SAINTS JOAN OF ARC AND FERDINAND III OF CASTILLE - MAY 30, 2022

 

Joan of Arc

1412 - 1431

I was conflicted about WHICH  saint to meditate on today: Joan of Arc, one of my favorite female saints, or King Ferdinand III of Castille, my 25th great grandfather. Complicating it is my relationship to King Charles VII of France, my 11th cousin, 15 times removed, for whom Joan of Arc went to war and whose monarchy she was instructed to save by saints and angels who appeared to her and spoke to her when she was a young teen.

Knowing my relationships to the saints has helped me tremendously in my spiritual life. It is always a good thing when history can be made to "come to life" for us.

Charles VII of France

Aided by Saint Joan of Arc

My 11th cousin, 15 times removed

Common ancestor: William the Conqueror

Anyway, I am devoting some time to each of these saints.

The thing that strikes me as being relevant to our time is that Joan of Arc was executed primarily because she wore men's clothing to save herself from being raped by her jailers. Previously, she had been tried for this and for heresy and witchcraft but had avoided execution with a life sentence instead. Then, after the first trial, she had to wear men's clothing again, to protect her modesty, but they decided to kill her for it.  That's the given reason, but we all know that women who wield power terrify men and they'll do anything they can to disrupt it. Who knows which reason was primary? People really DID believe in witchcraft in those days.

Joan, a French citizen, was put into the hands of the English by the government of Burgundy, who captured and sold her. That girl just could not catch a break.

Welcome to the era when the Church ruled the land and women were burnt alive by supposedly holy men because they wore pants. This is how crazy it can get when church and state coalesce.

Saint Joan is only one of thousands of women who were executed in horrific ways by The Catholic Church for ridiculous reasons, such as wearing pants, witchcraft, and the like. They were burned alive - usually after being tortured. 

Elevating supposedly moral flaws to the level of an offense worthy of execution is what happened when government control was was wielded by The Church in England, which is why the founders of our country were keen to keep religion out of politics. But here we are again - fighting off a hostile takeover of the government by a religion.

Don't get me wrong. I am Catholic and I love the faith. I am a believer, but I am not enthusiastic about repeating the errors of the past because I have "met" a lot of people on the internet who appear to be proponents of force and punishment whose language is so extreme that I could easily picture them putting people to death for voting for a Democrat.

Saint Joan of Arc

Listening to the voices of the angels

There is SO much written about Saint Joan of Arc, I am not going to reinvent the wheel. I just wanted to make that comment about how that very holy, very pure and very young girl was put to death by religious = authorities when she was only 19. She had been 13 when she started hearing the voices and seeing visions. She was about 17 when she went to war to help establish my cousin, Charles VII, on the French throne.

I also want to add that, in addition to all of that, she had to endure the humiliation of being poked and prodded in her nether regions by nuns tasked with determining if she was a virgin or not!

From the vantage point of a woman born and raised in the U.S., without ever having to answer to any government official about the condition of my hymen or whether or not I wear PANTS, I feel renewed gratitude for all my freedoms, but I DO remember what a big deal it was to be allowed to wear pants to school when I was in my teens....a vestige of the controls that government authorities have typically exerted over women throughout the ages.

 

Saint Ferdinand III

King of Castille, Leon, Galicia & Toledo

(various time frames)

5 August 1201 - 30 May 1252

My 25th great grandfather

Saint Ferdinand, my 25th great-grandfather, has a lot less dramatic a story than poor Joan of Arc. He was King of Castile and died a couple hundred years before she was burnt at the stake.

He was a devout monarch, and, in addition to grabbing some territory from the Muslims, he is credited with the establishment of  churches and religious institutions. He was a very successful leader who brought together disparate territories. He a member of the Third Order of St. Francis and was buried in its habit. I sense that he was a kind man. It is said that he was careful not to burden his subjects with too much tax or odious laws as he feared the curse of one poor woman more than an army of Saracens!

I am proud to include him in my family tree.

Today is Memorial Day, a day on which we honor men and women who died during their service in the U.S. Armed Forces, particularly those who died in battle or from wounds received in battle. It is said they made the "ultimate sacrifice" for their country, somewhat as Saint Joan of Arc did for hers. Not a great comparison, I admit...but it's the best I could come up with.  

Reading about the battles of Joan of Arc and Ferdinand III of Castile brings to mind the horrors of war and just how violent human beings can be. Even religious folk are violent - killing women for being witches or wearing men's pants, even after they have accomplished great things in battle, at the behest of God Himself.

Personally, I am a pacifist and abhor violence. I veer away from capital punishment and never even slapped my child in jest, much less spank him for some infraction. I just don't believe in hurting people, but I am out of step with human beings, as a whole. I hope those that believe in hurting other humans can catch up to the pacifists one day.

God bless you all!

Silver "Rose"

            

THE CHAIR OF PETER, MODERNISM, AND THE LAITY

the chair of St. Peter in Rome

I would like to take a moment to clarify that, just because I have written lately that modernism has infected the Holy Catholic Church and we DO have a number of clerics spouting heretical ideas, and some living in luxury in palatial mansions, this does not mean that I think we should abandon Holy Mother Church. To the contrary, as Michael Voris recently said, we need to "step it up." What is meant by that? We can't sit around mooning about how much we looooove Jesus, batting our eyelashes and sighing over our great love for Him or, in the alternative, stomp out in a huff because the administrators of the faith are not protecting it and propagating it.

The Church is in crisis, and we have to get busy. Yes, we have to be busybodies. We have to actively energize our own faith and the faith of others. We have to study, pray and preach The Truth until Jesus comes again. We can no longer sit back in the pews and soak up the holiness and knowledge from the guy at the altar. There are some fabulous priests in the Catholic Church, probably some very holy ones, but there are a lot of guys at the altar whose Catholic education is faulty, or who disagree with aspects of the faith, or who have just lost their zeal. Some are struggling with ill health that would sideline someone working in the secular world, but they keep plugging away, delivering lukewarm homilies because they're exhausted.

Some priests work long past retirement age, pouring themselves out for the church because we aren't getting enough priestly candidates and/or the candidates that we ARE getting, many of them, are homosexuals intent on changing the church's teaching about this type of sin. Holy priests see this state of affairs and can't bear to remove their orthodox voice from the mix, and I am grateful for them.

The congregation is not an audience. Mass is not another piece of entertainment. We are participants in the mass, just as much as the guy at the altar. We are responsible for the faith and for our own education in it. We can't turn it off like a television show that gets boring. We don't change the channel for another faith because this one is too taxing. We don't throw up our hands in despair because "it's not our job" to help correct the errors in the church. It IS our job. We just have to do the right things in the right way. Most of all, we have to be prepared for backlash, and a lot of it.

We are not alone, however. The Holy Spirit is with us. The current batch of schismatic, heretic, and/or greedy prelates will be taken care of by Christ's church, in time. Sometimes it takes a long time, but I trust The Lord's Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, established by Jesus Christ himself upon "the rock" - Saint Peter - the first Pope. I will not leave it, even when the behavior of some of its ersatz leaders is alarming. Their behavior is not the fault of the religion, which is perfect. It is perfect because it came from Jesus Christ.

Christ infused His Church with authority, responsibility for souls, and with grace. He transmitted something real when he gave his breath upon the disciples. The faith came directly from Jesus. The church is administered by sinners like you and I. Of COURSE some of them are going to fall off the rails and land in a ditch on occasion. They're human. We have to lift them up, not stand at the sidelines saying, "Tsk, tsk, he had such promise!" They need our prayers and our voices, but we must have informed, educated voices that ring with the Truth of Christ.

Satan has always attacked the Catholic Church, from both within and without, yet it has endured for 2,000 years. The Catholic Church will prevail, even against the "gates of Hell." Jesus promised he would be with us until the end of time. Time has not ended, so He is still here, and I take comfort in that. I pray for his guidance in the steps that I take.

As long as I continue to study and practice my faith, I should be inoculated against the erroneous messages that come from some of the clergy. I will know my faith and I will recognize when I am hearing something else, and I can simply dismiss the crazy talk and stick to the Truth, while I pray for the church and for these misguided men. Sometimes I write about this process on this blog, but I wish to be clear that my intention is to be completely faithful to the Holy Mother Church and her magisterium and that I recommend that we remain respectful to the positions that these men hold while at the same time ordering our minds to the True Faith.

Yes, The Church may be in crisis at the moment, but it has always fought Satan in one guise or another. Satan would love nothing more than for us to become discouraged and abandon the faith because the discord and disobedience of those that should know better has reached a crescendo, but that isn't right. We, the true believers, are faithful to the church that Jesus started and we will not abandon it. We will study, pray and preach the Truth until Jesus comes again. We are to participate in the work of keeping the True Faith alive.

In order to know the faith, what it teaches and why it teaches it, I have previously recommended that we study as much as we can. There is so much misinformation flying around the media and in the parishes, you pretty much have to conduct an independent course of study, unless you are lucky enough to have access to a good educational system. I am poor and disabled, so I have to do what I can within the boundaries of my abilities.

In service of this goal, I am giving you a link to a list of recommended books to read and to keep in one's library as resource material. These are in addition to The Holy Bible, The Catechism of the Catholic Church, and Papal Encyclicals that are available on the Vatican website. This list includes the early fathers and mothers of the church, the doctors of the church, and some saints.

I have read many of these books, years ago, but do not currently have them in my library and wish to read them again and to make use of them when writing my blog, which is why I initially started this list.  I would like to share it with you, in case there are any offerings on it that you've not heard of. Perhaps some of us can read these books together and compare notes. Let's see how it goes.

You may find this list HERE

God bless you,

Silver Rose Parnell
(c) Copyright 2015
All rights reserved

LIBERAL CATHOLICISM

"Liberal Catholicism" is an oxymoron. That term is a conflation of a political orientation with the Catholic faith. It gives the impression that there are different types of Catholicism. This is a lie.  The doctrines of the Catholic faith are specific and unambiguous. They are laid out in detail in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. There is one Catholic faith.

If you disagree with the doctrines of the Catholic faith, you are not a "liberal Catholic," you are a protestant.

If you knowingly and deliberately mislead people into believing that the Catholic faith approves of things that are intrinsically evil, you are a heretic and an enemy of the faith. You are not a "liberal Catholic."

I dearly wish that none of us would use these terms "liberal" or "conservative" in relation to the Catholic faith, since it conveys the lie that the Catholic faith is a democracy. It isn't.

Silver Rose
(c) Copyright 2015

All rights reserved