Horror Continues to Unfold

More of the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, from The New York Times.

An excerpt.

As a young man studying to be a priest in the 1980s, Robert Ciolek was flattered when his brilliant, charismatic bishop in Metuchen, N.J., Theodore E. McCarrick, told him he was a shining star, cut out to study in Rome and rise high in the church.

Bishop McCarrick began inviting him on overnight trips, sometimes alone and sometimes with other young men training to be priests. There, the bishop would often assign Mr. Ciolek to share his room, which had only one bed. The two men would sometimes say night prayers together, before Bishop McCarrick would make a request — “come over here and rub my shoulders a little”— that extended into unwanted touching in bed.

Mr. Ciolek, who was in his early 20s at the time, said he felt unable to say no, in part because he had been sexually abused by a teacher in his Catholic high school, a trauma he had shared with the bishop.

“I trusted him, I confided in him, I admired him,” Mr. Ciolek said in an interview this month, the first time he has spoken publicly about the abuse, which lasted for several years while Mr. Ciolek was a seminarian and later a priest. “I couldn’t imagine that he would have anything other than my best interests in mind.”

Bishop McCarrick went on to climb the ranks of the Roman Catholic hierarchy — from head of the small Diocese of Metuchen to archbishop of Newark and then archbishop of Washington, where he was made a cardinal. He remained into his 80s one of the most recognized American cardinals on the global stage, a Washington power broker who participated in funeral masses for political luminaries like Edward M. Kennedy, the longtime Massachusetts senator, and Beau Biden, the son of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Suddenly, last month, Cardinal McCarrick was removed from ministry, after the Archdiocese of New York deemed credible an accusation that he had molested a 16-year-old altar boy nearly 50 years ago.

Cardinal McCarrick, now 88, who declined to comment for this article, said in a statement last month that he had no recollection of the abuse. He is the highest-ranking Catholic official in the United States to be removed for sexual abuse of a minor.

But while the church responded quickly to the allegation that Cardinal McCarrick had abused a child, some church officials knew for decades that the cardinal had been accused of sexually harassing and inappropriately touching adults, according to interviews and documents obtained by The New York Times.

Between 1994 and 2008, multiple reports about the cardinal’s transgressions with adult seminary students were made to American bishops, the pope’s representative in Washington and, finally, Pope Benedict XVI. Two New Jersey dioceses secretly paid settlements, in 2005 and 2007, to two men, one of whom was Mr. Ciolek, for allegations against the archbishop. All the while, Cardinal McCarrick played a prominent role publicizing the church’s new zero-tolerance policy against abusing children.

The scandal of child sexual abuse by clergy has gripped the Catholic Church for nearly two decades, resulting in billions spent by the church on lawsuits, settlements and prevention programs. But while the church has made strides in dealing with sexual abuse of children, it has largely avoided a reckoning over sexual harassment and abuse suffered by adult seminarians and young priests at the hands of their superiors, including bishops.

Retrieved July 16, 2018 from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/16/us/cardinal-mccarrick-abuse-priest.html

Writing from Prison

Excellent article from the Wall Street Journal.

An excerpt.

When a revolutionary mob stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789, the famous Paris prison held only seven inmates. The eighth, the Marquis de Sade, had already been transferred to another jail. But the liberators did find the manuscript of his pornographic novel “The 120 Days of Sodom,” which he had managed to write on a narrow scroll of parchment 50 feet long.

Sade was uncommonly prolific during his 11 years in the Bastille, producing 20 plays and eight novels. Two centuries later, the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky, who was sentenced to five years of hard labor by the Soviet government, wrote in his essay “The Prison Where I Live,” “Prison writings are about suffering and endurance.” In its perverse way, Sade’s work exemplifies both.

The real significance of prison literature, though, whatever its subject matter, is that it speaks to a higher truth about the human condition: The spirit remains free, even when the body is in bondage.

St. Paul’s Epistles to the Philippians and the Colossians, written from prison around the year 62, combine practical admonitions to these early Christian congregations with musings on the cosmic nature of Jesus. Likewise, the prison diary of Vibia Perpetua of Carthage, who was martyred in 203 at the age of 21 after becoming a Christian convert, recorded both her inner thoughts and daily life, making her the founding mother of prison literature.

In the sixth century, the Roman senator Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius was brought down while at the height of his power, having been chancellor to the Ostrogothic king Theoderic. In prison, Boethius composed “The Consolations of Philosophy” while awaiting his execution. The treatise is one of the great meditations on the meaning of life in all its vicissitudes.

Modern prison writing came into its own during the Reformation, when large numbers of educated people were incarcerated as being enemies of the state because of their religious views. Writing became an act of political resistance. In 1642, the poet Richard Lovelace, imprisoned for his support of King Charles I in the English Civil War, wrote from the Gatehouse prison in London, “Stone walls do not a prison make/Nor iron bars a cage.”

Not surprisingly, prison authorities have often reacted by trying to silence the writers in their midst. Sentenced in 1849 to four years in a Siberian prison, for the crime of belonging to a progressive literary group, the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky could only write in secret. Miraculously, his prison notes survived, courtesy of a sympathetic hospital doctor, and formed the basis of “The House of the Dead.”

Dostoyevsky’s message in that novel—that oppression destroys the oppressor as well as the victim—continued to resonate in the 20th century. Writing from Birmingham jail in 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded his fellow pastors that society cannot avoid the consequences of injustice: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

Retrieved July 16, 2018 from https://www.wsj.com/articles/literature-behind-bars-1531414940

Confusion From Vatican, Again

This seems to be an ongoing problem, as this article from Catholic Culture reports.

An excerpt.

The recent Vatican Instruction “Ecclesiae Sponsae Imago” on the “Ordo virginum” has caused considerable distress among consecrated virgins in America, and presumably elsewhere. This is evident in a preliminary statement issued today by the United States Association of Consecrated Virgins, which concluded its annual convention today in Miami, Florida.

According to USACV President Judith M. Stegman, JCL the nub of the problem is the lack of clarity in the Instruction issued by the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, which seems to invalidate the traditional requirement that consecrated virgins be, in natural reality, actual virgins. The problematic sentence is found in number 88:

Thus to have kept her body in perfect continence or to have practiced the virtue of chastity in an exemplary way, while of great importance with regard to the discernment, are not essential prerequisites in the absence of which admittance to consecration is not possible.

This statement raises an important question, namely, whether losing one’s virginity is a failure “to have kept her body in perfect continence” which does not necessarily make admittance to virginal consecration impossible. In other words, is actual virginity a necessary foundation for consecrated virginity?

Clearly, a previous lack of virginity should not be an impediment to offering perfect chastity to the Lord in the future. This can be done in many forms. As an example, many spiritual writers have recommended that widows not marry a second time, but rather embrace the opportunity to devote themselves exclusively to God for the rest of their lives. Nor should the Mary Magdalenes of the world regard their lack of natural or physical virginity as an impediment to a deep commitment to Christ actuated through perfect chastity going forward.

But when it comes to the formal state of consecrated virginity, something different has always been involved, namely the consecrated virginity, both existent and ongoing, of a fairly young woman who freely renounces not only sins against chastity but her freedom to engage in even morally legitimate sexual relations (within marriage) without ever having experienced them. This is a radical, lifelong commitment to become a spouse of Jesus Christ without ever, legitimately or illegitimately, having experienced the pleasures of sexual intercourse here on earth. So it has always been understood, and so the actual Rite of Consecration still assumes the case to be.

We can see through a small thought experiment how easily a failure to recognize the connection between actual virginity and consecrated virginity can become absurd. For if physical virginity is not a requirement for the vocation of consecrated virginity within the Church, at what point would this make an absurdity of the vocation? What would its meaning be for those who embrace virginity only at an advanced age? Or for those who choose to forego sexual relations only after enjoying many years of marriage? Or for those have habitually lived unchastely over a long period of time? Surely such persons should be able to commit themselves to a life free of sexual relations in the future, and to embrace that commitment as part of their path of growth in holiness. Just as surely, such persons cannot really embrace in its vocational fullness the life of a consecrated virgin.

Retrieved July 14, 2018 from https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otc.cfm?id=1561

Speaking Ex Cathedra

It is crucial to understand the limits of the institutional Catholic Church in terms of Peter defining sacred doctrine, as Karl Adam writes in his magnificent book:

“The Catholic sorrowfully recognizes that even the holders of the highest and most exalted office on earth can be children of their age and slaves of its conceptions, and that the Holy Spirit in governing the Church does not guard every act of the pope and every papal pronouncement from error and delusion, but is infallibly operative only when the pope speaks ex cathedra, i.e. when basing himself on the sources of the faith and in the fullness of his power as Head of the Church and successor of St. Peter, he pronounces a decision in matters of faith or morals which embraces and binds the whole Church.” (p. 248) Karl Adam. (1937. The Spirit of Catholicism. Revised Edition. (Translated by Dom Justin McCann, O.S.B.) The Macmillan Company: New York.

According to Wikipedia: “The solemn declaration of papal infallibility by Vatican I took place on 18 July 1870. Since that time, the only example of an ex cathedra decree took place in 1950, when Pope Pius XII defined the Assumption of Mary as an article of faith.” (7) From the Encyclopedia of Catholicism by Frank K. Flinn, J. Gordon Melton (p. 267)

Retrieved July 10, 2018 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility

Explaining the Left

Understanding the Left is crucial for those involved in ministry to criminals as the foundation of the normative criminal/carceral narrative emanates from there, so Dennis Prager gives us great insight in this article from American Greatness.

An excerpt.

As I watch a great number of my fellow Americans and virtually all of the mainstream media descend further and further into irrational and immoral hysteria—regularly calling the president of the United States and all of his supporters Nazis, white supremacists and the like; harassing Republicans where they eat, shop and live; ending family ties and lifelong friendships with people who support the president; declaring their opposition to Trump and the Republican Party the “Resistance,” as if they were American reincarnations of the French who fought real Nazis in World War II; and so on—I ask myself: What is going on? How does one explain them?

Here are some answers:

1. Naivete

Many Americans are naive, about life, about good and evil, and about America. They don’t realize how rare America is and how good they have it. This mass naivete was vividly expressed by the reaction of tens of thousands of mostly white middle-class Americans to then-candidate Barack Obama in 2008, when he was campaigning in Columbia, Missouri. Obama announced, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

I frequently play the recording of Obama’s statement on my radio show not only to explain a basic difference between Right and Left—the Left believes America needs to be fundamentally transformed, while the right thinks America needs to be incrementally improved—but also for people to hear the crowd’s reaction.

Very few contemporary American recordings are as depressing as the ecstatic and prolonged cheering the crowd gave that terrible promise from Obama. I believe it is not an exaggeration to say that had he announced a cure for cancer, the cheering could not have been louder and probably would not have been longer.

Why would middle-class Americans—people who have more affluence, more opportunity, better health, better healthcare and more liberty than almost anyone alive in the world today, and certainly than anyone who ever lived—thunderously applaud a call to fundamentally transform their decent country?

One answer—one of many, as we will see—is naivete.

Earlier this year, I had a debate/dialogue with two left-wing students at the University of California, Berkeley. I thought debating left-wing students, rather than giving a speech, would accomplish two objectives: deter left-wing protesters from disrupting my appearance and enable young people at Berkeley and around the world (via the internet) to hear differences between right and left clearly spelled out. Both aims were achieved.

My final question to them was “Do you believe people are basically good?” Without a moment’s pause, both students said yes.

I told them they think that way because they live in such a decent country. It is easy to remain naive in America, where most are insulated from the suffering inflicted on so much of humanity in deeply corrupt, poverty-stricken and war-torn societies. Nevertheless, given the way humans have treated one another throughout history, and only two generations after Auschwitz, only the naive can believe people are basically good. And since no Western religion (i.e., any religion based on the Bible) has ever posited that people are basically good, this naivete is abetted by secularism, which allows for the pursuit of knowledge but destroys wisdom.

Only the naive—or willfully ignorant—could equate support for Donald Trump with Nazism. Are most Israeli Jews Nazis? Are a third of America’s Jews Nazis? (Many on the left would probably answer yes, which gives you an idea how mean and sick many on the left are.)

Retrieved July 10, 2018 from https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/10/explaining-american-leftists-part-i/

Abortion & Immigration & the Hypocrisy of the Institutional American Church

Great article about this from the Remnant Newspaper.

An excerpt.

On June 13, Daniel Cardinal DiNardo, archbishop of Galveston and Houston and head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, read aloud a statement at the USCCB spring meeting in which he denounced the immigration policies of United States President Donald Trump and Attorney General of the United States Jeff Sessions. Cardinal DiNardo was particularly exercised by Trump’s and Sessions’ policy of refusing asylum to those fleeing gang violence, and of prosecuting everyone who illegally enters the United States, a practice which could potentially separate children from their criminal parents.

According to a Religion News Service (RNS) report, “DiNardo asked bishops to clap if they approved the statement. The room erupted in applause.”

Other bishops wanted to do more than just clap. “Bishop Edward Weisenburger of Tucson, Ariz., [suggested] implementing canonical penalties for Catholics ‘who are involved in this’, referring to children being separated from their families at the border. […] ‘For the salvation of these people’s souls, maybe it’s time for us to look at canonical penalties.’” Since 1973, more than sixty million of my countrymen have been murdered by abortionists. To the best of my knowledge, no “canonical penalties” have ever been levied against the politicians “who are involved in this,” or the hundreds of millions of people who have participated in “children being separated from their families” by voting for candidates and political parties with pro-abortion platforms. During the 2016 presidential election, for example, the USCCB did not dare to suggest that Catholics who voted for Hillary Clinton might be met with “canonical penalties” for their endorsement of a woman whose position on in utero homicide can perhaps best be described as “triumphalist”.

During the years that sixty million Americans were being vivisected in the womb, the American Church has been overrun by scofflaws. The Church now wants to excommunicate those who say enough is enough. But enough was enough a long time ago. I have gone to confession and been unable to hear the priest because of the electric guitar mariachi band practicing in front of the tabernacle. I have arrived at Mass to find the pews and aisles strewn with glitter and confetti from the “ethnic” service beforehand. I know of priests, nuns, and other church officials who have actively conspired with illegal aliens to help them break the law, such as by forging documents, obstructing justice, and concealing crimes. (When all this was reported to the local bishop, no action was taken.) I have seen church buildings slowly destroyed: items stolen, restrooms vandalized, drywall demolished, common areas left looking like the bivouacs of a conquering horde.

The same thing has happened to my country, but on a much larger scale.

Entire towns are overrun by illegals.

Hospital emergency rooms are filled with them. Insured taxpayers must wait, often with fatal results, while those who laugh at our laws and are fattened by money expropriated from our paychecks get priority medical attention at our expense. Poor Americans cannot find work because illegals have swarmed all the entry-level positions. Barbaric gangs throng our schools and our jails, and their appalling violence spills out into our streets. We are under siege.

But the bishops are oddly silent about all this. More than silent—those who sound the alarm about the dangerous lawlessness and abuse of goodwill within the Church in the United States are accused, with no hint of irony, of themselves being “cruel” and “hardhearted”. What could possibly explain the failure of the USCCB to impose “canonical penalties” on those who participate in infanticide, and the standing ovation that the USCCB reserves for those who insist that the invasion of the United States across the southern border be intensified? How did such moral cowards—who said nothing when sacred vestments were used in a pornography program at the Met [see page 11 of this edition for The Remnant’stake on this event]—suddenly summon such pluck?

Retrieved July 10, 2018 from https://www.remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/3963-us-bishops-blast-trump-wimp-out-on-abortion

Sol/Pro Leadership

The Solution (Sol) is in the Problem (Pro)

1) “It’s not unusual for the leadership that resolves tense situations to arise in someone from a “minority” or marginalized group. I believe that we must look to such leaders and groups to help us solve future problems.” Mindell, Arnold. ( 1995) Sitting in the fire: Large group transformation using conflict and diversity. Portland Oregon: Lao Tse Press. (p.27)

2) “Liberation theology’s option for the poor also involves commitment to a concrete way of social change. Too often in the past, change was regarded as occurring from the top down. Poor people are now to become subjects of their own history.” (Stephen I. Pope, “Christian Love for the Poor: Almsgiving and the “Preferential Option.’” Horizons 21 (1994) 303-308) Juan Luis Segundo refers to people who are poor and oppressed as ‘artisans of a new humanity.’ (Theology for Artisans of a New Humanity, 5 vols. (Maryknoll, N.Y. Orbis. 1973-1974) “Social change comes from the ground up, not from the top down. Poor people themselves will bring about the change.” Charles E. Curran, Catholic Social Teaching: 1891-present: A Historical, Theological, and Ethical Analysis (2002) Georgetown University Press, Washington D.C. p. 185)

3) “The Last shall be First: The good thief, Dismas, crucified with Christ, was the first human being Christ brought to heaven. Mary Magdalene, the prostitute, was the first person Christ revealed himself to after his resurrection.” David H. Lukenbill, Lampstand

4) “Those who live in the world but are not of it have something important to tell us about transcending the world. These men and women include the poor and the broken, mystics and visionaries, artists, children and fools. They all live in the margins, and each one wears the face of Christ in a unique way.” Edwina Gateley, Christ in the Margin

5) “The specific purpose of this corporation, the Lampstand Foundation, is to provide support to poor, distressed, and disadvantaged adults to obtain a college education and professional credentials. The root cause of the perpetuation of many of our social problems, is that the wrong people are being asked to address them. The leadership of the social service sector are people whose only experience of the social problem they are attempting to address is through education and or training, which is a good first half step. The fuller step is to bring those into service whose personal background includes experience with the social problem being addressed, inspiring them to seek higher education and professional credentialing and encourage them to assume leadership of our social sector.. As we all know, from experience, the most successful programs are self help programs. And as those in the social sector know, the most successful counselors are peer-counselors.

“All human service work should be led by transformed indigenous leaders, the homeless, transformed, should help the homeless, the prisoner, transformed, should help the prisoner, the addicted, transformed, should help the addicted, the disabled, transformed, should help the disabled. Work for legislation that says: For public agency work in human service work, in addition to education and professional credentialing, experience as a human service consumer is necessary.” David H. Lukenbill, Lampstand

6) Indigenous Leadership:

“a) The solution is in the problem.

“b) Indigenous leaders are native to the community being addressed.

“Lampstand will help inspire the poor, the distressed, the disabled, the prisoner, the addict, the abused, the beaten down, and the disadvantaged, to obtain college degrees from Catholic Colleges, secure professional credentials, and return to help their particular community of suffering. Their lives will become a transcending mission of their former suffering after having helped themselves, learning and bringing back tools, knowledge, expertise, and credentials to help others who are suffering what they once did.

“Self help is an old American concept, virtually enshrined in the revolution founding America, ratified in the mythic status of second chances, codified in the sixties and as strong a current of under-girding thought as ever. Lampstand is dedicated to helping create a society where the individual spiritual search for salvation is supported and revered, as much as the academic and professional search.

“One of our guiding principles is opening our hearts and touching the untouchables, extending our hands to them, in our attempt to fulfill a central part of Christ’s instructions to us in living the Christian life. The heart of philanthropy is ‘God’s love of humanity’, expressing that love through our work is our core belief. The root of philanthropy is spiritual, defined throughout all scripture as love of the neighbor, love of the enemy; love that reaches out and gives. The use of the term ‘philanthropy’ has largely replaced ‘charitable’ as those receiving it – the kindness of others – did not always wish to be seen as distressed or in need of charity. Receiving help from a philanthropist however, appears more to be earned, thus relieving the receiver of the ‘stigma of need’. In terms of emulating ‘God’s love of humanity’, whom among humanity was most deserving of that love, we need look no further than Christ’s actions. One of the first to be forgiven by him and come to play a major role in his mission was the prostitute, Mary of Magdalene. What was Christ telling us through his actions about charity? Suffering can bring grace – the reformed reform others through word and deed – blessed be the sinners who have repented – all of these and more.

“Using a medical metaphor, Lampstand believes that the surest antidote to any social disease is someone who has been cured, educated and trained and sent back into the field to inoculate others. Addiction medicine is one of the few areas of health services where focusing more attention actually saves money. It is estimated that having the medical profession focus on patient’s drug or alcohol problems (examples: asking questions during routine exams about any issues, having social workers deal with obviously intoxicated patients in the emergency rooms, etc) could save four dollars for every one spent. This has been known for some time. This is not new information. Why then has it not been, except in the rare case, folded into the medical profession. Because those in the medical profession, and many still in the public, believe addiction is primarily a behavioral choice rather than a disease. This attitude will change once the formerly addicted begin receiving education and credentials to work in the addition medicine field. The most successful addiction treatment program in the world is alcoholics anonymous. If people from AA are supported in receiving academic credentials, and then professional certification, to work in addiction medicine, the amplifier effect, the leverage, could be, would be, astounding.” David H.Lukenbill, Lampstand

7) “Active concern for the poor and marginalized is of ancient vintage within the Christian tradition; what is new in liberation theology is the privileged role given to the experience and perspective of the oppressed themselves in articulating the theological ground and ethical entailments of that concern. As part of an overall recasting of traditional theological method, liberation thinkers insist that the central claims of the Christian faith (e.g., about the existence and nature of God, the identity of Jesus Christ, the work of the Holy Spirit, and the nature of the Church) be tested “from below,” against the experience of the powerless and the oppressed, and that ultimately such claims cannot be ratified apart from that standpoint.” McBrein, R. Ed. (1995). Encyclopedia of Catholicism. Harper Collins. New York. (p. 769)

8) “It is difficult for most of us to believe that people on the margins of life are capable of becoming highly educated and professionally credentialed, due to the generally accepted mental model that most we carry with us that they are where they are due to a failing, usually of intellect and character, within them.

9) “Deep Smarts: Deep smarts is the term used by (Leonard, D. & Swap, W. (2004). Deep smarts. Harvard Business Review,82 (9), 88-97) to describe a form of knowledge which is earned by experience and over time. Structured knowledge is easy to codify or turn into checklists; unstructured knowledge is hard to articulate and hard to pass on, but by definition, unstructured knowledge is more valuable—precisely because it is hard to duplicate. Deep smarts is what Lampstand builds its mission upon.” David H. Lukenbill, Lampstand

10) Leadership: “The Scots-Irish assertion, which is the essential American assertion, is that leaders will not be accepted who don’t come from within our people and embody or values, has made American what it is today.” Randall Wallace, Director Braveheart, We Were Soldiers. The American Enterprise, “Live” with TAE, March 2005, (p.18)

11) “Deep Knowledge: Experience, academic learning, and professional credentialing, all in the same field.” David H. Lukenbill

Liberation Theology & Historical-Critical Method

They are connected—both erected on an atheistic and Marxist foundation—and understanding them is vital to effective ministry to criminals as much of the criminal/carceral narrative has developed from their convergence.

The greatest theologian of our time, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, has set the mark for Catholic discussion of each.

Writing as Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Faith in 1984 about liberation theology:

“The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a message of freedom and a force for liberation. In recent years, this essential truth has become the object of reflection for theologians, with a new kind of attention which is itself full of promise.

“Liberation is first and foremost liberation from the radical slavery of sin. Its end and its goal is the freedom of the children of God, which is the gift of grace. As a logical consequence, it calls for freedom from many different kinds of slavery in the cultural, economic, social, and political spheres, all of which derive ultimately from sin, and so often prevent people from living in a manner befitting their dignity. To discern clearly what is fundamental to this issue and what is a by-product of it, is an indispensable condition for any theological reflection on liberation.

“Faced with the urgency of certain problems, some are tempted to emphasize, unilaterally, the liberation from servitude of an earthly and temporal kind. They do so in such a way that they seem to put liberation from sin in second place, and so fail to give it the primary importance it is due. Thus, their very presentation of the problems is confused and ambiguous. Others, in an effort to learn more precisely what are the causes of the slavery which they want to end, make use of different concepts without sufficient critical caution. It is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to purify these borrowed concepts of an ideological inspiration which is compatible with Christian faith and the ethical requirements which flow from it.” (Introduction) Instruction on Certain Aspects of the “Theology of Liberation”. Retrieved June 28, 2018 from http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19840806_theology-liberation_en.html

Writing as Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 on the historical-critical method of scholarship:

“As historical-critical scholarship advanced, it led to firmer and finer distinctions between layers of tradition in the Gospels, beneath which the real object of faith—the figure [Gestalt] of Jesus—became increasingly obscured and blurred. At the same time, though, the reconstructions of this Jesus (who could only be discovered by going behind the traditions and sources used by the Evangelists) became more and more incompatible with one another: at one end of the spectrum Jesus was the anti-Roman revolutionary working—though finally failing—to overthrow the ruling powers; at the other end, he was the meek moral teacher who approves everything and unaccountably comes to grief. If you read a number of these reconstructions one after the other, you see at once that far from uncovering as icon that has become obscured over time, they are much more like photographs of their authors and the ideals they hold. Since then there has been growing skepticism about these portrayals of Jesus, but the figure of Jesus himself has for that very reason receded even further into the distance.

“All these attempts have produced a common result: the impression that we have very little certain knowledge of Jesus and that only at a later stage did faith in his divinity shape the image we have of him. This impression has by now penetrated deeply into the minds of the Christian people at large. This is a dramatic situation for faith, because its point of reference is being placed in doubt: Intimate friendship with Jesus, on which everything depends, is in danger of clutching at thin air.” (p. xii) Pope Benedict XVI. (2007). Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration. Doubleday: New York.

Liberation theology says truth and salvation rests in political struggle and the historical critical method of viewing the past, present, and future, is the key unlocking that knowledge.

Both of these movements separate the divine Christ from Christ the man, heaven from earth, human history from supernatural truth; and their success in in so doing, has largely, though temporarily, negated the power of the Catholic Church—who alone is able to provide forgiveness of sin—the strongest power against the evil of Communism and these two sin-negating narratives it engendered.

Vatican II, Latin Mass and Shrinking of the Church

They are connected, as this superb article from Fatima News reports.

An excerpt.

One Father Bill Peckman, a diocesan priest from Missouri, recites the grim statistic that there are 74.3 million Catholics in the US, plus “30 million who self identify as former Catholics.” Among the 74 million who still consider themselves Catholics, “only 23% go to Mass on any kind of regular basis.”  That would be a mere 17 million Catholics, out of a total of 104 million present and former Catholics, who make any effort to obey the fundamental law of the Church respecting attendance at Mass on the Sabbath.

In short, the picture is one of mass apostasy, concerning which Father Peckman concludes “something has gone wrong.”  Something?  Confronting this “something” that has gone wrong, Father Peckman writes: “Some want to blame Vatican II. It is a cop out. It allows us to play the ‘if only’ game.”

Just a moment. Who said anything about Vatican II?  If the Council is utterly blameless for the collapse of faith and discipline that followed it immediately, why bring it up?  Indeed, why does anyone tie the Council to the collapse?  Is not the obvious and immediate temporal connection alone, putting aside the mountain of other evidence, reason to suspect that the Council had something to do with this mass apostasy?

Commentators who want to absolve the Council of any complicity in the ecclesial collapse, but who keep bringing it up anyway, are like the neighbor of the victim of a deadly home invasion who tells the police: “Some want to blame Smith just because he was seen near that house last night, but that would be a copout.”  To which any sensible detective would reply: “Smith?  Who said anything about Smith?  We need to question Smith.”

Father Peckman admits what we have seen since the Council is “tossing most any transcendence from Mass,” which “has had grave consequences,” but this disaster, says he, was “not call[ed] for by Vatican II or in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal…”

On the contrary, the Council’s liturgy constitution and the General Instruction were both the work of the infamous Annibale Bugnini and, after the Council, his Consilium, and it was precisely on the pretext of “obedience to the Council” that Pope Paul VI, approving Bugnini’s radical deconstruction and vernacularization of the Roman Rite, declared on November 26, 1969, in perhaps the single most astonishing address ever given by a Roman Pontiff:

“No longer Latin, but the spoken language will be the principal language of the Mass. The introduction of the vernacular will certainly be a great sacrifice for those who know the beauty, the power and the expressive sacrality of Latin. We are parting with the speech of the Christian centuries; we are becoming like profane intruders in the literary preserve of sacred utterance. We will lose a great part of that stupendous and incomparable artistic and spiritual thing, the Gregorian chant.

“We have reason indeed for regret, reason almost for bewilderment. What can we put in the place of that language of the angels? We are giving up something of priceless worth. But why? What is more precious than these loftiest of our Church’s values?”

Bugnini was sacked and sent off to Iran after Paul VI, by Bugnini’s own admission, was presented with a dossier on his Masonic affiliation (which he denied), following which Bugnini’s entire liturgical congregation was dissolved.  Too late, however, to undo his veritable destruction of the Roman Rite, as Msgr. Klaus Gamber described the outcome with the approval of the future Pope Benedict XVI, who wrote the French language preface to Gamber’s Reform of the Roman Liturgy wherein Gamber declares:

“[T]he traditional Roman rite, more than one thousand years old and until now the heart of the Church, was destroyed. The real destruction of the traditional Mass, of the traditional Roman Rite with a history of more than one thousand years, is the wholesale destruction of the faith on which it was based, a faith that had been the source of our piety and of our courage to bear witness to Christ and His Church… Many Catholics agonize over the question: what can be done about the loss of our faith and of our liturgy?”

Retrieved June 26, 2018 from http://fatima.org/news-views/vatican-ii-and-the-liturgical-collapse-ignoring-the-obvious/

Destruction of the Nuns

What has happened to the contemplative nuns since Vatican II is horrible, and this article from the Remnant Newspaper is excellent.

Think about it, how important is it to the people that consecrated persons spend their whole life praying for us?

An excerpt.

More evidence keeps pouring into my email inbox that the current administration of the Congregation for Religious[1] is planning on using the provisions of Cor orans to totally rewrite the nature of contemplative women’s religious life, particularly the “conservative” and traditional communities, in the name of the “New Paradigm” of VaticanTwoism. [Editor’s Note:”Cor Orans” (“Praying Heart”) is the title of an April 1, 2018 document that Implements instructions on how to apply Pope Francis’ 2016 Apostolic Constitution – “Vultum Dei Quaerere” (“Seek the Face of God”) addressed to Catholic women religious in contemplative communities. MJM]

As I have written many times elsewhere, the one uniform characteristic of the current pontificate is the purge. It is clear now that Jorge Bergoglio was elected by a group of 1960s progressives to bring about the final removal of the last elements within Catholicism that have resisted the Vatican II revolution. After 50 years of ambiguity, of the two implacably opposed “paradigms” living in an uneasy truce within the same institution, those few recalcitrants left who refused to accept the new liturgical forms, new theological “formulations,” the new disciplines are being forced either to conform or leave.

In all Catholic institutions the so-called “conservative” middle ground, the safe and reasonable compromise position that was allowed to exist under the last two pontificates has evaporated. As Amoris Laetitia will have the effect of forcing out priests and seminarians who refuse to desecrate the Holy Eucharist by giving it to unrepentant adulterers, so Cor orans will be used to remove “conservative” contemplative nuns who have refused to adopt the full Vatican II programme of “renewal” of religious life.

We must never forget the appeasement of LCWR by the Congregation for Religious after Pope Francis’ election. The new prefect[2], Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz, effectively apologised to the world’s most notoriously heretical organisation of modernist religious, soothing feathers that had been ruffled by his predecessor’s abortive attempt at bringing them back to Catholicity. Contrast this with the ruthless suppression by that office of the Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Immaculate at the same time, and the programme becomes obvious.

This week I received another document that included extensive quotes from a 2015 speech given by the Congregation’s Secretary, Jose Rodrigues Carballo, in which he darkly implied that traditional forms of Catholic religious life had “served their purpose” and must be allowed to die out so that something as yet undefined, but assuredly new and wonderful, could replace them.

At a meeting of religious formators in April 2015 in Rome, Carballo said quite clearly that it is Vatican II that must take precedence over the classical charisms of religious life.

“With this explicit reference to the Second Vatican Council, we point to our profound conviction that the council is the point of reference, non-negotiable, in the formation to the consecrated life.”

In his speech in Avila[3], Spain a month later, Carballo spoke even more plainly, denouncing the “many fundamentalist groups” in the religious life, saying, “This is not of the Spirit.” “Vatican II is our compass” he said, adding that the pope “takes his lead from Vatican II.”

Carballo said that with the collapse of vocations over the last 50 years, it is clear that the forms of religious life that have been known through the last 20 centuries have “done their task in the Church.” This, he said is a time of “purification” for the religious life. He called “some forms” of religious life “antiquated” and claimed that they “say hardly anything to people today.” These, he said “will not remain even though they have [had] a certain success.” [emphasis added.]

“As with the Gospel,” Carballo said, the charisms of religious life “are on-going,” they “develop” and “continue to grow over time.” He said, “Some forms are dying out. But new forms are rising.”

With regard to the living of their charism, “The church asks us not only for fidelity but for creative fidelity,” he said.

He asked the assembled Carmelites, friars and nuns, “What does Teresa want now?” and “we don’t want to walk as we did 500 years ago.” The charism “goes forward.” He denounced those who respond “We have always done it this way,” saying that “even good people need changes,” and being “faithful does not mean staying the same.”

As is usual with Catholic progressives, he went on to spin the total collapse of religious life since Vatican II as a positive, comparing the current “chaos” in religious life with the conditions before Creation, urging those present to “think of Genesis” and to imagine “a new creation” that is coming soon.

Speeches and documents from the Congregation for Religious often employ the phrase “creative fidelity” or “dynamic fidelity” when speaking of the ancient orders or charisms. At this meeting, Carballo clarified this, saying it means that being “faithful does not mean staying the same.”

This “updating”, he said, will be brought about through formation. “Only formation transforms the heart and mind.”

Given these hints, what Cor orans tells us is that with regard to the female contemplative life, the progressives, who expected the “chaos” of the post-conciliar upheaval they engineered to bring to birth a “new church,” are tired of waiting.

With this pope they have been given a mandate to crush the remaining hold-outs and, instead of “singing,” to bluntly force “the new church into being.” Cor orans’ language, put together with Carballo’s clear messages in his various speeches, has made it unmistakable; this is a purge.

And the document is equally clear about its status as a piece of legislation. It isn’t a suggestion; superiors are already reporting receiving messages from Rome, and the existing federations and associations, that they are to implement it “immediately”. It mandates membership in a federation, with that body’s president and council having unprecedented powers over finances, new foundations, formation and, crucially, decisions about the suppression of monasteries.

Retrieved June 26, 2018 from https://www.remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/3949-cor-orans-another-evil-spirit-of-vatican-ii