The Most Important Interpersonal Skill Keeps Getting More Complicated

Interpersonal communication is foundational to our success – and it keeps getting harder. How can we adapt?

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Indian bishop quits to become a hermit

Auxiliary Bishop Jacob Muricken of Palai has left his official post to become a hermit. (Photo: Supplied)

By UCA News reporter August 23, 2022

A Catholic bishop has become a hermit, quitting his position to fulfill his long-cherished desire, the first such case in the Catholic Church in India.

Auxiliary Bishop Jacob Muricken of Palai diocese of the eastern rite Syro-Malabar Church based in the southern state of Kerala left the bishop’s house on Aug. 15 and moved to a hermitage he built in Nallathanni in Kanjirappally diocese.

Bishop Muricken, 59, “took this decision following approval from the Synod of the Syro-Malabar Church,” Father Joseph Maleparampil told UCA News on Aug 22, a week after the prelate left the bishop’s house.

“The prelate will spend his remaining life in prayer in isolation and continue to hold the title of bishop. This is the first case in India’s Catholic Church where a bishop has become a hermit,” Father Maleparampil said, adding “The prayers of the bishop will surely rejuvenate the Catholic Church.”

“Bishop Muricken is so down to earth that before becoming bishop he never used to wear footwear. He began to wear slippers after becoming the auxiliary bishop and he also follows a very simple vegetarian diet eating twice a day. He is an inspiration to all of us,” the priest said.

Earlier speaking to UCA News, Bishop Muricken said his decision to quit the bishop’s office came from “an inspiration from God.”

“God inspires me to go into solitude”

“It is a special call within a call to become a monk and abstain from official life as a bishop and other administrative roles in the diocese. It is to become closer to God and nature,” he said.

The idea of leading a solitary life came to him in 2017, five years after he was ordained auxiliary bishop of Palai. 

The bishop said he looked forward to spending the rest of his life “more in prayer and meditation and leading an eco-friendly life away from the hustle and bustle of the routines of a bishop.”

The prelate in an interview released through deepika.com, a Churn-run news portal announcing his move, said his life and prayer in solitude “will help transform the Catholic Church and people across the globe.”

The prelate said he wants to be with the people but “God inspires me to go into solitude.”

“When an ordinary person becomes a monk or hermit it will not be noticed much, but when a bishop becomes a monk it will get the attention and focus of many people who will in turn think about the will of God,” he said.

“Now I will only focus on a Christ-centered life”

“Solitary life does not mean that I hate the world, but to see the world as per the will of God who is the creator. Now people treat the world as a utility and exploit it for luxury, but my attempt as a hermit is to live in the world according to the will of the creator.”

The prelate said his life in the hermitage will be totally focused on the holy host and with the presence of Christ all the time.

“When I was in the bishop’s house I was busy with so many things but now I will only focus on a Christ-centered life.”

The prelate said he chose a remote place as he wanted to avoid a public who visit him for personal worldly gain rather than spiritual gain.

“Now I am sure only those who wish to gain spiritual insight will call on me and I will interact with them,” he said.

“I will also discharge the duties of a bishop in case of emergencies such as ordinations where a bishop is unavailable or other such things, but not to hold any office of bishop.

“Such emergency assignments will be accepted provided Church authorities make the request,” he added.

Bishop Muricken hit international headlines in 2016 by becoming the first bishop in India to donate one of his kidneys to a Hindu. 

Muricken was born in Muttuchira, a village parish in the diocese, on June 16, 1963. He joined a seminary after completing a master’s degree in economics and was ordained a priest in 1993.

The two-week synod in session at Mount St. Thomas, the headquarters of the Syro-Malabar Church in Kochi, since Aug. 16, has not made any official announcement regarding Bishop

Renewal and Restoration: That nothing may be lost

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio – articles – email ) | Aug 23, 2022

In the August/September issue of First Things, editor R. R. Reno had an interesting take on Pope Francis’ constant insistence that true Catholic renewal never involves restoration:

I have to wonder what the Holy Father could be thinking. Are we to suppose that the “spirit of Vatican II” opposes the always necessary, always ongoing restoration of the Church? The fall of man imposes a bitter law of entropy on all our endeavors, including our noblest ones. The Church is forever spending down her inheritance, neglecting her spiritual riches, forgetting her theological wisdom. It was not within the power of the Second Vatican Council to repeal this sad law of decay and dissolution. Only someone beholden to a religious ideology, rather than informed by a genuine theology, could look at the last fifty years and imagine that we don’t need a strong dose of “restorationism.”

I might add the reminder that when God was calling the remarkable St. Francis of Assisi to his special mission, the words He spoke were always, “Rebuild my Church!”—so much so that Francis, who could be supremely free when it came to his own sacrifices, began the work literally on a particular church, stone by stone.

The constant debate over the role of restoration in genuine progress is critical to understanding doctrinal development. How often have we heard one variant or another of the opinion that our contemporary understanding of some scientific discipline—say biology or physics or psychology—gives us grounds to change the heretofore constant moral teachings of the Church. A perfect example is found in the publicly-expressed opinions of Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, SJ of Luxembourg, who has been appointed to play an important role in the final meeting of the Synod of Bishops in 2023. Speaking of the Church’s constant teaching on the immorality of homosexual acts, Hollerich parries: “I believe that the sociological-scientific foundation of this teaching is no longer correct.” (See our report here: Key Synod cardinal: Catholic teaching on homosexuality is “false”.)

The modernist fallacy

There seems to be a presumption among our advanced modern thinkers that nobody before the late twentieth-century understood natural law, temptation, sin and rationalization; and that nobody could make distinctions between inclinations and acting on those inclinations. And yet if we read even very ancient literature, we find that, in truth, people had at least as thorough an understanding of these deeply human issues two or three thousand years ago as we have today. People have always known that different persons are attracted to different kinds of sins. Jews and Christians have always known that it is not the temptation which deserves condemnation, but rather the process of giving in to the temptation and, even worse, attempting to justify the sin based on the presence of inclinations which we did not deliberately choose to have.

We all have disordered inclinations, and nobody deliberately chooses the ones which he or she happens to experience. The sexual appetite is particularly prone to distortion from nearly every possible angle, precisely because it is such a powerful appetite. Anybody who thinks that homosexual acts have been judged sinful by Jews and Christians because they were sometimes part of pagan rituals—as Cardinal Hollerich argues—has failed to understand the fundamentals of what it means to be human. Anyone who thinks that actions are not sinful if we have, for any reason, a deep tendency to desire those actions—as Cardinal Hollerich apparently believes—does not understand what it means to be human, or the spiritual drama that being human necessarily entails.

Or the purpose of the Church, her sacramental mystery, and the role of grace in perfecting nature.

Okay, one tires of repeating the obvious. But sometimes, as Reno suggests, we in the Church forget things that the Church has already known and properly valued previously, and while Pope Francis is certainly right that no tradition is ever renewed and strengthened without some corresponding development in understanding, there is in almost every age a preliminary need to recall to mind and confess adherence to those aspects of the Church’s Tradition which are either forgotten or have come under heavy fire. This is essential if we are to increase our understanding of their truth, value, and best form of expression. The alternative is to forget what we already know as a Church, and begin to go off on reckless tangents, making up our truths and customs out of whole cloth, as if the Church herself, over a period of 2,000 years and more, has nothing to say that cannot be denied by popular prejudice under the names of “science” and “superior knowledge”.

Hold fast to the traditions

Then there was today’s first reading (today being August 23rd and the optional memorial of St. Rose of Lima), straight from St. Paul, excerpted below:

We ask you, brothers and sisters…not to be shaken out of your minds suddenly, or to be alarmed either by a “spirit,” or by an oral statement, or by a letter allegedly from us to the effect that the day of the Lord is at hand. Let no one deceive you in any way…. Therefore, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught, either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours. [The entire reading is 2 Thes 2:1-3A, 14-17]

The specific context of this highly-relevant passage was the nonsense being spread about by false prophets “with regard to the coming our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling with him”. Yet is this not exactly what today’s false prophets do as well, men and women like Cardinal Hollerich, who reject apostolic teaching and instead try to redefine what is demanded for salvation by Christ, and by the Church He established?

Surely Christ’s intention in returning to the Father was that we should be his faithful representatives throughout history, to bring as many as possible into a perfect conformity with Himself. “So we are ambassadors for Christ,” says St. Paul, “God making his appeal through us. We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:20). When will vain and silly thinkers stop seeking ways to justify their preference for the world over the One who made it?

This redefinition of sin through wordplay is puerile, and we do well to recognize it. Men and women who should know better have become professional adolescents. “Such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as servants of righteousness,” wrote St. Paul to the Corinthians. “And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is not strange if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds” (2 Cor 11:13-15).

Yes, the Body of Christ grows and develops in various ways down through history. Liturgical forms can change under the authority of Christ in His Church in an effort to communicate the same sacred mysteries more transparently in different times and places. Catholic doctrine can be more thoroughly studied, better understood and more effectively communicated. But there are no guarantees that every change will be an improvement. For this to happen—for us to grow within the Body of Christ rather than apart from the Body of Christ—we must heed the warning of St. Paul against false prophets.

With respect to the substance of the Faith, we must take extraordinary care to “stand firm and hold fast to the traditions” that we were taught. Our Lord Himself bids us to squander nothing in our work of renewal, in our efforts at providing for the legitimate needs of those we serve. In this there is self-evidently a place for restoration: “Gather up the fragments left over,” He cautions, “that nothing may be lost” (Jn 6:12).

Dabbling with the Devil

According to a Pew Research survey, an increasing number of people identify themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” Deeply spiritual people believe they do not need a Creator or Creation.

Deeply spiritual people reject organized religion, although they often pick and choose religious practices. Many deeply spiritual people aim for the state of Nirvana (based on eastern religious conventions). Nirvana is purely spiritual, the state of perfect quiet, freedom, and highest happiness. It is the liberation from worldly attachments, suffering, and God’s Creation. They can run, but they cannot hide.

Deeply spiritual people seek to avoid the bondage of sensory perception that distorts their dreams. They identify comfort zones and expect everyone to abide by their imaginary safe spaces. Deeply spiritual people are otherworldly, pleasant, non-judgmental, and nice—except when others disrupt their dreams. Inwardly, they detest people who are not intensely spiritual.

God created us as rational beings. Deeply spiritual people avoid logical arguments. Facts and logic disrupt the process of spirituality set adrift from the verifiable facts of Creation. It is impossible to define “woman.” There are more genders than the 57 varieties of Heinz products. Deeply spiritual people label those who disagree with their dreams as racists, sexists, or homophobes. Zoom conference calls disproportionately appeal to deeply spiritual people and limit personal contact. Fortunately for us, there is a mute button.

Deeply spiritual people cannot allow the physical universe to determine spiritual preferences. They seek to transcend existence, separating themselves from reality and God’s handiwork. They scoff when Jesus teaches: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Mt. 18:20) Crying babies and church bells are annoyances, disrupting inner peace.

Insurance companies and many in the medical profession are deeply spiritual. They ask, “What was your sex assigned at birth?” A religious realist asks, “Did it change?” A deeply spiritual person responds, “Creation is useless. Follow your dreams and self-identify as you will.” Alas, some dreams are nightmares.

The 450 false prophets of Baal were deeply spiritual people who followed their dreams. When the irascible, harsh, judgmental, and divisive Religious Realist, Elijah the Prophet, challenged them to prove their worship was superior to worship of the one Creator, they entered into a trance—a deeply spiritual otherworldly state, detached from the world. They slashed themselves with swords, and blood gushed everywhere.

Mutilation is a sign of self-loathing and hatred for Creation. It is the hallmark of deeply spiritual people who self-identify according to their dreams disconnected from reality. The objective truth of Creation violates their spiritual fantasies and illusions. They ask, along with Pontius Pilate: “What is truth?” Lost in an aimless spiritual cosmos, they react with self-inflicted violence and crucify those who do not condone their futile dreams.

Objective truth depends upon sensory perceptions of God’s Creation and reliable testimony, not dreams or piously concocted myths. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you….” (1 Jn. 1:1-2)

Religious realists work with Creation as it is. 1) We are not deeply spiritual, 2) the human body expresses the soul, 3) we are male and female, and 4) we associate with others as embodied spirits. We attend church services with others. We need a community for spiritual, social, and economic well-being. Religious realists expect sufficient evidential matter to keep them on a common-sense path. When deeply spiritual people insist, “Follow the science,” they mean we must trust their dreams, not the evidence. They dismiss the legitimate factual questions of religious realists as conspiracy theories.

The good angels are deeply spiritual because God created them that way. They accept created reality. They freely serve God, rejoicing in His Creation and serving us according to God’s plan. Mysteries abound. Like Santa’s elves, they may even assist God in Creation, designing creatures—like a giraffe and a hippopotamus—with comical appearances. When pondering the mysteries of Creation, playful speculation doesn’t hurt.

The demons are also deeply spiritual, but they reject God’s realism. They will not serve, and they hate Creation because the Word of God became flesh rather than an angelic being. Many deeply spiritual people imitate the Devil by mutilating God’s good Creation. The medieval Albigensians despised the world of Creation. They believed conception traps a free-floating soul, and abortion releases the soul from the clutches of material Creation. Saint Dominic converted many of them with the realism of this prayer: “Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”

Religious realists encounter the living God, His Church, and His Creation through His gifts: “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” (Rom. 8:28) The Sacraments reflect the religious realism of Catholics. We see, hear, and touch the stuff of worship—Creation! Water cleanses us of sin. The Sacramental bread of life nourishes us. The oils of the Sacraments provide courage and seal us as God’s holy priests—both common and ordained.

Jesus—the Incarnation—gives us a vision of the Normal. Original sin wounded human nature and tarnished Creation. So we aim to return to orderly and virtuous lives according to reason and the law of Christ. As realists, we know it takes a lifetime of cooperating with God’s grace in Sacramental encounters to repair what our sins have lost.

The Devil is a deeply spiritual person who follows his dreams, and we dabble with the Devil when we deny the truth of God’s Creation. The Sacraments—celebrated with devotion—revere Creation. The Sacraments restore the correct relation of body and soul, faith and reason, science and religion. The Sacraments provide the path to the resurrection of the body and eternal joy.

VAX CARPET BOMBS: Aerosolized “vaccines” being developed that can be sprayed on human cities for automatic depopulation?

Tuesday, August 23, 2022 by: Mike Adams

(Natural News) When conventional farmers want to carpet bomb a crop field with insecticides to kill the insects, they spray the field with toxic chemicals. The chemicals are absorbed by the insects and go to work destroying their nervous systems or circulatory systems. Before long, millions of insects experience a “died suddenly” event.

When globalists want to kill off masses of humans living in high population density cities, they can similarly carpet bomb the city with aerosolized “vaccines” that are designed to be inhaled. These can be sprayed from low altitude aircraft in exactly the same way malathion was sprayed on populations, presumably to control mosquitoes and the over-hyped Zika virus.

A recent article from Eugyppius: A Plague Chronicle reveals that Bill Gates-associated researchers are now pushing for covid nasal vaccines that could theoretically be sprayed on populations and inhaled without individual knowledge or consent.

“Virus moron Eric Topol and snakeoil saleswoman Akiko Iwasaki plug mRNA nasal spray hocus pocus, demand a second Operation Warp Speed to further tinker with billions of human immune systems,” writes the website:

Oligarchic support for nasal spray vaccines proceeds primarily from the beleaguered mind of Bill Gates, who is quietly disappointed in the performance of the mRNA elixirs and now places the better part of his hope in masking…

Topol is just a mentally vacant Corona brigadier, but Iwasaki is co-founder of the pharmaceutical startup RIGImmune, which has received two million dollars from the Gates Foundation “to develop novel innate immune activators to protect against infectious diseases that disproportionately impact the developing world.” She’s also co-founded Xanadu Bio, which is trying to come up with nanoparticles that won’t kill you when you inhale them…

If this effort succeeds, it would give globalists a way to air drop mRNA instructions on entire populations in exactly the same way farmers spray fields with insecticides. The mRNA instructions hijack the body’s cells, programming them to construct non-human protein structures which can also function as biological weapons that cause infertility or clots.

As Natural News has exclusively documented with laboratory tests, these clots are self-assembling biostructures that grow in size until they block blood flow and often kill the victim. People are dropping dead just like weevils, and the “human herd” is being culled like never before.

Human populations are seen as “plagues” by the globalists

Human populations are seen by globalists as plagues upon the planet, worthy of extermination in the same way an infestation of cockroaches might be handled. According to globalists, human beings are not only using too many precious resources — such as water, energy and land — they’re also polluting the oceans with plastics, destroying ecological systems and contributing nothing to the future of human civilization. Therefore, they must be exterminated, the thinking goes.

The real trick is figuring out how to convince the masses they aren’t being exterminated as they line up for extermination injections. To achieve this, “vaccines” were pushed by doctors, journalists, government authorities, Big Tech, employers and schools, in contradiction to any real supporting science. These death shots were called “safe and effective” when they were really dangerous and deadly. Those who gave in to these apparent “authority” influencers will likely pay for that bad decision with their lives, it turns out. Because all along, the covid-19 pandemic was a ploy to get people to line up and agree to be injected with slow-acting euthanasia shots.

Now, the post-vaccine clots are continuing to grow in size, clogging arteries and blood vessels, causing an increasing number of people to drop dead without any ready explanation that the medical establishment will accept. The common cause among all these “died suddenly” events is, of course, post-vaccine clots that are clogging up arteries and blood vessels.

Importantly, these clots are continuing to grow in size every day, inside the bodies of the people who took the vaccines. Millions more will die in the months and years to come. For those who aren’t killed by the current vaccines, globalists can simply spray the cities with new mRNA “death bombs” that people inhale against their will or knowledge.

Talk about violations of Nuremberg… this would effectively turn every targeted city into a Holocaust-style gas chamber where people breathe in the bioweapons that will kill them over time.

Mary Holland of Children’s Health Defense is calling for global prosecutions against those who are perpetrating these crimes against humanity

As explained on the CHD website today, Mary Holland has calling for large-scale global prosecutions of these covid vaccine criminals and bioweapons engineers who unleashed these attacks on humanity:

Tragically, in the last two-and-a-half years, we have witnessed a global assault on the Nuremberg Code. Governments, medical establishments, universities and the media have violated the very first principle and every other principle of the code’s 10 points.
They have coerced people into being human guinea pigs. Those who have intentionally, knowingly and maliciously violated the principles of the Nuremberg Code must be punished. They must be called out, prosecuted and punished for crimes against humanity…

Indeed, Holland is correct, and if the human race doesn’t stand up to the vaccine death cult mass murderers like Fauci, billions will die.

In fact, we may already be beyond the tipping point where billions are programmed to die over the coming years. Unless a method is found to reverse the clots and literally deprogram the human body from malicious mRNA instructions, the 5+ billion people who already took these vaccines may be facing extermination via “science.”

Remember: Fauci lied. Millions have already died, and billions are at risk of death in the months and years ahead. Big Tech and the media are censoring, blacklisting and attacking anyone who tries to sound the alarm on this, proving that they are in on the genocide and complicit in these crimes against humanity.

Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Linked In and many more are guilty of conspiracy to mass murder billions of human beings, even when some of those victims will be their very own employees, engineers and executives. Truly, we are witnessing a global death cult play out in front of our very eyes.