From: The Smoke of Satan...

Actor Mel Gibson, when filming his now classic The Passion of the Christ, was interviewed on the set by Time (January 27, 2003). For Gibson, Vatican II "corrupted the institution of the Church. Look at the main fruits: dwindling numbers and pedophilia." Gibson misrepresents the moral crisis facing the Church, which is not “pedophilia” but stems from an inordinate amount of active homosexuals as ordained priests and some inattentive bishops who have run interference for them, all the consequences of a failure to uphold and live the Church’s sexual moral teaching. Accolades to Gibson are in order, though, for his perception of Catholic demographics. The chart which follows gives us the tip of the iceberg (the underwater portion is the subject of the remainder of the book) regarding a few indicators since 1965:

	1965	Today
Priests	58,000 (doubled from 1930-65)	45,000; projection for 2020 is 31,000
Ordinations	1,575	450
Priestless Parishes	1 percent	15 percent
Seminarians	600	200
Sisters	180,000	75,00 (Average age of 68)
Catholic High School Enrollment	700,000	386,000
Catholic Elementary Enrollment	4.5 million	Less than 2 million
Attendance at Mass	3 out of 4	1 out of 4

An interesting contrasting view to Gibson’s is Temple University professor and Hans Kung protégé Leonard Swidler’s in his introduction to The Church in Anguish: Has the Vatican Betrayed Vatican II? Swidler writes of:

….the anguish engendered in the Catholic church during the past decade through what appears to many Catholics, and non-Catholics, as an attempt by the present leadership in the Vatican to reverse the momentous gains in maturity that were made at the Second Vatican Council (1961-65)....Vatican II was clearly a peak experience. Today we seem to be going through “the valley of the shadow..."

Neither Mssrs. Gibson (who in common parlance is a “traditional” Catholic) nor Swidler have it just right. Mr. Gibson’s “dwindling numbers and pedophilia” are not the fruits of the actual reforms set down in the Documents of Vatican II any more than is Professor Swidler’s claim of “momentous gains in maturity” prior to 1978. The evidence reveals that the true fruits of Vatican Council II are only today beginning to be realized in each of the four main areas addressed by the Council documents, which brings to mind one final assessment of the Council’s fruits I discovered which, when I began understand why it was offered, inspired me to write the Smoke of Satan.....

Comments

This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News

DANCING WITH MR. D: This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News : 'via Blog this'

Thou Shall Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbor

Tucker Carlson: The Biden Scandal Is Real And Not Going Away Posted By Ian Schwartz On Date October 30, 2020 TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: It's been obvious for decades now that the Biden family has gotten rich from selling influence abroad. Joe Biden held a series of high level jobs in the U.S. government. Based on that fact and that fact alone, Biden's son and brother approached foreign governments and companies, sovereign wealth funds, energy conglomerates, Third World oligarchs and dictators, and they offered to exchange favors from Joe Biden for cash. The polite term for that practice is influence-peddling. Sometimes it is legal under American law, sometimes it is not. But it has always been the economic engine of the Biden family. They've never done anything else. Until recently, no one debated this fact. Several liberal news organizations, in fact, have written detailed stories about the Biden secret business dealings over the years. Look them up, assuming you still c...

Adult happiness declines, while teen contentment grows - Try Jesus Christ!

Adult happiness declines, while teen contentment grows - TODAY.com

Neomodernism vs. Religious Life (conclusion)

That’s a credit to him, that he at least had pangs of conscience; whereas these other orders, like the Jesuits, even when they saw that the IHMs were almost extinct, nevertheless they invited the same team in. Oh, yes. Well, actually we started with the Jesuits before we started with the nuns. We did our first Jesuit workshop in ‘65. Rogers got two honorary doctorates from Jesuit universities…. A good book to read on this whole question is Fr. Joseph Becker’s The Re-FormedJesuits. It reviews the collapse of Jesuit training between 1965 and 1975. Jesuit formation virtually fell apart; and Father Becker knows the influence of the Rogerians pretty well. He cites a number of Jesuit novice masters who claimed that the authority for what they did—and didn’t do—was Carl Rogers. Later on when the Jesuits gave Rogers those honorary doctorates, I think that they wanted to credit him with his influence on the Jesuit way of life. But do you think there were any short-term beneficial...

Fr. Barron on Yves Congar and the Council

In my second chapter I recount Benedict XVI's recollections in The Ratzinger Report the origins of the journal Communio, also mentioned by Fr. Mark Barron of Catholicism fame in t his look at the role played by Fr.Yves Congar at the Second Vatican Council. ... For more on the division discussed in Fr. Barron's piece, plan on getting my book!

Bishops Bishoping!

As the nation’s courts increasingly strike down popularly-supported state bans on marriage between men who have sex with men, and women who have sex with women, bishops increasingly are “bishoping”, to coin a term I use often in my book; i.e., they are at long last defending the faith against the onslaught always sure to come from the secular culture. Diocesan Catholic schools in Cincinnati and Oakland, Calif., are weathering criticism for contracts that require teachers not only to witness to the faith in the classroom, but also in how they live their lives in the public square. Condemnation of Catholic-school contracts that ask teachers to not controvert the Church in public have received dramatized coverage from the secular media in California and Ohio, where a slight number of teachers are opposing the contractual language. A a teacher in a Catholic school it is heartening to see the dioceses in question standing their ground, emphasizing the dynamic role teachers ...

NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST: Time for Weeping

EPISTLE (I Cor. 10. 6-13.) Brethren, Let us not covet evil things, as they also coveted. Neither become ye idolaters, as some of them: as it is written: The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed fornication, and there fell in one day three and twenty thousand. Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them tempted, and perished by the serpents. Neither do you murmur, as some of them murmured, and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now all these things happened to them in figure, and they are written for our correction, upon whom the ends of the world are come. Wherefore he that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall. Let no temptation take hold on you, but such as is human: and God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able but will make also with temptation issue that you may be able to bear it. Can we sin by thought and desire? Yes, if we de...

Libido V

I think it helpful that, as I discuss in chapter 3 of my book that recent events corroborate Pope Paul VI's prophecy in Humanae Vitae as evidenced by this story...

On God's Gift of Sex

Having written an entire chapter on dissent from Humanae vitae in the U. S., it was heartening to read that nearly 50 years after this “prophetic” papal document, more than 500 Catholic scholars with doctoral degrees in theology, medicine, law and other fields have recently signed a document in support of Catholic teaching, titled “ Affirmation of the Catholic Church’s Teaching on the Gift of Sexuality.” Humanae vitae speaks against the distorted view of human sexuality and intimate relationships that many in the modern world endorse. The document was prophetic in predicting some of the evils that would result from widespread use of contraception. Dissent from Humanae vitae centers around the claim there are “no grounds” for Catholic teaching against contraception, questioning the idea that openness to procreation is inherent to the significance of sexual intercourse, and that the choice to use contraceptives for either family planning or prophylactic purposes can...

Post-Obergefell: Dutch woman to marry dog after cat-husband dies

Years go, when support for "same-sex marriage was 12% nationally, I would argue to my classes that it would never catch hold with a majority of the American people, as such a redefinition of marriage would not preclude one from marrying anyone one wanted- I used the example of marrying my pet turtles. No one took me seriously, though I wasnot far off the mark in this prediction, as evidenced in Dutch woman to marry dog after cat-husband dies - NY Daily News : 'via Blog this'

Search This Blog