Chile, the Church and Liberation Theology

A damning article from Rorate Caeli.

An excerpt.

“Chile’s Conference of Bishops have echoed the calls of protesters for a new Chilean constitution as protesters ransack, loot, burn, and desecrate Catholic churches throughout the country.

“This past month Chileans have seen their country ravaged by a small minority of revolutionaries, supported by the media, United Nations, and foreign international powers. Their aim is to destroy the legal system of the country and establish a communist tyranny similar to that of Venezuela and Cuba.

“The protesters have an apparent affinity for fire, as they have burned down subway stations; supermarkets; small town markets and shops; commercial malls; government offices, such as the civil register for births, marriages, divorces and deaths; and they have set a couple of female police officers on fire.

“Even the Catholic Church has not been spared from these acts of arson. Protesters have ransacked churches, removing pews and other works of art only to burn them in a pile outside. They have even gone as far as setting fire to the once-beautiful Iglesia de la Vera Cruz (Church of the True Cross) in Santiago, where an actual splinter from the original cross on which Christ was crucified is venerated. Fortunately, the splinter was saved from the flames.

“However, images of the Virgin Mary were not so fortunate. Several were desecrated along with the church buildings themselves, which were spray-painted with images of satanic pentagrams. The host, which devout Catholics believe is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ when consecrated, was also taken and trampled on. Statues of Catholic priests, which were previously displayed on public avenues, were also destroyed.

“Protesters have also graphitized city walls with slogans such as “cura muerto, abono para mi huerto,” Spanish for: “[a] dead priest [is] fertilizer for my garden.” Other graffiti states that the only church that enlightens is that which is in flames.

“One might expect the Catholic population of Chile to mobilize to the defense of the symbols of their history and faith, to defend their places of worship, and to prevent additional sacrileges from taking place. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case either. Why?

“The explanation is simple: The Catholic Church in Chile, and elsewhere throughout Latin America, is heavily infiltrated with adherents of liberation theology, who preach the gospel of Marx. These Marxist priests praise the revolution in the streets and even offer the use of churches as meeting places for the revolutionary groups, which seek to dissolve the constitutional and legal order of the country.

“For example, Celestino Aós Braco, who was appointed by Pope Francis as the temporary Archbishop of Santiago following a major crisis in the Catholic Church in Chile last year, held this same position, weeks before the agreement to change the country’s constitution was signed in the National Congress of Chile.

“Archbishop Aós Braco virtually endorsed the revolution. In light of all the terrorist acts and the open support from the Communist Party of Chile, Socialist Party of Chile, and other socialist groups for the protests and their demands for a new Chilean constitution, Aós Braco likewise lent his support, stating that a new constitution was necessary in order to protect the life of unborn babies. However, considering the forces behind the protests and their aims for a new constitution, it is naïve to believe that any new constitution drafted would include such protections for the unborn.

“On the very same day that Aós Braco made his declaration in support for a new constitution, the first Catholic Church located on Vicuña Mackena Avenue, was attacked. And what was his reaction to this attack? He downplayed its significance, simply stating that the physical life of people is what matters most.

“Unfortunately, he is not alone. Chile’s Conference of Bishops issued a statement on November 15, expressing both their support for the revolution against the current constitution and for the promotion of its replacement to be drafted by “social organizations” rather than by the political parties.”

To read the rest of this article retrieved November 27, go here: https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2019/11/chilean-conference-of-bishops-sides.html

Changing the Meaning of a Word

It happens all the time, but nice to see this particular history of one change impacting Catholicism, from Crisis Magazine, authored by the transformed political criminal, the inimitable Joseph Pearce.

An excerpt.

“It is important to have a clear understanding of the meaning of a word before we use it. The word ecumenical is a case in point. Throughout history, until very recently, its meaning was connected to its etymological roots in Greek (oikoumene), in which it means literally “the inhabited (world)”, or more generally “the whole world”, or the whole civilized world—i.e., that part of the world which is encompassed by a common and universally accepted creed and culture. It was in this sense that it was used during the Roman Empire when it signified Roman civilization itself and the administration of it.

“This sense of the word was inherited by the Roman Catholic Church as the inheritor of a baptized Roman civilization, which used it to signify Christendom and the administration of it. Hence, an ecumenical council was a council convened by the authority of the Church to discuss and define disputed matters of doctrine, which would then be binding on all Christendom. It can be said, therefore, that the dogmatically defined doctrines of the Church are ecumenical in this original sense of the word. That is to say, they are binding on the “whole inhabited world.”

“This authentic and linguistically rooted definition of ecumenical has nothing to do with the modern understanding of ecumenism, which appears to be the willingness to dilute or delete doctrine in pursuit of a perceived unity among disparate groups of believers, irrespective of what they actually believe. Few will know, for instance, that “ecumenical” was only distorted into an “ism” in the past half-century or so. Prior to 1950 there is no record of ecumenism as a word, and there is no entry for it in the 1964 edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary.

“Ecumenism, in the sense in which it appears to be understood, is not merely modern but modernist, which is to say that it is heretical. It subjects the objective truth, as taught and defined by the Church in the light of faith and reason, to the way that the world subjectively understands such truths, i.e., in the light (or darkness) of the world’s own transient beliefs, the latter of which are rooted in secular—that is, worldly—criteria. St. Pius X, when he formally condemned modernism as a heresy, warned that its philosophical foundation was to be found in agnosticism.

“The Catholic Encyclopedia states that “modernism aims at that radical transformation of human thought in relation to God, man, the world, and life, here and hereafter, which was prepared by Humanism and eighteenth-century philosophy, and solemnly promulgated at the French Revolution.” Chesterton, who is said to have quipped that “we don’t want a Church that will move with the world but a Church that will move the world,” defended dogma, and the unity of faith and reason enshrined in doctrine, in an essay entitled “The Staleness of Modernism”:

“Euclid does not save geometricians the trouble of thinking when he insists on absolute definitions and unalterable axioms. On the contrary, he gives them the great trouble of thinking logically. The dogma of the Church limits thought about as much as the dogma of the solar system limits physical science. It is not an arrest of thought, but a fertile basis and constant provocation of thought.”

“Chesterton would not have known the word ecumenism; the phrase did not exist as a word when he was writing. But he would have seen the thing to which the word is now appended as being rooted in the relativism which disdains doctrinal definition. This was evident in his response to the relativism which is now called ecumenism of one of his contemporaries, Holbrook Jackson. “Theology and religion are not the same thing,” Jackson claimed; “When the churches are controlled by the theologians religious people stay away.” Chesterton reacted to this mindless “ecumenism” by insisting that “theology is simply that part of religion that requires brains.”

“When C. S. Lewis, a great admirer of Chesterton, complained that the modernist dilution of doctrine was “Christianity and water,” he was not going far enough. Modernism, or ecumenism, is not merely dilution but pollution; it poisons the purity of the Gospel with the waywardness of the world. Lewis was more to the point when he condemned progressivism and modernism as the products of the sort of “chronological snobbery” which presumes that those who lived in the past are inherently inferior to those who live in the present.”

To read the rest of the article, retrieved November 25, 2019, go to https://www.crisismagazine.com/2019/how-the-modernists-made-ecumenical-a-dirty-word

Catholic School that Works

Many of them do, many of them don’t, but here’s a great story of one that does, from City Journal.

An excerpt.

“For more than 100 years, All Hallows High School in the South Bronx has been educating immigrant and lower-income boys. Early on, the students were Irish; later, they were Italian; today, they are Hispanic and black. In past generations, the school’s teachers were largely members of the Irish Christian Brothers, men pledged to lives of poverty, chastity, and obedience and to a vocation of teaching those most in need. Today, only three brothers remain at the school, and more than a third of the teachers are themselves alumni. Despite demographic changes in the neighborhood and dramatic cultural change within the Catholic Church, All Hallows maintains its traditions, practices, and aims.

“What’s its secret—what holds this place together? I recently visited All Hallows to find out. I had heard great things about this old school and wanted to learn more. “Don’t try to reduce what we do to a formula or recipe,” said Brunelle Griffith, English teacher and track coach. “It’s larger than that and hard to describe.” It was a timely warning. For decades, education-policy researchers have sought to understand why some schools succeed where others fail. The best research tells us that the things that matter most in effective urban schools are hard to quantify—and even harder to replicate. Success is bound up in a shared sense of mission, reciprocity, trust, respect, and other intangibles that define strong relationships and forge social bonds. Yet, much of the policy debate around schooling still focuses on measurable inputs—spending, class sizes, teacher training, and curricular offerings. How can one measure a school’s culture, or the relationships it fosters between educators, students, and their families? And even if one could, how could those findings be translated into practice for other schools to emulate?

Prior to the growth of public charter schools over the last 20 years, many viewed Catholic schools as the model for inner-city education, since they achieved so much success with children from low-income families—the types of students that many public schools failed to educate. Some of the earliest charter schools tried to mirror Catholic school practices, but what made Catholic education effective was often lost in translation: it’s much more than strict rules. Understanding how All Hallows flourishes in the face of adversity can help us understand how to support such important schools—and how to apply some of their lessons.

“All Hallows is a school that works, though many would think that it could not, given its student demographics. It serves 510 young men from Harlem and the Bronx; 85 percent come from low-income families, defined as annual income below $32,630 for a family of four, the eligibility cutoff for free school lunch under federal guidelines. Sixty percent of students come from single-parent homes; 78 percent are Hispanic, and 20 percent are black. All students applying to Catholic high schools in New York City must sit for placement exams, and All Hallows generally admits students scoring high on the Catholic high schools admission exam, but it also considers lower-scoring students by looking at grammar school grades and recommendations from principals and teachers. Its intent is to admit all students whom it believes it can help achieve success. (The school does not accept special-needs students because it is not equipped to serve them.)

“All Hallows provides a traditional high school curriculum: four years of English, math, physical education, and religion; three-year sequences in history, foreign language, and science; and various electives in 12th grade. On the recommendation of their academic advisor, students may take up to five advanced-placement courses, beginning in tenth grade. In 12th grade, the first marking period of math is dedicated to SAT preparation.

“Every student takes an extra course in American history throughout his four years at All Hallows, one of four New York archdiocesan high schools to partner on curriculum with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Freshmen get to improve their writing and researching skills by analyzing documents related to America’s founding and New York City history. The school coordinates guest lectures by prominent scholars, field trips to historic sites such as Gettysburg and Washington, D.C., on-site exhibitions, and other special opportunities. All Hallows has been selected as an Amazon Future Engineer (AFE) school—a partnership between Amazon and Edhesive to improve access to computer-science education in communities currently underrepresented in technology. The school will offer two AP courses in computer science, beginning next year.

“By the standards of public education, All Hallows is under-resourced. It spends about $11,600 per student—less than half of what neighboring public high schools spend and about 64 percent of outlays at the city’s public charter schools. All Hallows teachers earn dramatically less than their public school counterparts. The 90-year-old school building is compact, vertical, and spartan. Its gymnasium has no bleachers for spectators, though its walls are adorned with banners commemorating past and recent glories.

“Despite such constraints, the school is achieving at high levels. In recent years, 85 percent of the students entering the school in ninth grade made it through 12th grade, and almost all the 12th-graders went on to college, ranging from city and state schools to highly regarded private universities. Almost every year, a graduate or two goes on to the Ivy League or other highly selective universities.

“All Hallows’ success continues despite a large institutional challenge, faced by almost all Catholic schools: the loss of a traditional talent pool for staffing. The first school established in the United States by the Irish Christian Brothers, All Hallows opened in Harlem in 1909 before moving to its current location in 1929. For much of the school’s history, the Christian Brothers made up a significant portion of the teachers. Today, two of the three remaining brothers (out of 41 staff members) are in their late fifties, while the third is in his mid-seventies. The school has made a challenging transition to lay leadership, including the establishment of a governance board that includes one sister and no brothers. This shift is the norm in U.S. Catholic schools today, where the number of religious brothers is down two-thirds from 1970 and that of religious sisters has declined even more, to just 28 percent of their earlier ranks, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.”

Retrieved November 25, 2019 from https://www.city-journal.org/all-hallows-high-school

 

Interview with New Head of USCCB

From Crisis Magazine.

An excerpt.

“On November 12, the Most Reverend José Horacio Gómez, Archbishop of Los Angeles, was elected president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. His Excellency graciously granted Crisis his first substantial interview since his election.

“Your Excellency, some Catholic intellectuals today are questioning whether we Catholics can be loyal citizens of the American republic. They say our liberal, secular politics are incompatible with the Faith. However, you have frequently referred to St. Junípero Serra as a kind of “forgotten Founding Father.” What does St. Junípero’s legacy mean for American Catholics in our age?

“I also have concerns about the directions of our culture, our society, and our politics.

“It’s true, in many practical ways, we are living now in a country where God does not matter anymore. Our religious identity and our freedoms are being eroded by an aggressive secularism and “de-Christianizing” that marginalize belief and believers, and that are also spreading confusion about the true meaning of life—who we are, what God intends for our lives.

“In my opinion, part of the cultural and political crises we face today is that we’ve lost the capacity to think differently about our future; we’ve lost the sense of the divine horizon or transcendent dimension of our lives.

“The vision for life that our society offers to people—and it’s not only here, it’s in all the societies of the West today—we’re not calling people to holiness or truth or to discover God’s plan. Instead, we get told that we’re on our own and our life is our own personal project—that we are free to make and “re-make” ourselves according to our own ideas about what we think we want out of life.

“What that means in practice is sad. It means that life for many people becomes a kind of restless search for money or material comforts, for passing pleasures. Politics, entertainment, consumerism, even work—in different ways, these have all become substitutes for religion for many people in our society.

“So, I understand the conversations and debates that are going on in the Catholic media and among our public intellectuals. These conversations are important. At the same time, I’m not sure our situation is any worse than what the Church has faced in other times and places. And when I reflect on what Christians around the world are dealing with—in Africa, the Middle East and South and East Asia—I know there are people suffering for their faith far more than we are.

“To try to answer your question directly: I don’t think retreat or indifference is a luxury that we have as Christians—if we’re going to be true to the Gospel and true to our baptism.

“And I may be naïve, but I continue to believe in the founding promises of America—the principles of Declaration of Independence, and the spirit of the great missionaries to this country like St. Junípero Serra.

“In his last book, St. John Paul II said: “The history of all nations is called to take its place in the history of salvation.” I think that’s really important for us to remember.

“This country, this moment in history, it’s all within God’s Providence. Jesus Christ is the Lord of history and he is still at work in our world and he is still calling those who follow him to build his Kingdom in this world.

“We’re not saved by politics or by science and technology or by “progress” defined in material terms. We are saved by Jesus Christ. And Jesus gives each one of us, as baptized Christians, a mission to proclaim his salvation in everything we do.

“To me, the promise of America, America’s exceptional place in history, is to carry forward the beautiful Judeo-Christian vision of the sanctity and dignity of the human person—created in God’s image, endowed with God-given rights and responsibilities, and called to a transcendent destiny.

“So, individualism, secularism, relativism—a society where a lot of people don’t believe anymore that it’s even possible for us to know God—this is all mission territory for us as Catholics, as Christians.

“We need to be salt and leaven, to use our Lord’s terms. And there’s that beautiful image from the early Church: “The Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body.”

“We need to work to purify our culture and our politics, and our own hearts and intentions. And we need to work to restore the centrality of the human person, the sanctity and the mystery of the human person. At least, that’s how I see it.

“The USCCB has faced criticism from the political Right for being too outspoken on matters of “prudential judgment,” like immigration. Why do you feel this is such a crucial issue for Catholics to confront today?

“The first thing to say, always, is that bishops are pastors, we’re not politicians. When we are talking about political, economic or social questions, we are always trying to engage in terms of Gospel values and principles.

“And I think that all of us—laypeople, especially—need to keep allowing ourselves to be challenged by the Gospel, challenged by the teachings of the Church. If our faith doesn’t sometimes make us uncomfortable with our political commitments, then there’s something wrong.

“Maintaining a true Catholic identity, understanding ourselves to be followers of Jesus Christ before we are anything else, is always a challenge. And, I think it’s getting harder in America today because everything is “politicized.”

“For me, immigration is not about politics. It’s about the dignity of the human person. And it’s also about our national identity and purpose, what America means and what does it mean to be an American.

“The bishops recognize that it’s the imperative of every nation to secure their borders and to regulate who enters their country and how long they stay. We also understand that every sector of our economy—from construction and agriculture, to hospitality and service industries, to high-tech and medical professions—has a vital need for immigrant workers.

“And we understand that there is genuine anxiety in our country because our demographics are changing and our economy is changing. Also, migration is one of the signs of our times. That’s just a reality. Movements of people are happening in every part of the world, millions of people are leaving their homelands, seeking a better life for their families; often, they are leaving because of violence and poverty.

“As Catholics, we need to remember that we are not talking about “statistics,” we are talking about human beings—the image of God, our brothers and sisters.

“There are complicated issues involved, questions of law, economics, and politics. But the most basic consideration here is that migrants are human beings. They are loved by God and they are redeemed by Jesus Christ, and he calls us to love others as we love ourselves—especially the poor, the migrant, and the prisoner.

“Jesus did not say we only love those who are fellow citizens or who have the proper “papers.” Men and women do not become less of a child of God because they are “undocumented.” This is not a political position, it is matter of our faith.

“America has always been exceptional because it has always been a refuge for peoples who have no place left to turn, and it’s always been a place where peoples from all parts of the world can come to share their talents and creativity, bringing with them their values of family and hard work, and their dreams of a better life for their children.”

To read the rest of the interview, retrieved November 19,2019, go here: https://www.crisismagazine.com/2019/a-crisis-of-saints

 

The SSPX Today

An excellent article about their situation today and from the past—and it is very important what happens to the SSPX  http://sspxusa.org/  in relation to the Church (In my opinion, they should be brought back into the fold, and largely on their terms)—from Crisis Magazine.

An excerpt.

“Tomorrow I’m leaving for Mexico,” Bishop Bernard Fellay tells me, “and then on to Cuba.”

I balk. “What’s in Cuba?”

The question seems to confuse him. “The faithful,” he explains. “They need Confirmation, too.” What’s the SSPX presence in Cuba like? “Small,” he tells me, “and mostly underground. They’re still badly persecuted by the communists.”

I make a crack about the Vatican’s concordat with China, which he politely ignores. “You know, I think that’s why Pope Francis likes us,” Fellay postulates. “He’s always saying, ‘Go to the margins. Go to the suffering. Go to the poor.’ Well, we do! Archbishop Lefebvre was a missionary priest in Africa. Everyone knows about the Council, but that’s only half the story.”

t reminded me of our interview last year, when Bishop Fellay told me the Holy Father had read the 700-page biography of Lefebvre—twice. “After that he said to one of our priests, ‘You know, they have treated them badly’.” By they, of course, Pope Francis meant the Vatican bureaucracy; them is the Society.

Those who know anything about the Society of St. Pius X may find it strange to hear Bishop Fellay speak this way about Pope Francis, and vice versa. Fellay is a trad among trads, by far the most prominent bishop to demand the Tridentine Mass be restored as the ordinary form of the Latin Church. Moreover, he was a signatory of the “filial correction,” which accused the Holy Father of propagating heresy.

To be sure, many in the Church’s upper echelons are ambivalent towards Fellay. Others, however, see him as the best hope for mending the rift between Latin Mass and Novus Ordo Catholics. And that’s precisely why many traditionalists don’t like him—including some within the SSPX itself.

But maybe we should start at the beginning.

Having gained distinction for his missionary work in Africa, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre became a decisive figure in Church history during Vatican II, where he led the Council’s conservative faction. Known as Coetus Internationalis Patrum, the conservatives opposed the “Protestantizing” liberals who, they fear, would weaken the integrity of Catholic dogma and corrupt the Church’s liturgical heritage.

Clearly, the Coetus didn’t get their way. And so, in 1970, Lefebvre founded the Society of St. Pius X, a priestly fraternity devoted to upholding traditional doctrine and perpetuating the traditional Latin Mass, both of which Lefebvre and his followers believed were being abrogated (or suppressed) by liberals and modernists within the Church bureaucracy. They continued teaching the old doctrines and celebrating the old Mass as though nothing had changed.

Accused of insubordination by Rome, Lefebvre’s priestly faculties were suspended in 1976. Shortly thereafter, he celebrated Mass for 10,000 supporters in France. “Now, when I’m doing exactly the same thing I have done for thirty years,” he said during his homily; “all of a sudden I am suspended a divinis. Perhaps I shall soon be excommunicated—separated from the Church, a renegade. How can it be…?”

No longer able to ordain his seminarians licitly, the aging Archbishop began to suspect the Vatican intended to starve the Society of priests until it simply faded into nothingness. He pressed them for permission to consecrate a new bishop. Leading the negotiations on the Vatican’s side was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and himself deeply sympathetic to traditionalism.

What happened next varies depending on whom you ask. The Archbishop claimed that, while permission to consecrate a new bishop had been granted, Rome refused to set a date for when the consecrations might take place. “Cardinal Ratzinger gave us the written authorization to have a member of the Society as a bishop,” Lefebvre later explained. “It’s true that I consecrated four. But the principle itself of having one or several bishops was granted by the Holy Father,” Pope John Paul II.

In any event, by the spring of 1988, Archbishop Lefebvre was convinced the Vatican was not negotiating in good faith. That June, he consecrated four of his priests as bishops in Écône, Switzerland, among them the 30-year-old Bernard Fellay.

John Paul declared that “such disobedience—which implies in practice the rejection of the Roman primacy—constitutes a schismatic act.” He declared that Lefebvre, Fellay, and the three other Écône bishops had incurred excommunication latae sententiae. Rome discouraged all laypeople from seeking the sacraments from SSPX priests, and the order entered a state known as canonical irregularity. A group of Society priests quickly split from Lefebvre and formed a new order in full communion with Rome: the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, or FSSP.

Lefebvre died in 1991, and Fellay was elected Superior General three years later. The Society carried on its work as usual until 2005, when their old sparring partner Cardinal Ratzinger ascended the Chair of St. Peter as Benedict XVI.

In 2007, Benedict published his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, which established that Catholic priests are “permitted to celebrate the Sacrifice of the Mass following the typical edition of the Roman Missal, which was promulgated by Blessed John XXIII in 1962 and never abrogated, as an extraordinary form of the Church’s Liturgy.” Then, in 2009, he lifted the excommunications on the four surviving SSPX bishops.

Summorum wasn’t only important because it promoted the widespread use of the Latin Mass: it also acknowledged Lefebvre’s concern that elements within the Church bureaucracy had attempted to suppress it, and nearly succeeded. For nearly half a century, priests in virtually every diocese in the world had been punished by Rome or by their bishops for celebrating the Tridentine Mass without the “proper faculties.” Benedict retroactively declared that no such faculties were necessary, except those conferred upon every priest of the Roman Church upon ordination.

Retrieved October 22, 2019 from https://www.crisismagazine.com/2019/sspx-back-to-the-bad-old-days

Good & Evil, A Powerful Conversion Story

This wonderful story comes to us from One Peter Five

An excerpt.

“For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12)”

“Years ago, when I was Protestant I had two spiritual experiences — one evil, one holy — that pushed me toward the Catholic Church. Before I tell the stories, I should emphasize that I am not the type of person who spiritualizes everything. I tend to be practical in my analysis of situations and likely even go too far in de-spiritualizing events. I don’t hear heavenly voices, and I don’t have visions. But these two events were so profound that even a naturally skeptical person like me couldn’t downplay or deny their spiritual aspects.

“The Face of Evil

“The first experience happened while I was in college praying in front of an abortion clinic with a few dozen other pro-lifers. Some pro-abortion college students came to counter-protest our prayer vigil. This was in the early 1990s, at the height of clinic blockades and pro-life activism, so there was a sizable police presence there to keep things under control.

“Once the clinic closed for the day, most people left, including the police. A few Catholic friends and I decided to stay a bit longer and keep praying. Some of the pro-abortion students also stayed. Not surprisingly, the pro-aborts taunted us with crude and juvenile remarks. But after about 10 to 20 minutes, the mood seemed to shift as darkness fell. Their chants, which had been the standard fare “Not the Church, Not the State, Women Must Decide Their Fate” and other such nonsense, became more antagonistic, then downright evil. They spewed all types of blasphemies against Our Lord and Our Lady (their attacks on Our Lady were curious to me as a Protestant at the time, since I viewed her as mostly unimportant to my Christian faith). Their blasphemies made it clear that this was no longer a conflict simply over abortion; it was a conflict between good and evil.

“Most of us knelt in prayer as the pro-aborts began to circle us and in a lower voice chanted, “Kill the Christians, kill the Christians” and “Bring back the lions.” The other (Catholic) pro-lifers continued to pray their rosaries. But I started to get spooked and even a bit frightened for our physical safety. I looked up into the eyes of one of the pro-aborts; what I saw was blackness and evil. There was no question in my mind that this person was possessed. I don’t mean figuratively, but literally possessed by a demon. I believe that all the pro-aborts there that night were.

“I quickly looked away and glanced at the other pro-lifers. One, a young lady from our college group was on her knees praying her rosary. A pro-abort young man approached her, then stood over her and began yelling disgusting and blasphemous things at her. Yet she completely ignored him with a peaceful look on her face as she prayed. I asked myself: What was it that gave this young woman the ability to face evil so peacefully? I couldn’t help but think it was somehow related to the simple plastic beads in her hands. The image of this encounter sticks with me to this day. (The fact that the young woman eventually became my wife might have admittedly given it more staying power.)

“It was on this night that I realized that evil is real, and it is personal. Evil is not just an abstract concept, but a personal force actively working against our good. As St. Peter wrote, “[y]our adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking some one to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). I also came to another realization that night: I had no ability to resist that evil. Not only did I not have any personal power against evil (no one does), but I didn’t have within my spiritual tradition any significant tools for combating evil on this scale. But the Catholics did. They had no more personal power than me, but they were better equipped than I was. Through the rosary, and through their regular reception of the sacraments, they were far more prepared to face evil.

“My Lord and My God!

“The second spiritual experience happened a few months later. At this point, I had intellectually accepted the teachings of the Church but had not yet been received into the Church. I decided to go on a Catholic retreat, which, unbeknownst to me, was to include Eucharistic adoration. I had not only never attended adoration before, but didn’t even know what it was. As we entered the church the second night, I was under the understanding that we were going to have some praise and worship. Instead, after a few songs, a priest entered and exposed the Blessed Sacrament in the monstrance. Intellectually, I had no idea what was going on. But, like a flash, I understood: this is my Lord! This is my God! Like St. Thomas, I was given a revelation, and it was abundantly clear that the Eucharist was truly the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ.

“If my experience at the abortion clinic was a direct contact with evil, then this experience of adoration was a direct contact with Good. I knew then, at a level beyond the intellect, that God exists and that He is All-Goodness. Taken together with my experience of evil months before, I also realized that there was a terrible battle going on, both in the world and in my soul, between good and evil. And I was woefully unprepared. My Protestant upbringing, while pointing out the importance of Jesus and the Sacred Scriptures, did not have the spiritual depth needed for engaging “against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places,” as St. Paul describes our enemies. I needed serious spiritual weaponry, the kind found in the Catholic Church. I needed the Sacraments, I needed the deep spiritual tradition of the saints, and I needed the sacramentals like the rosary.

Put On the Armor of God

“I tell these stories because they have been a constant reminder to me — a natural skeptic — that we are engaged at all times in a spiritual battle. If we look at the current battles both inside and outside the Church as primarily political or earthly battles, then we have already lost. The sexual abuse scandal that has plagued the Church for decades is fought not with charters or other legalities. The rampant heresy among the hierarchy, clergy, and laity isn’t overcome with new catechetical programs. These problems are fought primarily with prayer, fasting, and contending with dark forces directly. What we see is only the tip of the evil iceberg. Even if we cut down that tip, we’ll still crash into the greater, hidden part of the iceberg.”

Retrieved September 11, 2019 from https://onepeterfive.com/not-against-flesh-and-blood/

Jacques Maritain

I have been a huge fan of Jacques and Raissa Maritain (who will be raised to the altar someday) since I read their book during my conversion, Liturgy & Contemplation (which is available to read online at https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/liturgy-and-contemplation-10083

The 2005 biography about them, Jacques and Raissa Maritain: Beggars for Heaven, is wonderful.

In reading one of his major works—full of insight—I came across this marvelous paragraph:

“When Jesus lived on the earth, the grace of which He was full, and which was infinite in the supraconscious heaven of His soul, did not cease to grow in the here-below of His soul, in proportion to His age, to His trials and the acts of His heroic love.

“In Mary, as long as she lived on the earth, the grace of which she was full did not cease either to grow, until the moment when the Virgin was led, soul and body, close to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in order to become the Queen of the Angels and of the Church of Heaven and of earth.

“And in the Church who proceeds on earth while carrying the cross of Jesus, the grace of which she is full will not cease to grow until the last trials and until the end of time; then, when time will be no more, she will be completely gathered up in the universe of the blessed (where from year to year, in proportion as here below time advances, the multitude of her members entered into glory increases constantly). And it is from there that the heavenly Jerusalem will descend into the material universe transfigured.” (p. 33)

Jacques Maritain. (1973). On the Church of Christ: The Person of the Church and Her Personnel. (Translated by Joseph W. Evans). University of Notre Dame Press: Notre Dame, London

 

Catholic Seminaries Doing Fine

Who would have thought that, but as George Weigel—one of our favorite Catholic scholars—writes at Catholic World Report, things are going very well, considering.

An excerpt.

“If you’re feeling a bit down about the future of Catholicism in the United States, ask yourself these questions: Why haven’t American seminaries emptied over the past 16 months, as Crisis 2.0 continues to roil the U.S. Church and an aggressive media regularly puts Catholicism in the worst possible public light? Why haven’t the McCarrick affair, the Pennsylvania grand jury report, the Bransfield affair, and other revelations of episcopal misgovernance (and worse) caused a mass exodus of young men from priestly formation? Can you name another profession, regularly subjected to media ridicule and popular caricature, to which young men are applying in greater numbers than 20 years ago?

“I’ve been in and around seminaries and seminarians for 54 years now. I knew seminaries and seminarians during the Really Bad Patch of the post-conciliar years. And I have watched with admiration as seminary formators — not unlike the relatively junior officers who reformed the U.S. military after the debacle of Vietnam — have taken a set of severe problems in hand and put a venerable institution, essential to the Catholic future, on a much more solid foundation. Is there more to be done, in refining recruitment of students for the priesthood and reforming American seminaries? Undoubtedly (and a few suggestions will follow below).

“But a great deal has in fact been accomplished in the last 15 years, and it’s important that the people of the Church know it.

“Last month, I had the pleasure of working with two seminarians in the 28th annual meeting of the seminar on Catholic social doctrine I am privileged to lead in Cracow. Like other future priests who have been part of the program over the past quarter-century, these men were impressive: intellectually alert and engaged; deeply pious without being cloyingly sentimental; able to interact with (and offer a real witness to) fellow-students in a multinational context of Catholic men and women; much more mature than I remember seminarians being four decades ago. If there has been a winnowing of candidates for the priesthood since Crisis 1.0 in 2002, and if that sifting has continued in the wake of Crisis 2.0, then what has remained, and what is coming through the pipeline, is very good news indeed.

“I am not so naïve or romantic as to believe that the seminarians with whom I’ve worked in recent years are men immune to personal challenges: not least from a toxic culture that constantly tells them that their commitment to celibate love is at best a delusion and at worst pathological. What impresses me about the seminarians I interact with today is that they fully recognize those challenges and are facing them through an intensified life of prayer, fraternal solidarity, and a deeper commitment to the truths of Catholic faith.

“Other Catholics may deny that Crisis 1.0 and Crisis 2.0 are, at bottom, crises of fidelity, exacerbated by doctrinal and moral dissent. These guys know that’s the case; they live what they know; and they want to spend their lives helping others live the beauty of love as described by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 and modeled by Christ in Ephesians 5:1-2.”

Retrieved August 28, 2019 from https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2019/08/28/in-praise-of-todays-seminarians/

Reading Old Books (Continuing)

As I have noted in older blog posts, found here, https://catholiceye.wordpress.com//?s=reading+old+books&search=Go the reading of old books is very rewarding, and I’ve recently been reading the works of Orestes Brownson, who wrote in the 19^th Century, and came across this wonderful excerpt.

“The objection to the Catholic Church just now most insisted upon in our country is, that she is hostile to our form of government…..

“I must, however, premise that I am always humbled in my own opinion, when I am called upon to reply to an objection of this sort. It is humiliating in the extreme to be forced to defend the spiritual against objections drawn from the temporal, or religion against objections drawn from politics. Religion, if any thing, is for man the supreme law, and must take precedence of every thing else; and the very idea of a church, is that of an institution founded by Almighty God, for the purpose of introducing and sustaining the supremacy of his law in the government of human affairs. If religion and politics are opposed, politics, not religion, must give way. No man, I care not who he is, whether a Catholic or a Protestant, a pagan or a Mahometan, if he has any conception of religion at all, denies, or can deny, that he should place his religion first, and that all else in his life should be subordinated to it. He who denies that his religion should govern his politics, as well as all his actions, virtually denies morality, denies the divine law, and asserts political atheism. To subject religion to politics, or to object to a religion because incompatible with this or that political theory, is, in principle, to deny the sovereignty of God himself, and to fall below the most degrading form of gentilism.” (p. 39)

Michael P. Federici. (2019). From the July 1856 essay: The Church and the Republic; Or the Church Necessary to the Republic, and the Republic compatible with the Church, (pp.37-62) inThe Catholic Writings of Orestes Brownson. University of Notre Dame Press: Notre Dame, Indiana.

Loving the Church

I read an excellent article today by Fr. John Saward, in the Catholic Herald Magazine expressing so well what I have been trying to explain for years but never reaching the eloquence and insight of Fr. Saward.

Here is an excerpt, unfortunately its not online.

I have emboldened what I think to be the key idea, in the final paragraph.

Excerpt.

“We can still love the Church.

“We must love the Church.

“Those who truly love the Lord Jesus will not fail to love the Mystical Body of which He is the Head, the Bride for whom He offered Himself up on the Cross. It would be ingratitude to Him if we refused His gift of the Church as Mother and Teacher. We are members of the Church, yet she is greater than we are, and is eminently worthy of our trust. The One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church will never let us down. She is “the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” (I Timothy 3:15)

“But surely, when we remember the sexual crimes of some of the clergy, we cannot love the Church. How is she to be trusted when so many of her bishops, even when not guilty of perversion themselves, have practiced deception and covered up the evils of others? Surely we cannot love a Church led by bad shepherds.

“But no, we can and must love the Church. The wickedness of which we have heard so much in this last year is the work of churchmen, not of the Church herself. The visible, hierarchical Catholic Church remains immaculate in the beauty of holiness, and in the splendour of truth. She is holy because of Christ, her divine Head, and by the working of the Holy Spirit, who fills her with His grace, gifts and fruits.

“Despite our own sins, and those of our pastors, the Church is holy in the sacred doctrine of her faith, and in her Sacraments, which impart the grace of Christ for the sanctification of our souls. She is holy in the saints in heaven, and above all in the Immaculate Mother of God, the Queen of All Saints. She is holy in the poor souls in purgatory, for whom the remains of sin are being burnt away. She is holy in the humble Catholics on earth who love Jesus and Mary, trust in God and not in themselves, who strive to keep the commandments, avoid the occasions of sin, pray without ceasing, and fight courageously against the world, the flesh and the Devil. When we say in the Apostle’s Creed that we believe in the Holy Catholic Church, we are not deceiving ourselves.

“The Church’s integrity is undiminished even when one of her prelates departs from her faith and presents his own strange opinions as if they were orthodoxy. Think of those who fell into Arianism, of Nestorius in the See of Constantinople, or of Thomas Cramer, Archbishop of Canterbury. The faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3) remains invulnerable despite the depredations of the heretics. This or that cleric may lose his faith, and make himself a slave of the world, but the Church our Mother remains divinely free; she is a virgin, and keeps the faith pure and intact. Even when a pope falls into heresy, as Honorius I and John XXII apparently did, Peter’s voice still resounds with all its original clarity in the teaching of his orthodox predecessors, and indeed in all those bishops, priests and lay people who hold and foster the Catholic and Apostolic faith. Sacred Tradition is immortal by the gift of the risen Christ.” (p. 36)

Fr. John Saward. (2019). Love in a time of crisis. Catholic Herald. August 2, 2019.