No Therapy

My therapy was cancelled yesterday. So my day was an off Monday. Who can you trust? What if everyone is a devil? What if everyone you see on the street, in this beautiful New York City has sold his soul to the devil?

There are a lot of AA meetings in my area. There are four chapters within a few blocks of my house. There are a lot of alcoholics and former alcoholics. I liked going, and they gave me a book and told me to go in the hospital, but I stopped going because it was too cultish. And then I asked my father if I should go back and he said "no." I have enough religion from Church. At my Church in our little upper rented room, we used to be across the hall from a local AA chapter. And we had a little book for sale that condemned AA as a demonic cult. Then our priest told us to stop selling the book because he thought AA was not bad, or perhaps he did not want to scandalize the alcoholics. There is another man who I met at Church who I learned was a drug addict and an alcoholic who used to go to AA. Everyone has tried to help him, but he is too captured by the demons.

Let you know I believe the demons are very powerful. I think my own problems are caused in large part by the demons. I used to talk about them every week at therapy. It used to be worse when my torments were new. I was in despair. And I prayed, and it got better. In July I had an episode again. I think it was because I did something bad and sinned. At the time I thought I was doing something good, but it was bad and I should have known better. So the demons took me back for a while. But I survived and now I feel better. When I was spazzing out my parents took me to my therapist and my psychiatrist. I do not remember the meeting but my therapist told me I was speaking with an evil voice. Because I think I was possessed by the demons. They make it hard for me to think because I have scars. My problems all started when I decided to start praying. The demons were in me already, but they just lead me on in to sin. And when I started praying and decided to try to stop sinning, the demons manifested themselves and did not want to let go of me. So they tormented me and when I persisted they hurt me. And they made me crazy with my schizo. My crazy goes off and on now. It is usually off, but my mind was broken by the demons and by the struggle, so while I am safe most of the time, my mind is broken. I can no longer think with my mind. To explain it, I cannot see pictures in my mind anymore. And I can not meditate or imagine.

So I have my demons. I feel fine now. And everyone around me has sold their soul to the devil. This whole world is damned.

But God is more powerful than the demons. They are nothing to him. But why is everyone so bad? Why is everyone so ugly?

I had a delusion that everyone was a soul on a string and the devil held the strings and controlled everyone. That everything that everyone did was a work of the devil, and no one had any freedom, they were all souls on a string. Or souls in chains, and nothing that they did was a free act. And I thought what if I was ensnared in such a way, and I fell into despair. Now I seem free. I try to be good. I do not do anything heroic, but I try to be good in a little way. I try not to sin. I like to go pray. And I think pious thoughts. I go to Church to be with Jesus. I look at Our Lady of Guadalupe and pray the Rosary and I have my little devotions. I am not a secret pervert. I used to be unrepentant but now I am sorry for my sins. Am I then still a soul on a string?

Hotel California

The devil was attacking me this morning. As I awoke, the Eagles song Hotel California was in my head and stayed there for a little bit. I thought it must be the devil.

I Am Grateful

I am grateful. I am grateful for my family I have, and who take care of me. They let me live with them without paying rent, though I share my meager stipend with them when there is a need. If I were forced to survive on my own, I fear I would end up in the street. But they let me live with them.

My life is simple. I am crazy and I cannot think straight. I cannot remember things and I am always losing things. So I am useless. I can not work. I get a little disability check because the doctors determined that I was a bad case. It is good because it allows me to go to Church, give a little tithe and go out for coffee after Mass with my friends without begging my parents for money.

This is my life, which I am grateful for. I try to live a silent life. I avoid television and movies and the radio for the most part. I like peace and quiet. I do not usually get bored. I like to go to Church to sit before Jesus. And pray. The Church is a block and a half from my house and Jesus is there so I can go visit Him like a good friend. He looks at me from the tabernacle. I go at least once a day, though ideally I would go three times. Once at noon, once at three, and once at six. I say my prayers. Lately I have been trying to pray from my prayer book. In my free time, I do use the computer I am typing on. I think I use it too much, though I do not do anything bad on it. It is an attachment to the world. On Thursdays in the mid-day I walk to the neighboring Church for Benediction. I always see the grackles on my walk there, south of the avenue. I saw them again today. And at night I make my little holy hour and look at pictures of Gemma crucified. On Fridays they have Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction at my local parish so I go there during the day and at night for the blessing. And Sunday is the best day. Now that Mass is in the evening, I go a little early, and listen to Vespers at the indult parish, before going to our little upper room for our Low Mass. There is music now because of the Lovely Helena. And afterwards we talk of things in the Church and in the world and about our lives.

I have a happy life. But my parents are getting older. They will not live forever. Without them life would be difficult. So I am grateful for the time I have with them. My father hurt his knee this week so I have been helping him. He can barely walk. Today he got a cortisone shot and an x-ray. I am happier than I have ever been, since the last time I got out of the hospital in late July. Though I am also alone. My parents do not go to Church with me. They must think I am strange going to Church all the time. And I have no girlfriend or wife. But I do not feel lonely on this account like I used to. I can not explain why. Like when I was a child, I do not need a woman in my life to be happy. The need for a woman is a sign of a fall. It is better to be happy alone, than to have your happiness rely on the whims of a woman. To be able to be happy alone, but still have a woman, is another state. I have never been in that state. I do not worry about it, though, because of my condition it is unlikely to ever happen. I am like a nice young man with down syndrome. Crippled, alone, but happy. I wish I were as innocent as they are.

I imagine I would be happier with a girlfriend or a wife, but I do not grieve it. I still love women and am entranced when I see them walking around, if they are beautiful, or modest. But immodesty is ugly to me and makes me happy I am alone rather than with such a woman. The women at Church dress nicely and decently so it is good to see them, even though I feel like they are above me because of my condition.

I am grateful for God because I am happy. I feel like he is taking care of me. And I feel he has forgiven me for the sins of my youth. So many sins. It was difficult and painful but I feel the suffering had a purpose. But now I have peace. Trouble may come again, but now is a happy time for me. I feel as if I have grace. I have joy. I want to sing and I do to myself when I go out walking.

I do not have a wife, but I have a heavenly mother and the saints, including my favorite, my poor poor Gemma. If I go to heaven one day I will be one of her friends there. They keep me company and are good friends to me when I am alone. I have my Church friends and Julian who I visit and get Father to visit with the Blessed Sacrament.

So my life is happy. For now. As long as my parents are able to help me. It would be good if I die before they do. I am not afraid of death. If I was right with God I would be happy to die. Get this mortal life done with so the real life can begin. But then I may be damned. I fear that less now than I used to. So I am very grateful.

Sedevacantism

There is a small number of Catholics who are called sedevacantists. My best friend Julian is among them and so is angry Tom. If you do not know who they are, they are a small group of people who are scandalized by what the last few Popes have done and have come to the conclusion that it is impossible for a true Pope to do what they have done, so therefore they are not Popes somehow. They reject the papacies of all the popes after Pope Pius XII and believe that there has been no Pope since his death in 1958. I used to be very sympathetic to their cause, but now, not so much. I have come to think many of them are pious fools, many are scientistical heathens, some of them are perverts, and many of them are schismatics. I truly believe my friend Julian is a good Catholic, but some others, not so much. I do not trust the priests among them. They look at the church and are scandalized and say, this cannot be the Church, so they leave and start their own Church. Sometimes among them there are sex scandals, but this is not unique to them. They are independent so there is no oversight. The first large organization of sedevacantists was founded by a layman who got himself ordained by a schismatic Bishop and started a sect who turned out to become a drug addict and a pederast. Some claim he eventually started wearing white and declared himself the true pope. He is dead now. His followers kicked him out and claim to be clean now. But with such beginnings. Can a rotten acorn produce a healthy oak tree? Well our souls are conceived in sin yet with God's grace we can become saints. It is similar to the Legionnaires of Christ who are among the mainstream Church, but sedevacantists claim to be the pure true Church which if they were correct should be immune to such scandals if they were blessed by God? The faithful remnant.

Is everyone a slave to sexual sin? Does everyone else other than me have sexual fantasies and watch porn and commit such acts of impurity in act, even people claiming to be pious Catholics? I do think the world is wicked and enslaved to lust, but when I see people I think they are good and chaste, especially people who claim to be religious. Perhaps it is because I went crazy, but I do not suffer from such problems. Like when I was a child before such perversions were introduced to me, so I am now. I have no interest in them. I do not think of such things and the idea of them does not please me. Maybe a kiss from a devout wife but I am really a prude if such a word fits and does not imply deviancy. I used to commit such sins as a young man, but when I converted I had to give such things up and I did and it was hard at first, but now I am clean. Perhaps because of my mental illness, but I think it is because of God's grace and the help of His Mother and the Saints.

I am thinking often about the idea that sin scars the body as well as the soul. the thought that the reason little children are more beautiful than older people is not because they are smaller, but because they are more innocent. And when people get older they become ugly because of their sins which perverts the body as well as the soul. Over time a sinful person starts to look vile and repulsive, even if they were born beautiful, and a holy man starts to look beautiful even if they were born ugly. They have a glow about them and look like the angels in Fra Angelica's paintings. That is my theory as to why most women are ugly without makeup after their short spring of youth, even before they take up the stress of motherhood and raising children. I imagine as the world gets more and more wicked, the faces of people will get more and more ugly, until even the children will look like little devils, even the little ones, because now they are getting corrupted even in their youth. I know me myself was not corrupted until probably the sixth grade, and especially middle school. From communion with the other children who were advancing into puberty, and from watching television and going to school, with things like sex ed, which was tame back then, they did not even speak of sodomy. And seeing pornography around the house. But is this dangerous to think? Probably. How can one know by looks alone? One can be easily mistaken. It is just a thought. But some people just look holier than other people. I think of my Gemma and the Little Flower who looked like angels, but they were young, and Pope Pius X who looked like a saint even as an old man on his deathbed. Can you really see grace in the faces of God's holy men, and can one really see sin in the faces of the wicked? Is it possible for one to be like Christina the Astonishing who could see and smell sin and would flee from it, even to the point of flying away like a bird into the fresh air?

I don't know but I do not think most people are beautiful. Everyone is ugly. I do not think I look ugly myself, for some reason when I see my own face in the mirror I think I look good, even though I am middle aged now. But so many other people just look ugly to me. It is a strange delusion, similar to my first attack when I thought I could see sin in the faces of the people who came in to get coffee and I freaked out. But anyway I do not like make up. Hiding behind a glaze. Can one really be called a lover if one hides from them behind a mask?

Perhaps I am getting ill again, thinking such things. Who knows what is real and how the world works. Who can one trust? Is there a Padre Pio alive today who can read souls? There should be one among the traditional Catholics, should there not? But there is only Archbishop Lefebvre and he is long since dead. He is also among those who I believe looked holy so I consider it possible knowing about his life that he was a good man and not the leader of a schismatic false revolution.

So I am no longer sympathetic to sedevacantism. I believe Francis is the real Pope, but I believe he is a bad one. Things fall apart. There are others who believe that Pope Benedict who is retired and living in the Vatican is still the Pope even though he denies it and resigned seven years ago. Most prominent among those is Ann Barnhardt. I hold the sedevacantists in higher regard than the Benevacantists as they are jokingly called.

And in my judgment of people's looks, I am sad to say that a prominent Bishop who is in the news looks like an evil man to me. He just looks wicked, even though he is supposed to be the good guy. One can not judge by looks, and I hope he is an angel. But it is just a strange delusion I have, or perhaps a gift. When I look at his face I think badly of him. I was in the court house with my Father who is a lawyer and I was looking at all the people there and I thought all of them were ugly, except for one woman, who looked like a normal person, but not beautiful.

Animals are more beautiful than people. But not all animals, but the ones I normally see. People have the potential to be more beautiful than animals unless they are defiled by grievous sins. But in the fallen world we live in today, it is better to look at the animals. The animals, the moon, the clouds, the sun, the stars. And then the ugly people. In a world so devastatingly beautiful, us people are an ugly pox, not because of our nature, but because of our sin. The sin that cries out to heaven for vengeance. Because of our sin.

So I am feeling delusional lately, thinking such things.

Three Hail Marys

Of all of the prayers I pray, there is one devotion that seems to me to be more powerful than all the others. It is not praying the Rosary, but a little devotion.

I remember one day when I was new at Church, a man named Andre, who moved away years ago, gave me a little prayer card. On the front it had a black and white picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Help with bejeweled crowns of gold on the heads of the Baby Jesus and Mother Mary.

And on the back it described a devotion.

Every morning you should pray three Hail Marys as soon as you rise from bed. And after each Hail Mary, you should recite the prayer: "By thy holy and immaculate conception, O Mary, make my body pure and my soul holy. O my mother, preserve me this day from mortal sin."

Every evening you should pray three Hail Marys right before you retire to go to bed. And after each Hail Mary, you should recite the similar prayer: "By thy holy and immaculate conception, O Mary, make my body pure and my soul holy. O my mother, preserve me this night from mortal sin."

Like with many devotions, this prayer card came with a promise of salvation for those who faithfully recite the prayers every morning and every night until death, or perhaps, senility.

I think this is a powerful prayer because I used to be tempted with sins of impurity like many young men, but when I took up this devotion these temptations went away and I had peace ever after. I am like a quiet man on an island who grows enough food to survive, has a clean source of water, and good friends who come once a month to give me all I need to survive. I have a peaceful happy life.

But I was thinking about this powerful devotion because there is a man who I was talking to after Church. He told me he suffered from temptations against purity and sometimes fell into sin. Namely, he spoke of pornography. This is a difficult sin. I remember when I first tried to give up sins of impurity the devils had their claws in me and tempted me terribly. It was far more difficult than quitting cigarettes, which was hard, or cutting down on drinking beer, which was relatively easy. There was even one time where I felt my body compelled to commit an act of impurity against my will as if the devils were controlling my body but, my will resisted and I did not consent. They say there are monks who left the world and even after decades of fasting in the desert, they were still tempted by fornication. I am fortunate that I no longer suffer from such temptations and I hope they do not return. I think this devotion the the Blessed Virgin Mary is the reason.

But I will write down this devotion on a little card and give it to my friend and tell him that it helped me avoid the temptations he is struggling with. I hope it helps him too. He must trust me because he told me about such an embarrassing sin.