Circling the Eighth, a giant loo downward leading.
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| Dante, Divine Comedy, Inferno* |
But because fraud is man’s peculiar vice,
More it displeases God; and so stand lowest
The fraudulent, and greater dole assails them. - Canto 11, Inferno
Are we doing obstinate public sinners (who are taking advantage of the vulnerability of Christ in the Holy Eucharist) any favours by coddling them? Tolerating their twice bad behaviour - 1) their cooperation with horrific evil (state sanctioned murder of unborn children) and 2) their sinful pride and boasting about their diabolical behaviour - is not helping them. Pelosi, Biden, and the recalcitrant Dems who signed their "We're gonna have our host and eat it too" document, they've made their choice and are frauds for it.
(T)he Eight and Ninth Circles, in which the Fraudulent are punished. The Eighth Circle is called Malebolge, or Evil-budgets, and consists of ten concentric ditches, or Bolge of stone, with dikes between, and rough bridges running across them to the centre like the spokes of a wheel. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, English translation and notes.
While we wander about, pretending to be master and lord, God patiently waits while our choices play out to the point we feel like we're drowning and, our constructed gods having failed us, we are finally are forced to call for rescue. While we may abandon Him, He never abandons us. God is always there waiting with us, waiting for us to reach out, the generous father of the prodigal son. He does not force us into compliance, but He does permit us to live the lives we choose to live. Perhaps we should model our "outreach" to our erring brethren by waiting patiently like God, hand extended even when they slap away that hand to preserve their imagined control. Control, as in non serviam.
But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time. - Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 45I
We can make ourselves available to our brethren, and offer counsel, but if their cup is full, there's no way they're going to be open to Christ's alternative to ignorance, sin and death, especially if they are content with their pride and the chaos it brings.
As difficult as it may be for any person with a heart to accept that others who have made up their minds to deliberately disobey Christ and His Church deserve to be cut loose, there comes a time when one must concede that they who have formally demonstrated and celebrated their entrenched evil biases are clearly lost to, or infatuated with, and imprisoned by, their disordered convictions. Quite possibly they are perfectly possessed, and therefore, in a twisted way, quite content being so. Kyrie eleison!
Therefore whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. - 1 Corinthians 11:27
By signing a document explicitly stating their defiance, the aforementioned Demo(n)crats (pardon the pun) have indicated in no uncertain terms no interest in repentance and no intention to conform to the Church's teaching and wisdom. If, by some miracle, they begin to listen to the voice of God and turn away from sin and turn back to Christ and His Church, allelulia! We must, in charity appropriate to the Christian calling, enthusiastically welcome the prodigals back with open arms and a joyous feast prepared for them.
The good God does not need years to accomplish His work of love in a soul; one ray from His Heart can, in an instant, make His flower bloom for eternity. - Thérèse de Lisieux
Until they return to sanity, pray for our misguided brethren. Do not tolerate their refusal to listen to reason. Do not enable their fraud by indulging their disobedience. Let us pray!
Heavenly Father, we humbly beseech Thee, kindle in the hearts of our fallen-away brethren a pure fire of love for truth and goodness. Provide them, O Lord, with opportunities to hear the Gospel and to turn from evil. Grant, O Lord, Thy grace to help us all turn from sin toward newness of life in Jesus Christ Thy Son, Who with the Holy Ghost, liveth and reigneth with Thee, one God, world without end. Amen.
Let us recall that the door to the confessional is open and God's mercy awaits us all.
Good Christians make an examination of conscience and an act of contrition every evening. There was a devout monk lying at the point of death; when his Superior came and told him to make his confession, he answered: "Blessed be God! I have for thirty years made an examination of conscience every evening, and have made my confession every day as if I were at the point of death." - St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori
* The Eighth Circle of Hell, called Malebolge ("Evil Ditches"): the upper half of the Hell of the Fraudulent and Malicious. The Eighth Circle is a large funnel of stone shaped like an amphitheatre around which run a series of ten deep, narrow, concentric ditches or trenches called bolgie (singular: bolgia). Within these ditches are punished those guilty of Simple Fraud. From the foot of the Great Cliff to the Well (which forms the neck of the funnel) are large spurs of rock, like umbrella ribs or spokes, which serve as bridges over the ten ditches. Dorothy L. Sayers (the only person except the current leader of Hells 8th Circle who was able to escape) writes that the Malebolge is "the image of the City in corruption: the progressive disintegration of every social relationship, personal and public. Sexuality, ecclesiastical and civil office, language, ownership, counsel, authority, psychic influence, and material interdependence – all the media of the community's interchange are perverted and falsified." - NState
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