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Retraction:1&2&3
In the memoof ‘Prayer’: Only say the word and my servant will be healed, I criticize the line paraphrased and highlighted below that comes before communion. I forgot to say how great Christ himself thought of the Centurion who said it. It’s necessary for me to say that of all the gospels Christ said that the centurion who asked for his slave to be healed had a Great faith.
Only say the word and I will be healed
That to me is the most maligned statement in the Catholic Liturgy. I have watched
myself and other Catholics say that line with so much verve that you’d think we would raise the roof. The line has a purpose in the liturgy. Just as the ‘I confess’ deals with all the sins you may have coming into mass. The word (The body of Christ) has to be
announced before Communion. I asked a priest where this comes from and he says that a roman soldier asked Christ to only say the word for an ill slave he wanted cured. Is that enough? Christ will cure your slave if you line up for communion. No, well get out apen and fill in your own gospel interpretation. My thing is that it will only heal not cureyou, and only in Reference to its position right before the holycommunion. Many if notmost Bi-Polar Catholic people see this as an un-broken chain of false hope.
It is in my experience that Christ himself may have had an additional gift to the mentally and spiritually wounded centurion’sof the debased immoral Roman Empire. It’s Lithium that the sick Centurions of that time, foundby bathing in the mineral bathsbuilt wherever the Roman Legions conquered. Two French anesthetists in the 19th Century found the compound Lithium in one of these baths in France and gave the first therapeutic prescription for a mental disease. Before you only doped people up or down with Cocaine or opiates.
Aside from the cure for the schizophrenic Roman, Christ paid back for his Crucifixion by giving Rome and all of us ‘The Church of Christ’
As I wrote the centurion was given the title of having the greatest faiththat Jesus Christ had ever seen. In my abysmal prayer reckoning, I lampooned the pronouncement that occurs just before the communion as an impossible feat. But as reminded by a black pastor from Brooklyn who in a recent Charismatic Mass in Our Lady of the Angelus; when you receive a gift from God, it comes in God time. This is, now, my appreciation with God’s gift… He has come half way with the prescription of Lithium; He’ll take whatever time he needs to restore my faith in him to cure me of my schizophrenia.
2.Our Lady of Fatima prayer:
I have ceased saying the Fatima prayer in my Rosary. But for the sake of all the Catholics who say this incorrect approach to prayer I will say the Novena of our Lady of the Rosary. In this Novena it mentions the Blessed Mother asked at Fatima for the recitation of the Rosary for peace in the world and in individual souls. I can then approve of the intent of our Lady of Fatima prayers without approval of the prayer itself. The third mystery of the Lady of Fatima children’s testimony has unforeseeably failed the Vatican’s test of inerrancy three times. I’m talking about the announced release of the children of Fatima letters in 1967, 2000 and 2006. All squashed by the Vatican.
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What bothers me about the Lady of Fatima prayer is the finish…Lead all souls to heaven especially those in most need of thy Mercy. In a meditative sense it is caroling you into praying for the most despicable members of the human race every decade of the rosary. Who would be the most need of God’s mercy .ie. Hitler, Stalin, Bernhard Goetz. The list goes on.
It must be remembered the vision of our Lady of Fatima took place in 1917 in a more innocent time when nation states went to war not dictators. I can only compliment Our Lady of Fatima for giving us a renewed interest in the Holy Rosary. A Rosary, by the way, nearly all Catholics include in it the Fatima prayer.
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3. Reassessment of Finding the Body of Christ:
Because of continuing illness I’ve had to reassess one of the theological underpinnings of my decision to put my sin offering on the cross and carry it to its crucifixion. In my disavowal of my sinful existence as a schizophrenic I did a wrong turn of giving depression a new name: Poverty of Spirit. It was my secret ambition to give a religious justification to a mental state that had only tangential significance to true poverty of Spirit. True poverty of Spirit is as the accompanying essays a clear anti-materialistic foundation in the affairs of religious practices. It is not the sinful (bad) sickness of depression and melancholy. In the foreword to my decision to offer my sin offering on the cross I use the excerpt from The Beatitudes “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven”
As can be seen I develop a parallel to “open prayer” by showing an example of emptying myself in order to receive the Eucharist. This in itself would be good if I was talking about my prayer life with God, but “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven” is talking about the quality of life for an aspirant here on earth. What I was talking about was a conundrum in my head.
This facility of emptying oneself for the Eucharist would answer the pop quiz question for finding the body of Christ by enabling me to receive the sin offering on the cross ergo… The Eucharist. As important as this was to me I never questioned the fallibility of the process of offering up my sin offering on the cross. It is very important to be believable even if only to yourself.
It’s important for you to understand that this mistake didn’t prevent me from offering the sin of my existence (My preference for fantasy over reality) on my cross and carrying it to the Crucifixion.
Like many of these religious perceptions; I made and fumbled the delivery. Chief amongst them is the fallacious argument that God loves me sin and all. As James said in my first “Temptation” God dislikes sin and you can’t tempt God with sin. When he helps you it’s always a gift. My way of getting help from God by showcasing my sin instead of offering it up explains the veniality of my approach. I want God to appreciate me for the suffering of my sin as a religious experience which it clearly is not.
It is indicative of the original Finding of the body of Christ the section immediately preceding my successful carrying of the cross that I’ll proceed to devolve “Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted”. Here I focus my mourning as an estrangement from a purposeful living that causes a flux of sin and repentance. A situation I still am in today where I both attract fantasy’s that are sinful and abhor them when they make my thoughts deviate from normal behavior. The term flux is an Electrical Engineering term meaning electro-magnetic transference of power. In this case I’m using the metaphor of a magnetic field describing how God feels the flux of sin and repentance. And we in turn experience God’s saving redemption. [The primary coil transfers its power to the secondary coil over an air dielectric in a step up transformer].
Insanity is not an authentic religious experience. But it is part of the flux of sin and repentance that keeps me going back to God. Why God would bother handling my sin as well as countless others is beyond me. And in an affected style I’ll give you the mistake in judgment that following it through these tirades is like.
In my neighborhood I’ve always debated whether the shortest distance to the subway is the LIRR Foot Bridge or Woodhaven Blvd. What always happens in arguments like this is the path most traveled wins the argument. To show you how blindsided reality is if you were to actually see how the foot bridge cuts across a triangle piece of Woodhaven you’d still walk the more familiar terrain to the subway.
This experience of going over the same territory doesn’t make me contemptuous like the old expression familiarity breeds contempt. It instead makes me say familiarity breeds resolve. I resolve to dig in to my stand with the religious practices I employ and amend any of the inconsistencies I find that obscure my vision of the risen Lord. Including the inerrancy’s that I described in this letter of retractions.