Good Morning America dredges up Father Richard McBrien once again...

In its ongoing effort to discredit the Catholic Church with falsehoods which have already been totally refuted, Good Morning America solicited the viewpoint of Father Richard P. McBrien, the poster-boy for the intellectually-challenged within the Church and a sock-puppet for sophomoric dissidents who continue to agitate for women's ordination, a homosexual priesthood, and a democratic Church - not to mention a host of other asinine demands. Father McBrien insisted that the current scandal would not abate until the Holy Father revealed what he knew and when he knew it.

Father McBrien isn't taken seriously by Catholics with an IQ greater than their waist-size. His column is found in only a handful of diocesan newspapers today. I opposed his column being published in The Catholic Free Press [diocese of Worcester, Mass] for years and led a campaign to have it removed from that paper. Which is why I'm about as welcome in that diocese as Andrew Dice Clay would be at a NOW meeting. I'm rather surprised that The National Enquirer hasn't brought him on board as an "expert" in things Roman Catholic. Only recently, this giant of Catholic thought and spirituality referred to Eucharistic Adoration as a "needless devotion." See here.

Indeed a quick survey of Father McBrien's thought reveals the mind of a troubled individual who dissents from the teaching of the Church on many and varied points: "He denied that Christ founded the Catholic Church as we know it; He wrote that the sacraments were not directly instituted by Christ; He said that 'the idea that the Catholic Church is the one true religion no longer exists'; He depicted Christ as if he did not always know that he was the Son of God; He questioned the virginal conception of Jesus and the perpetual virginity of Mary; He wrote that the dogmatic definitions of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary are not part of the essential core of the faith; He endorsed philosopher Paul Ricoeur's assessment of original sin as 'a rationalized myth about the mystery of evil'; He encouraged people to ignore Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska, when the bishop warned his flock that they could not join certain anti-Catholic organizations such as Planned Parenthood, Catholics for a Free Choice, the Hemlock Society, and the Masons; He was one of the original signers of Fr. Charles Curran's Statement of Dissent against Humanae Vitae, and he has argued that this reassertion of the historical Christian position on contraception was fundamentally wrong teaching; He said the Gospels were not written by eyewitnesses but were the products of the later Christian communities who invented miracles in order to convey certain theological meanings and establish the divinity of Christ; He questioned the doctrine that the sacrament of ordination brings about an intrinsic change in the priest's relationship to Christ and the Church." (See more here).

When Judas betrayed Our Lord he was so filled with guilt that he hanged himself. When Father McBrien betrays the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, he does so proudly on national television. Maybe that's what his supporters mean when they call him "progressive"?

Related reading: Father McBrien and Attorney Daniel Shea.

Related reading: A response from the Prefect for the CDF.