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More weekend reading May 11, 2012

Posted by Tantumblogo in Admin, awesomeness, foolishness, General Catholic.
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Read this awesome post by Dr. Jay Boyd about NFP and it’s proper place in the Church.

Read this long interview of “I love more and more government” Bishop Stephen Blair of the USCCB Justice and Peace conference, wherein he makes plain he doesn’t know much about economics, the proper role of government, the effects of Grace, or much of anything else, but he does know that he really, really loves checks from the government.

Gotta go, have a great weekend, God bless you!

Bishop Fellay sounds like a man I could well understand May 11, 2012

Posted by Tantumblogo in Basics, General Catholic, Holy suffering, Latin Mass, religious, sadness, scandals, Tradition, Virtue.
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I have missed, I guess, the news exploding on Rorate concerning the seeming divisions within the SSPX over the possibility of regularization of their canonical status with Rome.  It appears the Holy Father, in his beneficence, will no longer allow the irregular situation to stand.  The choice is union or schism.  Fellay argues strongly, below, for union.  From his letter, it is almost certain Williamson, he of the disconcerting comments regarding the Holocaust and other matter, is opposed to regularization, and may have influenced the other two SSPX bishops to join him in that opposition.  But, Fellay’s arguments make a great deal of sense to me.  I’m posting all the contents of the letter from Fellay to Williamson and the other two bishops below.  May God have mercy on our souls:

Your Excellencies, 

 
    Your collective letter addressed to the members of the General Council received our full attention. We thank you for your solicitude and charity. Allow us in our turn, with the same concern for justice and charity, to make the following observations. 
 
    First of all, the letter indeed mentions the gravity of the crisis gripping the Church and precisely analyzes the nature of the ambient errors that pullulate in the Church. Nonetheless, the description is marred by two defects in relation to the reality in the Church: it is lacking in a supernatural spirit and at the same time it lacks realism. 
 
    The description lacks a supernatural spirit. To read your letter, one seriously wonders if you still believe that the visible Church whose seat is at Rome is indeed the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, a Church horribly disfigured, to be sure, a planta pedis usque ad verticem capitis, but a Church that in spite of all still has as its head Our Lord Jesus Christ. One gets the impression that you have been so scandalized that you no longer accept that it can still be the true Church. For you, it would seem to be a question whether Benedict XVI is still the legitimate pope. And if he is, there is a question as to whether Jesus Christ can still speak through him. If the pope expresses a legitimate will concerning us which is good and which does not order anything contrary to the commandments of God, have we the right to neglect or to dismiss this will? Otherwise, on what principle do you base your actions? Do you not believe that if Our Lord commands us, He will also give us the means to carry on our work? Now, the pope has let us know that an abiding concern for the regularization of our situation for the good of the Church lies at the very heart of his pontificate, and also that he knew very well that it would be easier both for him and for us to leave things as they stand now. And so it is indeed a decided and legitimate will that he is expressing. 
 
    With the attitude you recommend, no room is left for the Gideons or the Davids or for those who count on the Lord’s help. You reproach us with being naïve or fearful, but rather it is your vision of the Church that is too human, and even fatalistic. You see the dangers, the plots, the difficulties, but you no longer see the assistance of grace and of the Holy Ghost. If one grants that Divine Providence leads the affairs of men while safeguarding their liberty, it is also needful to admit that the gestures in our favor over the last several years are also under its guidance. Now, they trace a line  — not straight — but clearly in favor of Tradition. Why should this suddenly stop when we are doing our utmost to be faithful and to intensify our prayer? Will the good God let us fall at the most critical moment? That does not make a lot of sense, especially as we are not trying to impose on Him the least self-will, but are trying to examine events closely so as to discern what God wants, and being disposed to all that shall please Him. At the same time, your description is lacking in realism as regards both the degree of the errors and their extent. 
 
    Degree: Within the Society, some are making the conciliar errors into super heresies, absolute evil, worse than anything, in the same way that the liberals have dogmatized this pastoral council. The evils are sufficiently dramatic; there is hardly any reason to exaggerate them further (cf. Roberto de Mattei, Une histoire jamais écrite, p. 22; Mgr. Gherardini, Un débat à ouvrir, p. 53, etc.). Needful distinctions are not being made, whereas Mgr. Lefebvre did make the necessary distinctions on the subject of liberals several times. i This failure to distinguish is leading one or the other of you to a hardening of your position. This is a grave matter because this caricature no longer corresponds with reality and in future it will logically end in a real schism. And it may well be that this fact is one of the arguments that urges me to delay no longer in responding to the Roman authorities.
 
    Extent: On the one hand, you saddle the current authorities with all the errors and evils to be found in the Church while leaving aside the fact that they are trying at least partly to disengage themselves from the most serious of them (the condemnation of the “hermeneutic of rupture” denounces real errors). On the other hand, you act as if ALL of them are implicated in this pertinacity (“they’re all modernists,” “all are rotten”). Now that is manifestly false. The great majority are still caught up in the movement, but not all. 
 
    So that, coming to the most crucial question, the possibility of our surviving in the conditions of recognition of the Society by Rome, we do not reach the same conclusion as you do. 
 
    Let us note in passing that it was not we who were looking for a practical agreement. That is untrue. We have not refused a priori to consider, as you ask, the Pope’s offer. For the common good of the Society, we would prefer by far the current solution of an intermediary status quo, but clearly, Rome is not going to tolerate it any longer. 
 
    In itself, the solution of the proposed personal prelature is not a trap. This is apparent from the fact, first of all, that the present situation in April 2012 is quite different from that of 1988. To pretend that nothing has changed is an historical error. The same evils afflict the Church, the consequences are even worse and more obvious than before; but at the same time we have observed a change of attitude in the Church, helped by the gestures and acts of Benedict XVI toward Tradition. This new movement, which began at least ten years ago, has been growing. It has reached a good number (still a minority) of young priests, seminarians, and even includes a small number of young bishops who clearly stand out from their predecessors, who confide in us their sympathy and support, but who are still pretty well stifled by the dominant line in the hierarchy in favor of Vatican II. This hierarchy is losing speed. This perception is not an illusion, and it shows that it is no longer illusory for us to contemplate an “intramural” struggle, the difficulty of which we are not unaware. I have been able to observe at Rome that however much the talk about the glories of Vatican II we’ll be dinned with is still on the lips of many, it is no longer in people’s heads. Fewer and fewer believe it. 
 
    This concrete situation, with the canonical solution that has been proposed, is quite different from that of 1988. And when we compare the arguments that Archbishop Lefebvre made at the time, we conclude that he would not have hesitated to accept what is being proposed to us. Let us not lose our sense of the Church, which was so strong in our venerated founder. 
 
    The history of the Church shows that recovery from the conflicts that beset it usually occurs gradually, slowly. And once one problem is resolved, something else starts up… oportet haereses esse. To require that we wait until everything is regulated before reaching what you call a practical agreement is not realistic. Seeing how things happen, it is likely that it will take decades for this crisis to come to an end. But to refuse to work in the field because there are still weeds that may crowd out or hamper the good grain is a curious reading of the Biblical lesson: It is our Lord Himself who gave us to understand by the parable of the wheat and the cockle that there will always be, in one form or another, weeds to be uprooted and grappled with in His Church… 
 
    You cannot know how your attitude these last months — quite different for each one of you — has been hard on us. It has kept the Superior General from communicating and sharing with you these weighty matters, in which he would have so willingly involved you had he not found himself before such a strong and passionate incomprehension. How he would have liked to be able to count on you, on your advice and counsel at such a delicate passage in our history. It has been a great trial, perhaps the greatest of his superiorate. Our venerated founder gave the bishops of the Society a precise function and duties. He made it clear that the unifying principle of our society is the Superior General. But for some time now, you have tried, each in his own way, to impose on him your point of view, even in the form of threats, even publically. This dialectic between truth and faith on one side and authority on the other is contrary to the spirit of the priesthood. At least he might have hoped that you would try to understand the arguments that have moved him to act as he has these last years, according to the will of Divine Providence. 
 
    We do pray for each one of you, that in this battle which is far from being over we may find ourselves all together for the greater glory of God and for the love of our dear Society. 
 
    May our Risen Lord and our Lady deign to protect you and bless you, 
 
+Bernard Fellay 
 
Niklaus Pfluger+ 
 
Alain-Marc Nély+ 

———————————————–End Quote——————————–
I have read some excerpts from the letter Williamson, Tissier do Mallerais, adn de Galarreta sent.  It had little trust in the Holy Spirit, and looked solely at human means, human activities.  It did not feel right. Not that I know much about all this, but in spite of all his problems, the Pope is still the Pope, and if you reject him as inadequate, totally modernist, even heretical – you have formally placed yourself outside the Church.  And I have to ask why you are even bothering, if that is the case. 

So…….there’s some weekend reading for Mr. Ross.

One more attachment dragging me down….. May 11, 2012

Posted by Tantumblogo in Admin, awesomeness, Basics, foolishness, fun, silliness.
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…..and I just had to sink more money into the beast today.  So it’s ruining me financially and spiritually.

 

But she’s soooo pretty!  And it tore the mud up today (after picture).

What happened to DDLG?

An Ostracized Jesuit Cardinal speaks from the grave May 11, 2012

Posted by Tantumblogo in Abortion, Basics, contraception, disaster, foolishness, General Catholic, religious, sadness, scandals.
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Weekend reading.

He is said to have a brilliant mind, an analogue to the Holy Father.  I don’t know, I’ve never read him, but he would hardly be the first person persecuted, ostracized, and ridiculed by his fallen fellow religious to become a Saint.  The story of Jean Cardinal Danielou:

The rupture between Daniélou and his other Jesuit confreres in Paris and the rest of France was in effect the true origin of the neglect that fell upon this great theologian and cardinal.

A rupture that preceded his death by at least two years.

Since 1972, in fact, Daniélou had no longer been living in the residence of “Etudes,” the leading cultural magazine of the French Jesuits, where he had lived for decades. He had moved to a convent of sisters, the Daughters of the Heart of Mary.

The clash had been precipitated by an interview with Daniélou on Vatican Radio in which he harshly criticized the “decadence” that was devastating so many men’s and women’s religious orders, because of “a false interpretation of Vatican II.”

The interview was interpreted as an accusation brought against the Society of Jesus itself, the superior general of which at the time was Father Pedro Arrupe, who was also the head of the union of superiors general of religious orders.

The Jesuit Bruno Ribes, director of “Etudes,” was one of the most active in making scorched earth around Daniélou.

The positions of the two had become antithetical. In 1974, the year of Daniélou’s death, Ribes positioned “Etudes” in open disobedience with respect to the teaching of the encyclical “Humanae Vitae” on contraception.

And he collaborated with other “progressive” theologians – including the Dominicans Jacques Pohier and Bernard Quelquejeu – in the drafting of the law that in that same year introduced unrestricted abortion in France, with Simone Veil as health minister, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing as president, and Jacques Chirac as prime minister.

The following year, 1975, Father Ribes left the helm of “Etudes.” And afterward he abandoned the Society of Jesus, and then the Catholic Church. [How many times did this happen, and still happens?  Some “Catholic” betrays the Faith, uses their ostensibly “good Catholic name” and influence to help pursue some demonic course, and then, once they achieve their sordid objective, they openly break with the Church to go – very briefly – “enjoy” the pleasures of the world?]

The following is the interview that earned Daniélou his ostracism.

Forty years later, the decline of the religious orders denounced in it is still in progress, as proven in the United States by the saga of the “Leadership Conference of Women Religious”: [I think it important that every faithful Catholic recognize that the “reforms” of so many religious orders during and after the Council had nothing to do with the Council, or the Faith, but with secularization and worldly, materialist pleasures]

Interview of Cardinal Jean Daniélou on Vatican Radio, October 23, 1972

Q: Your Eminence, is there really a crisis of religious life, and can you give us its dimensions?

A: I think that there is now a very grave crisis of religious life, and that one should not speak of renewal, but rather of decadence. [Indeed – even intellectual decadence, as we perhaps see in the Ursuline sisters] I think that this crisis is hitting the Atlantic area above all. Eastern Europe and the countries of Africa and Asia present in this regard a better state of spiritual health. This crisis is manifesting itself in all areas. The evangelical counsels are no longer considered as consecrations to God, but are seen in a sociological and psychological perspective. We are concerned about not presenting a bourgeois facade, but on the individual level poverty is not practiced. The group dynamic replaces religious obedience; with the pretext of reacting against formalism, all regularity of the life of prayer is abandoned and the first consequence of this state of confusion is the disappearance of vocations, because young people require a serious formation.[!! Boy do they ever!] And moreover there are the numerous and scandalous desertions of religious who renege on the pact that bound them to the Christian people. [Did that rage filled sister I blogged about on Wednesday feel very bound to the Church?]

Q: Can you tell us what, in your view, are the causes of this crisis?

A: The essential source of this crisis is a false interpretation of Vatican II. The directives of the Council were very clear: a greater fidelity of religious men and women to the demands of the Gospel expressed in the constitutions of each institute, and at the same time an adaptation of the modalities of these constitutions to the conditions of modern life.   [Aye, that has been the rub.  It seems  many orders could not figure out how to adapt to “modern life” without surrendering to the world, the flesh, and……I, personally, do not believe there is any root difference, sufficient to cause a change in the conduct of religious life (especially contemplative), in the “modern world.”  The “modern world” was a mid-20th century fantasy]  The institutes that are faithful to these directives are seeing true renewal, and have vocations. But in many cases the directives of Vatican II have been replaced with erroneous ideologies put into circulation by magazines, by conferences, by theologians. And among these errors can be mentioned:

– Secularization. Vatican II declared that human values must be taken seriously. It never said that we should enter into a secularized world in the sense that the religious dimension would no longer be present in society, and it is in the name of a false secularization that men and women are renouncing their habits, abandoning their works in order to take their places in secular institutions, substituting social and political activities for the worship of God. [Once again, the octogenarian sister I blogged about the other day specifically said that Jesus never wanted to be worshipped!  She is completely secularized, and cannot fathom (and indeed denegrates) religious life that is not focused on a materialist, worldly end like “peace activism” or neo-pagan gaia worship the environmental movement] And this goes against the grain, among other things, with respect to the need for spirituality that is being manifested in today’s world.

– A false conception of freedom that brings with it the devaluing of the constitutions and rules and exalts spontaneity and improvisation. This is all the more absurd in that Western society is currently suffering from the absence of a discipline of freedom. The restoration of firm rules is one of the necessities of religious life.

– An erroneous conception of the changing of man and of the Church. Even if these change, the constitutive elements of man and of the Church are permanent, and bringing into question the constitutive elements of the constitutions of the religious orders is a fundamental error. [I would argue the Church can only change in detail, not in essence]

Q: But do you see any remedies for overcoming this crisis?

A: I think that the only and urgent solution is that of stopping the false stances taken in a certain number of institutes. For this it is necessary to stop all of the experimentation and all of the decisions contrary to the directives of the Council; to warn against the books, magazines, conferences in which these erroneous conceptions are being put into circulation; to restore in their integrity the practice of the constitutions with the adaptations requested by the Council. Wherever this appears impossible, it seems to me that those religious cannot be denied who want to be faithful to the constitutions of their order and to the directives of Vatican II, and to establish distinct communities. Religious superiors are bound to respect this desire.

These communities must be authorized to have houses of formation. Experience will demonstrate if the vocations are more numerous in the houses of strict observance or in the houses of mitigated observance.     In case the superiors oppose these legitimate requests, recourse to the supreme pontiff is certainly authorized.

Religious life is called to a grandiose future in technological society; the more this is developed, the more it will make felt the need for the manifestation of God. This is precisely the aim of religious life, but in order to carry out its mission it must rediscover its authentic meaning and break radically with a secularization that is destroying it in its essence and preventing it from attracting vocations.

My response to the Gates-Ursuline scandal – institute oath of acceptance of all Dogma May 11, 2012

Posted by Tantumblogo in Admin, Basics, Dallas Diocese, episcopate, General Catholic, religious, scandals, sickness, Society.
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Here is a copy of an e-mail I sent to the Diocese regarding the scandalous statements by Melinda Gates regarding the Catholic Faith, and Dallas Ursuline Academy’s seeming endorsement (or, at least, non-condemnation) of those statements:

The statements from Melinda Gates, and Ursuline Academy’s seeming endorsement of her demonic plan to flood the world with still more contraceptives, demand a response from Bishop Farrell.  The Dogma of the Faith regarding the intrinsic evil of contraception must be re-affirmed, and the error of Gates and the religious staff at Ursuline strongly rebutted.  Personally, I would like to see sanction taken against the staff of the school.

Bishop Farrell has made strengthening Catholic schools the focal point of his time as our Ordinary.  I am certain all the faithful are grateful for these badly needed efforts. However, these statements from religious at Ursuline, supporting, or seeming to support, Gates’ plans to spend billions on contraception, and the refusal of President Ann Moser to clearly repudiate this endorsement or condemn Gates, point to grave, ongoing problems in our Catholic schools.  This is hardly an isolated incident.  I believe the faithful of the Diocese would be very much gratified to see, and indeed hold a right to see, some action on the part of Bishop Farrell to correct this scandalous situation.  Concrete steps should be taken to greatly strengthen the Catholic identity of all schools, but especially the secondary schools like Ursuline. 

Therefore, I humbly request Bishop Farrell formally institute, at all Catholic schools, a sworn statement to be signed by all faculty and staff that affirms their total acceptance of the Catholic Faith, in detail.  Specific mention should be made of those moral doctrines that so very many self-described Catholics today reject – divorce and remarriage, contraception, fornication, pornography, so-called “gay marriage,” and of course, abortion, among others.  Catholics have a right to know that those who teach in Catholic schools actually hold the Faith, and do not undermine or trivialize it in any way.  I note that such oaths have been introduced by a number of schools in other dioceses, and even at the diocesan level, to the great improvement of the quality of catechesis as well as the general Catholic culture of the affected institutions.  Atonement Academy in San Antonio is one such school.

More and more faithful Catholics are recognizing the great problems regarding observance and transmission of the Faith in our Catholic schools.  I believe the recently commissioned survey of the diocesan schools confirms that. And, of course, there is the great expense, in addition to property taxes for secular schools which we must all pay.  Homeschooling continues to grow and grow and grow. Thus, attendance continues to drop. For the good of our Catholic youth, for the success of the schools, and by the demands of Charity, an Oath of Obedience to the Magisterial Dogmas of the Faith must be required of all faculty and staff.  It is the appropriate response to this scandalous situation.

I am so very grateful to Bishop Farrell for his leadership of the Diocese the past several years.  I am aware of many good changes made, and am aware of less than good things stopped or greatly reduced.  But this is an issue of literally international import and the level of scandal is tremendous.  I pray that Bishop Farrell strongly consider making a very firm response.

Please be assured of our prayers.