Sisters' rosary beads served as a deterrent although I never saw them used as a weapon. The only deficiency in that education was that there was no claim of omniscience.
Nor could I blame our youngest daughter that her peer group is ecumenical and disparate most often because the mothers were searching for "fathers" for Sami's friends. Although one of her friends had three "fathers," including the "fiancee" of the mother, most had two "fathers" and a few had only grandparents or foster parents. In nearly every case, either the parent(s) or the child, and usually all, were on some form of psychotropic medication.
In December of 2008, Sami, our youngest daughter, went to the Church at whose school she was an Eighth Grade student to participate in the annual Advent Program which was being held as always in the Church, the same Church where the Altar used to hold the Tabernacle in which the Body of Christ was always present so the Faithful could visit Him whenever they wished. Sami left the Church in tears before the beginning of the Advent Program after she was loudly verbally berated before all of her schoolmates by the Principal, who was not a member of the Clergy, for not being appropriately dressed to sing and dance around the Altar on which the Tabernacle would have been before the exile of Christ. Now the Altar was politically correct; it was a bare table and in fact, the Altar table itself had been shoved into a corner for the Advent Program gala. In an epoch where most females of Sami's age dress as though they were auditioning for "Girls Gone Wild" or the local bordello, Sami's mode of dress was characterized as "Gothic." I would characterize it as conservative or, to use a politically unacceptable term, as "modest."
A half century earlier, Monsignor Mullally watched an Advent Program which had been choreographed by the Principal of St. Paul's, Sister Bernard of Mary or possibly Sister Bernaditta. The program was held in the largest room of the Grammar School as most of the participants were from the elementary school and the Quonset hut which housed the high school did not have a suitably large room. No one considered that they might exile Christ from His Tabernacle, His Altar or His Church.
At about the same time as our daughter's Advent Program, I was attempting to home school Stephen, our youngest son. The Quonset hut in which I had attended high school had been replaced by a more socially acceptable school building on the corner of Mason Avenue and Nova Road and the three Dominican nuns had been succeeded by a far larger number of lay teachers. Steve, who had determined when he was nine that he wanted to become a Priest, was no longer expressing this desire with any frequency shortly after he began his Freshman year at Father Lopez Catholic High School. I should have realized that would be the result, when, at Parents' Night, we were told by the lay Religion teacher that the first assignment was to clip pictures and articles about any religion. Because of the ethical and religious values Steve had, his mother and I decided that since the only difference between the local "Catholic" high school and its secular counterparts was its cost and its name (by including the word "Catholic" in its name, it was afforded an allegedly higher status in the community), I would home school Steven using a Catholic home school curriculum. If my Mother, who had been a secretary, could home school me for eight years, I could guide Steve through four years of high school.
As a college teacher for seventeen years I had always endeavored to be prepared. If I was to say anything substantive I would review it in advance. Stephen and I were doing well in Latin I. He was earning an "A" on every examination, and if perchance he did not achieve an "A" the first time he took an examination, we would study more until he earned his "A." I could do no less for my son than I did for my students during my seventeen years of teaching American Government at Boston State College, where I gave each student the opportunity to retake a twenty question "true or false" test on the United States Constitution until every student had a passing grade of 70 or above.
Then his Mother advised me that, since high school is not devoted solely to the study of Latin, we should begin the study of another subject. Much to my undying regret, and with the knowledge that, given my eight years of religious instruction by my Mother, four years of Religion with the Dominican nuns and three years with the Jesuits at Georgetown University, I could certainly teach Steve Religion without reviewing the material, I grabbed the Religion course and began reading with Steve. When the first lesson we read appeared to both of us to say that only Catholics could go to Heaven, Steven and I wondered how this could be, given the Justice of God and that the Gift of Faith is a gift. I had flashbacks to Johnny and June Carter Cash when my helpmate had an operation in 1995. Before that operation began, I invoked the intercession of Mary, Mother of God, my Polish and Irish Catholic ancestors, her Orthodox Jewish parents, Bob Marley and Hailee Selassie. Then, as the operation was beginning, I rushed to the telephone and called a good Christian, John Tanner. When in 1986 he said to me, "Ron, you might go to prison for fifteen years but Jesus loves you" I did not welcome his comment, but I had come to believe his honesty and his words. When John answered his telephone and said "Ron, let's pray together" and started saying "Lord, Jesus Christ...." I had the feeling that Jesus Christ was on the phone line with us; that John had a phone with more capability than mine. I found it impossible to believe that God would exclude souls from Heaven because He did not give them a Gift. It is more logical that He would punish those who ignored or misused a Gift that He had given them.
It was about two thousand ten years ago that Christ founded his Church. He began with the statement, "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I shall build My Church." He gave to the successors of the Apostles, the Priests of His Church, the power to forgive sins when He said, "Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them. Whose sins you retain, they are retained." He had been sent by His Father, our Father Who art in Heaven, to free man from sin. By His death He gained our redemption from Original Sin and gave those who have been given the gift of Faith the opportunity of obtaining forgiveness through Confession for the sins they have committed. Faith is a Gift. One cannot be faulted for not being given a Gift. However, the misuse, abuse or ignorance of a Gift received is culpable.
Christ has now been exiled from His Church. He used to reside on the Altar in the Tabernacle. Now, in most of His Churches He and His Tabernacle are hidden somewhere out of sight of the Faithful and can be present only from the Consecration until the conclusion of the distribution of Holy Communion. Communion is no longer distributed only by the blessed fingers of the Priest to the tongues of the kneeling Faithful but by "Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist" who hand it to standing recipients who are now offered a cup by another "Extraordinary Minister of the Eucharist" saying "The Blood of Christ." We would do well to delete the term "extraordinary" since these same people perform the same function at virtually every Mass. Instead, we should reserve the term "extraordinary" for the Sacrament of Penance. Those lay persons who dispense Communion do so far more often than most of the recipients attend the Sacrament of Penance.
It would appear that the major benefits of receiving the Gift of Faith are being members of the Church Christ founded and the forgiveness of our sins in Confession. If those of us who have received the Gift of Faith permit Christ to be exiled from His Church and do not obey the laws of His Church or avail ourselves of Confession, we have misused that Gift, a Gift from Providence, for the abuse of which we will be deeply answerable. However, those who have not received the Gift of Faith might be bound only by their mature judgment and their conscience for the abuse of which they will be deeply answerable.
It was some months after I stupidly tried to home school my son that I told Steve that I wanted to commit these thoughts to writing. It appeared to me illogical and unjust to exile Christ from His Church and to say that those who did not receive a Gift would be punished although those who abused that Gift in their attempt at social and political correctness might not be punished. Sometime after that I stopped breathing. The medical "experts" had several theories as to why, all of which they think they disproved except the possibility of a mosquito-borne illness. I can come up with only one theory as to why I began breathing again.
It was Thomas Jefferson who wrote, "All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." We now see some attempting to alienate those rights. It is most disturbing when Government officials attempt to do so. The Founding Fathers of our country sought to establish a representative form of government which they termed a Republic in order to protect those inherent rights because they realized, like Alexis de Tocqueville, the dangers of a direct democracy. The Federalist Papers written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, helped to establish that republic which would hopefully survive and maintain man's inherent rights. The mass media, the belief that the opinions of the masses should be substituted for the mature judgments of the elected representatives and the expansion of the role of public opinion have led to the system they feared. This has been compounded by the evil effects of faction of which our Founding Fathers also warned. Taxation without representation has been replaced by what is rapidly approaching a mobocracy which is not unlike the system of government in Nazi Germany in its disregard for basic human rights. We have surrendered our right reason to the will of the masses as our Republic has deteriorated into a Democracy and from there to tyranny by the perceived majority or indeed to mobocracy. The hope of restoring our Federal system which began to erode in 1803 now appears to be utopian due to the power of the Federal Government and the mass media. Due to the power of the Executive Branch, the Supreme Court and the lack of a sense of history and their Constitutional role on the part of most members of Congress, the concept of separation of powers is nearly defunct. When I was an Assistant Professor of Political Science, I found that most students found it difficult to believe that the Constitution does not provide that "The Supreme Court shall have the power of judicial review" and that Executive Agreements are not substitutes for treaties. Civil liberties and the rights of man can survive without Federalism or separation of powers as they have in Britain and some other parliamentary systems. In the current epoch they cannot survive without a Representative Republic.
It was Christ who said "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I shall build My Church." However, He is seldom able to remain in His Church anymore We have now seen Christ exiled from His Church except for a few brief moments each week due to the desire to make His Church acceptable to those who have not been given the faith its members have. Thomas Jefferson was not a theologian but he was a logician and a political theorist. Although Johnny Cash was many things and in his later years received a degree in theology, he never claimed to be a logician or a political theorist but he was never a hypocrite. Regretfully our Church and our political system has been overrun by those who not only lack logic bur are incapable of rational thought and are indeed hypocrites.
Some years ago I sought political office running against a limousine liberal. Given my name I could have catered to an ethnic vote but I could not, in conscience, deny my maternal roots. At that time I waged my Congressional campaigns with student volunteers. Over the past several years I have asked nearly every person I meet how much money that person has ever contributed to a political candidate. I have found that I am the largest political contributor I have personally met having given my oldest son $100.00 when he was seeking a local political office and having contributed $1.00 to Dollars for Democrats when I was passing the White House during the Kennedy Administration. Yet I am now told by the media that millions of anonymous Americans have contributed millions of dollars to a presidential candidate on the internet. The same people who wish me to believe that they received millions of dollars on the internet also claim to want to limit corporate contributions to political campaigns and at least one elected official has denied his maternal heritage. I doubt that they can honestly deny either deceit or hypocrisy, although given their nature, they seem incapable of honesty. When I wrote my last book I never perceived that within a year I would regard David Letterman as perhaps our nation's best example of honesty.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Two Treatises on God and Manby Ronald E. Kowalski, Sr. Blumie R. Derfel-Kowalski Copyright © 2011 by Ronald E. Kowalski, Sr. with Blumie R. Derfel-Kowalski. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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