From Indifferentism to Apostasy

Some good material from Catholicism.org of the St. Benedict Center of New Hampshire, on how the attitude of religious indifference that crept deeply into the Church in the mid-20th century has transmogrified into open, practical apostasy.  The wounds to the Church have been unbelievable, and continue to grow and spread.

I cut and paste below some of the parts I found most interesting (adding my own emphasis and comments):

Indifferentism is the condemned heresy that advances the possibility of salvation in any religion. Apostasy (according to Father Hardon) is the “complete abandonment of the Christian religion and not merely a denial of some article of the creed.” There is a certain inexorable logic — or at least a psychologically coherent dynamism — that facilitates the journey from indifferentism to apostasy. It may take some time — a few generations perhaps, which is a brief span in the life of the Church — but indifferentism will feed the beast of apostasy.

Do we live in a time of widespread apostasy? [I don’t see how this can even be open to question at this point. If you want to read the “proofs” for this, go to the link]

………So, too, to speak of a “silent” apostasy of the former Christendom is to make a very loud denunciation of a people who once produced saints but have now forgotten God.

For decades, we here at Saint Benedict Center have warned that, to advance the possibility of salvation for non-Catholics who live and die in their various religions — without the benefits of baptism and without the divine and catholic faith — will seriously harm the Church’s missionary zeal. We have further warned that it will confuse Catholics themselves, who will wonder why they have to live the strict moral code of the Catholic Church when the rest of humanity can apparently be saved without it. [EXACTLY!  Why on earth can’t I contracept,  divorce, commit usury, etc., and be a “good Catholic,” when all these other people abide by religions that tolerate or even promote such and are apparently “saved?”]

Whatever the details of his own theology concerning these questions, “Pope Emeritus” Benedict has agreed with us that such fears are not only warranted, but, indeed, have also been realized in our day as a “deep double crisis”……[A good quote from Benedict follows basically emphasizing what was contained in the preceding paragraph.]

………..So, according to the Pope Emeritus, the abandonment of the conviction that infidels are lost led to a double crisis of the death of the missions and the questioning, by the faithful, of the “obligatory nature of the faith and its way of life.”

It is the second half of this crisis that led to the “silent apostasy” mentioned by Benedict’s predecessor. [I think it is much more accurately termed a practical apostasy, if not a formal one, but it is increasingly indistinguishable even from formal apostasy] It may be summarized in the following rhetorical questions: If Catholicism is not necessary for someone born into a Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist family, why is it necessary for me? If natives of desert islands can be saved by living according to what they know of the law of nature, why do I have to believe something supernatural? If Jews do not need Jesus Christ, His teaching and His Church, why do I? [And, of course, tens or hundreds of millions of “Catholics” have answered this question for themselves, and determined that, of course, they don’t have to.  Thus, Catholic rates of divorce, contraception, and even abortion are generally indistinguishable from the general populace, if not a bit worse]

Ireland’s online newspaper, Independent.ie, recently ran an article entitled, “Bobby Kennedy: the parish priest of the clan.” It gives us a some insight into how indifferentism and apostasy — at least in its beginnings — go hand-in-hand. [The Kennedy’s do make an object lesson in how this process occurred, aided and abetted by modernists in the Church who co-opted the Kennedy clan in their own plan to remake the Church into a liberal protestant denomination that moved absolutely no one to any kind of piety or devotion but which played very well with the powers of the world]

“Back in his undergraduate days, he joined other Harvard Catholics at lectures by Father Leonard Feeney, an influential Jesuit priest who… preached that only Catholics could be saved. Bobby was embarrassed enough by those diatribes to discuss them with his brother Ted and his father, who arranged for him to meet Archbishop Cushing to convey his concern.” [Boy was that a fateful meeting for Fr. Feeney and the St. Benedict Center]

This same Bobby Kennedy, who, as I was told by Brother Francis, argued with Father Feeney that his Protestant friends were going to be saved as Protestants, was not exactly a stickler for the Catholic Faith on other points, as that same Independent.ie article witnesses: “He called it ‘an awful thing’ that the Church taught that babies, his or anyone’s, were born in sin.”

So this indifferentist rejected the doctrine of original sin? At least according to his biographer, Larry Tye, who penned that piece, which is an excerpt from his book, Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon.

And that Archbishop to whom Bobby went “to convey his concern” about Father Feeney? He not only persecuted Father Feeney for teaching that there is no salvation outside the Church, but also helped to legalize the sale of contraceptives in Massachusetts. [Very true, and that’s only a small part of it.  Cushing worked mightily to break the natural opposition of Catholic politicians in Mass to approve contraception.  He actually went around pressuring people to abjure their faith, so he could have contraception legalized.  And, of course, he closely coordinated his activities with Planned Butcherhood]

It should be remembered that Bobby’s brother, John, thought Jesus Christ essentially had no business in politics.

I asked my friend Joe Doyle, frequent SBC conference speaker and Executive Director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, whether there was ever a formal apostasy in the political family. He could not think of one, but sent this informative reply:

Over the course of five generations, the Kennedys have transitioned from being nominal Catholics to being liberal, nominal Catholics, to being dissenting, liberal, nominal Catholics, to being non-practicing, dissenting, liberal, nominal Catholics. To use an accurate phrase disfavored by the post-conciliar church, they are all obstinate and notorious heretics. [In addition to being scandal-mongers and deeply immoral people]

Nor should we forget that, as has been said before, when it comes to morals, they not only refuse to impose Catholic teaching on others, they refuse to impose it on themselves. [In which sense, they are standard bearers for the kind of politicized, worldly Catholicism we see promoted by most bishops and clergy in the Church over the past 50 years.  That such Catholicism has very little appeal to souls and seems very poor at inspiring them seems to matter very little to these folks]

This is what comes of not wanting to appear “unreasonable,” or “harsh,” of fudging on absolutely vital Dogmas of the Faith in order to win worldly approval and not upset those with power and influence.  The story of the “Feeneyites,” whatever their “sin,” is a microcosm and antecedent of the story of the Church as a whole in these very dark days.

Ultimately, many, many leaders in the Church have decided -and this goes back decades or a century or more – that they would much rather serve men than God.  Maybe they don’t think that consciously, but, effectively, that is the decision they have made.