Friday, July 1, 2022

A Note on my Religious Work

For those of you who know me from EWTN, the Society of GK Chesterton, the Prairie Troubadours or The St. Austin Review, I am no longer affiliated with any of those groups.

  • "The truth will set you free" (John 8:32)
  • "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice." (John 18:37)
If we deny the truth, we are bad Christians and bad human beings.

If we put our faith in a lie - including a Big Lie - we are bad Christians and bad human beings.

If we endorse vulgarity, violence, bullying, gaslighting, fraud, irrational conspiracy theories, sedition and hate, we are bad Christians and bad human beings.

Since March of 2020, I have felt like a character in the play Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco.  In that play, the bestial inhumanity of rhinoceroses becomes a fad and people start turning into them - willingly discarding reason and free will and mocking others who don't.

Meanwhile, since I think some of my posts on this blog contributed to this problem, I have taken them all down.  You may follow me at https://theateroftheword.substack.com/.





Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Charlie Johnston Exposed!

Here are some observations by Dr. Jim Dooley on Charlie Johnston.  ...

***
Written October 14, 2017.
Charlie Johnston is a false prophet and most probably a fraud.  I can’t guess with complete certainty if he is a fraud / liar, delusional / mentally ill, or deceived by demons.  However, it really doesn’t matter; he’s any combination of the above.  He’s now wrong – yet again.  He’s racking up quite a collection of totally failed, so - called prophecies:  
  • He predicted that there’d be no peaceful transfer of power.
  • He predicted that Barack Obama would extend his term.
  • He predicted that President Trump wouldn’t be sworn in.
  • He predicted that the next American leader wouldn’t come from the normal electoral process.
  • He predicted we’d witness this as a sign from God, so we would believe.
  • He predicted the breakout of a world – wide civil war AND a complete economic collapse.
  • He predicted that during the period from October 13 to October 17, 2017, we’d be totally, visibly & miraculously delivered via the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  
  • He predicted that virtually the entire global population would convert to Catholicism.
  • He predicted that our infrastructure would be broken down & we’d be simplified.
  • Wrong on every prediction; that’s a perfect record!

We must note that he has been forbidden by his Archbishop to speak at any
church – owned properties and his followers have twice been strongly advised by the Archdiocese to, first, place their faith only in Jesus, the Scriptures and the Sacraments, and, second, to avoid trying to interpret his failed prophecies as valid.  The Magisterium has spoken.  Period.  Yet he still publishes articles on his blog, ‘The Next Right Step.’

Additionally, he has a cult - like following, which troubles me greatly.  He claims
to say simply that everyone must take the next right step and be a sign of hope to those around them.  Obviously, we don’t need Charlie to tell us to perform acts of charity towards others, especially when the world is in dire straits, which we can all clearly observe by simply viewing the nightly news, i.e. gay ‘marriage’, global wars, etc.  Thank you for stating the obvious, Charlie.  

I have nothing personal against Charlie, who’s a fellow Catholic.  Yet, significantly & deeply troubling, he used his alleged supernatural “prophecies” to initially attract and subsequently maintain, & actually augment, what has evolved into a cult – like following.  He obviously basks in the attention.  He also repeatedly scrubbed negative comments from his blog, allowing only supportive ones from his cult members to remain.  Finally, he attempted to spin a clear smack down from two separate Catholic Bishops, the Archbishop of Denver and the Bishop of Bismark, into something positive.  

He’s been proven to be a complete fraud yet again; has been proven false numerous times, and must be given no more platform, ever!  Yet, despite his repeated false and failed predictions, he has the unbelievable audacity to continue to post articles on his blog ‘TNRS / Abraham’s Journey”.  He has quietly returned and posted numerous articles on his blog, despite his promise to vanish from the public scene if he was proven false – which he has been.  He quietly returned, clearly for his own selfish and egocentric reasons.  At least have the honor to vanish.

He, his blog, and emails from ‘TNRS / Abraham’s Journey’ should be shunned.  The next right step must be to add Charlie to the dust bin of failed prophets & complete frauds.  Prayers for those whom he hurt, deceived & misled - and for him.  Charlie, and his dubious intentions, remain in our Rosary.  Ave Maria, Stella Maris!

***

Thanks to Jim for going through the effort to document all of Charlie's false prophecies - though it will make no difference to Charlie's True Believers.

The reason I finally stopped blogging at Waiting for Godot to Leave was that some of my readers continued to make excuses for Charlie, even after he admitted lying about his claim that he and I had emailed one another. 

Charlie's followers - if they still continue to put any faith in this man - are getting exactly what they deserve.

Sunday, May 1, 2016

Things I've Learned



Last year at about this time I took a sabbatical from blogging, except for a handful of posts here and there.

Here's what I've learned in the last year.


  • People are, in general, worse than we give them credit for being: more malicious, more scheming, more hateful, more selfish, more stupid, more desperate.  And that includes us.
  • Love is far more powerful than we suspect.  People who trust love are people who are saints.
  • The Charlie Johnston false prophet situation has absolutely nothing to do with religion.
  • We have not yet begun to figure out how to use the New Technology, nor do we really understand how certain technologies facilitate certain sins and bring out the worst in us, with different sorts of technology bringing out different forms of the worst in us.
  • Texting is the Pornography of Communication (the phrase is from a friend of mine who is always texting).  It separates the full person from the thing you want from him or her at that moment.  It implies a kind of casual intimacy that is clandestine, but that is also easy to walk away from - just like porn.  You can end a texting conversation without ever saying goodbye, for instance - and ignore texts indefinitely, even if you've been texting non-stop for hours with the same "friend" just yesterday.
  • Most of the problems of the last 500 years have been due to World Immanentism - the belief that the supernatural (or the Divine Ground of our being) either does not exist or is utterly separate from nature and cannot interact with it in any meaningful way.  We are all there is.  This is a closed system; there is no such thing as Grace that penetrates it from the outside.  Therefore, we save ourselves - or else we don't need to save ourselves.  Unreality (my word for the fictions we create and violently assert, forcing others to believe in them) is really just Self-Absorbed Promethean Neo-Pelagianism in action.
  • NFP (Natural Family Planning - which is typically used to avoid pregnancy without contraception) is the sacred cow of the "devout" wing of the Catholic Church.  It is a sacrament.  It conveys irresistible grace.  You may criticize lying, torture, capitalism, bishops, the Pope, even Charlie Johnston - but if you dare to suggest that Natural Family Planning is merely a tool that can be abused, you will be crucified.  Nothing gives Devout Catholics more pride than the fact that they abstain from sex a few days every month in order not to have smelly, messy babies, congratulating themselves for not using the pill or a rubber while achieving the exact same result.  Such a "sacrifice" makes them holy; and avoiding having babies for any reason is no big deal when you're holy.
  • When you see the Real Church - the Body of Christ as it actually is - you know it, especially when you're a part of it.  
  • The Kingdom of God is not what we expect.  We want Our Savior to be a Super Hero, not a skinny kid from Nazareth who gets crucified.  Plus we don't need a savior.  We're doing fine on our own, Self-Absorbed Promethean Neo-Pelagians that we are.  Plus we want a Kingdom we can build and see and admire, not something unmerited, profoundly silent, beyond our control and difficult to pin down.
  • My wife of 25 years, Karen, is the only person who tells me the truth at all times, even when I don't want to hear it.  She is utterly trustworthy, the best Catholic I know, the rock of my existence (next to Jesus).
  • And, finally, if it looks like BS, if it smells like BS, and if it tastes like BS, it's BS.

The Psychology of This

I honestly don't think that Charlie Johnston's followers believe him.  They can't.  Nobody's that stupid.  Nobody's that gullible.  This is why no matter what evidence people like me present to prove that Charlie is a liar and a fraud, his followers defend him.  This is why when the elections are not suspended, Obama does not convert, the Virgin Mary does not appear in 2017 and all the other things that Charlie claims his angel has "predicted" fail to happen, Charlie's followers won't care.  They'll defend him all the more vehemently from folks like me who point out that this is all simply crazy.

Back when I first started hearing about him, I had two intelligent and devout Catholics from separate parts of the U.S say to me at separate times, "I don't believe Charlie, but I want to!"

Why?

Why would anybody want to believe this garbage?

Perhaps what we see in Donald Trump and Michael Voris is part of the answer.  People don't care if demagogues are consistent or honest or anything in particular.  They want to cheer for them.  They want to see them "stick it to the man".  They're mad at mainstream politicians and so they flock to Trump, regardless of his personal integrity as a human being because he feeds and stokes their anger and mollifies their frustration.  They're mad at the bishops, so they subscribe to Voris.  "Here's somebody sticking it to the bishops!" - and the rage porn flows.  The fact that Trump has no core beliefs or that Voris attacks people like Mark Shea and me when we criticize the likes of Fr. Corapi, implying that we're part of a great shadowy conspiracy of "professional Catholics"; or the fact that so much of what Voris is peddling is paranoia of one sort or another - none of that matters.

This is not about truth.

This is about finding a hero - or a villain - who makes you feel good and who gives your less than glamorous Christian existence a little verve and focus.

Those of us who think that the truth will matter to True Believers are fooling ourselves.  This is because this is not about True Belief - it's about anger and frustration finding some sort of false solution.