Broader participation of the laity in the apostolic life of the Church?

In an essay entitled, “The Case for the Latin Mass,” Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand explains that, “Those who rhapsodize on the new liturgy make much of the point that over the years the Mass had lost its communal character and had become an occasion for individualistic worship.  The new vernacular Mass, they insist, restores the sense of community by replacing private devotions with community participation.  Yet they forget that there are different levels and kinds of communion with other persons.  The level and nature of a community experience is determined by the theme of the communion, the name or cause in which men are gathered.  The higher the good which the theme represents, and which binds men together, the more sublime and deeper is the communion.  The ethos and nature of a community experience in the case of a great national emergency is obviously radically different from the community experience of a cocktail party.  And of course the most striking differences in communities will be found between the community whose theme is supernatural and the one whose theme is merely natural.  The actualization of the souls of men who are truly touched by Christ is the basis of a unique community, a sacred communion, one whose quality is incomparably more sublime than that of any natural community.  The authentic we-communion of the faithful, which the liturgy of Holy Thursday expresses so well in the words congregavit nos in unum Christi amor, is possible only as a fruit of the I-Thou communion with Christ Himself.  Only a direct relation to the God-man can actualize this sacred union among the faithful.  The communion of Christ has nothing of the self-assertion found in natural communities.  It breathes of the Redemption.  It liberates men from all self-centeredness.  Yet such a communion emphatically does not depersonalize the individual.  Far from dissolving the person into the cosmic, pantheistic swoon so often commended to us these days, it actualizes the person’s true self in a unique way.  In the community of Christ the conflict between person and community that is present in all natural communities cannot exist. 

 

So this sacred community experience is really at war with the depersonalizing ‘we-experience’ found in mass assemblies and popular gatherings which tend to absorb and evaporate the individual.  This communion in Christ that was so fully alive in the early Christian centuries, that all the saints entered into, that found a matchless expression in the liturgy now under attack - this communion has never regarded the individual person as a mere segment of the community, or as an instrument to serve it.  In this connection it is worth noting that totalitarian ideology is not alone in sacrificing the individual to the collective; some of Teilhard de Chardin’s cosmic ideas, for instance, imply the same collectivistic sacrifice.  Teilhard subordinates the individual and his sanctification to the supposed development of humanity.  At a time when this perverse theory of community is embraced even by many Catholics, there are plainly urgent reasons for vigorously insisting on the sacred character of the true communion in Christ.

 

I submit that the new liturgy must be judged by this test: Does it contribute to the authentic sacred community?  Granted that it strives for a community character; but is this the character desired?  Is it a communion grounded in recollection, contemplation and reverence? Which of the two - the new Mass, or the Latin Mass with the Gregorian chant - evokes these attitudes of soul more effectively, and thus permits the deeper and true communion?  Is it not plain that frequently the community character of the new Mass purely profane, that, as with other social gatherings, its blend of casual relaxation and bustling activity precludes a reverent, contemplative confrontation with Christ and with the ineffable mystery of the Eucharist?...our epoch is pervaded by a spirit of irreverence.  It is seen in a distorted notion of freedom that demands rights while refusing obligations, that exalts self-indulgence, that counsels ‘let yourself go.’  The habitare secum of St. Gregory’s Dialogues - the dwelling in the presence of God - which presupposes reverence, is considered today to be unnatural, pompous, or servile.

 

But is not the new liturgy a compromise with this modern spirit?  Whence comes the disparagement of kneeling?  Why should the Eucharist be received standing?  Is not kneeling, in our culture, the classic expression of adoring reverence?  The argument that at a meal we should stand rather than kneel is hardly convincing.  For one thing, this is not the natural posture for eating: we sit, and in Christ’s time some reclined.  But more important, it is a specifically irreverent conception of the Eucharist to stress its character as a meal at the cost of its unique character as a holy mystery.  Stressing the meal at the expense of the sacrament surely betrays a tendency to obscure the sacredness of the sacrifice.  This tendency is apparently traceable to the unfortunate belief that religious life will become more vivid, more existential, if it is immersed in our everyday life.  But this is to run the danger of absorbing the religious in the mundane, of effacing the difference between the supernatural and the natural.  I fear that it represents an unconscious intrusion of the naturalistic spirit, of the spirit more fully expressed in Teilhard de Chardin’s immanentism....

 

Those who idolize our epoch, who thrill at what is modern simply because it is modern, who believe that in our day man has finally ‘come of age,’ lack pietas.  The pride of these ‘temporal nationalists’ is not only irreverent, it is incompatible with real faith.  A Catholic should regard his liturgy with pietas.  He should revere, and therefore fear to abandon the prayers and postures and music that have been approved by so many saints throughout the Christian era and delivered to us a precious heritage..”

 

An article written by Marcellino D’Ambrosio for the Catholic News Service and carried on the front page of The Catholic Free Press and entitled “A ‘student’ of Vatican II,” displays such an irreverence for the Mass which made saints like Padre Pio and the Cure of Ars.  In his article, Mr. D’Ambrosio repeats the tired mantra: “Before the council, laity were passive spectators in the liturgy, often praying devotional prayers while they were ‘hearing’ Mass since the readings were in Latin...The goal of the council was to promote the conscious, active participation of the laity in the liturgy, but also to restore a much broader and richer participation of the laity in the apostolic life of the church as reflected in the Acts of the Apostles and the epistles.”

 

Such an attitude betrays a hateful irreverence toward the Mass which made such great saints as Padre Pio and the holy Cure of Ars, Saint Jean Vianney.  In “Salt of the Earth,” then Cardinal Ratzinger and now Pope Benedict XVI declared that, “A community is calling its very being into question when it suddenly declares that what until now was its holiest and highest possession is strictly forbidden and when it makes the longing for it seem downright indecent.” 

 

How much more so when that same liturgy is disparaged?

 

Mr. D’Ambrosio’s article is an exercise in chronolatry and nothing more.  Let’s examine the fruits of this attempt to “promote the conscious, active participation of the laity in the liturgy” while restoring a “much broader and richer participation of the laity in the apostolic life of the Church.”  Patrick Buchanan writes, “The 1950s were America’s Catholic moment.  The moral authority of the Pope and America’s bishops was never higher.  Long lines formed outside confessionals on Saturdays.  It was standing room only at Sunday Mass [the same Mass now disparaged by the progressives today].  Fr. Patrick Peyton’s Rosary Crusade (‘The family that prays together stays together’) drew huge crowds.  The most visible prelate was Msgr. Fulton J. Sheen, whose television ratings bested those of Milton Berle.  ‘He’s got better writers than I do,’ quipped Berle.  Notre Dame’s legendary gridiron teams had millions of ‘subway alumni.’  Four out of five Catholics cast their votes in 1960 for John F. Kennedy, who became our first Catholic president...Half a century on [since Vatican II], the disaster is manifest.  The robust and confident Church of 1958 no longer exists.  Catholic colleges and universities remain Catholic in name only.  Parochial schools are closing as rapidly as they opened in the 1950s.  The number of nuns, priests, and seminarians have fallen dramatically.  Mass attendance is a third of what it was [broader participation?].  From the former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to vice president Joe Biden, Catholic politicians openly support abortion on demand...

 

Four decades after Vatican II, a quarter century into the pontificate of John Paul II, Kenneth C. Jones of St. Louis pulled together a slim volume of statistics demonstrating that the fears traditionalists who warned that the council was courting catastrophe had been justified.  And they exposed as naive those who insisted that the council would revitalize the faith, reconcile Catholicism with modernity, and make the Church more appealing to our secular world.  Here are Jones statistics on the decline and fall:

 

Clergy.  While the number of priests in the United States more than doubled to 58,000 between 1930 and 1965, between 1965 and 2002 that number fell to 45,000 and is on course to sink to 31,000 in 2020, when more than half of all Catholic priests will be over the age of seventy.

 

Ordinations.  In 1965, 1,575 priests were ordained.  In 2002, the figure was 450.

 

Parishes.  In 1965, only 1 percent of parishes were without a priest.  In 2002, 15 percent, or 3,000 parishes, were without priests.

 

Seminarians.  Between 1965 and 2002, the number of seminarians fell from 49,000 to 4,700, a decline of more than 90 percent.  Two-thirds of the 600 seminaries operating at the end of Vatican II have closed.

 

Nuns.  In 1965, there were 180,000 Catholic nuns.  By 2002, that number was down to 75,000 and their average age was 68.  By 2009, their numbers had fallen to 60,000, a loss of two-thirds in four and a half decades.

 

Teaching Nuns.  In 1965, there were 104,000 teaching nuns.  Today, there are 8,200.

 

Jesuits.  In 1965, 3,559 young men were studying to become Jesuit priests.  In 2,000, the figure was 389.

 

Christian Brothers.  The situation here is even more dire.  Their ranks have shrunk by two-thirds, while the number of seminarians has fallen by 99 percent.  In 1965, there were 912 seminarians in the Christian Brothers.  In 2,000, there were seven.

 

Religious Orders.  The number of young men studying to become Franciscan and Redemptorist priests fell from 3,379 in 1965 to 84 in 2000.  For many religious orders in America the end is in sight.

 

Diocesan High Schools.  Almost half of these high schools operating in the United States in 1965 had closed by 2002, and student enrollment had fallen from 700,000 to 386,000.

 

Parochial Schools.  In 1965, there were 4.5 million children in parish grammar schools.  By 2000, the number had plunged to 1.9 million.  In the first decade of this century, the number dropped again, to 1.5 million, a loss of two-thirds of Catholic parochial school enrollment since Vatican II - in a country whose population grew in that period by over 100 million.

 

In 2007, after interviewing 35,000 people for its U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, the Pew Forum confirmed what Jones had reported.  Since Vatican II, the Catholic Church in America had undergone a decline to rival what happened in some northern European countries during the Reformation.  By 2007:

 

One in three Catholics reared in the faith had left the Church.

 

One in ten American adults was a fallen-away Catholic.

 

Catholics remained 24 percent of the U.S. population only because of immigration.  Forty-six percent of all immigrants are Catholics.  As Irish, German, Italian, and Polish Catholics leave the Church or die, the pews fill up with Mexicans, Central Americans, Filipinos, and Vietnamese.  Were it not for immigrants, Catholics would have fallen from a fourth of the population to 18.4 percent, or less than one fifth...

 

Catholic losses have been ‘staggering,’ writes Fr. Joseph Sirba, ‘if one excludes immigrants and converts from the calculations, the Catholic Church has lost to other religions or to no religion at all 35.4 percent - or more than one-third - of the 64,131,750 of its native-born members....

 

The Catholics who remain in the Church are not nearly as firm in the faith or devout as their parents were.  The institutional shrinkage mirrors a spreading disbelief in doctrines that define the faith....Where a 1958 Gallup poll revealed that three of every four Catholics attended Mass on Sundays, a recent study by the University of Notre Dame found that one in four Catholics attend Sunday Mass today.”

 

Is this the “broader and richer participation of the laity in the apostolic life of the Church” which  Mr. D’Ambrosio refers to?  If so, he can keep it.

 

Buchanan continues: “Only 10 percent of lay teachers accept church teaching on contraception.  Fifty-three percent of lay teachers believe a woman can have an abortion and remain a good Catholic, even though participation in an abortion means automatic excommunication.  Sixty-five percent of lay teachers believe Catholics may divorce and remarry.  Seventy-seven percent believe one can be a good Catholic without going to Sunday Mass.  Millions of Catholic children are being taught their faith by heretics.....According to one New York Times poll, 70 percent of all Catholics 18-44 believed the Eucharist is but a ‘symbolic reminder’ of Jesus, and nearly two-thirds of all Catholics agreed.  Through the papacy of Pius XII, Catholicism remained the Church of the deeply traditionalist Council of Trent...refusing to modify its teachings to accommodate the age.  After Vatican II, the Church came out to meet the world.  The statistics give us the results of the encounter.” (Suicide of a Superpower, pp. 88-94).

 

The Mass which is popularly known as the Tridentine Mass informed the spiritual lives of so many saints.  Even while accepting its validity, can we honestly say the same about the new Mass?

 

Can we?

Photograph is of the Office Manager for Saint Joseph's Parish in Fitchburg.

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Bishop Gerhard Mueller, the CDF's new Prefect, and the pillars of the Faith

It was Father Vincent Miceli who warned that, "Once the liturgy is humanized, Christ the Center and Object of it becomes the humanist par excellence, the liberator, the revolutionary, the Marxist ushering in the millenium; he ceases to be the Divine Redeemer.  We must be alerted to those who plan, by convincing us to abandon our sacred forms, at length to seduce us into denying our Christian faith altogether.  The Church is attacked by these Sons of Satan, in and outside her fold, because she is a living form, the sacrament - sign and instrument - of communion with God and of unity among all men; because she is the visible body of Religion.  Hence these shrewd masters of sedition know that when her sacred forms go, religion will also go.  Violate the lex orandi and you must inevitably destroy the lex credendi.  That is why they rail against so many devotions as superstitions, why they propose so many alterations and changes, a tactic cleverly calculated to shake the foundations of faith.."

The Devil hates the Eucharist and Our Lady [recall how these two pillars played an important part in Don Bosco's prophetic dream as they stabilized the Church represented by a ship with Peter at the head] and never ceases to attack them.  He uses variations on gnosticism, symbolism and modernism to attack the authentic teaching of the Magisterium on the Holy Eucharist.  As the spiritual war continues to escalate all around us, the Devil's attacks against the Eucharist will multiply.  These attacks will intensify and reach a crescendo with the Man of Sin.  Do you doubt this?  Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, Doctor of the Church, has already warned us that:

"The devil has always managed to get rid of the Mass by means of the heretics, making them precursors of the Antichrist who, above all else, will manage to abolish, and in fact will succeed in abolishing, as a punishment for the sins of men, the Holy Sacrifice of the altar, precisely as Daniel had predicted." ("Le Messa e l'Officio Strapazzati" in Opere Ascetiche).

Pope Benedict XVI has just named Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, who was a student of Father Gustavo Gutierrez (credited with founding Liberation Theology), to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  As this Blog post notes, Bishop Mueller has expressed some rather odd ideas regarding the Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Real Presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ - Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity - in the Holy Eucharist:

"On the Perpetual Virginity of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary:


In his 900-page work "Katholische Dogmatik. Für Studium und Praxis der Theologie" (Freiburg. 5th Edition, 2003), Müller denies the dogma of the Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary claiming that the doctrine is "not so much concerned with specific physiological proprieties in the natural process of birth (such as the birth canal not having been opened, the hymen not being broken, or the absence of birth pangs), but with the healing and saving influence of the grace of the Savior on human nature."


On the Real Presence of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the Lord in the transubstantiated Eucharistic species:

In 2002, bishop Müller published the book "Die Messe - Quelle des christlichen Lebens" (St. Ulrich Verlag, Augsburg). In this book, he speaks of the Sacrament of the Altar and warns against using the terms "body and blood" in this context. These terms would cause "misunderstandings", "when flesh and blood are considered to mean the physical and biological components of the human Jesus. Neither is it simply the transfigured body of the resurrected Lord that is being designated."

Bishop Müller continues: "In reality, the body and blood of Christ do not mean the material components of the human person of Jesus during his lifetime or in his transfigured corporality. Here, body and blood mean the presence of Christ in the signs of the medium of bread and wine."

Holy Communion transmits according to Müller a "community with Jesus Christ, mediated by eating and drinking the bread and the wine. Even in the merely personal human sphere, something like a letter may represent the friendship between people and, that is to say, show and embody the sympathy of the sender for the receiver." Bread and wine thus only become "symbols of his salvific presence".


That is how Mgr Müller explains a "change of being" in the Eucharistic gifts:

"The essential definition of bread and wine has to be conceived in an anthropological way. The natural essence of these offerings [bread and wine] as the fruit of the earth and the work of human hands, as the unity of natural and cultural products consists in clarifying the nourishment and sustenance of man and the communion of the people in the sign of a common meal [...]. This natural essence of bread and wine is transfigured by God in the sense that the essence of bread and wine is made to consist exclusively in showing and realizing the salvific communion with God."

Strange days.  Dark days.  The smoke of Satan has darkened many minds.

In his Encyclical Letter Mysterium Fidei, Pope Paul VI warned us that, "..among those who deal with this Most Holy Mystery [transubstantiation] in written or spoken word, there are some who, with reference either to Masses which are celebrated in private, or to the dogma of transubstantiation, or to devotion to the Eucharist, spread abroad such opinions as disturb the faithful and fill their minds with no little confusion about matters of faith, as if every one were permitted to consign to oblivion doctrine already defined by the Church, or to interpret it in such a way as to weaken the genuine meaning of the words or the approved import of the concepts involved." (No. 10).

Pope Paul VI goes on to warn in this important Encyclical that, "it is not allowable...to discuss the mystery of transubstantiation without mentioning the marvelous changing of the whole substance of the bread into the Body and of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood of Christ as stated by the Council of Trent, so that it consists in 'transignification' or 'transfinalization.' as they put it."

In No. 46 of Mysterium Fidei, the Pope explains:

"After transubstantiation has taken place, the species of bread and wine undoubtedly take on a new meaning and a new finality, for they no longer remain ordinary bread and ordinary drink, but become the sign of something sacred, and the sign of a spiritual food.  However, the reason they take on a new significance and this new finality is simply because they contain a new 'reality' which we may justly term ontological."

This is the teaching of the Council of Trent regarding Eucharistic dogma: "In the first place the holy Synod teaches...that in the precious Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, after the consecration of the bread and wine, Our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man, is truly, really and substantially contained under the species of those sensible things."

This is the Church's authoritative teaching.  And, as Pope Paul VI said, no one is free to "consign to oblivion" this defined doctrine or to weaken the Church's teaching or the concepts involved.

Pray and watch.  For a diabolical disorientation is clouding minds.  The smoke of Satan continues to wreak havoc.

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As Catholics, we are called upon to imitate Mary's "virginally integral" faith, hope and charity

Faith is God’s gift to created persons who are entirely dependent on Him. The proper response to this gift is reverent obedience. Christian faith is characterized by a humble and reverent submission to what God has revealed. Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum) has this to say: “’The obedience of faith’ (Rm 16:26; cf. Rm 1:5; 2 Cor 10: 5-6) ‘is to be given to God who reveals, an obedience by which man commits his whole self freely to God, offering the full submission of intellect and will to God who reveals,’ and freely assenting to the truth revealed by him. To make this act of faith, the grace of God and the interior help of the Holy Spirit must precede and assist, moving the heart and turning it to God, opening the eyes of the mind and giving ‘joy and ease to everyone in assenting to the truth and believing it.’” (Dei Verbum, No. 5).


For many if not most Catholics today, obedience to revealed truth seems difficult if not impossible. The idea of submitting one’s mind and will to another authority is viewed as repugnant. And this largely because, as Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand reminds us, “The egocentric sovereignty that modern man arrogates to himself bans everything that has the character of coming from above, of imposing bonds upon us, and of calling for an adequate response. Modern man also shuns all the factors in life which are gifts, which he cannot grant to himself: they remind him of his dependence upon something greater than himself and above himself. Thus truth in its implacable sovereignty – absolute truth that judges our reason instead of being judged by it – is denied.” (The New Tower of Babel: Modern Man’s Flight from God, p. 19).

This is most unfortunate for St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us that, after the virtue of religion, obedience is the most perfect of all the moral virtues. And this because the virtue of obedience unites us more closely to God than any of the other virtues, insofar as it detaches us from our own will. For the main obstacle to union with God is self-will.

Obedience unites us to God and enables us to share habitually in His life. Obedience subordinates our will directly to the will of God and, as a consequence, all of our other faculties since these are subordinated to our will.

When we offer our wills as a sacrifice to God through obedience, we enter into communion with God, since we no longer have any other will but God's will. Only then can we make the words of Jesus in His agony our own words: "Not my will, but thine be done." This conformity of our will to the Divine will becomes one with charity. As St. Thomas reminds us, love effects primarily a union of wills.

This is the teaching of St. John, the beloved Apostle. After teaching us that he who claims to love God and keeps not His commandments is a liar, the Apostle declares: "But he that keepeth his word, in him in very deed the charity of God is perfected; and by this we know that we are in him" (1 John 2:5). This is the teaching of Jesus Himself, Who tells us that to keep His commandments is to love Him: "If you love me, keep my commandments" (John 14:15).

True obedience is, in reality, a genuine act of love. And this genuine love, this genuine conformity to the Divine will, purifies us from sin. Moreover, this conformity to the Divine will is what works out our reformation. It is, after all, the disordered love of pleasure - to which we yield through either weakness or malice - which has deformed us.

Happily, as we strive to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5: 48), we have a most perfect model of faith, hope and charity in the Blessed Virgin Mary. Mary is all holy. Her earthly life was characterized by perfect harmony with the person and redeeming work of her Son. Pope John Paul II reminded us that, “The Council urged the faithful to look to Mary so that they may imitate her ‘virginally integral’ faith, hope and charity. To preserve the integrity of faith is a demanding task for the Church, which is called to constant vigilance even at the cost of sacrifice and struggle. The Church’s faith is not only threatened by those who reject the Gospel message, but especially by those who, in accepting only part of the revealed truth, refuse to share fully in the entire patrimony of the faith of Christ’s bride. Unfortunately, this temptation, which we find from the Church’s beginning, continues to be present in her life, urging her to accept revelation only in part, or to give the Word of God a limited, personal interpretation in conformity with the prevailing mentality and individual desires. Having fully adhered to the Word of the Lord, Mary represents for the Church an unsurpassable model of ‘virginally integral’ faith, for with docility and perseverance she accepts the revealed truth whole and entire…” (General Audience of August 20, 1997).

Mary accepted revealed truth whole and entire. She fully adhered in obedience to the Word of God. Shall we do any less?

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Saint Mary's Church in Seattle deserves better than Tricia Wittmann-Todd

Tricia Wittmann-Todd, the "pastoral life coordinator" who refused to circulate petitions in support of Referendum 74, the ballot measure to roll back Washington's same-sex "marriage" law, even though Archbishop J. Peter Sartain asked parishes throughout the Archdiocese of Seattle to do so, is at it again.  This time, in her weekly message to parishioners of St. Mary's Church in Seattle, Tricia is commenting on the sixth and seventh chapter of Acts to imply that same-sex unions are called for because of the demands of "justice." 

She writes, "This story is a good reminder that ours is a very long and complicated history, and that the Holy Spirit chooses to manifest Herself in first one and then another.  Certain things remain constant in our faith: worshipping God, care for the widows and orphans...and a radical equality for justice that includes all people all the time."

Note Ms. Wittmann-Todd's use of vertical inclusive language when referring to the Person of the Holy Spirit.  This even though the Vatican has made it clear that, "..in keeping with the Church's tradition, the feminine and neuter pronouns are not to be used to refer to the Person of the Holy Spirit." (See here).  Apparently Wittmann-Todd has a problem not only with her Archbishop's authority but with authority in the Church in general.  For this reason alone, her competence to serve in any capacity, even at the parish level, is in question.

In her weekly message, Wittmann-Todd writes, "Many have expressed concern and anger that Archbishop Sartain has been appointed to 'overhaul' the Leadership Conference of Women Religious...What will this mean for the countless women religious who have been and continue to be foundational for most of us in our spiritual lives.  They have taught us the faith in school and church..."

Some foundation.  We are witnessing its fruits in the United States today: emptying churches, seminaries and convents and a Church which needs to be re-evangelized, a mission territory where so many Catholics, like Wittmann-Todd herself, do not even understand the fundamentals of the faith.

If Wittmann-Todd had been given a solid foundation in the faith she would understand, as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith affirmed in its document entitled Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons, that "civil law cannot contradict right reason without losing its binding force on conscience.  Every humanly-created law is legitimate insofar as it is consistent with the natural moral law, recognized by right reason, and insofar as it respects the inalienable rights of every person." (No. 6).  Thus, "laws in favor of homosexual unions are contrary to right reason...the State could not grant legal standing to such unions without failing in its duty to promote and defend marriage as an institution essential to the common good." (No. 6).

Wittmann-Todd lacks a solid foundation in the Catholic faith.  For this reason, she should be removed immediately from her position as "pastoral life coordinator."  Faith, as defined by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is "..a personal act - the free response of the human person to the initiative of God who reveals himself" (CCC, 166).  Faith is a response to what has been divinely given.  In other words, a response to divine revelation.  Faith is not merely a subjective feeling which we work up within ourselves.  St. Thomas Aquinas says [Summa Theologiae II-II, I, 2, ad 2] that: "The believer's act [of faith] does not terminate in propositions, but in the realities which they express."

If Wittmann-Todd has difficulty accepting the Church's teaching, which is divinely revealed, and her authority, how can she faithfully serve a Catholic community?

Archbishop Sartain?

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Please join with America Needs Fatima in protesting this blasphemy

As New Advent Encyclopedia explains: "Blasphemy, by reason of the significance of the words with which it is expressed, may be of three kinds.

1.It is heretical when the insult to God involves a declaration that is against faith, as in the assertion: "God is cruel and unjust" or "The noblest work of man is God".

2.It is imprecatory when it would cry a malediction upon the Supreme Being as when one would say: "Away with God".

3.It is simply contumacious when it is wholly made up of contempt of, or indignation towards, God, as in the blasphemy of Julian the Apostate: "Thou has conquered, O Galilaean".

Again, blasphemy may be (1) either direct, as when the one blaspheming formally intends to dishonour the Divinity, or (2) indirect, as when without such intention blasphemous words are used with advertence to their import.

Blasphemy is a sin against the virtue of religion by which we render to God the honour due to Him as our first beginning and last end. St. Thomas says that it is to be regarded as a sin against faith inasmuch as by it we attribute to God that which does not belong to Him, or deny Him that which is His (II-II.13.1). De Lugo and others deny that this is an essential element in blasphemy (De just. et jure caeterisque virt. card., lib. II, c. xiv, disp. v, n. 26), but as Escobar (Theol. mor., lib. xxviii, c. xxxii, n. 716 sqq.) observes, the contention on this point concerns words only, since the followers of St. Thomas see in the contempt expressed in blasphemy the implication that God is contemptible--an implication in which all will allow there is attributed to God that which does not belong to Him. What is here said is of blasphemy in general; manifestly that form of the sin described above as heretical is not only opposed to the virtue of religion but that of faith as well. Blasphemy is of its whole nature (ex toto genere suo) a mortal sin, the gravest that may be committed against religion. The seriousness of an affront is proportioned to the dignity of the person towards whom it is directed. Since then the insult in blasphemy is offered to the ineffable majesty of God, the degree of its heinousness must be evident. Nevertheless because of slight or no advertence blasphemy may be either a venial sin only or no sin at all. Thus many expressions voiced in anger escape the enormity of a grave sin, except as is clear, when the anger is vented upon God. Again, in the case where blasphemous speech is uttered inadvertently, through force of habit, a grave sin is not committed as long as earnest resistance is made to the habit. If, however, no such effort is put forth there cannot but be grave guilt, though a mortal sin is not committed on the occasion of each and every blasphemous outburst. It has been said that heretical blasphemy besides a content directed against religion has that which is opposed to the virtue of faith. Similarly, imprecatory blasphemy is besides a violation of charity..."

America Needs Fatima is leading a protest against yet another pro-homosexual production which blasphemes against Christ.  See here.

Let us pray:
O Jesus, my Savior and Redeemer, Son of the living God, behold, we kneel before Thee and offer Thee our reparation; we would make amends for all the blasphemies uttered against Thy holy name, for all the injuries done to Thee in the Blessed Sacrament, for all the irreverence shown toward Thine immaculate Virgin Mother, for all the calumnies and slanders spoken against Thy spouse, the holy Catholic and Roman Church. O Jesus, who has said: "If you ask the Father anything in My name, He will give it to you," we pray and beseech Thee for all our brethren who are in danger of sin; shield them from every temptation to fall away from the true faith; save those who are even now standing on the brink of the abyss; to all of them give light and knowledge of the truth, courage and strength for the conflict with evil, perseverance in faith and active charity! For this do we pray, most merciful Jesus, in Thy name, unto God the Father, with whom Thou livest and reignest in the unity of the Holy Ghost world without end.

Amen.

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Has Cardinal Christoph Schönborn lost his faith and the ability to reason?

LifeSiteNews is reporting that the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Schönborn , received a letter from the Vatican demanding action, after ten months of "discussion" between the Cardinal and the dissent group calling itself the "Austrian Priests' Initiative."  The dissent group issued a manifesto last year demanding that the Church change her teachings on the ordination of women and married clergy and the reception of Communion by non-Catholics and divorced and remarried persons, and calling on their fellow clergy to disobey the Vatican.

LifeSiteNews is reporting that, "the Cardinal himself has also publicly called for the Church to acquiesce to the group's agenda" and has asserted that "the Church does need some reform."

Back in 2010, Cardinal Schönborn criticised the Church for what he characterised as its refusal to accept homosexual relations. Schönborn told the far-left UK Tablet magazine that the Church should also consider allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion since "many people don’t even marry at all any longer" and insisted that, "We should give more consideration to the quality of homosexual relationships. A stable relationship is certainly better than if someone chooses to be promiscuous." (See here).

The doctrines which have been revealed by the Lord Jesus, either directly or through His Church, are often truths beyond the power of reason to discover or comprehend.  In such cases, supernatural aid is required to accept these truths.  This supernatural aid is called the gift of faith.  Faith is a supernatural gift of God for the acquisition of truth in the supernatural order, just as reason is a natural gift of God for the acquisition of truth in the natural order.

Now, the natural law is perceptible and knowable by all men who have reached the age of reason.  Pope John Paul II, in his Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, No. 36, explains that, "Some people..disregarding the dependence of human reason on divine wisdom and the need, given the present state of fallen nature, for divine revelation as an effective means for knowing moral truths, even those of the natural order, have actually posited a complete sovereignty of reason in the domain of moral norms regarding the right ordering of life in this world.  Such norms would constitute the boundaries for a merely 'human' morality; they would be the expression of a law which has its source exclusively in human reason.  In no way could God be considered the Author of this law, except in the sense that human reason exercises its autonomy in setting down laws by virtue of a primordial and total mandate given to man by God.  These trends of thought have led to a denial, in opposition to Sacred Scripture (cf. Mt 15: 3-6) and the Church's constant teaching, of the fact that the natural moral law has God as its Author, and that man, by the use of reason, participates in the eternal law, which it is not for him to establish."
Cardinal Schönborn wants us to give "more consideration" to what he refers to as " the quality of homosexual relationships."  But the Holy Spirit, through St. Paul, explains why idolatrous peoples, such as the Romans, fall into unnatural vice.  We are told that:

"The wrath of God is indeed being revealed from heaven against every impiety and wickedness of those who suppress the truth by their wickedness.  For what can be known about God is evident to them.  Ever since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what He has made.  As a result, they have no excuse; for although they knew God they did not accord Him glory as God or give Him thanks." (Romans 1: 18-21).

The Holy Spirit tells us through the Apostle that the failure to recognize God leads to corruption of the will and a blinded intellect which, ultimately, leads to idolatry.  And God's punishment for this vanity is to abandon such people to the vice against nature:

"Instead, they became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless minds were darkened.  While claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for the likeness of an image of mortal man or of birds or of four-legged animals or of snakes.  Therefore, God handed them over to impurity through the lusts of their hearts for the mutual degradation of their bodies." (Romans 1: 21-24).

The Apostle, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is most clear and unambiguous.  He describes this mutual degradation while stressing its unnatural character:

"Their females exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the males likewise gave up natural relations with females and burned with lust for one another.  Males did shameful things with males and thus received in their own persons the due penalty for their perversity." (Romans 1: 26-27).

As a result of these unnatural relations, such people face horible consequences:

"They are filled with every form of wickedness, evil, greed, and malice; full of envy, murder, rivalry, treachery, and spite.  They are gossips and scandal-mongers and they hate God.  They are insolent, haughty, boastful, ingenious in their wickedness, and rebellious toward their parents.  They are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless." (Romans 1: 25; 28-31).

Finally, those who succumb to this unnatural vice not only become attached to it but attempt to justify it while applauding others who have fallen into the vice: "they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them." (Romans 1: 32).
Rather than challenging sinners to conform themselves to Christ and His Church and to work, with the help of God's grace, toward reforming themselves, Cardinal Schönborn wants the Church to "reform" [and here we are not speaking of legitimate reform - a growth in holiness and truth] by changing her teaching to accommodate those who dissent from the teaching of the Lord Jesus.

Has Cardinal Schönborn lost his faith and the ability to reason?  If not, why does he then request the Church to abandon her teaching and acquiesce to the demands of a group which has embraced dissent?  Why does he speak of unnatural relations as having "quality"? 

Truly, as I have been warning for years, and as Pope Benedict XVI recently said, darkness is descending upon the world.  And many can no longer distinguish between good and evil.

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Terence Weldon has lost his faith in Christ, His Church and her doctrines

Terence Weldon wants to introduce us to James Nickoloff, a confused and lost soul whom he refers to as a "gay Catholic theologian."  Weldon writes, "Dr James B Nickoloff is an openly gay, Catholic theologian, who unlike many others to whom that description applies, is working in an eminently respectable corner of the Catholic academy. He is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and also an adjunct professor at the Jesuit University of Santa Clara, California, where he held a Bannan Fellowship for 2008-2009. In June 2009, he delivered a lecture on his research at Santa Clara University for the academic year, 'Intrinsically Disordered”: Gay People and the Holiness of the Church.'


In his introduction to the lecture, he writes about himself: 'In the interest of full disclosure, let me make it clear that I write as a professional Catholic systematic theologian who is also a self-affirming gay man and legally married in Massachusetts.'

With such a clear, honest self-description, it is not surprising that he has come under attack from orthotoxic Catholic fundamentalists. For example, the Holy Cross Cardinal Newman Society posted an outraged reaction to his participation in a Rainbow Alliance Week forum, at which he is alleged to have spread 'confusion' and undermined Church teaching, displaying as evidence [a] flyer he distributed at the meeting. Yet every item on the flyer is taken from completely orthodox Catholic documents: from the Vatican, from the USCCB, or from diocesan offices. Now, how can one be said to be 'undermining' Church teaching by disseminating it?" (See here).

What Mr. Weldon won't tell you, being the ardent propagandist that he is, is that James Nickoloff is not interested in "full disclosure" when it comes to his background.  We learn here that: "Prof. James Nickoloff, of the Religious Studies department, is a former Jesuit priest who told a student group in November that he was personally engaged in homosexuality and 'married' in the state of Massachusetts to another man. He implied the sanction of the Catholic Church as he also identified himself as a professor of religious studies at a Catholic college. This act undermines the efforts of the Church to counsel and serve those with homosexual inclinations and to help them find happiness and fulfillment in Christ through chastity or in a lifestyle not destructive to both their bodies and souls."

When communicating with others, we all have certain responsibilities.  For example, we all have a responsibility to submit ourselves to truth when communicating.  Dr. Germain Grisez explains that, “As creatures, human persons are utterly dependent on God.  Their freedom and action presuppose realities whose meaning and value cannot be changed.  Therefore, human fulfillment requires knowing and conforming to the truth, and especially to the truth about what is good.  But since genuine community is cooperation in seeking common fulfillment, it depends on submission to truth.  Consequently, since all parties to communication should be open to genuine community, they should submit themselves to truth.  The alternative is pursuing what they want regardless of truth, caring about no common good beyond themselves, and so, while using means of communication, failing to promote genuine community.”

Terence Weldon is not interested in genuine community.  If he were, he would be honest in his communications.  He is not interested in submitting himself to the demands of truth.  Weldon is a manipulator who trusts in himself alone.  But Cardinal Newman, prophet of our times, warns us not to follow ourselves in matters of faith and morals, but Christ and His Church. He writes, “Be our mind as heavenly as it may be, most loving, most holy, most zealous, most energetic, most peaceful, yet if we look off from Him [Christ and His Church] for a moment, and look towards ourselves, at once those excellent tempers fall into some extreme or mistake. Charity becomes over-easiness; holiness is tainted with pride; zeal degenerates into fierceness; activity eats up the spirit of prayer; hope is heightened into presumption. We cannot guide ourselves. God’s revealed word is our sovereign rule of conduct; and, therefore among other reasons, is faith so principal a grace, for it is the directing power which receives the commands of Christ, and applies them to the heart.”


Terence Weldon is a modernist. He has lost his faith in Christ, His Church and her doctrines, even if he cannot steel himself to admit this.  And because he has lost his faith, he is anxious to rob others of theirs.  Misery loves company. Pray for him.

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Who has really gone "well over the line," Rick Santorum or Barack Obama?

Former White House Press Secretary and current campaign adviser Robert Gibbs is alleging that GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum went "well over the line" when he questioned Obama's Christian values.  Gibbs told ABC's "This Week" that it's time to get rid of this mindset in our politics that, if we disagree, we have to question character and faith."  See here.

If Robert Gibbs really believes that Rick Santorum went "well over the line" by merely questioning Obama's so-called "Christian virtues," he must then concede that Barack Obama obliterated that line when he said that Christians, Jews, Muslims and others who are opposed to homosexuality on moral grounds are clinging to "worn arguments and old attitudes." See here.

Where was Mr. Gibbs when Barack Obama said, "You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them.."  If we are not supposed to question character or faith, why was Mr. Obama questioning the character and faith of average Americans who live in "a lot of small towns in the Midwest"?

I've noted before at this Blog that Barack Obama imposes a standard on others which he refuses to live up to himself.  See here.  And it would seem that Robert Gibbs would also hold others to a higher standard than he expects from his boss.  Mr. Gibbs should reflect very carefully on what the philosopher Plato had to say in Book I of his Laws (635a): "We invite you to criticize our institutions without reserve. One is not insulted by being informed of something amiss, but rather gets an opportunity for amendment, if the information is taken in good part, without resentment."

In the meantime, I would like an explanation as to how Barack Obama may be considered a Christian when he has rejected the teaching of Sacred Scripture.  I would really like to hear Mr. Gibbs' explain that one.  I just love creative fiction.

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The Worcester Diocesan Commission for Women: Replacing Faith with Opinion in the Pursuit of a Self-Made Church

In his book "Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today," then Cardinal Ratzinger and now Pope Benedict XVI, writing about futile reform and the "naive arrogance of the self-appointed enlightener who is convinced that previous generations did not get it right, or else were too fearful and unilluminated," explains the thinking of such deluded souls: "It thus appears [for these adolescent Catholics] as the most normal thing in the world to make up for lost time, which means first establishing once and for all this basic patrimony of structures of freedom [elaborated by the Enlightenment].  We must move - it is maintained - from the paternalistic Church to the community Church; no one must any longer remain a passive receiver of the gift of Christian existence.  Rather, all should be active agents of it.  The Church must no longer be fitted over us from above like a ready-made garment; no, we 'make' the Church ourselves, and do so in constantly new ways.  It thus finally becomes 'our' Church, for which we are actively responsible.  The Church arises out of discussion, compromise and resolution.  Debate brings out what can still be asked of people today, what can still be considered by common consent as faith or as ethical norms.  New short formulas of faith are composed...

But questions immediately arise concerning this work of reform, which in place of all hierarchical tutelage will at long last introduce democratic self-determination into the Church.  Who actually has the right to make decisions?  What is the basis of the decision-making process?  In a political democracy the answer to this question is the system of representation: individuals elect their representative, who makes decisions on their behalf.  This commission has a time limit, its mainlines of policy are clearly defined by the party system, and it embraces only those spheres of political action that are assigned to representative bodies by the constitution.

Questions remain even in regard to representation: the minority must submit to the majority, and this minority can be quite large.  Furthermore, there is no infallible guarantee that my elected representative actually does act and speak as I wish.  Once again, the victorious majority, seen from close up, can in no case consider itself entirely as the active subject of political events but must accept the decisions of others, at least in order not to jeopardize the system as a whole.

But there is a general question that is more relevant to our problem.  Everything that men can make can also be undone again by others.  Everything that has its origin in human likes can be disliked by others.  Everything that one majority decides upon can can be revoked by another majority.  A church based on human resolutions becomes a merely human church.  It is reduced to the level of the makeable, of the obvious, of opinion.  Opinion replaces faith.  And in fact, in the self-made formulas of faith with which I am acquainted, the meaning of the words 'I believe' never signifies anything beyond 'we opine.'  Ultimately, the self-made church savors of the 'self,' which always has a bitter taste to the other self and just as soon reveals its petty insignificance.  A self-made church is reduced to the empirical domain and thus, precisely as a dream, comes to nothing." (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today, pp. 136, 138-140).

These points are not understood by the Worcester [Massachusetts] Diocesan Commission for Women.  This commission continues to associate itself with well-known dissidents who promote women's ordination, homosexuality and lesbianism, and New Age spirituality.  As I noted in a previous post, the commission has invited Elizabeth Dreyer to be a guest speaker at its 2011 "Gather Us In" Conference.  Ms. Dreyer has publically demanded the ordination of women to the ministerial priesthood.

The commission has also touted Sister Jon Julie Sullivan [in photo].  See here.  Sister Sullivan was part of a group of several hundred dissidents who protested outside of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross on Good Friday back in 2002.  Sister Eileen Brady, a Sister of Mercy who was among the dissidents protesting that day, was quoted by The Boston Globe as having said, "There needs to be significant change [in the Church]. When the Church says you can't even dicuss the ordination of women, that's unjust.  And we stand for justice."  And Sister Sullivan was quoted as having said, "There aren't even words to tell you how many changes we need."  See here.

But is it the Church which must change?  Or something else?  As I've said so many times over the years, the very same intellectually and spiritually cramped adolescents who demand change in the Church fail to recognize that it is not the Church which needs to change but rather themselves.  Saint Paul exhorts us: "Put off the old man who is corrupted according to the desire of error, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind: and put on the new man, who according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth" (Eph. 4:22-24).


Some people seem incapable of grasping this truth.  And they are poorer for it.

Related reading here.

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Signs: Cardinal O'Malley to tell Pope Benedict XVI that Catholic Church in Ireland is on brink of collapse

It was Sister Lucia (of the Fatima apparitions) who said, "the Virgin knew that these times of diabolical disorientation were to come" and who wrote, "Let people say the Rosary every day. Our Lady stated that repeatedly in all her apparitions, as if to fortify us against these times of diabolical disorientation, so that we would not allow ourselves to be deceived by false doctrines...Unfortunately, the great majority of people are ignorant in religious matters and allow themselves to be led in any direction. Hence, the great responsibility of one who has the task of leading them....A diabolical disorientation is invading the world, deceiving souls! It must be resisted." When questioned on the content of the Third Secret of Fatima, Sister Lucia replied, "It's in the Gospel and in the Apocalypse, read them." She also confided to Father Fuentes that the Mother of God made her understand that "we are in the last times of the world."

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