mycatholictwocents.com

The Church’s Duty to Safeguard the Sacrament of Confirmation – My Catholic Two Cents

By Dr. Rafael Xavier Gonzalez
Only the superficial mindset sees hate when there’s love. Sin inverses our values. We call good evil and evil good because immorality ends up darkening the intellect. For that reason, St. John the Baptist today would be considered a hater or a “grifter”. Currently those who want to live a holy life must face the cynicism from the children of Satan, which are those given over to the criteria of the world, if not outright worshippers of the devil.
There recently was an issue with the openly gay ABC news anchor, Gio Benitez, who is in a so-called gay marriage. He scandalously received Confirmation while his male lover, his “husband”, was his sponsor. Now regarding the sponsor, Canon 892 is clear:
“As far as possible the person to be confirmed is to have a sponsor. The sponsor’s function is to take care that the confirmed person behaves as a true witness of Christ and faithfully fulfills the obligations inherent in this Sacrament.”
How can one live the …

mycatholictwocents.com

Contemporary Neo Arianism and its Antidote, Mariology – My Catholic Two Cents

By Dr. Rafael Xavier Gonzalez
It’s all about Jesus Christ, Our Lord! All theological errors stem from Christological errors. Arianism is the root cause of all heterodoxy and evil, as St. John writes, referring to the Divinity of Jesus: “Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.” (1 John 2:22). Jesus himself said, “I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that
Arianism was and is a force to reckon with, so much so that it was addressed and condemned by the first ecumenical council of the Church. As a side note, it is said that the council of Jerusalem was the first council, which appears in the Acts of the Apostles. But the truth is that it wasn’t. It was more than an ecumenical council because the Apostles were still alive and hence the public Revelation of the Church was still ongoing, to be ended with the death of the last Apostle. That’s why the role of the actual ecumenical …

mycatholictwocents.com

Virginity or Hell – My Catholic Two Cents

Dr. Rafael Xavier Gonzalez
Why do people go to hell? Why do
In the nine concentric circles of hell, according to Dante Alighieri’s
Since the lustful are in an outer concentric circle, it is broader.
Is lust a common sin today? Of course it is. An essential read is the fantastic work of Msgr. Charles Pope,
“The Kingdom of God is about chastity. God is very clear with us that His kingdom values chastity. For the unmarried, this means no genital sexual contact. For the married, this means complete fidelity to each other. Further, things such as pornography, lewd conduct, and immodesty are excluded from the kingdom. Many people today do not prefer chastity. They would rather be unchaste and immodest. Many celebrate fornication and homosexual acts as a kind of liberation from “repressive” norms. Many people like to consume pornography and do not want to limit their sexual conduct. It is one thing to fail in some of these matters through weakness, but it is quite another to defiantly insist …

mycatholictwocents.com

The Need to Restore the Mockery of Evil – My Catholic Two Cents

mycatholictwocents.com

Traditionalism is a Red Herring

Cardinal Cupich recently wrote an article on Chicagocatholic.com titled: “Tradition vs. Traditionalism”.
With so many problems in the Church today, it is extremely tiring to hear about so-called traditionalism being the main danger.
No matter how many try to gaslight, both the Pachamama idol and a so-called “pride” rainbow cross were processed into Saint Peter’s Basilica. It is what it is. The human element of the Church is scandalizing many and yet we have Catholics in the intellectual world decrying traditionalism. Why?
When you hear “all are welcome”, the meaning is not that all people are welcome, which has been a clear perennial reality in Catholicism. But rather it refers to all
Grant that a reactionary extreme position is usually a response to another extreme position. So those promoting disunity in the Catholic Church due to the human failures of the hierarchy are doing something evil, no doubt. Yet reacting against a reactionary position can be fruitless and even damaging,…

mycatholictwocents.com

The Islamic Dilemma Negates Islam

The Islamic dilemma is a killer for Islam and their response to it is unsatisfactory. It’s more! It makes no sense. For those who do not know, the Islamic dilemma is relates to the Christian Scriptures, the Bible.
The principle of non-contradiction states that a being cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same sense. Interestingly, Muslims accuse Christians of having contradictory beliefs of God’s nature, namely, The Trinity. How can God be one and three at the same time? Yet the Trinity
Let me quickly explain what a dilemma is in logic. It is when only two alternatives are presented,
So what does the Koran say about the Bible? The Bible, or the previous scriptures according to Muslims are mentioned in three groups or categories—the
1) “Indeed, We sent down the Torah, in which was guidance and light…” Surah Al-Ma’idah (5:44)
2) “And We gave to David the Zabur.” Surah Al-Isra (17:55)
3) “And We sent, following in their footsteps, Jesus, the son of Mary, confirming that …

mycatholictwocents.com

We Need Meditation! On Death and the Assumption of Mary.

Meditation on the mysteries of our Faith is indispensable for our eternal salvation. Without prayer we cannot be saved, as St. Alphonsus clearly taught, and prayer must be principally meditative, since this is the highest form of prayer! Read the right content (good books) as a means to spiritually ruminate what you assimilate. In this article, I provide some points for meditation. Let us not forget what is essential in the little time we have on this earth!
Death is truly horrible. It is the ripping apart of the integral realities of man, his body and soul. Though the soul can exist without the body, it is incomplete in a way, a semi-person in a sense (The famous Thomist, Cardinal Cajetan used this terminology). No one naturally wants to die. It is repugnant to our human inclinations since we fundamentally desire to live, a God-given tendency (you would obviously think there’s something wrong if I told you I do not want to live). God actually did not have death in His original plan of …

mycatholictwocents.com

Eastern Orthodoxy Inclines towards Universalism

This may be (merely) anecdotal, but I don’t think so. Eastern Orthodoxy today seems to have a universalist bent to it. Universalism is the belief that
For Catholics the question is clear:
1.
2.“Those who do evil will receive a perpetual punishment with the devil.”It confirms the eternal punishment of the damned, directly opposing universalist claims.
3. “The Holy Roman Church… firmly believes, professes, and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church… can be saved…”
4. Pope Pius IX – “There are, of course, those who are struggling with invincible ignorance… but even here, one must guard against the dangerous opinion that salvation is assured for everyone.”
5. “Very often, men, deceived by the Evil One… exchange the truth of God for a lie… Hence, to procure the salvation of all these… the Church… must preach the Gospel to everyone.”
6. CCC 1035: “The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of …

mycatholictwocents.com

Eschatological Optimism versus Eschatological Pessimism

The topic of eternal salvation and where we go when we die is directly related to metaphysical and religious views. For Catholicism, and most other beliefs, the good are saved eternally while the evil are damned. Without getting deeply into the theology of salvation, the fundamental question is: are more people saved or damned? Do more people go to Heaven or hell?
At the outset, it is essential to mention that within Catholic orthodoxy, both a sound optimism and pessimism are held, allowing certain leeway here and there. Only with a truly metaphysical difference, like being an agnostic or straight atheist and therefore denying any transcendent life, does the question of eternal salvation even apply. It makes no sense to even address this topic with those who basically are materialists, skeptics and nihilists, because eternal life does not even exist for them. The more radical you are in optimism or pessimism, the more your position is interchangeable with the other, for extremes have …

mycatholictwocents.com

The Desperately Needed Holy Nihilism of St. John of the Cross

Today we live in a Nihilistic age, which of course is not good. Yet, even Nihilism, its underlying mentality, can shift towards goodness. In the age of digitalization, virtual reality, materialism and technology, there seems to be a reaction from the
This holy Nihilism points to the spirit of St. John of the Cross, the Spanish Carmelite mystic of the 16
I personally remember, when I was discerning in a monastery some years back, that I had asked the superior for permission to read St. John of Cross’s writings. He told me that I better wait and grow more spiritually, as that doctrine can be detrimental for newbies in the spiritual life.
I also heard from a professor I had that Pope St. John Paul II, before becoming Pope, learned Spanish with the express intent of reading St. John of the Cross’s works, in order to write his PhD dissertation (“Faith according to St. John of the Cross”). Of course reading an author in their original language is optimal for better grasping what they wish …

mycatholictwocents.com

Islam as a Christian Heresy, Our Lady of Fatima and the Evangelization of Muslims

by Dr. Rafael Xavier Gonzalez
Traditionally, Catholics held Islam or Mohammedism to be a Christian heresy, a militant Arianism since it believed and still believes in Jesus as a mere prophet, not actually Divine, the true natural Son of God the Father. It was, and essentially is, militant because it basically spread by the sword, though Islamophilic Academia has attempted to suppress such a clear historical reality. So-called Islamophobia is not a fabricated hateful position just based on whim or arbitrary discrimination. Fear of Muslims was, and is in a sense, totally justified as Catholics living in the time of Islamic conquest have attested to, interestingly according to prior prophecies:
“A theologian and a monk who wrote in the immediate aftermath of Arab invasions (between 634 and 640), Maximus decried the invaders as ‘a barbarous nation of the desert overrunning
another land as if it were their own! To see our civilization laid waste by wild and untamed beasts which have merely …

mycatholictwocents.com

Theological Notes and the Loss of Faith as Always Culpable

mycatholictwocents.com

Futurism has no Future, Fiducial Faith versus Dogmatic Faith

mycatholictwocents.com

My Interview with Bishop Schneider, Divine Medicinal Chastisements and the Virtue of Religion

mycatholictwocents.com

How Negative Apologetics Proves the Veracity of Catholicism

mycatholictwocents.com

Sacred Heart of Jesus, Pride Month and the Loss and Recuperation of Love.

By Dr. Rafael Xavier Gonzalez
Only in Catholicism, and not in mere generic Christianity, can one establish the doctrine of Divine charity. While all reject the symbol of the crucifix as a sign of God’s love and reminder of his presence in his members, in the Militant Church, The Catholic Church (the Orthodox also) clings on to her crucified Savior represented in the crucifix, for there is no cross without Christ and no Christ without a cross.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is the antithesis to the values of our current secular culture, devoid of love: “because of the increase of wickedness, the love of many will grow cold” (Mt. 24:12). Let us be reminded of what St. Paul says about people in the end times, and may God save us from such a spirit:
“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without …

mycatholictwocents.com

Protestant Problems with Missionary Activity

By Dr. Rafael Xavier Gonzalez
As missionaries, Catholics have been much more successful than non-Catholic Christians or Protestants. I’ll just go ahead and lump all Protestants together into a single genus, as does Alexander Gray Ryrie, the Protestant British history, scholar and author of the excellent book,
According to Ryrie, it is justified lumping Protestants into a single category. Even though there are differences, there is that which makes Protestants Protestants, besides the name which implies protesting (against the true Church of Christ, which is the Catholic Church, a name which originated with them I believe). The tenet of
“[Protestants]…refuse to let anyone else tell them how to read their Bibles. ‘I acknowledge no fixed rules for the interpretation of the Word of God,’ Martin Luther told Pope Leo X, ‘since the Word of God, which teaches freedom in all other matters, must not be bound.’ The following century, John Bunyan gently refused to submit to anyone else’s …

mycatholictwocents.com

The Obligation to Embrace the True Positive Religion

By Dr. Rafael Xavier Gonzalez
I have heard from many non-Catholics (and even from Catholics also actually) that the reason they follow their so-called religion is simply because they grew up in it, and that’s it. It is mere tradition that has caused and makes them stay in the religion they hold. In fact, many appeal to this tradition as a reason for not converting to another religion. My teacher of Old Testament in college was a Rabbi. He used to tell us with passion about many little-known facts about Christianity. I one time asked him why doesn’t he become Christian and he told me that that would be too difficult, as he would be leaving his entire culture and tradition behind (!). Truth is not the criterion apparently!
We have to recognize God, in justice. How? By giving Him what exclusively belongs to Him alone, namely, worship. Hence the virtue of religion stems from the cardinal virtue of justice. Man is thus obliged in this transcendent practical endeavor. We should see it not …