A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

The best book I’ve read on the radical changes in the Church…… November 27, 2012

…….since Vatican II is The Desolate City: Revolution in the Catholic Church by Anne Roche Muggeridge (we are probably related on the Frenchy side!).  Written in the depths of the post-Vatican II collapse of the mid-80s, Muggeridge goes through in great detail to look at the beliefs (or lack thereof) of the radical priests, religious (especially), laity, and few bishops who planned, organized, and executed the revolution against the traditional belief and practice of the Faith beginning in the early 60s.  There is so much in this book I would like, and plan, to share. Each time I read it (I’m not quite done) I underline and make notes on whole new passages, many of which I hope to bring out here. I had planned to try to present things systematically, going through the topics as the author did, but now I think I’ll look at things thematically.  One thing that has really popped out to me, is how radical the revolutionaries were, even well before the Council.  Many, like the execrable Canadian Gregory Baum, no longer even believed in the Incarnation, Resurrection, or Real Presence by the start of Vatican II.  And yet, even though he was very public in his apostasy,  married while still a priest (and was excommunicated for it), and was finally laicized, he STILL TAUGHT THEOLOGY AT A MAJOR SEMINARY FOR DECADES AFTER THIS. Thus, the Church in Canada, which is in much worse shape than the Church in the US, if you can believe that.

The crisis in the Faith is a crisis of bishops.  The bishops allowed the revolution to get a foothold at Vatican II in exchange for the carrot of gaining power at the expense of Rome under the rubric of “collegiality.” 

The irony, so delicious, is that the bishops actually wound up losing power to the vast lay apostolates they had to create to fill the power vacuum created by collegiality.  After Vatican II, the bishops, by and large, had no idea how to plan, create, and staff the myriad bureaucracies that had to come into existence with the power transfer from Rome. The revolutionaries filled all the new positions at the national (say, USCCB), regional (Texas Catholic Conference), and local chancery levels and gained almost total control of the Church.  So, when you think “why doesn’t the bishop do something about this?,” the main reason is that they are afraid to challenge or offend the generally very progressive staff in their diocese or at the USCCB by enforcing doctrine. Progressives, historically, having a habit of lashing out violently when crossed.  This is beginning to change, and in a very few places has changed, but for the most part is still reality to one degree or another.  When Muggeridge wrote the book, the progressives had total control over the Church bureaucracy in the US.  Things are somewhat better now, but much of the bureaucracy, from the USCCB down to the parish staff, is still largely made up of aging progressives, clinging to their little niche of power, refusing to leave for fear that someone more orthodox might come along to undo their life’s work.

But, there has been hope of a counter-revolution since John Paul II.  I had wavered quite a bit in my enthusiasm for JPII prior to reading this book, and I still wish he hadn’t done a number of things he did, but my overall appraisal is back to being much more positive, seeing what he had to fight against and the very substantial inroads he made against the revolution. We the faithful are tremendously in the debt of the tandem of Popes JPII and BXVI……I pray the counterrevolution continues after Benedict departs from this life.  Long may he reign!

Some quotes below. I hope to provide much more tomorrow, and on ensuing days for a while. Begin quotes:

…..But the Catholic Faith cannot begin to be restored unless all the bishops speak with one voice and act in practical directions to disengage themselves from the revolutionary parallel magisterium they themselves created. The cold truth is that if the Catholic Faith and order are to be restored, the whole of the revolutionized post-Vatican II bureaucracy has to be repudiated and replaced, or, better still, dismantled.  [How I pray for this!  I so totally agree, I pray that the entire, massive, post-Vatican II bureaucracy created in the Church may be obliterated!] But by now the revolution is so strong, so established at every level of Catholic life, so ruthless in self-preservation and savage in attack that bishops not unnaturally quail at the prospect of attempting to dismantle it.  Yet if they do not, all is lost anyway. A society that is not prepared to defend itself by the use of force does not deserve to survive.  At the moment, it is only too obvious that even good and orthodox bishops don’t have the nerve to act against the revolution since it is grounded in their local administration. [The fox is in the henhouse, and yet is the farmer’s pet.  And the farmer wonders why his chickens keep dying…….]  Yet, as the revolutionaries themselves charge, nothing could be more destructive than the present episcopal solution of teaching the traditional faith [well, maybe…..occasionally……..softly…..] while tolerating  and even protecting its revolutionary contradiction.

[arguing that bishops will never effect change or restore the Faith until they proclaim loudly and repeatedly that contraception is gravely, gravely sinful]…. Until bishops go back to the beginning, until they anchor their Catholic cosmology once again on the point where man and woman and God combine in creation, they will continue to get everything wrong. [Everything]  They must go back to the beginning because it is the beginning; one cannot take a stand halfway along the line of the Catholic argument, at homosexuality, or at abortion.  [and, yet, that is what many bishops have tried to do, and continue to do.  But their efforts to oppose things like fake gay marriage, or abortion, or divorce, are doomed to fail until they deal with the elephant in the room, contraception. And the longer they wait, the worse the problem becomes]

At present, the behavior of many bishops suggests that they no longer operate from any coherent Catholic world view……the original episcopal loss of nerve over Humanae Vitae paralyzes the Church in those areas where the “truth about Jesus Christ, about the Church, and about man and his dignity” is hardest to affirm and to practice in the circumstances of modern secular culture in the West.  The hard truth of the indissolubility of Christian marriage, for instance, has become too onerous to maintain, and “divorce Catholic-style” is reaching scandalous proportions. [remember, this was written almost 30 years ago.  Tragically, nothing has changed here, the enormous scandal of Catholic divorce by another name continues] In 1968, the year Humanae Vitae was issued, 338 annulments were granted in the United States; in 1983, there were approximately 52,000. [and for so long as the bishops continue not to preach against contraception, so long as they continue to look the other way at the large majority of Catholics using contraception (and possibly damning themselves if this use remains unconfessed), those numbers won’t change. Nothing will change]

…….Before the Council, Catholic marriage was amazingly resistant to modern secular pressures; today, it is completley demoralized, and the blame for that demoralization has to be laid at the door not of the dissenting theologians but of the bishops, by Christ’s appointment the principal pastors and teachers of the Church……..

…….the laity can pray, the laity can offer penance, the laity can suffer, but the laity cannot enforce doctrinal integrity.  That function can only be accomplished by the bishops……..

….if an angel allowed me one suggestion as to what more than anything else would most quickly restore the sense of the sacred to the Mass it would be this – to do away with Mass facing the people [Oh, I so agree!  I’m a convert, and even I recognize that nothing has been so destructive of the proper understanding and offering of the Mass than Mass facing the people!  This, and Communion in the hand, are the twin abuses, completely unmentioned by the Council, that must be stopped immediately] …..it may surprise even Catholics that the turning around of the altar (or, rather, of the priest) was not legislated in any Vatican II documents or in any document since. The only remarks pertaining to the versus populum (facing the people) mode of the altar and Mass are to be found in the Instruction on the Liturgy (Oct 16, 1964) issued hot off the mark by the [extremely] radical Cardinal Lercaro, president of the new Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, after the Constitution had been passed, stating….”It is proper that the main altar be constructed separately from the wall, so that one may go around it with ease and so that celebration may take place facing the people.” (V. 91, my italics)…….

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Well, we all know what happened there. “May” became “must” in the revolutionary “spirit of Vatican II,” so that even glorious high altars paid for by the blood, sweat, and tears of mostly poor Catholics, the labor and love of generations, were callously ripped out and turned into parking lot curbs.  There are photos of bulldozers doing their unseemly, I would even say evil, work, inside cathedrals.  But that was always the intent.  The revolutionaries got the most extreme legislation they possibly could into the conciliar documents, but always intended to take the frequently nebulous statements (like the word “may”) and run with them to execute the revolution against the constant belief and practice of the Faith, claiming the council had established a radical new set of beliefs.  It did not, for the most part, but it was so very nebulous, contrary to every preceding council.  And that lack of clarity, coupled with the virtually complete collapse of papal authority under Paul VI (tell me again why he’ll soon be made a blessed?) was enough.

Great, great book.  I’m almost through my year long penance of reading books about the Council and its aftereffects, and many of the conciliar documents themselves. If you’re ever having trouble sleeping, have a go at Guadium Et Spes.   It is so utterly vital that the Church give a conciliar pronouncement about the operation of Catholic movie theaters, no?  And radio stations.  And to tell the world that labor is a necessary part of man’s condition.  And that doctors perform a vital service.  Thank goodness they had a

If you are not praying and offering works of penance for your bishop, you must start!  It is absolutely critical that all bishops have a vast team of faithful Catholics at their back, sending down great cascades of Grace to work on them!

In addition, I have a great work in mind.  I think it’s great, anyway.  I know a few are interested in doing this.  But I want to do it big.  I want to make a scene. A ruckus.  I want to get in trouble. More later.