For the Feast of St. Thérèse

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This simple act SAVED St. Therese of Lisieux (you can do it too)
Heralds of the Gospel | 28 Sept. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yAeirrEU-M

I am glad St. Thérèse was saved.

I am perhaps less glad at the suspicion someone thought I needed this reminder and picked this story about the saint, thinking of my advantage. I could be wrong, I have a harrowing suspicion I'm not, I'll explain both the reaction to the suspicion if true, and the suspicion.

First of all, self love is judged differently in lay people and in religious. If a layman desires sexual pleasure, he's supposed to marry. If a religious feels such a desire, he or she is obliged to suppress.

Second, the other traits in her then condition are now at present lacking in my case.

I say at present, because a very faulty reception of me into the Novus Ordo sect ended up with me having some kind of decision to become or at least attempt a monastic or sacerdotal life even before my first confession. Indeed, while I could not have received sacramental absolution prior to completed and accepted conversion process, it would have done me excellent good to have talked to a priest about some specific sin and how to get right with God (the sooner the better, before the sacramental absolution was an option), specifically instructions on what to do for a perfect act of charity.

Those first years after my reception were scrupulous. It would be very erroneous to think I am in that condition now. The depression, yes, I was depressed, was however not purely from lacking hope of salvation, it was bitterness about being with a grandmother of a personality type not far from Mrs. Moore if you know the story of C. S. Lewis, or so it seemed to me then, in my anger, and also about not getting an occasion to speak out with a priest I would rather marry, if that didn't deprive me of the absolution received. I NEVER got an opportunity, he ALWAYS told me "don't be scrupulous" ... which was not the exact problem.

Now, third, why do I have this suspicion? Because I am a writer. On the one hand, some guys in the novus ordo sect could have a real interest in getting me to exchange things I have written for a rejection of "all that vanity", on the other hand, given the work I have done, if there hadn't been any kind of "arrière-pensée" or of reticence in the real approach one had for me, I could have had a publisher long ago among people having even a partial agreement with me, or a debate with people having a vehement disagreement with me.

The rules of that sport, and yes, I consider debating is a sport, are not to say "oh, debating didn't work, he still rejects Vatican II, we must try to do something else" ... the rules are more like, if you have no more to say, leave the floor to someone else.

Oh, one more thing. The guys who may be judging me from "back then" ... let's be clear how long ago it was. I tried to talk to a priest in 1985 and was received in 1988. After plenty of catechism, but basically no instruction of how to get peace with God while waiting for conversion. Perhaps they presumed I should still go to the Lutheran parish at least for a talk, I considered this inappropriate. Some other guys may get a similar impression from elsewhere. That's how some types of Protestant will very generally judge Catholics, partly because that's how Luther was living up to when he basically ceased to be Catholic. And some "Catholics" will be so ecumenical they will judge me as scrupulous on the word of a Protestant for things like:

• wanting a fertile marriage
• wanting to get back to the rosary when and if I can forgive enemies
• rejoicing in having done a pilgrimage.

The first of these will be termed "legalism" by some Protestants, the other two will be termed "works based salvation" and both will be termed "scrupulosity" when they deal with Catholics who use that term.