Mass Confusion in the Body

I would like to share a reflection by Fr. Longenecker. Reflecting on his conversion to the Church some 13 years hence, he remarked:

Famous converts to the Church

"What I was not prepared for was to find two Churches within Holy Mother Church. These two churches are very difficult to identify and define because the two different groups cannot be separated according to outward criteria alone. It is too easy to divide these two groups according to ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’; ‘charismatic’ or ‘traditionalist’; ‘right wing’ or ‘left wing’. The two groups I am talking about exist within all these preferences. The two groups are distinguished not so much by what they do, the way they worship or the causes they espouse, but by their underlying understanding of just what the Catholic Church is for."

In writing my book on the Church after Vatican II, I ran across the following observation from a prominent Jesuit after the Council:

It is clear that the Church is facing a grave crisis. Under the name of 'the new Church,' 'the post-conciliar Church,' a different Church from that of Jesus Christ is now trying to establish itself; an anthropocentric society threatened with immanentist apostasy which is allowing itself to be swept along in a movement of general abdication under the pretext of renewal, ecumenism, or adaptation.

-Cardinal Henri de Lubac, S.J., Christian Witness (1967)

I spent 7 summers researching and writing about just how this schism in the Body of Christ came about from the perspective of one who is a cradle Catholic, and agree with Fr. Longenecker that many are in ignorance of "what the Church is for". To find out, the confused need only read the documents of Vatican II, or my synopsis.

Fr. added a succinct summary of catechetical teaching on the reason Jesus established his Church:

"[The Church] is about a supernatural transaction between God and mankind. It is the old, old story of a race fallen into sin, and a God who lowers himself to seek and to save that which is lost. Life, and especially the Christian life is about our search for the God who is searching for us. It is about stepping out on the adventure of faith to search for a city whose founder is God. It is about engaging in the war for our souls, and being determined never to sacrifice our eternal happiness in a search only for happiness in this life. Where this old story is preached and lived with dynamic discipline, hearty good humor and joyful abandon the faith will flourish. Where it is abandoned the faith will soon falter. It is vitally necessary within our catechesis, the formation of our children, the instruction of priests and the teaching of the whole church that we renew the foundations of our faith. If we do not there will soon be no faith left. If we do, the faith will flourish and we will build a church which will have the strength, the power and the glory to welcome home many more of her lost and wayward children."

I argue in my book that the gates of hell will never cease in the effort in "the war for our souls." We as the Body of Christ must never cease efforts to reverse the comtemporaryand search only for happiness in this life at the expense of our eternal happiness. To quote Ralph Martin, "Will Many be Saved?"

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'

Dancing with Mr. D: Gender Ideology

In a private conversation with Bishop Andreas Laun on January 30 as part of the Austrian bishops’ ad limina visit , Pope Francis strongly condemned “gender ideology.” In so doing he follows the example of Pope Benedict, who is on record as saying that gender ideology is “a negative trend for humankind,” and a “profound falsehood,” which “it is the duty of pastors of the Church” to put the faithful “on guard against.” Bishop Laun The Austrian bishop stated, “In response to my questioning, Pope Francis said, ‘Gender ideology is demonic!’” As I have chronicled on these pages, the Holy Father often refers to the work of the devil. Of gender ideology, Bishop Laun explained that “the core thesis of this sick product of reason is the end result of a radical feminism which the homosexual lobby has made its own.” “It asserts that there are not only Man and Woman, but also other ‘genders’. And furthermore: every person canchoose his or her gender,” he added. “Today,” he said, ...

Lord, I was dancing, dancing, dancing so free And dancing, dancing, dancing so free And dancing, Lord, keep your hand off me And dancing with Mr. D.,

Andy Cohen Gala Selfie In my thirty years as a Catholic educator, I have observed innumerable communal concerns displacing the reenactment of the saving passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Our Lord. Paul VI referred to an excessive concern with communal aspirations as the result of positivism, wherein God has become society, the ultimate reality. I would add that this particular crack through which Satan entered God’s Temple is an accurate explanation of the disregard for organic development in the liturgical reform of Vatican II. Thus as the Church began her aggiornamento , she presided over a disintegration of her most relevant instrument for presenting the truth of Jesus Christ to the modern world, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, now at the mercy of liturgical commissions wishing to make the liturgy more “pastoral.” Let us also remember Paul VI’s teaching that Satan is always seen as active where the spirit of the Gospel is watered down, as in the reformers’e...

Not Everybody Knows

I n the book I noted that a grave moral crisis facing the Church, of which the public is misinformed, is not a "pedophile priest" crisis, but a crisis which 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. For the doubting Thomases out there, please read Rod Dreher's recent piece.

Read the Documents!

The third reflection in the series on why Catholics must know the real Vatican Council II: 3) “The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services” ( Sacrosanctum Concilium , #116). Here's why.

Libido Redux: Apple Employees Fired For Stealing Nude Pics From Female Customers' Phones

Apple Employees Fired For Stealing Nude Pics From Female Customers' Phones : 'via Blog this' And it doesn't stop here. See here .

Bishops Bishoping!

I view of the Federal Disctict Judge's ruling on same-sex "marriage" in Michigan, and the Circuit Court's stay : Marriage is and can only ever be a unique relationship solely between one man and one woman, regardless of the decision of a judge or future electoral vote. Nature itself, not society, religion or government, created marriage. Nature, the very essence of humanity as understood through historical experience and reason, is the arbiter of marriage, and we uphold this truth for the sake of the common good. The biological realities of male and female and the complementarity they each bring to marriage uniquely allows for the procreation of children. Every child has the right to both a mother and a father and, indeed, every child does have lineage to both. We recognize not every child has the opportunity to grow in this environment, and we pray for those single mothers and fathers who labor each day to care for their children at times amid great challe...

Rolling Stone Gathers Pope Francis

Final thoughts on the Rolling Stone feature on Pope Francis… The article attempts to show Francis’ break from the supposedly “conservative” Church of old, in the process remaking Pope Francis as the hero of the liberal left. It uses the scandals of Vatican finance and sexual abuse, coupled with old stories about Opus Dei and the Latin Mass, to fashion Pope Benedict XVI as a “conservative” conniver. In short, Francis is portrayed as the populist leader of a movement to “liberalize” the Catholic Church. Certainly the article contains a great deal of untruth. Inconvenient facts, like Francis’ theological orthodoxy, are ignored. Rolling Stone draws arbitrary conclusions from selected illustrations drawn from the Pope’s life. Why would this pop cultural icon do this? Easy. Sexual and social relativists wish to refashion Christianity such that they may claim Christ, and his vicar, as their supporters, for their social agenda is more appetizing to people if it complements, r...

Trump is Under Attack, and Not Just by Human Critics | The Stream

This piece is unique in its reference to spiitual warfare as an explanation for the poor track record of Trumpism: Trump is Under Attack, and Not Just by Human Critics | The Stream : 'via Blog this'

Chapter Six: Catechesis

I am grateful to Our Lord, (and a plug here for my Guardian Angel), my mother and the Sisters of Notre Dame De Namur for instilling in me a clear sense of the transcendent, “absolutely other” Triune God of revelation as I was growing up in the 1950s. I have made mention of my childhood religious formation in the preface; my gratitude stems from the Father’s gifts of the workings of baptismal grace, a mother who “knew how to mother” in a Catholic family, and devout religious sisters who taught me the fundamentals of the Deposit of the Faith. I believe all of this shielded me against the onslaught of neomodernist religious education “professionals” who led my catechist formation in the 1970s.

Search This Blog