World War III

Fasten Seatbelts

Fasten Seatbelts on November 17, 2007

Prepare to fasten your seat-belts for the year 2008! It is always risky to announce dates for dramatic events in the future, because if they do not then happen, the doom-dater has only discredited himself. However, there is a triple convergence for next year which may be at least an “orange alert.”

First and foremost there is the pressure building towards a Third World War, which may well be the beginning of the long-deserved chastisement of a globe turning its back on God. On the side of the United States there is an insane pressure group beating the war-drums for an attack upon Iran, when more and more now know that the disastrous attack upon Iraq was only made possible by fraud (9/11) and lies (WMD). On the side of Russia, President Putin has backed his good reasons for condemning any such attack with the threat to resist it.

But the West’s vile media silence the reasons and step up the war-drums. President Bush announces he wishes to “prevent Iran’s nuclear capacity” before he leaves office – end of 2008 – and in 2007 we see a mounting economic and financial crisis within the USA and in the world which risks presenting him no later than 2008 with a virtually irresistible temptation to “busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels” (Henry IV, Pt II).

Secondly, two years ago Fr. Paul Kramer quoted in the “Fatima Crusader” a German priest (living) who may be privileged with prophetic gifts from Heaven, and who has foretold 2008 as the year for the outbreak of WWIII.

Thirdly, one of the four girls from Northern Spain who saw Our Lady in Garabandal many times between 1962 and 1965 is reportedly giving March and April of 2008 as the months of the Great Warning and Great Miracle respectively. We shall see.

The prophecy from Germany and report from Spain are worth no more than they are worth (nor less), but the realities from the USA and Russia are for real. It does no harm to take a little more seriously still our constant need to “pray without ceasing” (I Thess. V, 17).

Kyrie eleison.

The Cinema

The Cinema on July 21, 2007

The world is in terrible shape, on the brink of a Third World War which will be immeasurably more horrible than World Wars One or Two. How did the world get to this point? It is useful not to think that it is a shallow problem with a quick-fix solution, so here are a few thoughts on how a common feature of modern life, the cinema, can have contributed.

The following quotation is from Franz Kafka, the famous Czech writer of about 100 years ago, in the early days of films: “Cinema upsets the way we see things. The speeding up of movements and the rapid succession of images necessarily means that they escape our vision. It is no longer our eyes that take in the images, it is the images that take over our eyes. They overwhelm our consciousness. Cinema means putting a uniform over the eye which wore no such uniform before. The eye is the window of the soul, and films are like steel shutters over that window.”

What would Kafka have said about television? Let that pass. What he is saying here about the cinema is that it short-circuits the mind. The human being is composed of body and spiritual (non-bodily) soul. Accordingly man’s way of knowing is composed of bodily sensing and the spiritual mind’s thinking. So the human mind works – only works – from sensations, constantly reading within the sense-data the intelligible content inside them that it alone can read. Therefore any serious upsetting of men’s sensing is bound to upset the working of our minds. For instance, to flood our eyes (and since Kafka’s time, also our ears) with a too rapid succession of images and sounds will be to wash out our minds (Kafka says, “to overwhelm our consciousness”).

Too many films, too little thinking. Too little thinking, too little truth. Too little truth, too many lies, and through them a Third World War to enable the liars (as they hope) to take over the globe. It is we who have not wanted to think. We have only to take our medicine.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy upon us.

Kyrie eleison.