La Salette Attleboro: The Pax Christi/COR Connection

As I mentioned in a previous post, the La Salette Center for Christian Living in Attleboro, Massachusetts will be offering a Lenten Series of discussions led by Father John Sullivan, M.S., and members of Pax Christi. This is particularly troubling since Pax Christi is a member organization of Catholic Organizations for Renewal (COR).

COR offers the following Mission Statement at its website: "Catholic Organizations for Renewal is a coalition of Catholic groups, inspired by Vatican II, to further the reform and renewal of the Catholic Church, and to bring about a world of justice and peace, reflecting the sacredness of all creation." Sounds pretty harmless right? Until one scrolls down a little further and reads that COR held "alternative events" to World Youth Day (Denver, August of 1993) and boasts, "The COR/Denver initiative enabled the national media not only to cover the papal events but to report responsible Catholic disagreement with the pope on many issues, including women's ordination, gay/lesbian rights, and sexual morality." (See here).

And so we can see that COR's idea of justice and peace is in fact nothing more than rebellion from the teaching of the Church. The great Cardinal Newman spoke of the shadows of the Antichrist which are created within the Church by such traitors to Holy Mother Church:

"It is a miserable time when a man's Catholic profession is no voucher for his orthodoxy, and when a teacher of religion may be within the Church's pale, yet external to her truth. Such has been for a season the trial of her children at various eras of her history. It was the state of things during the dreadful Arian ascendency, when the flock had to keep aloof from the shepherd, and the unsuspicious Fathers of the Western Councils trusted and followed some consecrated sophist from Greece or Syria. It was the case in those passages of medieval history when simony resisted the Supreme Pontiff or when heresy lurked in the universities. It was a longer and more tedious trial while the controversies lasted with the Monophysites of old and with the Jansenists of modern times. A great scandal it is and a perplexity to the little ones of Christ to have to choose between rival claimants upon their allegiance, or to find a condemnation at length pronounced upon one whom in their simplicity they have admired. We, too, in this age have our scandals, for scandals must be. It is a great gain when error and false teachers are exposed, for then they cease to deceive the simple." (The Idea of a University, pp. 360-361).

Any Catholic retreat center which allows professors, lecturers or retreat leaders (or whatever title they might happen to go by) to attack and or undermine the authentic teachings of the Catholic Church, is not really concerned about promoting justice and peace. You see, Catholics have a right in justice to Catholic doctrine in its purity and integrity (read Veritatis Splendor, No. 113). Such rebellion from the teaching of Christ's Church does nothing to promote peace. On the contrary, dissent from Church teaching only serves to promote discord and division within the Church.

COR supports the Women's Ordination Conference: See here.

Related reading here.