AS She Navigates the Storms of the Present Times...

I devoted an entire chapter in my book to the demise of Catholic Education after Vatican II, and was heartened to learn of the Apostolic Nuncio's views of late:

Apostolic Nuncio to USCCB: Time to Regain Catholic Identity in Catholic Schools

BALTIMORE - Catholic schools need to renew the Catholic identity of their past for the New Evangelization.

That was the message of Abp. Carlo Maria Viganò, apostolic nuncio to the United States, speaking to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) at their annual fall meeting on Monday.

He started by reminding the bishops of the primary means of growth for the Catholic Church in America according to its earliest leaders: education. The Faith spread in the United States "through the building of parishes with their own schools, together with the dedicated support of women religious."

"These schools became fortresses of solid Catholic formation for all those young people who would take their place in America's future," noted Abp. Viganò, who reserved special praise for the Jesuits. Perhaps surprising now, Viganò recalled that "it was this Order ... that was meant to build up and preserve genuine Catholic teaching to be infused into the culture of America's young society."

According to America's apostolic nuncio, Catholic schools attached to their own parishes were supposed to be the way families would come to their own "identity, meaning and nourishment" in a world of rapid change. "Education," he said, "was primary in the bishops' minds; it was an essential means for the Gospel message to be woven into the very fabric of our people's existence."

And thus, the path for America would follow the path of evangelization the Church had always relied upon to spread the Good News of Christ.

With the past laid out, Abp. Viganò then shifted his focus to the present.

"We are all well aware," he said, "that we are at a critical point now in the challenges that are brought to family life in our western world." Further, he explained that faithful Catholic families are where children really begin learning. In other words, he pointed out, good parents are "the best of teachers."

"They form a domestic Church," he said, "and they prepare their children for education in our Catholic schools on every level, from primary through University stages."

Archbishop Viganò believes the highly touted New Evangelization needs to take this route of having an emphasis on education — education in both schools and in the family. However, he is careful to add that its success "will exist only in proportion to its Catholic identity."

"If we are to preserve a moral order in our society," he insisted, "we cannot fall prey to the enticements and allurements of a secularized and increasingly pagan civilization."

Bishops, as shepherds, "have a tremendous obligation to watch over and protect families, and parishes and schools for the good of the people," Abp. Viganò reminded his fellow Church leaders. Therefore, he pointed to Pope St. Gregory the Great's rule against remaining silent — for "fear [of] losing the favor of men" — whenever errors are being taught under one's watch.

"Catholic colleges and universities, renowned for the professional formation of their students, should be encouraged to be faithful to the title of 'Catholic' that they bear," urged Viganò. Specifically, he called out the Jesuits, who have earned a bad reputation among orthodox Catholics as bastions of dissent from Church doctrine. Viganò hopes "that, with respect to their great tradition, after the example of our Holy Father, they would take again the lead in re-affirming the Catholic identity of their educational institutions."

"The course must always be set by Christ and His Church, never allowing influence and wealth to dictate what might be an improper orientation for a Catholic school or university," Viganò concluded, in words of advice to the Church as it navigates through "the storms of the present times."

Also of note is that before Abp. Viganò's address, he received two standing ovations from the U.S. bishops in attendance, largely for his unapologetic willingness to help Kim Davis, the Kentucky marriage clerk who went to jail for resisting same-sex "marriage." Mainstream media outlets pounced on Viganò after finding out he put together the private meeting between Davis and Pope Francis. Pro-LGBT activists were so outraged by Viganò's plan that they even petitioned the Holy Father to fire Viganò as papal nuncio.

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Neomodernism's Attack on Religious Life- (continued).

Who’s that on page 180 of that book? This is Sister Mary Benjamin, IHM. Sister Mary Benjamin got involved with us in the summer of ‘66, and became the victim of a lesbian seduction. An older nun in the group, “freeing herself to he more expressive of who she really was internally,” decided that she wanted to make love with Sister Mary Benjamin. Well, Sister Mary Benjamin engaged in this; and then she was stricken with guilt, and wondered, to quote from her book, “Was I doing something wrong, was I doing something terrible? I talked to a priest—” Unfortunately, we had talked to him first. “I talked to a priest,” she says, “who refused to pass judgment on my actions. He said it was up to me to decide if they were right or wrong. He opened a door, and I walked through the door, realizing I was on my own.” This is her liberation? How excited they were, to be delivering someone into God’s hands! Well, instead they delivered her into the hands of nondirective psychology. ...

Satan makes his way to us through the libido!

Let us take a great civilization historically devoid of pornography, and examine what happens once the door is opened a crack, for smoke to enter:

"The Spirit of Vatican II"

My advice to one confronted with doubt sown by those who make reference to “correct interpretations of Vatican II” is to reflect closely upon the words of John Paul II: With the Council, the Church first had an experience of faith, as she abandoned herself to God without reserve, as one who trusts and is certain of being loved. It is precisely this act of abandonment to God which stands out from an objective examination of the Acts. Anyone who wished to approach the Council without considering this interpretive key would be unable to penetrate its depths. Only from a faith perspective can we see the Council event as a gift whose still hidden wealth we must know how to mine . In short, it is this abandonment, this interpretive faith perspective that is woefully lacking in many who would offer to explain what the Council taught in “the spirit of Vatican II.” Watch here to see what abandonment looks like!

From "The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God"

….At the close of Vatican II, Pope Paul VI remarked that Christianity, the religion of God-Incarnate, had encountered the religion of man-made God. He was of the opinion that much of the Council was given over to demonstrating the compatibility of Enlightenment belief with Catholicism. Several years hence, on June 29, 1972, Paul delivered another assessment of the state of the Roman Catholic Church since the close of Vatican II. As Cardinal Silvio Oddi recalled it (in an article first published on March 17, 1990, in Il Sabato magazine in Rome) the Holy Father told a congregation: We have the impression that through some cracks in the wall the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God: it is doubt, uncertainty, questioning, dissatisfaction, confrontation. And how did this come about? We will confide to you the thought that may be, we ourselves admit in free discussion, that may be unfounded, and that is that there has been a power, an adversary power. Let us call him by his name: the...

Do Not Be Ashamed

T he demeaning and of Pope Benedict is quickening in combination with the growing exaltation of Pope Francis in the secular world and among the "progressive" dissidents within the Church. Thus I believe a little review of his Pontificate is in order, as the signs of the times required him to shoulder a heavy cross and suffer a quiet type of crucifixion due to his exceptional faith and courageous writings and actions. Pope Benedict took strong, long overdue and very necessary actions against moral corruption within the clergy, the religious orders and within Catholic aid agencies. He appointed many bishops faithful to the true Vatican II, and removed many who were a cause of scandal to the Church. He took actions on the liturgy and other issues that were not popular, but which he saw as essential to preserving Catholicism and Christian culture much as laid down in his The Spirit of the Liturgy. The full story of his papacy remains to be told. “And blessed is he who ...

My Intended Audience

I have written for those Catholics born and perhaps catechized before Vatican II or immediately thereafter who as yet are unaware of the true teaching of the Council. It should not surprise the reader that there are Catholics whose lifestyles do not differentiate them all that much from those who are not Catholic and/or Christian. Moreover, many Catholics of the “baby-boom” generation are alienated from the Church all together because their only exposure has been to a superficial, cultural Catholicism, impotent in the face of an American culture increasingly without faith. Conversely, many others have left the Church – hungrier, as they say, for a more “biblically-based church.” The book is also intended for young people of the “JP II” generation of Catholics, born long after the council but perhaps not fully aware of the turmoil spawned by dissent in the Church which, though on the wane, is still with us today. These young people, especially those in authentically Catholic college...

Popes are not Presidents...

John Allen of the Globe has opined today that there are two key words that capture why many church officials believe it’s so important to avoid what they regard as false expectations of swift change to the church’s ban on divorced and remarried Catholics receiving communion and the other sacraments: Humanae Vitae, Paul VI's 1968 document reasserting the church’s traditional ban on birth control. It rocked the world, Allen writes, "in part because the reforming energies of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) had led people to suspect change was just around the corner, in part because the pope himself had created a commission to study the issue." The o utcome of the Pope’s evential reassertion of the ban “soured public opinion on Pope Paul, in some ways inflicting a blow from which his papacy never really recovered. ” On matters related to marriage and the family, the Church has always seen the fertility of the husband and wife as a gift from God and the end ( telos...

On Marriage

Marriage comes to us from nature. In Catholic teaching Jesus sanctifies marriage as a sacrament for the baptized, giving it significance beyond its natural reality. Traditionally the state has safeguarded marriage because it is indispensable to family and thus to the common good of society. But neither Church nor State instituted marriage, and neither can change its nature. God created two mutually complementary sexes, able to transmit life through marital union. Consummated sexual intercourse between a man and a woman is ideally based on mutual love and must always be based on mutual consent, if they are genuinely human actions. No matter how strong a friendship or deep a love between persons of the same sex might be, it is physically impossible for two men, or two women, to consummate a marital union. (In civil law, non-consummation of a marriage constitutes grounds for annulment). It is easy to see that sexual intercourse between a man and a w...

On Sole Fide, Sola Gratia, Sola Scriptura

Haven't been blogging for awhile, as I am still recovering from a bout with my annual attack of bronchitis.... In this day and age of half-truths, spin-meistering, and dis-ingenuousness, I am always heartened by intellectual honesty, hence, I am glad to pass on this article in which a separated brother recounts how relying on Scripture alone for one's life as a disciple is never enough. The debate on the necessary means of salvation (the bible, faith, grace) is not, as it often seems between Protestants and Catholics, an "either-or" matter, but a "both-and...."

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