Thank You for Your Support
As I begin writing this article we are just one week into our fund raising campaign for ‘The Lumen Fidei Institute’. In just one week we have managed to raise almost one third of our initial target of €25,000. To those of you who have responded so promptly to this call, a big thank you. Your support and encouragement means so much, not just to me, but to my wife and family as well. I am sure Anthony Murphy would share this sentiment. A big thank you as well to anyone else who has responded or who is committed to responding but whose donations have not reached us just yet.
To those of you who are still considering making an initial donation of €500 or €1,000, or even a larger sum, to help get ‘The Lumen Fidei Institute’ off the ground, but are not yet committed to the idea, I hope that this article will encourage you to become a supporter of this new initiative for promoting the Catholic faith.
A Family of Supporters
To those of you who do not have the means to make a significant one off contribution I would like to ask you if you could spare us the price of a cup of coffee per week or €10 per month by way of a standing order. These small ‘family’ donations will become the bread and butter of ‘The Lumen Fidei Institute’ and will allow us to organise and to develop a strategic plan for the institute. It will also allow us to travel the highways and byways so that we can help to establish local communities of faithful Catholics who are willing to stand up and promote, defend, and help others to live by our beautiful Catholic faith.
The Maccabees
And now for some homework! I would encourage all of you to take out your bibles and to go to the old testament. Look for book one of Maccabees and begin reading. It is a great story for children to hear, full of blood thirsty excitement and of brave men who were willing to stand up for what they believed in and to defend the honour of their God to the death if necessary.
There is a branch of biblical study known as typology. A biblical ‘type’ is often an old testament figure who can be seen as a prophetic symbol who represents or symbolises a new testament figure. Moses, for example, is seen as a ‘type’ for Christ. Bathsheeba, is seen as a ‘type’ for Our Lady, both of them being the mothers of King sons. I believe that one Maccabees can be seen as a ‘type’ for the times we are now living through.
The Destruction of our Churches
In one Maccabees, the evil King Antiochus Epiphanes, after conquering Egypt decides to conquer Jerusalem and take it from Israel. He storms the sanctuary of the temple and strips it of its riches. He takes the hidden treasures and “he committed deeds of murder and spoke with great arrogance” (1 Maccabees 1:24).
I have included a picture with this article. On the left is the altar from St Kevin’s Church in Harrington Street in Dublin. St Kevin’s was built in 1872. On the right is the altar from Ireland’s national shrine, the Basilica of Knock, which was recently refurbished at a cost of some ten million euros. When you realise that the altar is where Christ’s sacrificial offering of His own body and blood to God the father is re-presented to God the Father in a real but unbloody manner, the greatest gift of God to mankind, you understand why the altar in the first picture is so ornate, so beautiful. It was designed to give glory to God the Father.
Belief in the Real Presence Denied
When, on the other hand, you look at how the belief in the real presence of God is denied by so many Catholics today, then you begin to understand the plainness and ugliness of so many of our modern churches and altars.
Maccabbees continues “Israel mourned deeply in every community, rulers and elders groaned, maidens and young men became faint, the beauty of the women faded.” (1 Maccabees 1:25-26)
The Beauty of our Women has Faded
Anyone who reads my articles is familiar with my thoughts on modesty. In the western world, the beauty of our women has faded, and now many of our womenfolk adorn themselves in immodest garb in a futile effort to reclaim their beauty but which only further highlights the loss of the beautiful dignity that is woman, created in the image and likeness of God. Our young men have also become faint and many fathers no longer know or realise how they should behave in order to uphold the dignity of manhood, fatherhood and husbandry. Men too, are created in the image and likeness of God.
This barrenness and despoliation has come about on account of the war that is being waged against the Catholic faith and on account of the lack of faith amongst so many of the baptised, of every rank, which has allowed ugliness and filth to permeate even the hallowed aisles and sanctuaries of our Catholic churches.
The False King
Antiochus finally sets himself up almost as a divine King, ordering everyone to adopt his religion, his customs, to sacrifice to idols and to profane the Sabbath. He sends soldiers out to the villages and towns to ensure compliance with his decrees
In the time of the Maccabees the rule of the land was enforced by military men. Soldiers made sure that everyone complied with the dictates of the King, and anyone who refused was put to death on the spot. In our time, the devil has become so much more subtle. Now media propaganda, the courts, false judges and false laws are used to enforce compliance.
The Worship of False Gods
We are asked today to worship and to offer sacrifice in front of a host of false gods. Today’s false gods include the false god of education. We are told that all the world’s problems such as poverty, discrimination, injustices of one kind or another would be solved if only everyone was educated according to the beliefs of the modern state.
We have the false god of intellectualism. The intellectual elite, who accost us with their words of worldly wisdom from newspapers, television screens, and secular parliaments, tell us not to worry. That they in their godly wisdom will dictate to us poor fools what is best for us and for our children.
Technology – Another False God
Technology too has become a false god. We can no longer survive as men did for thousands and thousands of years before us, unless we can plug in to our modern conveniences. Another false god is the false god of social media. Our young people more and more get their affirmation, not from the fact that they are created in the image and likeness of God, but from ‘likes’ on facebook, or from how many so-called friends they have on social media. Friends, some of whom they may never meet in real time, ever.
The Communications War
Today’s battles in our western world are not fought with guns and ammunition. No, today’s battles are fought through the new media of television, smartphones, and internet, as well as through the declining old media newspaper outlets. The war is particularly effective against our children. The new media allows our enemy to bypass the parents and gives him direct access to the young. Our governments have become complicit in the corruption of our young people through the false education system they have foisted on our children. Our bishops have become complicit because they dare not resist the government’s false education programmes on account of threats of a take over of the schools, or the threat of the imposition of financial penalties, and so our Catholic schools are no longer Catholic but have become arenas for the corruption of children.
Many Parents are Complicit in the Corruption of their Own Children
Most sad of all, many parents have become complicit in the corruption of their own children because they are so busy and most of their time is taken up with work, another false god who demands a tremendous sacrifice of parents, in effect turning them into slaves of the economy in return for the pittance of a flashy car, a couple of foreign holidays abroad each year or some other such bauble of worldly delight.
The Traditional Family
Because the traditional family, with its traditional roles, where the wife and mother stays at home to create a domestic palace, filled with the aroma of home cooking and with all the tender sentiments and symbols of her motherly love for her husband and children, is now such a rarity, many of our children are losing their sense of identity. Many children no longer know who they are. They have been told, through the mouths of the above mentioned false gods, that their sex is malleable and not fixed. If you are unhappy with being a boy, then why not become a girl? Or, you could be gender fluid for a while until you finally decide which sex you are. Or perhaps you are a ‘tranimal’, a cross between some animal and a human being. Our children are being fed this nonsense on an almost daily basis.
Suicide Rates are Increasing Amongst the Young
The saddest aspect of this confusion is that the suicide rate is rising amongst our young people. Young people, who are really no more than children and who should be full of the joys of life, are living in a world of confusion and darkness which is crushing the life out of them and an increasing number are deciding to end their lives. Many of the adults in today’s world, who should be helping these children out of their confusion and back into life, are also caught up in a world of false equality where nothing is stable and anything goes. Men can marry men, women can marry women, meanwhile the false god of LGBTQ is devouring our children because they are the sacrifice which this false god demands in order to be appeased.
The adults in these children’s lives, who tend to serve at the altar of the false god of the body, instead of speaking the Truth to these children in charity, are confirming the children in their confusion telling them that, ‘it’s OK to be Gay’, or that ‘maybe you are a boy in a girl’s body’. These adults don’t want to rock the boat, or they don’t want to offend anyone, or they don’t want to be portrayed as homophobic. The children’s confusion is then allowed to grow and their lives become darker on account of not being taught the Truth about their human dignity and their human sexuality. So life itself becomes a meaningless sea of pain and hurt feelings and emotions for these children, which all too often can have tragic consequences, if the child decides that life is no longer worth living. Or else the child will begin to act out of their confusion and adopt an immoral or disordered lifestyle which is contrary to their God given nature.
The Maccabee Solution
And so back to the Maccabees. What did Mattathias, the father of Judas Maccabeus, do when he was faced with a similar threat to his beliefs and to his family’s way of life? A threat such as what we now face today. First, the King’s officers spoke to Mattathias in order to encourage him to apostatise and to offer sacrifice on the false altar.
“You are a leader, honoured and great in this city, and supported by sons and brothers. Now be the first to come and do what the king commands, as all the Gentiles and the men of Judah and those that are left in Jerusalem have done. Then you and your sons will be numbered among the friends of the king, and you and your sons will be honoured with silver and gold and many gifts.”
We Will Live by the Covenant of Our Fathers
But Mattathias answered and said in a loud voice: “Even if all the nations that live under the rule of the king obey him, and have chosen to do his commandments, departing each one from the religion of his fathers, yet I and my sons and my brothers will live by the covenant of our fathers. Far be it from us to desert the law and the ordinances. We will not obey the king’s words by turning aside from our religion to the right hand or to the left.” (1 Maccabees 2:17-21)
At this moment another Jew steps forward to offer his sacrifice to the false god and Mattathias, filled with zeal, kills him. Then he kills the king’s officer before tearing down the altar that has been erected to the false god.
False Pacifism
In this day and age of a false pacifism, which sees grown men standing idly by whilst their children are being destroyed by a false ideology, we may find Mattathias’s actions harsh and extreme. I am not advocating that we take up arms against the tyrants, though I believe that the time could arise once again where righteous men must be prepared to defend their families by force if necessary, but I do think that we can learn from Mattathias’s family.
A group of people leave with Mattathias and flee into the wilderness in order to avoid having to worship the false gods. Later on, some of them are massacred by the kings forces because they refuse to fight on the Sabbath. “So they attacked them on the Sabbath, and they died, with their wives and children and cattle, to the number of a thousand persons.” (1 Maccabees 2:38)
Let us Fight for Our Faith
Mattathias’s response is “If we all do as our brethren have done and refuse to fight with the Gentiles for our lives and for our ordinances, they will quickly destroy us from the earth.” So they made this decision that day: “Let us fight against every man who comes to attack us on the Sabbath day; let us not all die as our brethren died in their hiding places.” (1 Maccabees 2:40-41)
We are currently faced with the same decision. Our young people are leaving the Catholic church in their droves and recent statistics, presented by the Irish Bishop’s conference of 2011, indicate that eighty two percent of our Catholic eighteen to twenty four year olds no longer attend weekly Mass, and that only forty two percent of all Catholics in Ireland attend weekly Mass. If we refuse to fight the good fight for the faith, we and our families will be quickly destroyed from this earth.
We must take to heart the words of Mattathias to his sons on his death bed.
None that Trust in God will Lack Strength
“And so observe, from generation to generation, that none who put their trust in Him will lack strength. Do not fear the words of a sinner, for his splendour will turn into dung and worms. Today he will be exalted, but tomorrow he will not be found, because he has returned to the dust, and his plans will perish. My children, be courageous and grow strong in the law, for by it you will gain honour.”
After the death of Mattathias, his son Judas Maccabeus, leads the fight for the faith. In his time the battle was a military battle, in our time the battle is being fought in the realms of the spiritual. Regardless of how the battle is being fought, it is important that we realise that there is indeed a battle, and that if we do not fight for the faith of our fathers, we and our generations will be wiped from the face of the earth.
I am Prepared to Lead my Family
I am prepared to lead my family and those that will follow to engage the enemies of our Catholic Faith and the enemies of our children. Anthony Murphy has already raised the standard of the Catholic Faith through the Catholic Voice newspaper. We are asking for your support. We are asking you to join us and to enter with us into the fray so that the Glory of God shines once again from the hallowed shores of Ireland.
Time to Organise Ourselves in Defence of our God, our Children, and our Families.
I do not want my words to turn out to be mere rhetoric and so I strongly encourage you to pray earnestly for the success of ‘The Lumen Fidei Institute’. I ask you to consider making a donation and also to consider setting up a small standing order of €10 per month. I ask you to get in touch so that we can begin to organise small groups of faithful Catholics right across the country.
To those of you who gave us your e-mail addresses at one of our meetings, I would like to apologise for our delay is responding. I am currently working on an email database which will allow us to communicate more frequently and I will be sending out an e-mail in the coming weeks. Anyone who would like to sign up to our e-mail list can do so via the website www.lumenfidei.ie or send me a text 085-1208779
Its time to organise ourselves in defence of our God, our children, and our families.
© John Lacken 2017
These articles are free to download, to print and to distribute provided that authorship is acknowledged and contact details for the author are provided as follows.
Author: John Lacken
‘Legio Sanctae Familiae’ – The Legion of the Holy Family
E-Mail: john@truedevotions.ie
Mob: +353 (0)85-1208779
Website: www.truedevotions.ie
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