Iran War started. Pray for Peace. And for Victory.

There are a lot more Catholics than Jews in the US. They need to start standing up for themselves, in my opinion. They have the Truth, after all.

 

I respect the Old Testament perspective. I agree that suffering can bring people back to God—we see that again and again.

But I also look at it through what I’ve lived.

After my accident, I went through a level of suffering I never could have imagined. I didn’t enjoy it. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But I also don’t see it as God chastising me. I see it as something God allowed—and then walked with me through. He allowed me to experience suffering I believe to help me know I am not in charge -I am not God- To help me trust more.

And in that, I didn’t lose hope.

That’s where I think I see things a little differently. For me, Christian hope isn’t about expecting inevitable chastisement or trying to brace for what’s coming. It’s about trusting God even when what I see in front of me doesn’t make sense.

What strikes me—especially today with the Feast of the Annunciation—is Mary’s yes. She didn’t say yes because she knew how it would all play out. In fact, her yes led directly into suffering—the Cross was already in that yes.

But she trusted anyway.

That’s the kind of hope I’m trying to hold onto. Not that I understand everything, and not that I see things getting easier—but that God is trustworthy even when I don’t.

I’ve started to see suffering less as punishment, and more in light of the Cross—not something sent to break us, but something that, in Christ, can be used for redemption.

So when I look at the world right now, I don’t primarily see ‘what’s coming’ in terms of chastisement. I try to see where God is already at work—even in the middle of the mess—and trust Him there.

For me, hope is holding onto that… even when it’s hard

 

Definitely a lot more Catholics than Jews. Are there a lot more Catholics than Zionists? Catholicism is close enough to being the largest Christian denomination in the US but it isn't the majority religion, not even the overall majority Christian religion. Factor in Catholics with a Zionist political mindset who might not identify as Zionists but their worldview is zionist in all but name. The general population has been conditioned to conflate Zionism with persecuted Jews and Muslims as the greatest enemy of Jews. They don't know that, prior to the colonial zionist project in Palestine, Muslims tended to treat Jews (the people of the Book) better than Christians. Israel and Muslim Azerbaijan align against Christian Armenia and Azerbaijan has keep Israel supplied with oil as the Israelis wage war against their fellow Muslims. Look at the Qataris gifting trump an airplane as he armed and funded the genocide in Palestine. I doubt the average American has a clue what their intelligence agencies and their greatest ally get up to. They won't read it in the NYT or hear about it on Fox or CNN.

If the US really does go to war, almost every American will support their troops. In their situation we would probably do the same. Hitler never had majority support in Germany but ordinary Germans joined up when their country was at war despite the Nazis killing so many Catholic priests. That politician's statement about Catholic processions could well have been a shot across the bow to the Catholic Bishops. Cardinal Dolan is probably more savvy than Bishop Barron because he has more experience living in New York - the belly of the beast. Bishop Barron should have kept his mouth shut and met quietly with Carrie but he's really an academic with a bit of an ego. I suppose that she has been boosted by getting Tucker Carlson's attention. She might wish soon enough that she were unknown because if her country goes to war and the Church is not seen to be 100% behind it, all the old Protestant calumnies will be trotted out to portray Catholics as traitors.

 

Great to come back to this little sanctuary of a website and read something like this; not theory, but practice, also.

And the great Glory of Christianity is that we worship a God whose knowledge of suffering isn’t just theory, but practice, too.

 

What you say holds a lot of truth, but America is very soft, now. The Americans like to win their wars easily. All their wars since Vietnam until this one have featured highly successful ‘shock and awe’ beginnings, followed by a slow decline. However, Vietnam was a disaster and divided the country in half. America is now much weaker and Iran a much more formidable opponent than North Vietnam. This time, the petrodollar (or the pedodollar, as some wags are calling it) is at stake. America is already bitterly divided; is the majority going to row in behind a war that wrecks their economy (leaving them without any money), with thousands of body-bags coming home and little prospect of meaningful ‘victory’?

The sites I’m getting my information from these last few years feature knowledgeable people who got events correct in the Ukraine and Middle East far more often than the MSM. They predicted Trump’s attack on Iran would be a disaster, although I don’t think any one of them expected the scale of it. They are united in their opinion of the folly of the ‘boots on the ground’ plan and see no possibility of victory for Trump, with even a nuclear attack being pyrrhic. So Catholics who do not share the Zionist heresy will find themselves far from alone, in my opinion.

 

It could take a few years of war and troops coming home in body bags before the American people come together and put enough pressure on their politicians to rein them in. I've just watched this podcast where Daniel Davis talks to a professor who has studied US wars and has been studying the Trump support in the MAGA movement. I recommend it. (I also read a comment where someone said that on Friday night or Saturday morning the US will take some small island in the Gulf and Trump will declare it the greatest invasion since Normandy).

 

Maybe if he occupies some island for a while, he can say 'mission accomplished' and go home.

One American commenter I've read, who's honest, says that 80% of the voters in his county voted for Trump, but that 75% of these Trump voters he knows are against this war and those who support it are 'tepid' about it. He says that people in his county mostly feel betrayed by Trump (including himself, who had been very enthusiastic). He says that any MAGA emblems or flags or any Star of David flags that had been up in his area are long taken down.

That sounds plausible. Many on this site, myself included, thought Trump was a good man and not without evidence. His first term was a good one and he cut back the US warring. He campaigned for his second term for more of the same. I wouldn't be surprised that many voters in America feel just as conned as I do myself.

I feel very sorry for these voters...to whom do they turn to, now?

 

It is sad but true that there are quite a few Catholic Zionists too. There should not be as Dispensationalism is a Protestant Heresy but there you are.

I have two Catholic friends who are Zionists ; I dare not even express and opinion on Israel they would fly into a rage. Sad.

I remember in a bar in Jerusalem my friend Gerry was sitting with a group of Israeli soldiers loaded with guns and he said to them that I did not like Jews. I had to leave the bar real fast.

Mad.

I remember talking to two Irish soldiers serving with the United Nations in Jerusalem. They said everyone in their unit was pro Israel before they left Ireland. But now having served in Israel they were all anti Israel and pro Palestine.

 

Also, events are unfolding very quickly. A long war will be even worse for the US. The escalations are coming so quickly, both sides might by then be going at one another with clubs! Even if the war remains conventional, the economic damage will escalate and no amount of cynical manipulation will be able to prop things up.

Militarily, the US will find it extremely difficult to gain a bridgehead, but even if it does, it's going to be even more difficult to hold on to it. And the US is running out of weapons. The $200 billion dollars given to the Pentagon is useless if there are no weapons to buy. Most US weapons are incredibly expensive, obsolete and slow to produce. They need rare earths for the electronics, but China has a monopoly on those earths. Taiwan makes 95% (!) of high-end computer chips and an ongoing war depriving it of oil is likely to drive it into the arms of Mother China without a shot having to be fired (great Far Eastern allies Japan and S. Korea are already plausibly reported as negotiating with Iran for oil). So, despite all its apparent might, there seems to be a touch of the Potemkin Village about the all-powerful US of A. Let's not forget the US has had to pull its THAAD battery from S. Korea, which did not impress the latter (there's a report today of a big explosion in Haifa Harbour just as the THAAD was said to be unloading, but yet to be confirmed-they're useless against ultrasonics anyway, but it will be interesting to see if the report is true).

 

In fairness, one must make a distinction between a political admiration for Israel and a theological belief in their cause. The former is a declining political opinion, which I once had myself, but the latter is a heresy.

If you don't mind me asking, are you still friends with Gerry!?

 

No. When they started the genocide in Gaza and I said it was wrong he was gone.

There might have been some excuse for supporting this evil as a result of ignorance at one time. It is less and less so now. Gaza is one vast extermination camp.

 

Get Ready For Energy Lockdowns (What They Have Planned Is Terrifying...)



Not scaremongering just well researched - a must watch

 

Well, they've already had their practice run.

 

Well said! It's like reading some of the writings of Luisa Piccarreta which deal with understanding sufferings.

 

Gaza is the 21st century holocaust that obviated the justification for the moral special pleading of the one from the previous century.

 

Honestly, I'm preparing myself that this will happen in Australia at any given moment now. I just saw diesel is $3.12 a litre. By next week will it be $4 - unbelievable!!

There are ppl panic buying petrol in jerry cans. This is the toilet paper fiasco all over again, which started in Oz, too lol. Sorry, laughing in disbelief.

I feel like all the pieces of the puzzle are coming together - the 3 days of darkness will be caused by lack of electricity due to this war? It seems like it...

 

I can say that I also went through a kind of Calvary last year… I remember pausing at a calendar and seeing a quote from Pope John Paul II: “You will not find love without the cross, and you will not carry the cross without love.”

It’s hard to describe, but when you enter a church and kneel, you feel greater and more powerful than ever—that is a feeling I believe each of us has experienced at least once. It’s not always the same, but that moment, that millisecond you may have felt once in your life, is as if heaven touched the earth, and you experienced a joy that no rewards, human recognition, or vanity—which do not fill the heart—can ever provide. It’s like when you look at the stars and the sky at night, or the sea. You feel so small before something that surpasses all our senses, understanding, and will.

If that is only a fragment of God’s beauty and love, how great must it be for each of us, when such a price was paid through Christ’s blood. It is hard to look at this kind of world—you see the powerful and the wealthy trafficking children, you see the helpless being killed with such modern force as in Gaza, you see good being twisted into evil and evil into good, those who start wars being called peacemakers, the entire history of Salvation and the Church being distorted, confused, and manipulated, shepherds abandoning their flock, and the flock itself shrinking as many have left the faith… it is hard not to fall into despair, because we are faced with some evil force that surpasses our intellect, our reason, and our strength to fight.

And yet, despite all this, God raises up small witnesses of faith in various ways—those who persevere in that struggle, who in the darkness point to the light and show that it is worth fighting for justice and truth. As you say, everything is in God’s hands—the One who, on the wood of the cross, was scourged and crucified, won victory over death and rose again.

After Good Friday, Easter Sunday always comes.

 

This beautiful post resonates with me. And miker's words as well. The quote from Pope JPII describes it truly. We learn love from the cross and we carry it because of love. Jesus draws very close when we are suffering and offering it.

 

Beautiful. Thanks for your witness.

 

Amen!