I KNOW THAT YOU THINK THAT I AM KIDDING OR THAT I AM EXAGGERATING THE PROBLEM, BUT I KID YOU NOT, THE NEO-FACISTS OF THE LEFT WANT YOUR CHILDREN AND THEY ARE GOING TO GET YOUR CHILDREN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER BECAUSE THEY HAVE THE POWER OF GOVERNMENT TO SUPPORT THEIR EFFORTS

Posted on April 24, 2018 by abyssum

They’re Coming for Our Children

April 2018

State-napping. It’s often assumed to be a tactic of totalitarian regimes, in which armed government agents accost defenseless citizens, often in their private homes, and seize family members deemed to be troublemakers, who are often never seen or heard from again.

But such scenes aren’t confined to communist or other dictatorships. They’ve been happening in Western Europe for years — only there the government agents aren’t concerned with apprehending agitators or insurgents, at least not those who fit the classic description. Instead, in these liberal democratic regimes, they’re coming for a different kind of dissident.

They’re coming for homeschoolers.

Adolf Hitler outlawed homeschooling throughout Germany in 1938. His ban still stands. Today, German homeschoolers who run afoul of Hitler’s law are subject to crippling fines. Some, however, don’t get off so lightly. That was the case for Bert and Kathrin Brause, a Christian couple from Zittau, near the Polish border, who believe that homeschooling their children is their duty before God. The government, of course, has other ideas. For years the Brauses refused to register their children in the local public school, and so in 2007 a judge revoked the Brauses’ custody of five of their eight children and handed them over to the Jugendamt, a youth welfare office created by Hitler. The judge charged the parents with “child abuse” for denying their kids access to public schools, a crime punishable by up to two years in prison. With their “obedience” to God, the judge declared, they had put the interests of their children “second.”

And what is in German children’s interest? That they attend public school. Never mind that Bert and Kathrin’s children were well educated, as the judge herself acceded. In Germany, state-managed education overrides parents’ presumed duty before God.

In another notorious 2007 case, German authorities seized a 15-year-old homeschooled girl in a dramatic raid. A family-court judge, representatives of the Jugendamt, and 15 police officers — fifteen! — showed up at the girl’s home to take her into custody. That’s how seriously they pursue rebel educators. The girl was sent to a mental hospital, the location of which authorities refused to disclose to her parents, where she was diagnosed with “school phobia.” The teen was a captive of the state for three months before she managed to escape under the cover of night and find her way back home.

In 2009 a German family fled to France in order to continue homeschooling their children. They “de-registered” their German residence and became official residents of France. Nevertheless, French social workers and two police officers appeared at their home in Saint Léonard, saying they had come at the request of German authorities to take the family’s four young children, who, they said, were “in grave danger.” The long arm of German homeschooling laws reaches across international borders.

Germans aren’t the only ones at risk of having their children “state-napped.” In another 2009 case that garnered international headlines, Swedish officials halted a plane bound for India one minute before it was scheduled to leave the gate for takeoff. Armed policemen stormed the cabin, taking a seven-year-old boy from his parents. They too were homeschoolers. But were they homeschool criminals? Here’s where it gets tricky. Though they had removed their son from the public school, they were never charged with a crime. That’s because homeschooling was — and is — legal in Sweden. The family intended to relocate to India, where the mother has family. But there’s no escaping the forces of public education.

It makes you wonder: to whom do children ultimately belong, their parents or the state?

In the most recent update to this bizarre story (WorldNetDaily.com, June 4, 2016), the boy, 14, had been in state custody for seven years — half of his life. Since 2010 Swedish authorities had denied his parents contact with him. The parents filed lawsuits in the Swedish Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights to regain custody, to no avail. It’s no wonder only one homeschooling family reportedly remains in Sweden — a country without any laws forbidding it.

Such stories are troubling, but, you might be inclined to say, we in the U.S. can breathe easy. Nothing of the sort can happen here, right?

Tell that to Kiarre Harris. Early last year, this single mother of two from Buffalo, New York, was arrested and her children taken into custody by Child Protective Services (CPS). Why? You guessed it: She too had begun homeschooling.

Harris had withdrawn her two elementary-school-aged children from the Buffalo school system the previous November because, she told a local news station, “I felt that the district was failing my children” (WKBW.com, Feb. 6, 2017). When CPS agents and the police showed up at her door with a court order to take her children and she resisted, as any mother would, they arrested her for “obstruction.” Harris had taken all the appropriate steps, including filing the necessary documents at city hall and informing the district of her intent to homeschool. Yet she and her children ended up prisoners of the state: she behind bars, and they in foster care. It took ten weeks and several court visits before the charges against her were dropped and she was reunited with her children.

Now, there are any number of reasons why parents elect to homeschool their children, but it is well known that a significant number of the 1.7 million homeschooled kids in the U.S. come from conservative Christian families. And many of them reject public education due to its lack of moral formation, or because the type of “morality” inculcated in state-run schools is inimical to Christian morality.

American Christians like to believe that one of the most remarkable features of our system of government is the great latitude it grants us to practice our faith. We take pride in the “religious freedom” we think we enjoy. But Christian families increasingly are coming to realize that the government is willing to curtail that latitude whenever it sees fit. And when the government deems our free exercise of religion to be a threat to its own self-defined orthodoxies, it will come for us — and for our children. As Kenneth R. Craycraft Jr. wrote in The American Myth of Religious Freedom (1999), “The first and overwhelming priority of any regime, including our own, is jealously to protect its principles, rituals, and institutions…. The American regime always reserves the right to judge the content of a religious claim in order to determine its fitness and legitimacy.” And, like its German counterpart, our government will necessarily “condemn” a church member’s claim that he “must recognize” the “moral teaching of the church” as his “primary (or sole) allegiance.”

Not only must Christian homeschooling parents (and Christian cake bakers) confront this brutal fact, but so must parents who run afoul of one of our government’s newest principles, one it will protect most jealously: that transgenderism is one of a panoply of acceptable “lifestyle” choices and its practitioners a protected class of citizens.

In 2016 an Ohio teen began suffering anxiety and depression severe enough that her Christian parents took her to Cincinnati’s Children’s Hospital for inpatient treatment. There the girl was diagnosed as having “gender dysphoria,” which the American Psychiatric Association (APA) defines as “a conflict between a person’s physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify.” (Gender dysphoria is APA’s gentler replacement for the term gender-identity disorder, which it no longer considers PC and therefore no longer catalogues in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.) It was discovered that the girl’s parents do not support her desire to “transition” to male, which, they say, goes against their “core beliefs.” Instead, they want her to undergo “Christian therapy” (Fox61.com, Feb. 13). They had enrolled her in a Catholic school, where — horrors! — she was made to wear dresses and answer to her birth name. She claims her parents forced her to sit in a room for hours on end, listening to Bible readings. This and their ongoing refusal to call her by a boy’s name had triggered her suicidal feelings.

So Hamilton County Job and Family Services got involved, taking temporary legal custody of the girl. This government agency assigned her a court-appointed guardian, who consented to her moving in with her maternal grandparents. Surprise, surprise: The grandparents support the girl’s new “gender identity” and have expressed their willingness to make medical decisions for her, including starting hormone replacement therapy “as soon as possible” to speed her “transition” to a boy.

The parents went to court in an attempt to reverse the state’s usurpation of their parental rights so they can make the medical decisions they believe are in their minor child’s best interest, at least until she turns 18. “It does not appear,” their attorney argued, “that this child is even close to being able to make such a life-altering decision at this time.”

The government disagrees. And so, this February, a judge awarded the grandparents permanent legal custody of the child. The judge did throw the parents a bone: they get visitation rights. In one of the more startling examples of governmental hubris, Donald Clancy of the Hamilton County prosecutor’s office said, “The parents in this case do not desire to parent their child. They merely have a desire to parent a child who, in reality, no longer exists” (WCPO.com, Jan. 26).

The state wins; parents lose — proving once again that our own natural children aren’t really ours to raise. We merely “desire to parent” them. And if our desire is misdirected in the eyes of the state — if we homeschool our children or we don’t sufficiently celebrate their self-proclaimed “gender identity” or we refuse to fund their “transition” — then our rights, in reality, no longer exist. We aren’t really free to believe whatever we want, to teach our children whatever we want, to raise them however we want — not even in the privacy of our own homes. Our right to “religious freedom,” as Craycraft claimed, is a “myth,” a theory that evaporates into the mist when our beliefs or practices contravene those of the omnipresent state. We are to have only one god, and his name is Caesar.

DOSSIER: America

DOSSIER: Catholic Home Schooling

DOSSIER: Transgenderism, Effeminacy & Conflation of the Sexes

New Oxford Notes: April 2018

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THE INSANITY OF SOCIETY IN CALIFORNIA CONTINUES TO EXPAND EXPONENTIALLY: A CIVIL JURY IN CALIFORNIA WILL NOW DECIDE WHETHER JAHI MCGRATH IS ALIVE OR DEAD IN NEW JERSEY!!!!!!!

Posted on April 24, 2018 by abyssum

Jahi McMath – Trial Set for February 11, 2019

Last week, the court and parties agreed to a civil jury trial on whether Jahi McMath is dead under the California Uniform Determination of Death Act. The trial will start February 11, 2019.

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How did SAME-SEX ideology gain ascendancy in American law, where government is by the consent of the governed? The short answer is through the influence of the learned professions and the acceptance of a new corporate ethic. Learned profession after learned profession—from psychologists to social workers to lawyers to medical doctors to mainline Protestant clergy—embraced first homosexuality starting in the early 1970s and then same-sex marriage in the 1990s.

Posted on April 23, 2018 by abyssum

How the New Corporate Elite Sold Same-Sex Marriage to the American Public

by Scott Yenor
within Book Reviews, Marriage
Apr 22, 2018 08:01 pm http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/04/21309/

Darel Paul’s meticulous, courageous account of how the elites brought same-sex marriage to America deserves to be read by all who would understand where we are and where we’re going.

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Though it was now almost three years ago, the Supreme Court’s Obergefelldecision provides us with an opportunity to ask some important questions about our culture. How did same-sex marriage come to America? Where is an America with same-sex marriage headed next? What does it imply about us that it did?

Darel E. Paul’s From Tolerance to Equality: How Elites Brought America to Same-Sex Marriage provides a revealing, well-documented set of answers to these questions. Everyone concerned about the future of marriage and the culture wars should be familiar with this indispensable book. Same-sex marriage sits at the confluence of the sexual and managerial revolutions, affecting and reflecting profound changes in family life and the workplace.

Dispensing with the Liberal Narrative

In so arguing, Paul opposes the simple, self-congratulatory liberal narrative of the triumph of same-sex marriage through moral progress. This narrative, present in scores of books and articles, pits the ascending Children of Light against the persistent, bigoted Forces of Darkness.

The Children of Light normalize homosexuality and accept same-sex marriage because of their personal experiences with diversity and homosexuality. When a friend or relative comes out of the closet, Children of Light empathize with their plight and admire their courage. They come to see that homosexual persons are normal and quite admirable through this contact. The normalization of homosexuality and the acceptance of same-sex marriage are thus, for liberals, acts of enlightened imagination akin to a personal conversion. Our former disgust with homosexuality turns to an affirmative humanity, as Martha Nussbaum argues. This liberal morality tale applied to race relations and immigration yesterday; homosexuality today; tomorrow it will explain the acceptance of transgenderism.

Paul contradicts this liberal narrative. Personal acquaintance with homosexuals, for instance, is more an effect of political opinions than a cause: people have contact with homosexuals because they first admire them. Furthermore, liberals do not consistently tolerate or affirm all of those they come into contact with. Those who come to have favorable views of homosexuality and same-sex marriage continue to have unshakable and deep prejudices against poor whites and Christian fundamentalists, even after they come into contact with them. Such “liberals” are, Paul shows through survey data, among society’s biggest haters, in fact.

Liberal elites seek to avoid or dehumanize those with whom they disagree on these matters, even if they have contact with such dissenters. This suggests that other factors—one’s opinions about family, public justice, and the workplace most prominently—mediate the relationship with homosexuals or Christians and one’s opinions about them. Opinions shape experiences (not the other way around), so Paul points his analysis to the opinions.

Same-Sex Marriage and the Sexual Revolution

Public acceptance of same-sex marriage presupposed the normalization of homosexuality, and the normalization of homosexuality presupposed the sexual revolution. The sexual revolution—a combination of sexual liberty and second-wave feminism—remade opinions about family life that had long governed the American family. The ideology of the sexual revolution rejected the idea that sex, marriage, and procreation were connected at the heart of family life. It conceived of a family centered on the equality of adult partners ordered toward companionship instead. Individual autonomy would guide sexual behavior, aided by contraception and abortion. Careers would be a locus of meaning within a relationship, as children were soon seen as less important to family life.

This new sexually progressive model of family life endorsed the normalization of homosexuality as an expression of its commitment to sexual autonomy and embraced same-sex marriage for its equality in partnership. Yet this new model was not immediately endorsed, and it still probably does not enjoy majority support in the country.

How did this ideology gain ascendancy in American law, where government is by the consent of the governed? The short answer, for Paul, is through the influence of the learned professions and the acceptance of a new corporate ethic. Paul catalogues how learned profession after learned profession—from psychologists to social workers to lawyers to medical doctors to mainline Protestant clergy—embraced first homosexuality starting in the early 1970s and then same-sex marriage in the 1990s. The broad public did not follow quickly. As late as 1992, a large majority of Americans thought homosexual acts were always wrong; fewer than 20 percent thought it was not wrong at all. As late as 2012, most Americans opposed public recognition of same-sex marriage.

The Importance of the New Managerial Elite

Only when America’s corporate managerial elite embraced homosexuality and same-sex marriage as an essential expression of diversity did America cross the “cultural Rubicon.” Normalization of homosexuality and acceptance of same-sex marriage became class values for our new class of corporate managers—those employed as public administration officials, financial managers, computer system analysts, computer scientists, college professors, lawyers, physicians, and other high achievers. Managers gain admittance to their jobs through higher education. They then oversee corporate and governmental bureaucracies. Through affirmative action, the leverage of benefits, diversity training, consciousness raising, and the promulgation of “shared values,” managers help create a new corporate regime, in which managers value diversity as much as profits and where opinions about language, food, and sexuality are as central to one’s personal identity as earnings, capital, or one’s place in the labor market. By translating society’s pluralism into productivity and social harmony, the new American diversity became a corporate strength and a key to their self-understanding.

Before they could vote in public to make pro-homosexual policies official governmental policy, America’s corporations, Paul shows, imposed nondiscrimination policies on themselves. They also extended benefits to same-sex partners without coercion. The first US employer extended benefits to same-sex partners in 1982. By 1996, 500 employers had done so; by 2004, the number was over 8,200. Twenty-eight Fortune 500 companies offered such benefits in 1996; 216 did by 2004. Many global companies signed amicus briefs to affirm same-sex marriage in Obergefell, while none opposed it.

Corporations built diversity-centered human resources departments to spearhead these and other celebrations of cultural diversity. They won approval from the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights activist group. These corporations marketed to America an acceptance of homosexuality. Gay was more than OK. Many managers left religion, patriotism, and the pursuit of family life behind. Instead, their lives were given meaning by their devotion to careers celebrating cultural diversity, and celebrating homosexuality is the key expression of that diversity. Homosexuality symbolized, in Paul’s words, “creativity, cosmopolitanism, authenticity, toleration, and the reward of merit.” In homosexuals, America’s corporate, coastal elites found a minority that looked like them: well-educated, creative, successful, white, and safe. According to Paul, and the various studies he cites, this corporate elite actively avoids living near the poor or near ethnic minorities. Celebrating diversity by celebrating homosexuality thus became the way corporate managers lived with what would otherwise have been an astounding cognitive dissonance.

What could not be gained thoroughly through the learned professions, education, and the courts was gained through flexing corporate power. Corporations publicly shamed and dismissed those who dissented from their orthodoxy. They used their outsized economic power to have their way: recent examples in Arizona, Indiana, and North Carolina show that corporations are on the side of normalizing formerly transgressive sexual identities and opposed to carving out protection for religious dissenters.

It took forty years for elites to bring us the normalization of homosexuality and acceptance for same-sex marriage. They are using the same techniques now to achieve transgender rights, and success may be on the horizon. A country in which such serious erosions of fundamentally important institutions happen so swiftly may be a country celebrating equality, but it is neither a free nor a self-governing country. Darel Paul’s meticulous, courageous account of how the elites brought same-sex marriage to America deserves to be read by all who would understand where we are and whither our democracy is tending.

Scott Yenor, PhD, is Professor of Political Science at Boise State University. He is the author of Family Politics: The Idea of Marriage in Modern Political Thought (Baylor 2011) and Hume’s Humanity: The Philosophy of Common Life and Its Limits (Palgrave 2016).

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WHERE OH WHERE HAVE ALL THE FRIENDS OF BILL AND HILLARY GONE? WITH THEIR LIFE CUT SHORT AND THEIR LIFE CUT LONG! HERE IS A LIST OF A FEW OF THEM

Posted on April 23, 2018 by abyssum

47 dead here but there may be many more, just lately a doctor killed himself in the kitchen (with a knife to his own heart) weeks before his testifying against Hillary.

All of these folks are indeed dead and it might all just be a tragic coincidence— But I wouldn’t want to be on their list of associates (just to be on the safe side)!!!!!!!!!!!

This is what happens when you have dirt on the Clintons :

1 – James McDougal – Clinton’s convicted Whitewater partner died of an apparent heart attack, while in solitary confinement. He was a key witness in Ken Starr’s investigation.

2 – Mary Mahoney – A former White House intern was murdered July 1997 at a Starbucks Coffee Shop in Georgetown. The murder happened just after she was to go public with her story of sexual harassment in the White House.

3 – Vince Foster – Former white House councilor, and colleague of Hillary Clinton at Little Rock’s Rose Law firm. Died of a gunshot wound to the head, ruled a suicide.

4 – Ron Brown – Secretary of Commerce and former DNC Chairman. Reported to have died by impact in a plane crash. A pathologist close to the investigation reported that there was a hole in the top of Brown’s skull resembling a gunshot wound. At the time of his death Brown was being investigated, and spoke publicly of his willingness to cut a deal with prosecutors.

5 – C. Victor Raiser II and Montgomery Raiser, Major players in the Clinton fund raising organization died in a private plane crash in July 1992.

6 – Paul Tulley – Democratic National Committee Political Director found dead in a hotel room in Little Rock, September 1992… Described by Clinton as a “Dear friend and trusted advisor.”

7- Ed Willey – Clinton fund raiser, found dead November 1993 deep in the woods in VA of a gunshot wound to the head. Ruled a suicide. Ed Willey died on the same day his wife Kathleen Willey claimed Bill Clinton groped her in the oval office in the White House. Ed Willey was involved in several Clinton fund raising events.

8 – Jerry Parks – Head of Clinton’s gubernatorial security team in Little Rock. Gunned down in his car at a deserted intersection outside Little Rock. Park’s son said his father was building a dossier on Clinton. He allegedly threatened to reveal this information. After he died the files were mysteriously removed from his house.

9 – James Bunch – Died from a gunshot suicide. It was reported that he had a “Black Book” of people which contained names of influential people who visited prostitutes in Texas and Arkansas.

10 – James Wilson – Was found dead in May 1993 from an apparent hanging suicide. He was reported to have ties to Whitewater.

11- Kathy Ferguson, ex-wife of Arkansas Trooper Danny Ferguson, was found dead in May 1994, in her living room with a gunshot to her head. It was ruled a suicide even though there were several packed suitcases, as if she were going somewhere. Danny Ferguson was a co-defendant along with Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones lawsuit. Kathy Ferguson was a possible corroborating witness for Paula Jones.

12 – Bill Shelton – Arkansas State Trooper and fiancee of Kathy Ferguson. Critical of the suicide ruling of his fiancee, he was found dead in June, 1994 of a gunshot wound also ruled a suicide at the grave site of his fiancee.

13 – Gandy Baugh – Attorney for Clinton’s friend Dan Lassater, died by jumping out a window of a tall building January, 1994. His client was a convicted drug distributor.

14 – Florence Martin – Accountant & sub-contractor for the CIA, was related to the Barry Seal Mena Airport drug smuggling case. He died of three gunshot wounds.

15 – Suzanne Coleman – Reportedly had an affair with Clinton when he was Arkansas Attorney General. Died of a gunshot wound to the back of the head, ruled a suicide. Was pregnant at the time of her death.

16 – Paula Grober – Clinton’s speech interpreter for the deaf from 1978 until her death December 9, 1992. She died in a one car accident.

17 – Danny Casolaro – Investigative reporter. Investigating Mena Airport and Arkansas Development Finance Authority. He slit his wrists, apparently, in the middle of his investigation.

18 – Paul Wilcher – Attorney investigating corruption at Mena Airport with Casolaro and the 1980 “October Surprise” was found dead on a toilet June 22, 1993 in his Washington DC apartment. Had delivered a report to Janet Reno three weeks before his death

19 – Jon Parnell Walker – Whitewater investigator for Resolution Trust Corp. Jumped to his death from his Arlington, Virginia apartment balcony August15, 1993. He was investigating the Morgan Guarantee scandal.

20 – Barbara Wise – Commerce Department staffer. Worked closely with Ron Brown and John Huang. Cause of death unknown. Died November 29, 1996. Her bruised, nude body was found locked in her office at the Department of Commerce.

21- Charles Meissner – Assistant Secretary of Commerce who gave John Huang special security clearance, died shortly thereafter in a small plane crash.

22 – Dr. Stanley Heard – Chairman of the National Chiropractic Health Care Advisory Committee, died with his attorney Steve Dickson in a small plane crash. Dr. Heard, in addition to serving on Clinton’s advisory council personally treated Clinton’s mother, stepfather and brother.

23 – Barry Seal – Drug running pilot out of Mena, Arkansas, death was no accident.

24 – Johnny Lawhorn Jr. – Mechanic, found a check made out to Bill Clinton in the trunk of a car left at his repair shop. He was found dead after his car had hit a utility pole.

25 – Stanley Huggins – Investigated Madison Guarantee His death was a purported suicide and his report was never released.

26- Hershell Friday – Attorney and Clinton fund raiser died March 1, 1994 when his plane exploded.

27 – Kevin Ives and Don Henry – Known as “The boys on the track” case. Reports say the boys may have stumbled upon the Mena Arkansas airport drug operation. A controversial case, the initial report of death said, due to falling asleep on railroad tracks. Later reports claim the two boys had been slain before being placed on the tracks. Many linked to the case died before their testimony could come before a Grand Jury.

THE FOLLOWING PERSONS HAD INFORMATION ON THE IVES/HENRY CASE:

28 – Keith Coney – Died when his motorcycle slammed into the back of a truck, July 1988.

29 – Keith McMaskle – Died stabbed 113 times, Nov, 1988

30 – Gregory Collins – Died from a gunshot wound January 1989.

31 – Jeff Rhodes – He was shot, mutilated and found burned in a trash dump in April 1989.

33 – James Milan – Found decapitated. However, the Coroner ruled his death was due to “natural causes.”

34 – Jordan Kettleson – Was found shot to death in the front seat of his pickup truck in June 1990.

35 – Richard Winters – A suspect in the Ives / Henry deaths. He was killed in a set-up robbery July 1989.

THE FOLLOWING CLINTON BODYGUARDS ARE DEAD: 36 – Major William S. Barkley Jr. 37 – Captain Scott J. Reynolds 38 – Sgt. Brian Hanley 39 – Sgt. Tim Sabel 40 – Major General William Robertson 41 – Col. William Densberger 42 – Col. Robert Kelly 43 – Spec. Gary Rhodes 44 – Steve Willis 45 – Robert Williams 46 – Conway LeBleu 47 – Todd McKeehan

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By His incarnation the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every man”(GS 22.2, my emphasis). Therefore: every man as such possesses a divine dignity for the simple reason that, in His Incarnation, the Son of God “has united himself with every man”!

Posted on April 23, 2018 by abyssum

The Vatican II Points of Rupture Remain

OnePeterFive April 23, 2018 0 Comments

Editor’s note: The following is the response of Prof. Paolo Pasqualucci to some criticism of his previous article, “‘Points of Rupture’ of the Second Vatican Council,” available here.

The critical remarks:

“Articles such as this one, written at a time of great confusion, only inflict greater uncertainty and anxiety upon the faithful.”

The author so often uses expressions like “it seems,” “it appears to say,” “could be interpreted as” that his reasoning appears “flimsy.”

The supposed “rupture” with the traditional notion of priesthood is not proven. The author muddles up the notions of priestly “task” and priestly “function.”

The author has not understood the notion of “divinization” of man implied by Gaudium et Spes 22.2: “For by His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man [Ipse enim, Filius Dei, incarnatione sua cum omni homine quodammodo Se univit].” The implied “divinization” of man is theologically correct (as allegedly demonstrated by a long list of scriptural and patristical quotations).

My replies:

We are all affected, I think, by a despondent feeling of “uncertainty and anxiety” about the future of our civilization and our Catholic religion. What most afflicts us is the clear and widespread perception that the present terrible crisis of the Church is caused eminently by the Catholic hierarchy itself. The tree is rotting from inside. Can we ignore this undeniable fact, thus avoiding any engagement in the “good battle” for the restoration of the true Doctrine? We Catholics have all been confirmed as “milites Christi,” soldiers of Christ, and have first of all the duty to fight for Our Lord’s honor and glory, everyone according to his capacities, as shown in the Parable of the Talents (Lk 19). The spiritual and practical fight for the Dogma of the Faith, against all the anti-Christian powers of this world, is in essence supernatural, its ultimate and everlasting prize life eternal.

Let’s be brave, then, and never lose faith in the help of the Holy Ghost, “For that which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory. While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen, are temporal; but the things which are not seen, are eternal”(2 Cor. 4:17-18).

The frequent use of “it seems,” “it appears to say,” etc. makes my reasoning inconsistent or “flimsy”?

I think the layman has the authority (CIC c. 212 §3) to enucleate and expose ambiguous (or erroneous) statements issued by a legitimate Church authority. As far as Catholic doctrine is concerned, no ambiguity is admissible, no possibility of a double entendre that might point directly or indirectly to erroneous or heretical doctrines. At the same time, an author ought to allow the public to establish by itself whether the exposed ambiguity conceals or not an error in fide – i.e., whether the ambiguous statements appear in accordance with the traditional teaching of the Church or not.

The due analysis of the ambiguities that appear in the often tortuous language of Vatican II documents is also spiritually offered to the judgment of the authority of the Church, which is supposed to have the ultimate word in these vital matters – i.e., to establish one day officially and forever if the exposed ambiguities are or are not in accordance with the perennial doctrine of the Church.

As shown by the history of the Church, ambiguities usually appear when new doctrines (nova) are introduced. They are generally proposed as if they were always in accordance with the traditional doctrine, which they are now supposed to explain better, with new arguments (nove). But the new doctrines that are introduced are generally dangerous for the faith. That’s why they are often camouflaged by tortuous and ambiguous language.

Vatican II has admitted of introducing new doctrines, though (of course) always in harmony (congruentia) with the old ones:

This Vatican Council takes careful note of these desires [of dignity and freedom] in the minds of men. It proposes to declare them to be greatly in accord with truth and justice. To this end, it searches into the sacred tradition and doctrine of the Church – the treasury out of which the Church continually brings forth new things [nova] that are in harmony with the things that are old [sacram Ecclesiae traditionem doctrinamque scrutatur, ex quibus nova semper cum veteribus congruentia profert]. –Decl. Dignitatis humanae on religious liberty, 1.1)

The notion of tradition and doctrine that appears here does not seem correct to me: it is not the task of the Church “to bring forth new things” from the Deposit of the Faith (whether “continually” or not), albeit (in theory) “always in harmony with the old ones.” Which “new things”? Those “desired in the minds of men” professing the profane values of our secularized age?

Such a statement shows in any case an evolutive notion of tradition, incompatible with the notions of Deposit of the Faith and of revealed truth. These notions imply that the Church can explain the “old things” better, with new arguments (nove), as for instance the dogmatic Council of Trent did, but has absolutely no power of introducing “new doctrines,” nova.

Did I say that according to the Council, preaching was the “first task” of priesthood, to be put in “the first place among priestly functions,” when, as a mere “task”, it should not be included among the “functions” of the priesthood? And did I overlook the fact that the first place among these “functions” is attributed by the decree Presbyterorum Ordinis to the celebration of the Holy Mass?

Surely not. I do not understand where this word “task” comes from, since the English translation of my Synopsisreports:

[A]mong the “functions” of the priesthood the first place ought to be given to preaching (“proclaiming the Gospel of God to all” PO 4.1). Indeed, if we check the text of the Decree, we see that, in listing the “Priests’ functions” (presbyterorum munera) the Council writes: “…priests, as co-workers with their bishops, have the primary duty of proclaming the Gospel of God to all” [primum habent officium Evangelium Dei omnibus evangelizandi]. Preaching, therefore, is not conceived of as a secondary task at all; it is emphasized as the “primary duty” of priests. The first duty, among the duties (munera) that fill their priestly “function”. In its analysis of the “priests’ functions”, the Decree begins significantly with the “praedicatio sacerdotalis”.

There is no ambiguity here. The change of perspective is quite obvious.

Why should the (improper) divinization of man implied by GS 22.2 be considered a legitimate notion?

Because, argues my critic, “it is perfectly orthodox to say that we baptized are by grace what Christ is by nature.”

My reply:

4.1 By grace we can become “sons of God by adoption,” as explained by St. Paul (Rm 8:14). This means that, in this world, we can become similar to Him (our Master) but never the same in nature. The adoption is conceded “provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him”(Rm 8:17) – that is, only if we are capable of sanctifying ourselves, regenerating ourselves with the help of God. The divine adoption is conditioned by the cooperation of our free will or, in other words, by our effective exercise of the Christian virtues. It is a condition we can achieve only fighting against ourselves.

4.2 We become “children of God,”, “Sons of God,” “Gods or likened to God,” “fellow-heirs with Christ” not because we have been divinized for the simple fact of being Christian, but because of our success in becoming an individual “born anew of water and the Spirit,” an individual who proves to be an effective disciple of Christ (John 3:3ff).

4.3 My critic lists five quotations from the Scripture, one from the New Catechism, and nine from the fathers of the Church to support his argument.

As some readers have pointed out, the status of “children of God” applies also to the elect in the Kingdom of God; in this case, it has nothing to do with what we are debating here. Furthermore, such a status, when related to man in this world, is never connected by the sources listed above to the Incarnation of Our Lord. This is a novelty introduced by Vatican II. To say the truth, it isn’t even a novelty: this error was refuted by St. John of Damascus (deceased A.D. 749) and by St Thomas Aquinas (see: Summa Theologiae, III, q. IV, a. 5). So “divinization” by Adoption and not by a union begotten by the Incarnation.

4.4 The idea that we have “been made gods” echoes the notion of theosis, typical of the Greek patristics, if I am not mistaken. But generally, isn’t it translated this way: “becoming likened to God” and not at all “like God”? “Likened to God” by the action of the Holy Spirit – that makes God act in the faithful receiving it. This seems to be the supernatural action revealed by Jesus in John 14:23: “if a man loves Me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our home with him.” Here we have a beautiful illustration of the ineffable and trinitarian action of the divine grace in us. Such an action has obviously nothing to do with a supposed “union” of Christ with us for the simple fact of His Incarnation.

4.5 GS 22.2, instead, seemingly wants to say that, by the mere fact

of Incarnation, the Son of God “has made his home” with every human being (!) – not exclusively with the faithful who loves Christ, but with every man for the simple fact that he is a man. Man is not supposed to do anything to achieve the extraordinary benefit of the “union” with the Son of God. The “union” with Christ becomes then an ontological quality of man, and we must assume that man is “divinized.” (Ontological is pertaining to the being [on, ontos] in Greek) – i.e., to the nature of man as such, without any further specification.

This new doctrine aims at establishing a supernatural foundation to the notion of human dignity, proposed in the same article. That’s why the sentence begins with “for” – enim in Latin. Article GS 22 tells us that Christ came in this world to “fully reveal man to man himself and to make his supreme calling clear”(a notion taken from the troubled theology of Henri de Lubac, S.J.). The Savior came not to make us believe in Him, repent, and be saved from eternal damnation (Mk 2:17); He came to reveal to man “his supreme calling.” Perhaps this consists of a call to “eternal life”? No. It consists, we are told, of the awareness of the divine dignity of our nature: “[s]ince human nature as He assumed it was not annulled, by that very fact it has been raised up to a divine dignity in our respect too. For by His incarnation the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every man”(GS 22.2, my emphasis). Therefore: every man as such possesses a divine dignity for the simple reason that, in His Incarnation, the Son of God “has united himself with every man”!

4.6 How could this extraordinary “union” take place? Is this supposed to be a clear notion? Further confusion is introduced by the expression “in some fashion” (quodammodo). What is this supposed to mean?

4.7 There is more to say on this extraordinary article 22 of GS and its interpretations. I conclude my short reply outlining that this ontological “union” practically destroys the dogma of original sin, at any rate vanished (as well as other dogmas) from the teaching of the Catholic hierarchy after Vatican II.

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SILENCE IN THE PRESENCE OF OUR EUCHARISTIC LORD JESUS CHRIST IS A GOOD THING, SILENCE IN THE PRESENCE OF EVIL MEN IS A BAD THING

Posted on April 23, 2018 by abyssum

Rod Dreher

The Silence Of California’s Catholic Bishops

By ROD DREHER • April 22, 2018, 2:14 PM

A Catholic reader in California writes to complain that the state’s Catholic bishops are paying no attention to Assembly Bill 2943 an LGBT rights bill just approved by the Democratically-controlled state legislature. It now heads to the California Senate. As I wrote here last week, if passed and signed into law as written, the bill stands to strike a massive blow against religious liberty in California.

The Catholic reader said he went to the California Catholic Conference websiteto see how the state bishops’ lobbying arm was fighting the bill. It turns out that … they aren’t. It’s not even on their radar. The reader writes about the site:

These are the top legislative priorities of the Catholic Church in California while attendance is cratering and the state is proposing banning Christian books:

1) Expanding the CalWorks eligibility age from 19 to 20 years old

2) Getting grant money from the state to provide immigration services

3) A tax deduction for new teachers

4) Grants for school-based trauma recovery centers

5) Preventing juveniles from being tried as adults

6) Opposing using public money to provide abortion drugs on CSU and UC campuses

This list is simply breathtaking in its display of skewed priorities. The most pressing issues the Church is concerned about in the California legislature is tax credits for teachers and funding for immigration programs? The biggest challenges facing young people according to the CCC right now is getting kicked off CalWorks at 19? Even the opposition to public money for abortion drugs on campus is remarkable for the fact that it’s fighting a battle long since lost in the state.

Don’t get me wrong, these are all important issues in isolation. But the state is considering banning books explaining orthodox Christian teachings on sexuality and it’s nowhere on their radar. It’s maddening.

Your tithes at work, I guess. Are the state’s Catholic bishops simply ignorant, or do they actually not care about this legislation? If not, why not? Because they’re not interested in defending Catholic teaching on sexuality in the first place?

Any of you readers have any real insight on this? If so, please share.

UPDATE: The California Catholic reader writes back:

I think it’s a combination of things, listed in descending order of charity.

First, I think it may be a function of who they hire for these advocacy positions. A friend of mine who works with the CCC on advocacy is the social justice type and he reads books on these issues exclusively from the point of view of the left. The issues he thinks about and sees as important are shaped by that intellectual milieu.

I doubt he reads sites like The American Conservative, National Reviewor any other right-leaning website that would find AB 2943 alarming. The fact that he had never even heard of the bill was a good indication that he’s not even on the lookout for things like that.

The second factor might be the natural desire of people to take the path of least resistance. Obviously the Church has been beat up a lot recently on marriage and sexuality issues. Especially in a place like California, the chances of prevailing on those issues is slim. I can easily see those looking at priorities for legislative advocacy and deciding to focus on those areas where they might be able to find a sympathetic ear in Sacramento.

This tendency might be augmented by the habit you complain about frequently, the inability of church leaders to take the threats to religious liberty seriously. Even if they know about it, they may be dismissive of it because obviously such a blatantly unconstitutional bill would never pass, and even if it did, it would be struck down in court. So why bother, when all it would do is get you grief from the press and woke parishioners? Except we both know that this is a false confidence that’s underestimates the hostility to the Church in the dominant culture.

The least charitable interpretation is that those in charge of the CCC’s legislative advocacy know about the issue, but decide that protecting orthodox Christian teachings on sexuality isn’t worth doing. I’m more inclined to the previous two explanations (never ascribe to malice what can be explained by ignorance, etc.) but I can’t totally rule this one out either. The open hostility to orthodox Christian sexuality and conservative Catholics displayed by the dominant culture and prominent church leaders is no doubt reflected in who is hired for these positions.

The fact that so many of the bills that are on the CCC’s list have only the most tenuous connections to Church teachings while major religious liberty issues are excluded is also an indication that these folks might be using the Church’s remaining moral authority to engage in standard left-wing advocacy unrelated to the Church’s real needs. It’s no secret that our friends on the left co-opt institutions to serve their own ends, so it wouldn’t be surprising at all that they’ve done the same with the Church’s worldly advocacy efforts.

UPDATE.2: Reader Heidi makes a very important point:

Anyone that says that this isn’t a problem for Christians hasn’t realized that there are psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors, counselors, etc… that are orthodox Christians. They are licensed by their state. What precisely are they going to do when someone comes in for counseling and that person asks their opinion, and help, on something such as a sex-change operation, or same-sex attraction? What if that patient asks for help on overcoming those feelings (in other words, they are unwanted and they want to learn to resist those unwanted thoughts and feelings). This law would indeed impact how those licensed individuals can respond to that patient. This is something all Christians who pay attention should push back against, not just Bishops of any denomination (and yes, I do realize it’s helpful when church leaders speak up).

Understand this clearly: the bill not only bans “conversion therapy,” but would also require therapists and others to affirm LGBT desire and behavior. This is especially problematic when it comes to transgenderism, which is not well understood, but which would be protected under the language of this bill, so that the only possible thing a psychiatrist or other mental health professional could say to a gender dysphoric person is: “Yes.”

PLUS — good news! The California Catholic Conference has come out against the bill!

The California Catholic Conference (CCC) has voiced opposition to the bill, and released a letter on its website urging Californians to contact their legislators to prevent it from becoming law.

The conference is concerned that the bill’s definitions are too broad, and seek to prevent adults from making decisions for themselves.

“AB 2943 would take something completely intangible – ‘sexual orientation change efforts’ – and add it to the CRLA,” the conference said.

Further, given that conversion therapy is already illegal for people under the age of 18 in the state, the California Catholic Conference questioned, “why would proponents wish to take away the freedom of adults to seek counselling” for issues regarding sexual orientation or behavior.

Good for you, bishops. Where are the Protestant and Orthodox leaders on this bill?

Posted in Christianity, Culture war, Politics, Liberty & The State, LGBT. Tagged Catholicism, California, bishops, religious liberty, AB 2943.

Africa Studio/Shutterstock

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THE ‘MIRACLE’ OF THE CHURCH OF THE ATONEMENT PARISH IN SAN ANTONIO

Posted on April 21, 2018 by abyssum

Drone Shots 3

On of my frequent visits to Rome during the time I was a Consultor to the Pontifical Commission for People on the Move (migrants, immigrants, refugees and seafarers) I stayed at the Casa Internationale del Clero about a block from the Pantheon. The Casa was a hotel and residence (owned by the Vatican) for bishops and others who had business to conduct with the Vatican.

On one such visit I found myself seated at the dining room table with a group of Anglican bishops. Naturally I was curious about their being there and so I discretely inquired, “What are you’ll doing here?”

They informed me that they were meeting with Pope John Paul II and the CDF about the possibility of working out an accord which would provide for the reception into the Catholic Church of Anglicans/Episcopalians including their priests with the further possibility of the creation of personal parishes where the Anglican Liturgy could be celebrated with the necessary revisions.

I was excited by the news. Ever since as a teenager I had discovered the riches of English literature, especially all the works of Willam Shakespeare, I have become an Anglophile. I told the bishops how happy I was with the news and I promised them that I would be among the first bishops of the United States to implement the Accord if it ever became a reality.

I did become a reality and I did accept the application of several Episcopalian priests to become members of the presbyterate of the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee. It was not to be however because in May of 1983 Pope John Paul II transferred me to the Diocese of Corpus Christi.

Shortly after I was installed in Corpus Christi I received requests from two Episcopalian priests to join the Corpus Christi presbyterate. I accepted them and eventually conditionally ordained them Catholic Priests. They were wonderful priests and soon an Anglican Use personal parish was started. My successors did not have the same love of the Anglican Accord as I did and the ‘parish’ remains very small

It was a different story in San Antonio.

There Archbishop Patrick Flores welcomed Father Christopher Phillips who started a tiny parish with converts from Anglicanisn/Episcopalianism. The parish was started by a small group of former Episcopalians seeking entrance into full Catholic communion under the terms of the Pastoral Provision which was established by Pope St. John Paul II. The parish was canonically erected on August 15, 1983 by Archbishop Patrick Flores and was comprised of just eighteen people (including children).

The first small church building was completed in 1987, with several subsequent additions to the church and school. The parish school, The Atonement Academy, was established in 1994, starting with sixty-six students.

Father Phillips was/is a remarkable priest. Married with several children he had the energy and the time to devote himself to his ministry with such zeal that the parish now has approximately six hundred families and about 450 students in the school.

In the opinion of many Latin Roman Catholics The Church of the Atonement was such a place of very spiritual liturgies that they soon threatened to crowd out the former Anglicans in the church on Sundays.

The drone photo above shows just half of the Parish plant. What a fabulous success story, really it is a ‘miracle.’

As is now well known, the Holy See a few years ago created the personal Ordinariate, like a diocese, to which former Anglicans/Episcopalians have a right to belong. While it was understandable that the Archbishop of San Antonio would not be happy to see one of the ‘best’ parishes of the Archdiocese leave his jurisdiction and become part of the new Ordinariate, no one anticipated the extreme extent of his opposition.

The people of the Church of the Atonement appealed to Rome and Rome overruled the Archbishops decision to prevent the transfer and now the Church of the Atonement is part of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham based in Houston.

The last sad chapter in the drama of the Archbishop’s relation to the Parish was when three Franciscan Poor Clare nuns who have been working in the Parish and Academy for ten years approached the Archbishop and requested permission to build a convent and he not only refused permission but ordered them to leave the Archdiocese.

I wish the faithful of Our Lady of the Atonement Parish every blessing that they may continue to grow in holiness and become an ever greater witness to the Faith in San Antonio.

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TO PERSONALLY KNOW SAINT POPE JOHN PAUL II WAS TO LOVE HIM AND TO TRUST HIM AND TO ACCEPT HIS MAGISTERIAL TEACHINGS AS INFALLIBLE, SECUNDUM QUID, AS GUIDES TO A LIVING FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST

Posted on April 21, 2018 by abyssum

Bishop René Gracida with Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, shortly before he was named Pope John Paul II.

Bishop René Gracida with Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, on September 28, 1978 the day Pope John Paul I died, three weeks before he was named Pope John Paul II. (Photo Provided)

6 Bishops Who Knew John Paul II Share Their Memories of Him

“If the Pope is afraid, then the Church is afraid. And, the Church must never be afraid.”

by Jim Graves

.APR. 21, 2018

May 20 is the 98th anniversary of the birth of Pope St. John Paul II (1920-2005). Elected in 1978, he went on to serve over 26 years as pope, making him among the longest-serving popes in history. He had a major impact on the Church, including through the appointment of many bishops. I spoke to six bishops who have met Pope John Paul II and asked them to share their memories of him.

Robert Carlson, Archbishop of St. Louis, Missouri

I admire Pope St. John Paul II. He was a man of prayer. He believed in freedom of religion and battled for years with the communists. I met him on a number of occasions. Once, for example, when I was an auxiliary bishop for Archbishop John Roach of St. Paul and Minneapolis, I recall him saying of me: “He’s a very young bishop. He has many years of suffering ahead.”

Paul Coakley, Archbishop of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Pope John Paul II was elected my first year in the seminary. He inspired me as a seminarian and priest and appointed me to be a bishop. I met him as a bishop-elect on an ad limina visit and received a pectoral cross from him which I still wear.

John Doerfler, Bishop of Marquette, Michigan

As a young man, my heroes included Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would become Pope Benedict. When I was a seminarian, I studied theology at North American College in Rome. I had the privilege of serving Mass for Pope John Paul II. It was the beatification mass of St. Katharine Drexel, and they wanted American seminarians to serve at the Mass. I was one of the lucky ones whose name was pulled out of the hat.

I met Pope John Paul briefly after Mass. I remember my exchange with him. I assured the Holy Father I was praying for him. He said, “Well, we’ll pray for each other.”

René Henry Gracida, the retired Bishop of Corpus Christi, Texas

In 1978, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, heard about a program with which I was involved with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He invited me to come to Poland to speak to him about it. I went to Krakow, but our visit was cut short when Pope John Paul I died unexpectedly. He had to go to Rome for the conclave that elected him pope.

In the time we did have together, he was fascinated that I was an airman during World War II. He asked me hundreds of questions. We became friends. I have a cherished place for him in my heart.

Robert Morlino, Bishop of Madison, Wisconsin

I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to have met two great saints: Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul. They show the greatness of what can be accomplished with one’s life. During one of my meetings with Pope John Paul, he said to me, “If the Pope is afraid, then the Church is afraid. And, the Church must never be afraid.” That’s always very alive in my mind.

Thomas Olmsted, Bishop of Phoenix, Arizona

(Bishop Olmsted lived in Rome for 16 years, including nine years while working with the Vatican Secretariat of State, and interacted personally with Pope John Paul II.) Pope John Paul II is a great hero of mine. His teaching inspires me constantly. He was a man of great holiness. He was a man of tremendous gifts. He spoke many different languages. He had a great love for poetry and was a poet himself. He had a love for drama and was a playwright. The Holy Father had a great interest in marriage which led to the promotion of the Theology of the Body.

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If truth could ever lose its quality of being the means to know the will of God, and become something false, and thus evil, then mankind is lost. Without immutable truth, we have no way to live in unity with God, with reality, and with one another.

Posted on April 21, 2018 by abyssum

Of Truth and Idols

Fr. Gerald E. Murray

SATURDAY, APRIL 21, 2018

THE CATHOLIC THING

Pope Francis celebrated and preached at the Chrism Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Holy Thursday morning. He addressed the concelebrating priests on the themes of the closeness of God and the closeness that priests should have to their people. This priestly closeness is “an attitude that engages the whole person.” He praised street priests “who are ‘close’, available, priests who are there for people, who talk to everyone.”

Closeness, he believes, is “the key to mercy” and “also the key to truth.” Further, “truth is not only the definition of situations and things from a certain distance, by abstract and logical reasoning. It is more than that. Truth is also fidelity (émeth). It makes you name people with their real name, as the Lord names them, before categorizing them or defining ‘their situation.’”

Then Pope Francis made a startling claim:

We must be careful not to fall into the temptation of making idols of certain abstract truths. They can be comfortable idols, always within easy reach; they offer a certain prestige and power and are difficult to discern. Because the “truth-idol” imitates, it dresses itself up in the words of the Gospel, but does not let those words touch the heart. Much worse, it distances ordinary people from the healing closeness of the word and of the sacraments of Jesus.

These words are troubling. An idol is a false god. Idolatry is rendering worship to something other than God – a grave offense against the First Commandment. Idolatry is essentially man worshipping himself through the medium of some created reality. He makes the choice of what idols are important to him. His false god is his own creation, and thus it serves him. This is the complete reversal of the true worship that man owes to his Creator.

Abstraction is the mental process by which we come to know metaphysical realities by considering those material things our reason grasps and drawing rational conclusions. By abstraction, we understand what underlies the reality before our eyes. Thus seeing individual men and abstracting from this knowledge, we come to know the category of humanity, and we begin to understand what constitutes human nature. Abstraction allows reality to reveal itself to our minds.

Truth is the conformity of mind and reality. The truth about God is understood when we accurately grasp the nature and purpose of His creation (natural theology), and when we believe in any supernatural revelation He may make. Jesus told us that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. All truths have their origin in the Truth who is God made man. The Christian understands that the truth is a Person.

Dogmatic and moral truths come from and lead to God. The truth banishes error, especially idolatry, because all truth is found in the Word made flesh. What is true is good and beautiful because it unites us to the good and beautiful God. He created us so that we may know Him by knowing the truth that He is.

Given this, is it possible to make the truth into an idol? Can Catholic dogmatic teachings and the truths of the moral law become false gods that we worship so as to gain “a certain prestige and power”? It’s not possible. The truth as taught by the Church is what unites us to the true God and frees us from the errors of idolatry. Truth is not an idol, it is the remedy to idolatry.

Pope Francis states that “the ‘truth-idol’ imitates, it dresses itself up in the words of the Gospel, but does not let those words touch the heart.” Is the Gospel obscured or falsified by truths taught by the Magisterium of the Church – which are drawn from that Gospel?

If the truth could be an idol, then naturally any use of the Scriptures to illustrate that particular truth would be a charade. But the truth of God cannot be an idol because what God has made known to us is our means of entering into His reality – the goal of our existence.

Francis states that this “truth-idolatry” in fact “distances ordinary people from the healing closeness of the word and of the sacraments of Jesus.”

Here we have the interpretative key to what I think he is getting at. He is defending his decision in Amoris Laetitia to allow some people who are living in adulterous unions to receive the sacraments of penance and the Holy Eucharistic while intending to continue to engage in adulterous relations.

This doctrinal and disciplinary innovation, which contradicts all previous papal teaching and legislation, was confirmed as his unequivocal intention in his letter to the Argentinian bishops of the Buenos Aires region.

Those who defend the Church’s constant teaching and practice on this matter have been subjected to various aspersions. Now they are being categorized as engaging in a horrific violation of the First Commandment because they treat Catholic doctrine as inviolable, and thus binding upon all believers.

If truth could ever lose its quality of being the means to know the will of God, and become something false, and thus evil, then mankind is lost. Without immutable truth, we have no way to live in unity with God, with reality, and with one another.

The good news is that truth can never be false. It’s not an idol, and to defend the truth is not to lead people away from God towards false worship, but rather to invite them to embrace what is, in fact, their deepest desire for goodness, happiness, and peace.

The truth will set you free, it will not enslave you in error and darkness. Those who seek to be healed by coming close to Christ in his sacraments will only realize that goal by knowing and doing what Jesus asks of them. To reject in practice his words about the permanence of marriage and the obligation to avoid adultery, and then assert a right to receive the sacraments risks making an erroneous opinion into an idol.

*Image: His Holiness, Pope Francis [Franco Origlia/Getty Images]

© 2018 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.orgThe Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

Fr. Gerald E. Murray

The Rev. Gerald E. Murray, J.C.D. is a canon lawyer and the pastor of Holy Family Church in New York City.

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WELCOME TO THE REMNANT, WILL THE LAST PERSON OUT PLEASE CLOSE THE DOOR.

Posted on April 21, 2018 by abyssum

88dd8-the_dictator_pope

John-Henry Westen / LifeSiteNews.com

Lisa Bourne

NEWSCATHOLIC CHURCHFri Apr 20, 2018 – 11:25 am EST

Catholic Mass attendance in U.S. plunges under Francis pontificate

Catholic, Catholic Mass, Gallup Poll, Mass, Pope Francis

April 20, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The Catholic Church is seeing its biggest decline in Mass attendance in the U.S. in decades that started between the papacies of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, a new Gallup poll says.

“From 2014 to 2017, an average of 39% of Catholics reported attending church in the past seven days. This is down from an average of 45% from 2005 to 2008 and represents a steep decline from 75% in 1955,” the poll found.

Francis became Pope in 2013.

Weekly Mass attendance among Catholics dropped six percentage points, the findings said, with fewer than four in 10 Catholics going to Mass in any given week.

In contrast, the survey said church attendance remained strong over the last decade with U.S. Protestants.

The number of weekly Mass-attending Catholics had leveled out at the 45 percent mark in the mid-2000s after dropping significantly during the time of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and its tumultuous aftermath.

The downhill shift in Mass attendance has picked back up under Francis with the biggest drop since the 1970s.

The Vatican’s Central Statistics Office published a report last year in which it found that vocations to the priesthood have continued a downward trend since 2012. The decline was found to have accelerated under the pontificate of Pope Francis. Total seminarians worldwide dropped from 118,251 in 2013 to 116,843 in 2015.

Gallup does not give an exact count from one year to the next, conducting its church attendance surveys toward the middle of each decade from the 1950s to present, Thomas Williams notes in a Breitbart report. Consequently, the time period of 2005-2008 selected for the survey corresponds to the first four years of Benedict’s papacy, and the 2014-2017 period similarly coincides with the Francis pontificate.

“After stabilizing in the mid-2000s, weekly church attendance among U.S. Catholics has resumed its downward trajectory over the past decade. In particular, older Catholics have become less likely to report attending church in the past seven days — so that now, for the first time, a majority of Catholics in no generational group attend weekly,” the poll states.

The biggest drop in Mass attendance between the Benedict and Francis pontificates came among Catholics between the ages of 50 and 59, falling from 46 to 31 percent, a decline of 15 percent.

The only rise in weekly Mass attendance came from American Catholics aged 30-39, rising three-percentage points from 40 to 43 percent.

The young adult demographic – aged 21 to 29 – had seen a small rise in weekly Mass attendance under Benedict from 2005-2008, to 29 percent. But this then dropped under Francis between 2014-2017 to 25 percent.

The current rate of weekly church attendance among Protestants and Catholics is similar at most age levels, the survey said, with the exception of that 21-to-29 demographic. Protestants in the young adult segment more likely at 36% than Catholic young adults (25%) to say they have attended church in the past seven days.

This drop in Mass attendance among Catholic young adults and the disparity between their attendance rate and that of their Protestant counterparts comes as Francis is in the process of convening a youth synod.

Williams noted that the drop in Catholic Mass attendance while Protestant church attendance has remained largely consistent is telling.

This “suggests that specific confessional issues rather than broader societal changes are behind the recent drop in Catholic Mass attendance,” he wrote.

It would be unfair to attribute the entire decline in Catholic Mass attendance to the “Francis effect,” Williams said.

However, he wrote “it is unlikely that the pontiff’s continual deemphasizing of the importance of obedience to church rules such as regular Mass attendance and adherence to Catholic doctrine has not had an appreciable effect on Catholic practice.”

“The Francis pontificate correlates to the sharpest drop in U.S. Mass attendance in recent decades,” Williams said.

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ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP

I KNOW THAT YOU THINK THAT I AM KIDDING OR THAT I AM EXAGGERATING THE PROBLEM, BUT I KID YOU NOT, THE NEO-FACISTS OF THE LEFT WANT YOUR CHILDREN AND THEY ARE GOING TO GET YOUR CHILDREN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER BECAUSE THEY HAVE THE POWER OF GOVERNMENT TO SUPPORT THEIR EFFORTS

THE INSANITY OF SOCIETY IN CALIFORNIA CONTINUES TO EXPAND EXPONENTIALLY: A CIVIL JURY IN CALIFORNIA WILL NOW DECIDE WHETHER JAHI MCGRATH IS ALIVE OR DEAD IN NEW JERSEY!!!!!!!

Jahi McMath – Trial Set for February 11, 2019

WHERE OH WHERE HAVE ALL THE FRIENDS OF BILL AND HILLARY GONE? WITH THEIR LIFE CUT SHORT AND THEIR LIFE CUT LONG! HERE IS A LIST OF A FEW OF THEM

By His incarnation the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every man”(GS 22.2, my emphasis). Therefore: every man as such possesses a divine dignity for the simple reason that, in His Incarnation, the Son of God “has united himself with every man”!

The Vatican II Points of Rupture Remain

SILENCE IN THE PRESENCE OF OUR EUCHARISTIC LORD JESUS CHRIST IS A GOOD THING, SILENCE IN THE PRESENCE OF EVIL MEN IS A BAD THING

Rod Dreher

The Silence Of California’s Catholic Bishops

THE ‘MIRACLE’ OF THE CHURCH OF THE ATONEMENT PARISH IN SAN ANTONIO

TO PERSONALLY KNOW SAINT POPE JOHN PAUL II WAS TO LOVE HIM AND TO TRUST HIM AND TO ACCEPT HIS MAGISTERIAL TEACHINGS AS INFALLIBLE, SECUNDUM QUID, AS GUIDES TO A LIVING FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST

If truth could ever lose its quality of being the means to know the will of God, and become something false, and thus evil, then mankind is lost. Without immutable truth, we have no way to live in unity with God, with reality, and with one another.

Of Truth and Idols

Fr. Gerald E. Murray

WELCOME TO THE REMNANT, WILL THE LAST PERSON OUT PLEASE CLOSE THE DOOR.

Catholic Mass attendance in U.S. plunges under Francis pontificate

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