The Holy Spirit is not the author of the confusion in the Catholic Church – so who is?

In his magnificent book The Devastated Vineyard (1973), Dietrich von Hildebrand warned against a false loyalty to the Church hierarchy in which Catholics uncritically accept every word and action of their bishop, while failing to acknowledge the harm that may be done to the Church by those words and actions:

A third false response, and perhaps the most dangerous one, would be to imagine that there is no destruction of the vineyard of the Lord, that it only seems so to us — our task as laymen is simply to adhere with complete loyalty to whatever our bishop says….

At the basis of this attitude is a false idea of loyalty to the hierarchy. When the pope speaks ex cathedra on faith or morals, then unconditional acceptance and submission is required of every Catholic.

But it is false to extend this loyalty to encyclicals in which new theses are proposed.

This is not to deny that the magisterium of the Church extends much farther than the dogmas. If an encyclical deals with a question of faith or morals and is based on the tradition of the holy Church — that is, expresses something which the Church has always taught — then we should humbly accept its teaching.

This is the case with the encyclical Humanae Vitae: although we do not have here the strict infallibility of a defined dogma, the content of the encyclical nevertheless belongs to that sphere of the Church’s magisterium which we must accept as true.

But there are many encyclicals which deal with very different (e.g., sociological) questions and which express a response of the Church to certain new conditions. Thus the encyclical of the great Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, with its idea of a corporate state, differs on sociological questions with encyclicals of Paul VI. But when it is a question of practical ordinances such as concordats, or the suppression of the Jesuit order by Pope Clement XIV, or the introduction of the new missal, or the rearrangement of the Church calendar, or the new rubrics for the liturgy, then our obedience (as Vatican I declares), but by no means our agreement, is required….

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“Reverse Inquisition” can rid Church of Apostate Priests, Antichrist Bishops and Popes

At the Vatican’s Good Friday Liturgy, 2002, the Preacher to the Papal Household, Capuchin Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, said the other religions “are not merely tolerated by God …. but positively willed by Him as an expression of the inexhaustible richness of His grace and His will for everyone to be saved.”

This, in short, is apostasy. 

St. John, the Apostle of Love, said: “Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is Antichrist who denies the Father and the Son” (1 John 1: 22). Thus, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, any religion that rejects Christ, according to Scripture, is an Antichrist religion.

Regarding heretical religions, for example, “Orthodoxy” and Protestantism, St. Paul tells us that false creeds are the “doctrines of devils” (1 Tim. 4: 1).

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Editor’s note: By almost every account, much of what officially passes for Roman Catholicism today, is just another form of heretical, Neo-Protestant Christianity.

Catholic teaching is in shambles. Catholic unity is a myth. Catholic leadership is so weak and ineffective as to be laughable, if the matter wasn’t actually so deadly serious.

Our pope thinks he’s Barack Obama, many of our bishops think they’re Senator Harry Reed, and the few Catholics still remaining in the pews really don’t know what to think!

The people running the Catholic Church today are teaching things that are radically different and often totally opposed to the truths which were handed down to us by Jesus and the Apostles, while paying out multi-BILLIONS of dollars (of our money) in clerical abuse settlements and legal fees.

Divine truth and Catholic morality doesn’t change, so exactly what in the HELL has been going on for lo these many years?

Think: “Reverse Inquisition”

The question is no longer simply whether or not the 2nd Vatican Council was legitimate. Everything that has happened in the aftermath of that council, every church teaching that was “reformulated” during that time and everyone who subsequently rose to power in the post-counciliar church must now be subjected to the closest scrutiny – by the laity. 

Faithful Catholic lay persons can rely on the power of constant, fervent prayer, combined with the power of the purse to bring about the necessary “reform of the reform”. But until such a concerted effort actually comes together, don’t expect much.

Australian Church Scandal Revelations: Unspeakably evil, incredibly incompetent – or both!

Look who’s smiling!

SENIOR Catholic Church leaders protected pedophiles, allowed them to keep offending and kept Victorians in the dark about the problem.

A Victorian parliamentary report is scathing of the church’s leadership prior to the 1990s, saying child abuse was trivialised and their protection of pedophiles meant abuse happened when it could have been avoided.

Archbishop Denis Hart apologised to victims and said previous responses to abuse cases were inexcusable, calling it the worst betrayal of his lifetime in the church.

“I fully acknowledge that leaders in the church made mistakes – these are indefensible,” he told reporters.

“I have to accept that church leaders in the past concealed crimes and caused other children to be offended against.”

The report gives specific examples in which former Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns and former Melbourne Archbishop Frank Little moved known sexual offenders between parishes without reporting them to police.

Link

Editor’s note: In which Vatican II document is this particular subject addressed? In which Pagan temple, Jewish synagogue or Muslim mosque was Pope John Paul II hanging out, when all of this this was occurring?

This is just another in a long string of colossal moral failures, of epic proportions, by the post-Vatican II Catholic Church, for which there is no acceptable excuse. It must be most embarrassing for the hierarchy – especially Australian Cardinal Pell. No wonder the Pope doesn’t want to “obsess” about it!

More details 

The Holy Spirit is not the author of the confusion in the Catholic Church – so who is?

In his magnificent book The Devastated Vineyard (1973), Dietrich von Hildebrand warned against a false loyalty to the Church hierarchy in which Catholics uncritically accept every word and action of their bishop, while failing to acknowledge the harm that may be done to the Church by those words and actions:

A third false response, and perhaps the most dangerous one, would be to imagine that there is no destruction of the vineyard of the Lord, that it only seems so to us — our task as laymen is simply to adhere with complete loyalty to whatever our bishop says….

At the basis of this attitude is a false idea of loyalty to the hierarchy. When the pope speaks ex cathedra on faith or morals, then unconditional acceptance and submission is required of every Catholic. But it is false to extend this loyalty to encyclicals in which new theses are proposed. This is not to deny that the magisterium of the Church extends much farther than the dogmas. If an encyclical deals with a question of faith or morals and is based on the tradition of the holy Church — that is, expresses something which the Church has always taught — then we should humbly accept its teaching. This is the case with the encyclical Humanae Vitae: although we do not have here the strict infallibility of a defined dogma, the content of the encyclical nevertheless belongs to that sphere of the Church’s magisterium which we must accept as true.

But there are many encyclicals which deal with very different (e.g., sociological) questions and which express a response of the Church to certain new conditions. Thus the encyclical of the great Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, with its idea of a corporate state, differs on sociological questions with encyclicals of Paul VI. But when it is a question of practical ordinances such as concordats, or the suppression of the Jesuit order by Pope Clement XIV, or the introduction of the new missal, or the rearrangement of the Church calendar, or the new rubrics for the liturgy, then our obedience (as Vatican I declares), but by no means our agreement, is required….

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Maybe the Vatican newspaper was right when it said that militant homosexuality was as big a threat to society as communism.

This past summer I wrote about a very serious problem in the Catholic Church that is still far from having been resolved.

That is, there are still very many actively homosexual and homosexual friendly clergy (from the lowest ranks to cardinals), religious and staff in numerous Church related offices and organizations in the developed World and in other nations such as Columbia. These people of the 50s and 60s revolution in the Church, some heavily influenced by Marxist thought, have played and are still playing a large role in most of the dreadful corruptions and dissent that have been plaguing the Church these past 50 or more years.

This was brought to mind again by Tuesday’s report on the Archbishop of Westminster’s long overdue decision to rescind permission for the notorious pro-homosexual Soho masses.

Whether this ends the scandal of this group continuing to use the Catholic Church and its sacraments to gain credibility for their anti-Christian morality and social engineering agenda remains to be seen. However, it does publicize what is a common, still on-going scandal in far too many Catholic dioceses in especially the developed world and which has gradually been exported to developing nations.

The scandal is that many bishops have been refusing to use their authority to take action against these decades’ long, in-your-face challenges to Catholic moral principles, despite constant appeals and complaints, with much solid evidence given by faithful Catholics. The groups have seemed to be untouchable, despite their blatant dissent, although there has been some progress.

Link

Cardinal Zen: “We cannot renounce the principles of our faith and our basic ecclesiastical discipline, just to please the Beijing government.”

Cardinal Zen—who has been the leading voice of Catholicism in opposition to China’s efforts to control the Church—says that mixed signals from the Vatican are partly responsible for the fact that many bishops who profess loyalty to Rome participated in an illicit ordination of a government-backed bishop in November, and in the election of new leaders for the Catholic Patriotic Association: a group which Pope Benedict has denounced as divisive. The cardinal said that in the absence of clear guidance from Rome, many Chinese bishops are apt to follow commands from Beijing.

“Our bishops needed some supply of courage,” Cardinal Zen says, referring to the hierarchy in China. “But instead they received much misplaced compassion, which pushed them deeper and deeper into the mire of slavish subjection.”

Link

Michael Voris of Real Catholic TV: It’s time for the laity to step up, demand an end to the corruption, and restore the faded glory of the Catholic Church.

Michael Voris is a Catholic Man with a Mission.

by Doug Lawrence

Five days each week, Michael Voris, S.T.B. delivers “The Vortex” … a professionally produced, 4-6 minute video to thousands of active, faithful, and committed Catholics, all around the world. (A feat that the Vatican probably wishes it might be able to accomplish, some day.)

Strangely, his organization (St. Michael’s Media/Real Catholic TV) is strictly a “guerrilla” operation, based in the suburbs of Detroit, with only a small (but dedicated) expert staff, running on the proverbial “shoestring” budget, and not affiliated with any particular Catholic parish or diocese.

Nor is Mr. Voris a deacon, priest, or bishop. He’s just a mere layman … which is also somewhat unusual for high-profile Catholic speakers.

Well educated in the Catholic faith, the letters “S.T.B.” after his name refer to the degree in theology that he earned from the prestigious Sacred Heart Major Seminary/Angelicum, in Rome – Sacred Theology Baccalaureate.

Mr. Voris admits to being a “revert” (a previously fallen away Catholic, who has since chosen to “come back” to the church). He’s also known as a nice guy … showing up on time, being respectful, kind, courteous, honest, faithful, charitable, long-suffering and humble. Plus … he works hard … and he has “guts”. (Just like a lot of other good Catholics I know.)

Perhaps most notably … Michael Voris has a reputation for being absolutely intolerant of corruption … both within and without the Catholic church … and he’s not ashamed to talk about it. For a good example some of his feelings on this matter, click here (PDF file).

Recently addressing an eclectic group of more than one hundred Chicago area Catholics (who each paid $40 to attend) Mr. Voris pulled no punches, speaking with evident disdain about certain Catholic bishops … whom he described as faithless and cowardly … and still others … as simply corrupt. To be fair … he also delivered a few well chosen “attaboys” and similar kudos.

Appealing primarily to Catholics of the more conservative, traditional persuasion … home-schoolers, pro-lifers, Latin Mass aficionados, and the “over 40” crowd … Michael has little good to say about the aftermath of the 2nd Vatican Council, or about the superabundance of “bad fruit” which proceeded directly in its wake … applying the terms “liberal” and “progressive” to wayward church prelates, along with their stubbornly entrenched staffers, policies, and politics.

Nor is he afraid to name names, when that’s necessary to make a point. He also does a very good impression of the late, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin!

Asked how today’s Catholics are supposed to help turn things around, Mr. Voris had several suggestions:

1) Vote with your feet. And be sure to take your collection money with you, when you go! Don’t hang around at parishes that consistently fail to offer licit, reverent, authentically Catholic Masses and Sacraments, that fail to teach the authentic Catholic faith, or that obsess over popular, liberal, “social justice” issues … rather than concentrating on the traditional work, worship, sacraments and devotions of the ancient church.  There are still plenty of other good, solid, truly Catholic parishes. Take a look around.

2) Learn the authentic Catholic faith, and at the same time, learn to instantly recognize the heresies and abuses that are so rampant in today’s church … by embarking on a regular, personal faith study, using widely available and generally free, authentically Catholic internet resources. For an extensive list of Catholic resources, along with links to more than 50 good Catholic internet sites, click here.

Of course, there’s much, much more. For that, I suggest you try to attend one of Michael Voris’ speaking events, or simply point your web browser to www.RealCatholicTV.com.

Read more about last Sunday’s event