Blessed Isidore Bakanja

He was killed for wearing the Carmelite scapular.

Blessed Isidore was born in 1887 at northeast Republic of the Congo, and at a young age was hired as a domestic boy. Many of the Belgian plantation owners and their agents were avowed atheists, who hated the missionaries because of the latter's defense of the natives' rights and their denouncing of injustices perpetrated against them. "Mon pere" was a pejorative name given to priests and to all that had to do with religion. Isidore soon experienced the hatred of the agents for Catholicism. He asked for leave to return home; permission was refused. He was told to stop teaching his fellow workers how to pray: "You'll have the whole village praying and no one will want to work", one agent shouted at him. Isidore was told to discard his scapular. When he did not, he was twice flogged.
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The second time, the agent flew into one of his rages. He jumped at Isidore, tore the scapular from around his neck and threw him to the ground. He had two servant boys hold Isidore by his hands and feet and a third domestic flogged him. The whip was made of elephant hide with nails protruding at the end. The writhing Isidore asked for mercy. "My God, I'm dying", he muttered. But the colonizer kept kicking Isidore in the neck and head, and ordered his domestic to scourge him harder still. After 100, those assisting lost count of the number of blows. Isidore's back was one open wound; some of his bones were exposed. After scourging he was thrown, legs chained, into a hut for processing rubber. He could not even move to relieve himself.
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Since an inspector was due, Isidore was banished to another village. But because he could not walk, he fell by the wayside and hid in the forest. He dragged himself before the inspector, who was horrified at the sight of this modern Job. The inspector himself left a written account of his impression: "I saw a man come from the forest with his back torn apart by deep, festering, malodorous wounds, covered with filth, assaulted by flies. He leaned on two sticks in order to get near me -he wasn't walking; he was dragging himself". The agent appeared on the scene and tried to kill "that animal of mon pere", but the inspector even physically prevented him. He took Isidore to his own settlement, hoping to help him heal. But Isidore felt death in his bones. He told someone who had pity on him: "if you see my mother, or if you go to the judge, or if you meet the priest, tell them that I am dying because I am a Christian".
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Two missionaries spent several days with him. He devoutly received the last sacraments. He told them the reason for his beating: "The white man did not like Christians.... He did not want me to wear the scapular.... He yelled at me when I said my prayers". The missionaries urged Isidore to forgive the agent; he assured them that he had already done so and that he nursed no hatred for him. This "animal of mon pere", this convert of two-and-a-half years proved that he knew what it meant to follow Jesus - even to the point of being flogged like him, even to the point of carrying the cross, even to the point of dying. The missionaries urged Isidore to pray for the agent. "Certainly I shall pray for him. When I am in heaven, I shall pray for him very much". His agony - more painful than the actual flogging - lasted six months. He died on either 8 or 15 August 1909, rosary in hand and the scapular of Our Lady of Mt Carmel around his neck. - EWTN

Married Priests in the First Centuries

Interesting video.

The Power of Holy Obedience

Anthony Esolen explains:

Obedience is indeed a liberating and beautiful virtue. It frees me from the stranglehold of my self-will, which is another way of saying that it pries the talons of Satan from off my throat, so that I might breathe like a human being and a child of God. It frees me from having to determine, from my own limited store of experience and my limited grasp of eternal verities, the principles whereby human actions are good or evil; and that means that I am free to delve the more deeply into those verities, discovering more and more within them, dwelling within them, meditating upon them like the Psalmist pondering the beauty of God's laws at night upon his couch. Obedience sharpens my hearing and my sight, as Jesus Himself has promised, for those who keep His commandments will be beloved by the Father, and He will bring them light.

Why We Are Not Healed

Resentment and the remembrance of wrongs.

God Isn't Nice

God is good, and goodness is different from niceness.

The culture of niceness rejects anything that challenges the autonomy of the individual. It has bastardized the meanings of words such as “love”, “freedom” and “marriage”, confusing people and leaving them ignorant about God, the meaning of life, and the dignity of the human person. In fact, the origin of the word “nice” is the Latin word nescius, which means “ignorant”.

“That kind of culture activity of ‘being nice’ is destructive, and it’s not what Christianity is all about,” said Sr. Galligan. “God is not nice. God is good, and goodness is different from niceness.”

The culture of niceness also eschews the rich intellectual tradition of the Catholic Church.

“We have a tradition that is [almost 2,000] years of the best of philosophical and theological minds, with the contemporary blessings of [Popes] John Paul II and Benedict [XVI], who are also very able to engage young people, old people—the culture,” said Sr. Galligan.

Tolerance

What is it?

We need to clarify our ideas concerning this important subject. What is tolerance? The word “tolerance” derives from the Latin verb tolare, which means to bear, to endure, to put up with. The object of tolerance, that which is borne or endured or put up with, is invariably something negative. We speak, for example, of people who have a low tolerance for distractions, meaning that they are easily distracted. Or, to cite another example, the physiologists tell us that women, on average, have a higher tolerance for physical pain than do men, meaning that they can put up with pain better than can men.

Now, the thing to note about tolerance is that, just as such, it has no immediate moral dimension to it. The inability to tolerate distractions may be simply a matter of natural temperament, and the ability to tolerate pain can be explained in terms of one’s physical make-up, things over which a person has no direct control. Whether or not tolerance takes on a virtuous character very much depends on its being an attitude which is deliberately assumed.

To the best of my knowledge, St. Thomas never regards tolerance, just as such, as a moral virtue. It would seem that the actual moral virtue that tolerance comes closest to is patience. The virtue of patience, unlike tolerance, is not the mere enduring of something difficult or painful, but it is doing so for a higher end. Saint Thomas teaches that patience represents a conscious, willed effort to preserve a rational good in the face of sorrow. The patient person puts up with difficulties for the sake of a good that transcends those difficulties. So, we take note of the fact that the saints are always patient, because they bear all the crosses that are sent to them for the supreme good which is the love of God.

Is it ever permissible to tolerate things which are not merely negative but positively evil? Not only is it permissible, sometimes it is unavoidable. There are certain circumstances in which particular evils must be put up with, and this is because any attempt to get rid of them would very likely only give rise to yet greater evils, and our second state will be worse than the first. But such circumstances should be considered exceptional, and the salient point to stress here is that to tolerate evil in such circumstances does not at all mean to approve of it. The evil is simply “put up with,” borne, as a painful presence which, if it were possible to do so, one would promptly take action to get rid of it.

Corporal Mortification

A brief defense.

Mortification is an unpleasant word to the contemporary ear. For many, it has something vaguely to do with "being embarrassed" -- but it also conjures up pain, humiliation, even cruelty. This is hardly surprising: What isn't understood often produces shock and incredulity. In our world of high tension, uncertainty, and psychological stress, why would any sane person welcome more affliction?

Despite all this, voluntary mortification has an enduring power for both the body and soul. Self-denial helps a person overcome both psychological and physical weakness, gives him inner energy, helps him grow in virtue, and ultimately leads to salvation. It conquers the insidious demons of softness, pessimism, and lukewarm faith that dominate the lives of so many today.

In contrast to the extremes of sadism or masochism, corporal mortification is grounded in a healthy view of man and the world around him, namely, that all of us are flawed and have sinful tendencies within us. The practice itself dates back to biblical times and finds its greatest expression in the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.