HE WILL PREVAIL

Just a couple of things today, since it is too hot again to do much.
John Henry Cardinal Newman said that "the face of the visible Church is very disappointing to an earnest mind, nay, in certain sense, a scandal." This did not discourage this great theologian, whom Pope Benedict will beatify later this year. "It is also a fact," Newman continued, "that, in spite of them still, the Church has ever got on and made way, to the surprise of the world; as an army may fight a series of bloody battles, and lose men, and yet go forward from victory to victory." We would do well also to recall two things our Lord Jesus Christ told us about His Church: that it is made up of both good and bad, wheat and chaff; and that the Gates of Hell will never prevail against it. Remember, he was a leading minister in the church of England, and converted to Catholicism in the 1840's. If you are able to, check out his "APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA", his book from 1864 in which he disputes the religious upheaval in England, and at the same time blowing away his detractors, especially when he defected to the True Faith of Catholicism.

We should remember this as we sometimes despair with all that is going on to the Faith these days. This stuff occurring today is the same as occurred in the past. Only the wordings and tactics have been changed.