Saint of the Day & Communism’s Power Over the Church

Long post today, important subject.

Today is the feast day of St. Thomas of Villanova, according to the traditional Lives of the Saints by Fr. Alban Butler, read about this day at http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/lots/lots294.htm

Reading about these saints is a wonderful daily reflection.

Communism’s Power Over the Church

Its power began during the failure to hear the message of Fatima and increased during Vatican II when KGB assets were allowed to sit in on the proceedings, as I noted in my book:

“The Church and its doctrine of each life being precious to God, has always been attacked by the world from the day its founder was crucified, and far too often, it has become corrupted in its worldly institutional form, but the corruption by Communism, which the 19^th and early 20^th century popes had warned about so clearly, seems to have begun in earnest by the failure of the Holy Father to fulfill the command of the Holy Virgin at Fatima in 1917, to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart.

“Much of the horrors she foretold which would happen if Russia was not consecrated, have happened.

“It is within the diplomacy-influenced reasons partially responsible for that failure—the Russian Orthodox Metropolitan who lobbied to ensure the consecration would not happen, was a KGB directed operative—that we see the Vatican corruption that infected the clear support of Catholic teaching about Communism, rendering it virtually mute.

“Amerio (1996) writes about the pact between the Vatican and Moscow regarding Vatican II:

“When one is talking about the liberty of the council, the salient and half secret point that should be noted is the restriction on the council’s liberty to which John XXIII had agreed a few months earlier, in making an accord with the Orthodox Church by which the patriarchate of Moscow accepted the papal invitation to send observers to the council, while the Pope for his part guaranteed the Council would refrain from condemning communism. The negotiations took place at Metz in August 1962, and all the details of time and place were given at a press conference by Mgr. Paul Joseph Schmitt, the Bishop of that Diocese [newspaper Le Lorrain, 2/9/63]. The negotiations ended in an agreement signed by metropolitan Nikodim for the Orthodox Church and Cardinal Tisserant, the Dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals, for the Holy See. News of the agreement was given in the France Nouvelle, the central bulletin of the French communist party in the edition of January 16-22, 1963 in these terms: ‘Because the world socialist system is showing its superiority in an uncontestable fashion, and is strong through the support of hundreds and hundreds of millions of men, the Church can no longer be content with a crude anti-communism. As part of its dialogue with the Russian Orthodox Church, it has even promised there will be no direct attack on the Communist system at the Council.’ On the Catholic side, the daily La Croix of February 15, 1963 gave notice of the agreement, concluding: “Following on this conversation, Msgr. Nikodim agreed that someone should go to Moscow carrying an invitation, on condition that guarantees were given concerning the apolitical attitude of the Council.”

“Moscow’s condition, namely that the council should say nothing about communism, was not, therefore, a secret, but the isolated publication of it made no impression on general opinion, as it was not taken up by the press at large and circulated, either because of the apathetic and anaesthetized attitude to communism common in clerical circles or because the Pope took action to impose silence in the matter. Nonetheless, the agreement had a powerful, albeit silent, effect on the course of the Council when requests for a renewal of the condemnation of Communism were rejected in order to observe this agreement to say nothing about it.” (Italics in original. pp. 75-76). Amerio, R. (1996). Iota unum: A study of changes in the Catholic church in the XXth century. Kansas City, Missouri: Sarto House. (

(pp.79-81) David H. Lukenbill (2013). Catholicism, Communism & Criminal Reformation. Lampstand Foundation: Sacramento, California.

George Weigel wrote about metropolitan Nikodim:

“On September 5, 1978, the new pope [John Paul I] received [Russian Orthodox] Metropolitan Nikodim of Leningrad, one of the six presidents of the World Council of Churches and a man who struck many Westerners as deeply pious. The KGB knew Nikodim as ADAMANT, as it knew his secretary, Nikolai Lvovich Tserpitsky (code name VLADIMIR). At the end of his private audience with John Paul, ADAMANT suffered a massive heart attack and died in the Pope’s arms. John Paul I later remarked that Nikodim had spoken “the most beautiful words about the Church I have ever heard” during their meeting; his last words, as the Pope held the fallen bishop, were said to have been “I am not a KGB agent.” But he was.” (p. 99) Weigel, G. (2010). The end and the beginning: Pope John Paul II—The victory of freedom, the last years, the legacy. New York: Doubleday.

This was also included in my book on page 119.

Communism’s influence appears to be alive and well, at least in China, as this story from OnePeterFive reports; though it is just a report of what might happen, not about what has happened, so take with a grain of salt; an informed grain of salt, however, considering the history.

An excerpt.

The Vatican is set to sign an agreement with China by the end of the month, one that cedes control over the appointment of bishops to Beijing. In return, we are told, Beijing has agreed to recognize the pope as the head of China’s Catholics.

From my position as a long-time observer of the machinations of the Chinese Party-State, this seems like a bad deal. The pope is ceding his very real authority to name bishops to China’s Communist authorities in return for the promise of symbolic recognition as the titular head of all Catholics in China. Might he not be giving up something for nothing?

The Vatican originally proposed that China follow the terms of an agreement it had reached with the Vietnamese government over the appointment of bishops. Under its terms, the Vatican and the Vietnamese authorities, working together, draw up a list of potential candidates. The Vatican then chooses someone from the list who, once Hanoi ratifies the choice, is consecrated as a bishop by the pope. Such a model clearly preserves papal authority.

This “Vietnam model” was rejected by China, however. As the official Global Times later reported, “Such a model was not accepted by China when it was tested in the country in 2005, as the Chinese authorities want total control over choosing candidates.” [italics added]

Beijing went on to insist upon a “Chinese model”, under the terms of which the Communist authorities alone will nominate a potential candidate for bishop. The pope must then approve or reject that candidate. If he vetoes the first candidate, Beijing will nominate another.

The pope’s “veto power,” however, is not unlimited.

As a Chinese official familiar with the negotiations was quoted as saying, “We cannot submit endless candidate lists to the Vatican if the pontiff keeps saying no. We may have to appoint bishops unapproved by the pontiff after a set number of rounds of negotiations. Such bishops may not be legitimate under the Church doctrine, but they can still give Church services to Chinese Catholics.”

In other words, the pope may veto an obviously unsuitable candidate or two, but Beijing has made it clear that there is a limit to the number of times a papal veto can be used. It has also limited the amount of time that the Vatican has to respond once a candidate’s name is submitted.

This means that at the end of the day it is the Communist authorities, and not Pope Francis, who will have the final say over who becomes a bishop in the Chinese Catholic Church.

The Vatican is reportedly prepared to make other concessions as well.

Perhaps the most important is that Pope Francis will formally consecrate as bishops seven men who were made “bishops” by the Communist authorities over the past decade. All of these men have been previously rejected by the Vatican as bishop candidates for various reasons having to do with personal morality, public actions, or both.

In a further concession, the Vatican has promised that the Pope will lift the excommunication of the seven illicit “bishops” of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association even before the new agreement is signed.

Second, the Pope will order two bishops of the underground Church, who have faithfully served for decades under intense persecution, to hand over their dioceses to bishops appointed by the Communist authorities. Shantou Bishop Zhuang Jianjian has been ordered to retire, a decision that has caused enormous pain to the local Church, while Mindong Bishop Guo Xijin has been told that he will be made an “auxiliary” of the Shantou diocese he has long headed.

Retrieved September 15, 2018 from https://onepeterfive.com/vatican-to-allow-beijing-to-name-bishops/

Saint of the Day & The Church is Holy, Leaders Often Not

Today is the feast day of St. Lambert, Bishop, Martyr, according to the traditional Lives of the Saints by Fr. Alban Butler, read about this day at http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/lots/lots293.htm

Reading about these saints is a wonderful daily reflection.

The Church is Holy, Leaders Often Not

An important point to remember, as this story from Life Site News reports.

An excerpt.

September 12, 2018 (Rorate Caeli) – The courageous denunciation of ecclesiastical scandals made by  Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has generated  the consensus of many, but also the displeasure of others, convinced that everything discrediting the representatives of the Church should be covered up by silence. This desire to safeguard the Church is understandable when the scandal is an exception. There is the risk in that case of generalizing, by saddling the behavior of a few onto everyone . Quite different is the case when immorality is the rule, or at least is a widespread way of living accepted as the norm. In this case public denunciation is the first step towards the necessary reform of “morals”. Breaking the silence is part of the duties of a pastor, as St. Gregory the Great admonishes: “What in fact is the fear of a pastor to state the truth, if not the turning of his back on the enemy with his silence? If, instead, he fights in defense of his flock, he builds a bastion for the House of Israel against its enemies. For this the Lord through the mouth of Isaiah admonishes: “Cry, cease not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet” (Isaiah, 58,1).

At the origins of a guilty silence there is often the lack of distinction between the Church and the men of the Church, be they the simple laity, bishops, cardinals or Popes. One of the reasons for this confusion is precisely the prominence of the authorities involved in the scandals. The higher their dignity, the more the tendency to identify them with the Church, attributing good and evil indifferently to the one and the other. In reality the Good is the sole business of the Church, whereas all the Evil is due to the men who represent Her. For this the Church cannot be defined as sinful: “She – writes Father Roger T. Calmel O.P. (1920-1998) – asks forgiveness to the Lord not for the sins She has committed, but for the sins committed by Her children, insofar as they do not listen to Her as Mother.” (Breve apologia della Chiesa di sempre, Editrice Ichtys, Albano Laziale 2007, p. 91). All the members of the Church whether of the teaching or student parts, are men, with their own nature, wounded by original sin.  Neither Baptism renders the faithful faultless, nor Holy Orders render the members of the Hierarchy such. The Pope himself can sin and fall into error, except for that which concerns the charism of infallibility.

It must be said, moreover, that the faithful do not constitute the Church, as happens in human societies, created by the members that form them and dissolved as soon as they separate. To say “We are Church” is false, since the belonging of the baptized to the Church, does not derive from their will: it is Christ Himself who invites us to belong to His flock, by repeating to everyone: “You have not chosen me but I have chosen you” (John 15, 16).  The Church founded by Jesus Christ has a Human-Divine constitution: human as it has a material and passive component, made up of all the faithful, part of both the clergy and the laity; supernatural and divine for Her soul. Jesus Christ, Her Head, is Her foundation and the Holy Spirit is Her supernatural propeller.

The Church therefore is not holy because of the holiness of Her members, but it is Her members that are holy thanks to Jesus Christ Who directs Her and the Holy Spirit Who gives life to Her. From them comes all Good, that is, all that is “true, noble, just, pure, lovable, honorable and worthy of praise” (Phil. 4,8). And from the men of the Church comes all the Evil: disorders, scandals, abuse of power, violence, turpitudes and sacrileges.

“So – writes the Passionist theologian Enrico Zoffoli (1915-1996) who dedicated many fine pages to this theme –  we have no interest in covering up the faults of bad Christians, of unworthy, cowardly, inept, dishonest and arrogant priests. The intent to defend the cause and mitigate their responsibilities would be ingenuous and useless along with minimizing the consequences of their errors, having recourse to historical contexts and singular situations in order then to explain  away and absolve everything” (Chiesa e uomini di Chiesa, Edizioni Segno, Udine 1994, p. 41).

Today there is great filth in the Church, as the then Cardinal Ratzinger said during the Via Crucis of Good Friday 2005, which preceded his rise to the papacy.  “How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to Him! (Jesus)”.

Monsignor Carlo Maria Viganò’s testimony is praiseworthy, since, by bringing to light this filth, he renders the work of purification of the Church more urgent. It must be [made]clear that the conduct of unworthy bishops or priests is not inspired by the dogmas or morals of the Church, but constitutes their betrayal, as it represents a negation of the law of the Gospel.  The world that accuses the Church for Her faults accuses Her of transgressing a moral order: but in the name of what law and doctrine does the world claim to indict the Church? The philosophy of life professed by the modern world is relativism to the degree that there are no absolute truths and the only law of man is to be devoid of [all] laws; the practical consequence is hedonism according to which the only form of possible happiness is the gratification of one’s desires and the satisfaction of one’s instincts.

How can the world, devoid of principles as it is, judge and condemn the Church?  The Church has the right and duty to judge the world because She has an absolute and immutable doctrine. The modern world, child of the principles of the French Revolution, develops with coherence the ideas of the libertine Marquis de Sade (1740-1814): free love, free blasphemy, total freedom to deny and destroy every bastion of Faith and Morals, as in the days of the French Revolution when the Bastille, where Sade was a prisoner, was destroyed. The outcome of all this is the dissolution of morality, which has destroyed the foundations of civil society and over the last two centuries has created the darkest age in history.

The life of the Church is also the history of betrayals, defections, apostasies and insufficient  correspondence  with Divine Grace.  But this tragic weakness always goes along with extraordinary faithfulness: the falls, even the most terrifying, of many members of the Church, are interlaced with the heroism of the virtue seen in many other of Her children.

A river of sanctity gushes out of the side of Christ and runs flowing through the course of the centuries: the martyrs who face the wild animals in the Coliseum; the hermits who abandon the world to live a life of penitence; the missionaries who go to the ends of the earth; the intrepid confessors of the faith who combat schisms and heresies; the contemplative religious who sustain the defenders of the Church and Christian civilization with their prayers; all those, who, in different ways, have conformed their lives to the Divine one.  St. Theresa of the Child Jesus wanted to gather up all these vocations in one supreme act of love to God.

The saints are different from one another, but what they all share is union with God: and this union, which never flags, makes it so that the Church, prior to being One, Catholic and Apostolic, is first of all perfectly Holy. The holiness of the Church doesn’t depend on the holiness of Her children; it is ontological, given that it is connected to Her very nature.

Retrieved September 14, 2018 from https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/the-church-must-not-be-confused-with-the-men-who-run-the-church

Saint of the Day & Are Catholics Waking Up?

Today is the Exaltation of the Holy Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, according to the traditional Lives of the Saints by Fr. Alban Butler, read about this day at http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/lots/lots290.htm

And here is a link to what Tradition in Action writes about this day, https://traditioninaction.org/SOD/j194sd_ExaltationCross_9-14.html

Reading about these days is a wonderful daily reflection.

Are Catholics Waking Up?

If articles like this from LifeSite News keep appearing, they well might; and as an aside, the great book of awakening mentioned in the first paragraph, The Soul of the Apostolate, is one I bought years ago, early in our Catholic journey, and it is still a must read; especially for those of us engaged in an apostolate.

An excerpt.

September 13, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – They say that Pope Pius X’s favorite bedside reading was The Soul of the Apostolate by Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard. I am beginning to wonder if Pope Francis’s favorite bedside reading is Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince.

Authors like Ross Douthat, Phil Lawler, and Henry Sire have provided copious documentation of the Pope’s Machiavellian modus operandi. It may help to recall, in the midst of Viganògate, a few egregious examples from the past that demonstrate how it works.

We remember when the pope deliberately washed the feet of women, against the universal liturgical law that limited the washing of feet to men. Then he changed the law to allow for the inclusion of any baptized member of the faithful—and proceeded to violate his new law by washing a Muslim’s feet. Even if one argues that the pope, as the highest legislator, is not bound by these laws in the same way as his subjects are, he should (as popes in the past have done) set the first and best example of observing Church discipline, since others will, in fact, take their cue or their justification from him. Thus, his public actions contrary to discipline are meant to transmit a spirit of contempt for law, with the message that subjective motives of “charity” or “mercy” can and should lead to the practical neutralization of Church discipline.

We have seen the same contempt, message of neutralization, and stirring up of confusion in regard to the German bishops’ disputes over whether communion should be given to Protestant spouses of Catholics. The pope first feinted to the left, favoring the liberal bishops, then feinted to the right, seeming to support backpedaling from the CDF, and finally let it be understood that the bishops could do whatever they pleased, even if the result will be a cuius regio eius religio checkerboard of dioceses with contradictory policies.

Then, in his manner of modifying the Catechism of the Catholic Church as well as in the new content that was ordered to be inserted, Pope Francis pushed through another victory for progressivism by effecting a change in doctrine, or initiating a motion towards that end, without having used a form of language that is unequivocally heretical. We saw that he did precisely the same thing in Amoris Laetitia (taken together with the Buenos Aires guidelines), in his revisions to the annulment process, and in many other cases, using techniques such as equivocation, studied ambiguity, internal contradiction, false quotation, and stalling tactics between phases to accomplish his purposes.

Again and again he displays this duplicity, playing off one side against the other, keeping people guessing—and keeping employed an army of anxious conservative Catholics who rabbinically reshape each act or statement. But a situation in which it is thought necessary to bend over backwards to defend the pope against undeniable appearances of doctrinal rupture and moral corruption is already a crisis of unprecedented scope. It means, at very least, that this pope has permanently lost the trust of many, and has therefore introduced a strong note of instability into the very office of the papacy, since future popes will be governing from a weak foundation. All of this coming from a Pope who told youths at a Mass in 2015 to “make a mess.”

There are still some Catholics who are digging in their heels. They refuse to believe that any pope can be as bad as this pope would have to be, if the most natural “reading” of things turns out to be true—so it must not be true! “Perhaps all of these doctrinal contradictions and moral meanderings and policy flip-flops are being misreported or misunderstood. Let’s circle around and defend the Pope at all costs from these naysayers, scandalmongers, and calumniators!” By doing this, they are effectively consigning their heads to a permanent vacation in the sand. This is one kind of coping mechanism: it effectively denies that there is a problem. It is like a child who puts his hands over his ears and says some loud nonsense in order to avoid having to hear what an adult is saying to him.

Retrieved September 13, 2018 from https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/when-will-catholics-wake-up-and-see-the-mess-pope-francis-has-made

Saint of the Day & Fish or Cut Bait

Today is the Feast Day of St. Eulogius, Patriarch of Alexandria, according to the traditional Lives of the Saints by Fr. Alban Butler, read about this Saint at http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/lots/lots289.htm

Reading about these saints is a wonderful daily reflection.

Fish or Cut Bait

That moment in the horror of the sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church may be upon us, as this article from Catholic Culture reports.

An excerpt.

As Pope Francis meets on Thursday with leaders of the US bishops’ conference, one question looms more important than all others:

Will the Pope authorize an apostolic visitation of the American hierarchy?

An apostolic visitation—a full investigation, under papal authority—could, if it was conducted rigorously and honestly (and that’s a crucial “if”):

• unearth the documents that will prove conclusively whether or not Archbishop Vigano’s testimony is accurate, whether or not his criticism of the Pontiff is justified;
• identify the bishops, in this country and in Rome, who helped advance the ecclesiastical career of ex-cardinal McCarrick—and those whose careers McCarrick has advanced;
• expose the influence of the “lavender mafia” and the corruption of the Roman Curia; and
• give American Catholics at least some reason to believe that the Vatican is finally taking action, and the cover-up is ending.

Cardinal DiNardo, in his role as president of the US bishops’ conference, has urgently requested an apostolic visitation, and indicated that he will go to Rome to pursuit of that request. That is a remarkable development: the head of the USCCB is, in effect, calling for an investigation of the USCCB! This is a bold move; one might even call it a desperate move. It’s almost the clerical equivalent of an infantry officer calling down artillery strikes on his own unit’s position. Casualties would be inevitable.

Retrieved September 13, 2018 from https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/the-city-gates.cfm?id=1645

Saint of the Day & Please, More Meetings?

Today is the Feast Day of St. Guy of Anderlecht, according to the traditional Lives of the Saints by Fr. Alban Butler, read about this Saint at http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/lots/lots288.htm

Reading about these saints is a wonderful daily reflection.

Please, More Meetings?

The Vatican strategy is well-addressed at Catholic Culture.

An excerpt.

Pope Francis has called the leaders of the world’s episcopal conferences to Rome, to “speak about the prevention of abuse of minors and vulnerable adults.” Great.

The meeting will take place next February—more than five years after the Pope announced his plan to set up a special commission to recommend plans and policies for “the prevention of abuse of minors and vulnerable adults.” So you might ask yourself, what has that commission been doing these five years?

For one thing, the commission has been butting heads with various Vatican officials, trying—and often failing—to gain approval for its recommendations. Commission members have resigned in frustration, complaining about the lack of cooperation from Vatican agencies and episcopal conferences. If he saw the problem as urgent, the Pope, as the Church’s supreme legislator, could require all the world’s episcopal conferences to adopt norms suggested by his commission. Instead, he’s convened a meeting—in five months—to talk about the issue some more.

Or rather, to talk about a part of the issue. The revelations of recent weeks—the Chilean debacle and the McCarrick scandal in particular—have made it impossible to ignore two aspects of the scandal that have not been addressed: the influence of a homosexual network among the clergy, and the complicity of bishops who have failed to address abuse charges. These issues are not even mentioned in the Vatican’s announcement of the February meeting.

To be fair, the papal commission did recommend the creation of a special tribunal that would hold bishops accountable for their negligence in handling abuse charges. In 2015, the Pontiff approved that recommendation and created the tribunal. On paper. But in reality nothing changed—it was all talk, again—and after a year the Pope announced a new policy, rescinding the plan for a tribunal, claiming that existing procedures were adequate for disciplinary action against negligent bishops.

But if those procedures worked, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. The Pope is inviting the world’s bishops to discuss the problem, ignoring the fact that to a large extent the world’s bishops ARE the problem.

Retrieved September 12, 2018 from https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/the-city-gates.cfm?id=1644

Saint of the Day & Church as Sign of Contradiction

Today is the Feast Day of St. Laurence Justinian, according to the traditional Lives of the Saints by Fr. Alban Butler, read about this Saint at http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/lots/lots279.htm

Reading about these saints daily is a wonderful reflection.

The Church as a Sign of Contradiction

Standing as such against the world has always been the mark of the Church, but over the past several decades, that has changed as this article from One Peter Five explains.

An excerpt.

In 1986, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre wrote the following infamous words:

“For the fact is that a grave problem confronted the conscience and the faith of all Catholics during the pontificate of Paul VI. How could a Pope, true successor of Peter, assured of the assistance of the Holy Ghost, preside over the most vast and extensive destruction of the Church in her history within so short a space of time, something that no heresiarch has ever succeeded in doing? One day this question will have to be answered.” (Open Letter to Confused Catholics, 1986)

About ten years before, in his book of the same name, Pope John Paul II, in a rather more optimistic vein, referred to the Church as being, like Christ, a “sign of contradiction” against the sin and error of the world. Several decades later, Lefebvre’s question has not yet been answered, and John Paul II’s characterization of the Church’s enmity with the world has become progressively more risible, as numerous bishops and cardinals appointed during his own pontificate openly make peace with the world and its sins. Nevertheless, many conservative Catholic commentators continue to insist that because of the doctrinal orthodoxy of the “New Evangelization,” the Church has maintained her aspect of contradiction with the world’s sins.

Whether all aspects of the New Evangelization are indeed orthodox is a separate question. What is more important is to note that mere orthodoxy in doctrine is insufficient for the Church to be the sign of contradiction against the world. Just as it is possible for an individual Catholic to be fully doctrinally correct and in a state of grace while maintaining a timid demeanor, so it is also possible for the Church as a whole to falter in boldly opposing the world without actually falling into doctrinal error. Indeed, it is precisely this that has happened since the Second Vatican Council. Lefebvre’s question and the former pope’s description of the Church are in fact intimately linked: the destruction of the Church’s inner stability devastated her ability to be a sign of contradiction against the world. If the Church is to have hope of recovering her former strength, lay Catholics must first understand what was lost at the Council: not doctrinal orthodoxy, not infallibility, but a spirit, a character, of both strength and opposition, that the world once knew well.

One of the aspects of the Catholic Church that was most strongly emphasized up until very recently, by her enemies and by her children, by converts and by opponents, was the sternness and consistency with which the Church insisted on absolute adherence to precise doctrinal formulas, in contrast with the freedom of thought enjoyed by Protestants. On the Protestant and freethinking side, it was condemned as obscurantism and dogmatism; on the Catholic side, it was hailed as the only guarantee of certainty of faith – of knowing what a Christian ought to believe.

The unanimity with which the Church’s character was described is striking. When David Hume wished to attack “Christian superstition,” he directed his fire at Roman Catholics, knowing that his largely Protestant audience would sympathize with his denunciation of Rome and his assertion in his Treatise of Human Nature that “[t]he Roman Catholics are certainly the most zealous of any sect in the Christian world.” Charles Hodge, a 19th-century Presbyterian theologian of great influence, referred in his Systematic Theology to the Church’s claim to magisterial infallibility as “a tyranny for which there is no parallel in the history of the world,” a judgment with which the evangelical Anglican theologian of the same period, J.C. Ryle, concurred, calling the Catholic submission to the Magisterium “laziness, idleness, and sloth.” Ryle went on to say in reference to the Oxford Movement and the growing sympathy among High Anglicans for Catholicism:

“We dreamed, in our folly, that the Reformation had ended the Popish controversy, and that if Romanism did survive, Romanism was altogether changed. If we did think so, we have lived to learn that we made a most grievous mistake. Rome never changes.” (“On Private Judgment,” emphasis in original)

The early 20th-century liberal theologian Charles Gore, who was influential in the post-Oxford Movement stage of High Anglicanism, spoke of Leo XIII’s encyclical on the authority of Scripture, Providentissimus Deus, as “disastrous.” He contrasted Leo’s alleged obscurantism with the freedom of inquiry Protestants enjoyed in the Anglican Church, criticizing the encyclical as being:

“… designed to suppress the school of real and free criticism which seemed to be forming itself in the Roman Church, and taking such firm root[.] … Nothing else is to be allowed – till truth revenges itself as it revenged itself on the same Church when she dealt in similar fashion with the science of Galileo.” (Gore, Roman Catholic Claims, 1920)

Catholic authors who noted the same difference between the Protestant layman’s plight of having to choose between competing authorities and his Catholic counterpart’s being able to rest in the living voice of the Church reads like a who’s-who of eminent figures in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Henry Edward Manning, John Henry Newman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Hugh Benson, Hilaire Belloc, Adrian Fortescue, Dom John Chapman, G.K. Chesterton, and Ronald Knox, to name a few. To sample merely a few, Newman noted in his Apologia that the crucial turning point at which he realized that the Anglican theory of the Church was untenable was his recognition of the exact resemblance of the outward aspect of Rome in the fourth-century Monophysite controversies and again twelve centuries later during the Reformation, noting:

“The drama of religion, and the combat of truth and error, were ever one and the same. The principles and proceedings of the Church now, were those of the Church then[.] … The Church then, as now, might be called peremptory and stern, resolute, overbearing, and relentless[.]” (Apologia Pro Vita Sua, 1864)

What is key to notice here in Newman’s statement, which he stressed elsewhere, is that the critical issue was not simply a matter of doctrinal continuity between Rome in the fourth and sixteenth centuries, but a continuity of spirit, of character, in how Rome related to heresies and the outside world. Indeed, the question of doctrinal continuity was precisely the difficulty that kept Newman out of the Church for years after he had lost faith in Anglicanism; as he relates in the Apologia, he found himself unable to go over to Rome because of a long abiding conviction that the Tridentine developments, particularly the veneration of the saints, were unscriptural and foreign to the early centuries of the Church. It was not a persuasion that Rome’s doctrine had not changed that led Newman to conclude that the Catholic Church of his day was the same as that of the fourth century – indeed, that is nearly the reverse of the truth. It was a general sense that the persona of Rome in the two periods was the same that led him, in spite of his difficulties, to ultimately conclude that the alleged contradictions and novelties in doctrine were only apparent.

Retrieved September 4, 2018 from https://onepeterfive.com/sign-contradiction-again/

 

Christ is the Church, the Church is Christ

This is an excellent article from Catholic Culture describing the difference between the Church and Protestant sects; very useful in ministry to criminals.

An excerpt.

In a recent discussion of the mission of CatholicCulture.org, an interesting question came up: Why do we have the word “Catholic” in our name, and not the word “Christ”? Similarly, one of the mission slogans I use frequently is to “enrich faith, strengthen the Church, and form Catholic culture”. Why do I include the terms “Church” and “Catholic”, and not the names “Christ” or “Jesus”?

The answer to this question actually marks a significant difference between Catholics and Protestants, who more frequently mention “the Lord Jesus”. Never mind for the moment that Protestants can hardly refer to “the Church”, since they do not have a “church”. While all Protestants are baptized Catholic, as Protestants they have no apostolicity, no succession in grace and orders, and no Christic unity of governance. The Orthodox can properly refer to themselves as “a church”; Protestant bodies are churches only in a more conventional sense. But such “churches” are not really churches, but sects or gatherings or communities or fellowships.

We might almost call them “prayer groups”. But there is a deeper issue.

Catholics recognize the Church AS Christ. The membership of the Church makes up Christ’s mystical body, and the Risen Christ is the Church’s head. The Church is sinful in her members, but she is both sinless and an infinite font of goodness and supernatural life in her institutional Christic essence—institutional in the same sense as the sacraments, that is, instituted by Christ to give grace. Just as we really and truly encounter Christ in each of the sacraments, so do we encounter Him constantly in the ultimate sacrament of His Church. Thus, the Catholic Church is not only one, holy, catholic and apostolic: She is Christ present in the world, present in what He has ordained to be His fullest mode until His Second Coming.

In other words, the Catholic Church is Our Lord and Savior’s preeminent presence here and now on this earth. This is a far greater presence, and a far more tangible one, than is found “wherever two or three are gathered in my name”. This does not mean it is wrong to speak of “Jesus” or “Christ” or “the Lord”, but it does mean that to do so apart from the Church or to the exclusion of the Church is a terrible impoverishment of His Presence.

This is true irrespective of the sins of the Church’s members. It is as true in the age of sex abuse as it was in all the great ages of doctrinal ferment, including our own, when priests and laity alike have agitated for shameful revisions of the Word of God, ultimately splintering away to do their own thing. And it was as true in the era of episcopal abuse of political power five hundred to a thousand years ago as it was in the age of itinerant Gnostic preachers two millennia ago, just after the Resurrection. The Body of Christ is certainly wounded and disfigured. But it remains His Body. There is no other.

Retrieved August 22, 2018 from https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/the-city-gates.cfm?id=1631

 

Bracing Affirmation of Catholicism

An excellent article from One Peter Five.

An excerpt.

Today, someone sent me the latest column at First Things by American Catholic writer and papal biographer George Weigel, entitled “WYD-1993: The Turning Point.”

I am not, in general, a fan of Weigel’s work, which I find by turns dull and frustrating – often both. This column is no exception, and yet it serves as a potent illustration of something very much worth talking about: that so-called “Conservative Catholicism” is illusory – a self-imposed, often starkly tone-deaf deception designed to maintain an incredibly destructive lie: that the Catholicism you’ve been given your whole life is the real thing, and therefore, worth conserving.

The obviousness of how threadbare this illusion has become makes itself clear when Weigel suggests – in August of 2018! – that the American Catholic Church entered a halcyon period following World Youth Day in Denver in 1993. While the rest of the American Church is currently reeling over changes to its catechisms and another horrifying round of sexual abuse allegations – including those made in solidly “conservative” dioceses like Lincoln – Weigel dons his rose-colored glasses while he cheerfully writes:

WYD 1993 was not just a triumph for John Paul II, and for now-Cardinal Stafford and his team; it was a turning point in the history of the Catholic Church in the United States, and its effects are still being felt on this silver jubilee. Before WYD 1993, too much of Catholicism in America was in a defensive crouch, like too much of the Church in Western Europe today. After WYD 1993, the New Evangelization in the United States got going in earnest, as Catholics who had participated in it brought home the word that the Gospel was still the most transformative force in the world. Before WYD 1993, U.S. Catholicism was largely an institutional-maintenance Church. With WYD 1993, Catholicism in America discovered the adventure of the New Evangelization, and the living parts of the Church in the U.S. today are the parts that have embraced that evangelical way of being Catholic.

Really, Mr. Weigel? Have you checked the news?

Are we not in a “defensive crouch” today? Has Catholicism, which has been in steady decline in the United States for decades, seen a resurgence nobody has bothered telling us about? Is the clerical CYA racket evidenced by the McCarrick case (and others) not precisely the worst kind of example of U.S. Catholicism as “institutional-maintenance Church”?

And yet, Weigel is not entirely wrong about World Youth Day. He’s just wrong about why it mattered. As I’ve written before, I was a participant in that very same World Youth Day in 1993. I was fifteen years old, and had begun falling in love with the Church I had grown up in as my adolescent sense of truth being something worth pursuing deepened. Even now, 25 years later, I remember standing in my grandmother’s living room, taking the call from my pastor on her yellow rotary phone, hearing the news that I was one of two people from the parish selected to go to Denver.

But as I wrote in 2016, World Youth Day represented a turning point for me, too….

There is, in fact, only one type of Catholicism. Catholicism as it always was: a Church founded by Christ and anchored by the apostles, guided by the Holy Spirit in an unbroken chain of succession for nearly 2,000 years in which doctrine and dogma remained consistent and undisturbed, even though heresies great and small threatened to overturn them; a liturgy and devotional life that developed organically, as imperceptibly as a giant oak; a Church Militant nurtured by all these things and in turn nurturing the culture and the civilization that sprung from it.

There is something else, too: an ersatz Catholicism. Catholicism as it has been since 1965: a revolution of novelty that leaves no aspect of the Church’s life untouched, that has created conflicts and contradictions that cannot simply be papered over through fantasy terms like “the hermeneutic of continuity” and has made the experience of the average parish-going Catholic something that would be unrecognizable to his counterpart from a hundred – or a thousand – years earlier.

Conservative Catholicism is false because it seeks to conserve something that is not real: a forcibly orthodox interpretation of a fundamentally heterodox epoch in salvation history. Conservative Catholicism is the theological equivalent – not to put too fine a point on it – of a man who pees on your leg and tells you it’s raining.

For the first time in a long time, an increasing number of people are suddenly realizing that their legs are wet, but the sky is clear.

Retrieved August 14, 2018 from https://onepeterfive.com/weigel-world-youth-day-and-a-conservative-catholicism-that-doesnt-exist/

Strategy of Disruption?

Insightful article from America Magazine about the Holy Father’s perceived strategy.

An excerpt.

Ours is an antinomian age. It is a time when people are “spiritual but not religious.” Young people especially are counted among the “nones” who, while believing in God, eschew the doctrines and communal bonds of traditional religion. It is a time of individualism and a distorted notion of conscience that, in practice, becomes indistinguishable from self-justification. Ours is an age in which the moral law is seen as an outdated and unreachable ideal or even as an obstacle to self-expression and self-fulfillment.

Five years ago, Pope Francis gave an interview to America and other Jesuit journals in which he warned about the inadequacies of a church that too easily becomes “obsessed” with certain moral teachings, confusing the fundamentals of the faith for a “disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.” If the church does not correct this imbalance, the pope warned, “the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards.”

What was needed instead, Pope Francis said, was to re-emphasize the church’s missionary character. Evangelization must be more about helping people to fall in love than about convincing them to fall in line. “The most important thing,” Pope Francis said, “is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you.” He continued, “It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.”

He wants to shake the church—to shake us—out of complacency and a tendency to moral abstraction. The pope’s oft-repeated advice—hagan lío, or “make a mess”—should not be dismissed as a quirk of Francis’ style. It is a deliberate evangelical strategy, and it is, perhaps, a strategy perfectly tailored to our times.

But this strategy of holy disruption is also risky, especially in this secular era.

The pope routinely denounces modern-day Pharisees and doctors of the law; he warns of gnosticism and neo-pelagianism. And rightly so: These are obstacles to the Gospel. But where is there a problem of people overly committed to following the church’s moral teachings on…well, on anything? Doesn’t it seem likely, or at least possible, that the human wreckage that requires a church as field hospital comes precisely from a culture of indifference toward the church’s moral teachings?

Nowhere is this more evident than in the sexual abuse scandals that once again are rocking the church. The greatest obstacle to the church’s proclamation of the Gospel today comes from the scandal of those—including cardinals, bishops and priests—who have excused in their own minds the most repulsive and criminal violations of the church’s moral law. Immorality destroys the Gospel; sin—yours and mine—is precisely what puts people in the field hospital to begin with.

Simply restating moral doctrine is obviously not the solution—as Pope Francis has pointed out, as history shows and as many of his crankier critics would do well to remember—but the church’s moral doctrines are liberating and precious. To treat them as secondary to the Gospel plays precisely into the antinomian temptation so prevalent in our time.

Will hagan lío prove a bracing call to evangelical boldness perfectly articulated for our time and lead to a rediscovery of the liberating Gospel, experienced in the mercy of Jesus Christ and proclaimed with joy in word and deed? Or will the pope’s willingness to make a mess confirm the antinomians of our age in their belief that obedience to the moral law breeds hypocrisy, not freedom, and leads to bondage rather than salvation?

Retrieved August 14, 2018 from https://eppc.org/publications/evangelization-isnt-getting-people-to-fall-in-line-its-getting-them-to-fall-in-love/

Faith & the World Today

A powerful and moving article from the Remnant Newspaper about the times we live in and the faith that is ours, if we can hold on to it.

An excerpt.

It is the solemn hour. The priest has summoned God from Heaven. The Consecration has been done. The ancient Sacrifice is renewed. Our Lord lies on the altar. He lies there, waiting. Waiting for you to come to Him. Waiting to come to you.

First, we must prepare. Our hearts must be ready.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum, the priest intones in the old Rite; the Peace of the Lord be with you always, he says in the new.

By the power granted him at his ordination, it is the Peace of Christ the priest bestows, not his own. Not friendly sociability or kindly affability. Not openness or caring or concern. None of those things, just the awesome Peace of the Holy One, Jesus Christ Our Lord. It is the wounded Hand of God reaching out to touch us with His Love. This supernatural Peace is ours to receive. It is ours to keep. It is ours to have confidence in the One Who, in a few moments, will come to us, will enter our soul, will feed us with Himself.

Paratum cor meum, Domine. My heart is ready, Lord.

Does the magnitude of the blessing touch our hearts? Do we believe that, just before we receive Him, Christ bestows His peace upon us through the action of the priest? Or is it just words, mindlessly repeated Sunday after Sunday, year after year? Empty words, signifying nothing?

For there is no peace among us.

We’ve been fractured. Fraternal war has replaced fraternal charity. Everyone has taken his stand, chosen his position. Everyone has a label. Groups splinter into factions; factions splinter into fragments. Faith has been pigeonholed.

But are we not all Catholic? Do we not belong to Him?

These are perilous times, and our souls are in danger. In this fight for tradition which consumes us, we must not forget our destiny. The goal is Heaven. Our life here is passing. We are all under sentence of death. In a very short time—who knows? perhaps today—we will be summoned to judgment. And then what?

Admit it or not, we don’t know for certain that we will be among the elect. We hope, but we can’t be sure that we’ll hear the blessed words: Enter into my rest. It’s not automatic, you know, just because you’re Catholic. Don’t ever forget that you could be lost. By your own fault, on the Last Day, you could be with the goats.

Some people are so busy pointing their fingers at everybody else that they forget to take care of themselves. What do they think, that the soul is some sort of stain-free polyester? Where’s the trembling at one’s weakness, where is the fear of God? That salutary fear is the beginning of wisdom. It is one of the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Without it, people are dumb as donkeys.

Wake up.

Beg for holy fear; beg for wisdom. Remember what the Sacred Scriptures say:

They that hold her fast, shall inherit life:

And whithersoever she entereth,

God will give a blessing. [1]

We long for life; we need that blessing. Saving our souls is not easy. There’s more to it than what some people say. It’s not enough to “accept Jesus as your personal Savior.” We were warned—not everyone who calls out Lord, Lord will be saved. And there’s no such thing as universal salvation, either. Forget this ersatz mercy that admits no justice. Forget this false god who laughs at sin, who welcomes everyone into his arms while he salivates at their damnation.

Believing is not enough. No, we have work to do. Remember what St. Paul said when he called us his dearly beloved: “With fear and trembling work out your salvation.”[2] And St. James, too: “But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?[3]

But what does that mean? It doesn’t mean running around implementing all sorts of social justice programs or welcoming hordes of people whose religions and cultures are inimical to our own. It doesn’t mean supporting people who won’t work or doing their work for them. It doesn’t mean “forming faith communities” or “uniting with the human family” or obeying any other commandment of those who would create a new golden age, a Saturnalian novus ordo seculorum.

Because that’s what they want to do, these agents of change, these lackeys of Hell. These are the ones we must resist if we are to enjoy the Peace of Christ, here on Earth and forever in Heaven. But resistance requires knowledge. We have to know what they’re all about. Why do they do the things they do? What is their purpose? What is their goal?

Quite simply, they plan to transform the world. They think they can do it. They seek a shining City ahead, a land of love, peace, and mercy. There’s nothing supernatural about it; it is the work of human hands. Using Christian love of neighbor and commitment to service, they have duped a lot of good people.

They think they’re so smart, so original, so modern, but their philosophy is old, tiresome, and false. Shall we examine it?

As usual, error starts with words, in this case novus ordo seculorum. While commonly translated as New World Order, the words actually mean New Order of the Ages. This isn’t simply a social agenda, a drive for progress, but an esoteric mantra signifying a transformative movement from darkness to light.

The phrase is from Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue, and he spelled the word seclorum (like on the dollar bill) for poetic reasons—to maintain the hexametric verse, the rhythm of classical Latin poetry. Startlingly, in view of what we’re going through now, the poem speaks of a time of revolutionary change in Rome forty years before the Incarnation. In English the passage reads:

Now comes the final era of the Sibyl’s song
Now a new lineage is sent down from high heaven
The great order of the ages is born afresh
Now justice returns, the return of Saturn’s reign.

Alarms sound here. Some translations of the Latin redeunt Saturnia regna don’t read return of Saturn’s reign, but, rather, honored rules return. That’s a huge difference. While some medievalists believe that the line was a prophecy of the Reign of Christ, esoteric philosophers ascribe a different meaning. Beneath their humanitarian guise, the enemies of the faith are working for exactly that: the Reign of Saturn. They don’t use the name of the Roman deity, of course. That would be too obvious. But this ancient god of liberation is the one they serve and whose reign they foster. They seek freedom from all that is good and holy and Christian. And they will force that slavery on us.

They are totalitarian utopians and they are the ones we need to ignore, resist, and disobey. On this earthly pilgrimage—which for many has become a lonely road–we must walk in faith, keeping in our hearts the love of God above all things.

Eyes front! teachers used to say to their students. Keep the line straight.

Retrieved July 30, 2018 from https://www.remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/3994-bracing-for-the-reign-of-saturn-the-real-new-order-of-the-ages