The Worcester Diocese welcomes a heretic....

 

An anonymous reader left the following at my last post:

On October 27 at 6 p.m., Dr. Thomas Groome will present “Passing on the Gift of Faith” at St. Rose of Lima Church, 244 W. Main Street (Rt. 20), Northboro. It will be preceded by Mass at 5 p.m. for all who would like to attend. This presentation, part of the parish’s Year of Faith efforts, will discuss how we can pass on our faith to children and other adults in challenging times. Professor Groome is chair of the Dept. of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry at Boston College. All are welcome.


The following is taken from the Gospa Missions website:

The False Theology of Dr. Thomas Groome

Laicized priest, Boston College professor of theology and director of the Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry and author of many books used in Catholic education

Introduction:

The purpose of this document is to present Dr. Groome’s views on a not insignificant number of topics that he has disseminated, in print or in lectures or in broadcast interviews, which are in serious conflict with the teachings of the Holy Father and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. It is by no means intended to be an exhaustive analysis of Groome’s dissent from the Doctrines of the Catholic Church as many additional examples can be found in his writings, interviews and lectures. But the examples included are more than sufficient to establish the fact that Dr. Groome’s theology is dangerously opposed to the consistent teaching of Catholic Scripture, the Holy Fathers and Doctors, Pope John Paul II and the loyal Magisterium of the Church.

The format of the document is to present a Dr. Groome’s views, in his own words, on a doctrine of the Catholic church followed by the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church through her Magisterium. I pray that all who read this document will subject Dr. Groome’s theology to a critical and discriminating analysis and will view them with the same “hermeneutic of suspicion” employed by him in his efforts to rewrite sacred scripture and to despoil Catholic Tradition.

Groome’s Position On the teaching authority of the Pope and the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church:

Groome argues that “Throughout his ministry, Jesus called together ‘an inclusive discipleship of equals’ to participate in his mission and to carry it on after him.” [Thomas Groome, Sharing Faith, A Comprehensive Approach to Religious Education & Pastoral Ministry, Harper, San Francisco, 1991, p. 301] op. cit. p. 444]

Expanding on this theme Groome insists that the Church “should be an egalitarian [i.e. Democratic] community.” [Ibid. p. 444]

In this same ‘the Church should be a democracy’ vein Groome insists, “If we remember that the Church is the whole community of the Body of Christ, including all baptized Christians and not just its leaders, then we recognize that the Church’s ‘teaching authority’ cannot be limited to the institutional Magisterium.” [Emphasis added]. [Thomas Groome, Educating For Life, op. cit. p. 241.]

(N.B: the Catholic Church defines “all Christians” as those who are validly baptized into the various Protestants sects as well as those validly baptized into the Catholic Church. In reading Groome it appears that his definition of “Christian” is anyone who is baptized into any persuasion, whether the baptism is judged valid or invalid by the Catholic Church).

· Vatican II emphatically rejected erroneous statements of this sort when it proclaimed: “But the task of giving an authentic interpretation to the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.” [Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, n. 25.]

Groome publicly chastised Pope John Paul II for the Holy Father’s teaching in his apostolic letter Ad Tuendam Fidem, whose stated purpose was “to protect the faith of the Catholic Church against errors from certain members of the Christian faithful, especially from among those dedicated to the various disciplines of sacred theology.” Groome attacked the letter calling it “a pretentious attempt by the present pope to stifle conversation and dialogue.” Groome lamented, “I read the blessed thing and without being too melodramatic, I was on the verge of tears. It is a very sad day.” [Thomas H. Groome, The Boston Globe, July 2, 1998.]

Totally misrepresenting the true definition of the Papal Magisterium Groome proclaims “In mainstream Catholic understanding of papal magisterium, however, the pope, as bishop of Rome, must teach in consultation and collegiality with the bishops of the world and represent the consensus faith of the whole Church, in fidelity to Scripture and Tradition.”[Emphasis added] [Thomas Groome, Educating for Life, Thomas More, Texas, 1998, p. 240]

· Vatican I definitively taught “ … that it is a divinely revealed dogma that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ‘ex cathedra’, i.e., when exercising his office as pastor and teacher of all Christians he defines, by his supreme apostolic authority, a doctrine of faith or morals which must be held by the universal Church, enjoys, through the divine assistance, that infallibility promised to him in blessed Peter and with which the divine Redeemer wanted His Church to be endowed in defining doctrine of faith and morals; and therefore that the definitions of the same Roman Pontiff are irreformable of themselves and not from the consent of the Church. If anyone should presume to contradict this definition of ours … anathema - sit." [Emphasis added] [Vatican I Pastor Aeturnus, Chapter IV].

· Vatican II emphatically affirmed that “The Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, namely, and as pastor of the entire Church, has full, supreme and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered.” [Emphasis added] [Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, n. 22; cf. Christus Dominus, n. 2]

· Speaking in regard to the supreme teaching authority of the Pope, Lumen Gentium added: “And therefore, his definitions [the Pope’s], of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church, are justly styled irreformable … and therefore they need no approval of others, nor do they allow an appeal to any other judgment.” [Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, n. 25]

· Dei Verbum, the Vatican II Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation teaches that Sacred Scripture must be viewed within the context of the Church’s Faith and that we cannot interpret Sacred Scripture such that it invalidates accepted Church teachings. The second principle that must be observed is that we cannot interpret Tradition that comes to us from the apostles in a manner that contradicts what the Magisterium has already ruled definitively to be the doctrine of the Church: “ … since Holy Scripture must be read and interpreted in the sacred spirit in which it was written, no less serious attention must be given to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture if the meaning of the sacred texts is to be correctly worked out. The living tradition of the whole Church must be taken into account along with the harmony which exists between elements of the faith. It is the task of exegetes to work according to these rules toward a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture, so that through preparatory study the judgment of the Church may mature. For all of what has been said about the way of interpreting Scripture is subject finally to the judgment of the Church, which carries out the divine commission and ministry of guarding and interpreting the word of God. [Emphasis added]. [Dei Verbum, n.12]
 

It is obvious that Dr. Groome’s theology in this area is seriously at odds with the teaching of Holy Mother Church and in some cases borders on the heretical. His pernicious attempt to destroy the firmly rooted Doctrine of the teaching responsibility and authority of the Pope and the Magisterium, which dates back to the 1^st century, must, in and of itself, disqualify him as a responsible teacher of, or lecturer on, the Catholic Faith.

Groome’s position On Papal succession and the Supremacy of the Successor of Peter:

In a not too subtle effort to disparage the doctrine of papal succession and, therefore the right of the popes, including Pope John Paul II, to teach in the name of Jesus, Groome declares, “The traditional Catholic assertion that there is a direct historical line of succession between the present Pope and Peter,presumed to be the first bishop of Rome, must also be nuanced [i.e. “questioned”].” [Emphasis added] [Thomas Groome, Sharing Faith, op. cit. p. 314.]

Groome continues, “in light of New Testament scholarship, we cannot presume a line of direct succession between pope and Peter...the function of bishop as we might recognize it today did not begin until the second century.” [Ibid. p. 314.]

Groome concludes: “In light of this, ‘the supposition that, when Peter did come to Rome (presumably in the 60’s), he took over and became the first bishop represents a retrojection of later church order’.” [Ibid.]

· The Catholic Church has unambiguously and consistently taught and declared that: “It is by the institution of Christ the Lord, that is, by divine right, that blessed Peter has endless successors in his primacy over the whole Church.” [Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus, Denz. 3056.]

· “… the Roman Pontiff is the successor of Blessed Peter in the same primacy.” (i.e. Rome). [Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus, Denz. 3058].

· Pope John Paul II has declared that this definition of papal succession“…binds the primacy of Peter and his successor to the See of Rome, which cannot be replaced by any other see.” [Pope John Paul II, The Bishop of Rome Is Peter’s Successor, General Audience, January 27, 1993].

· Vatican I solemnly teaches: “If, then, any one shall say that it is not by the institution of Christ the Lord, or by divine right, that Blessed Peter should have a perpetual line of successors in the primacy over the UniversalChurch; or that the Roman Pontiff is not the successor of Blessed Peter in this primacy - anathema sit.”[Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus, Denz. 3058.]

The doctrines of Papal supremacy and the infallible teaching authority of the Pope did not, of course, originate with the 1^st and 2^nd Vatican Councils. From the following citations it is abundantly clear that from the very first days of the Church it was Peter to whom the faithful, including the apostles, looked for leadership and it was the Pope, the Successor of Peter, to whom all faithful Christians turned for the definitive interpretation of Christ’s teachings. The Truth that all Christians must, as articles of faith, believe.

· Pope St.Leo the Great taught the doctrines of Papal succession and the supremacy of the Pope as head of the Apostolic See in the 5^thcentury, by which time it was already a “longstanding custom”: “The Lord . . . wanted His gifts to flow into the entire body from Peter himself, as if from the head, in such a way that anyone who had dared to separate himself from the solidarity of Peter would realize that he was himself no longer a sharer in the divine mystery . . The Apostolic See . . has on countless occasions been reported to in consultation by bishops . . . And through the appeal of various cases to this see, decisions already made have been either revoked or confirmed, as dictated by longstanding custom” [Emphasis added] [Pope St. Leo the Great (r. 440-461) in Letter to the Bishops of Vienne, July, 445 A.D., 10:1-2; in Jurgens, William A., ed. and tr., The Faith of the Early Fathers [FEF], 3 volumes, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1970, vol. 3, 269]

· The Council of Lyons II (1274) affirmed that: … it is the teaching authority of the Church itself that determines what is orthodox (including the position of supremacy of the papacy) when it declared: “Also this same holy Roman Church holds the highest and complete primacy and spiritual power over the universal Catholic Church which she truly and humbly recognizes herself to have received with fullness of power from the Lord Himself in Blessed Peter, the chief or head of the Apostles whose successor is the Roman Pontiff. And just as to defend the truth of Faith she is held before all other things, so if any questions shall arise regarding faith they ought to be defined by her judgment . . . in all cases looking forward to an ecclesiastical examination, recourse can be had to her judgment, and all churches are subject to her; their prelates give obedience and reverence to her”. [Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma; translated by Roy J. Deferrari, from the 13th edition of Enchiridion Symbolorum, 1955, Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications, section 466, p. 185]

· From the Council of Florence (1438-1445), in its Decree for the Greeks, Laetentur coeli, July 6, 1439 we learn that: “We likewise define that the holy Apostolic See, and the Roman Pontiff, hold the primacy throughout the entire world; and that the Roman Pontiff himself is the successor of blessed Peter, the chief of the Apostles, and the true vicar of Christ, and that he is the head of the entire Church, and the father and teacher of all Christians; and that full power was given to him in blessed Peter by our Lord Jesus Christ, to feed, rule, and govern the universal Church; just as is contained in the acts of the ecumenical Councils and in the sacred canons”. [Ibid., section 694, p. 220]

On the ordained Ministry, the Eucharist and the Apostolic Succession:

In Sharing Faith, Dr. Groome supports the notion that Jesus did not commission the apostles at the last supper. “… the many specific ministries in the New Testament church

seems to have emerged from the existential situations and needs of the first Christian communities. Some people were needed to preside at worship others to preach, to teach, … , to minister to people in need, and so on” [Emphasis added]. Groome concludes with the observation that “ … the communities began to designate people to fulfill functions of service … in the name of the church. They did not understand the commissioning to confer a sacral status [on those commissioned]. Designation called one to a function of service but not apart from the rest of the community. [Emphasis added] [ Thomas Groome, Sharing Faith, op. cit. p. 309]

Groome includes the sacral function of presiding at worship with all the other non-sacral functions, which certainly could have been conferred on a person by the community itself or even merely assumed by a person without any investiture, formal or informal, by the community thereby strongly inferring that the sacral ordination of priests was accomplished in the same manner. This is a classic example of Groome’s uncanny ability to interject a seemingly innocuous word or phrase to plant the seed of a heretical view. Employing the “hermeneutic of suspicion”, the cornerstone of his teaching philosophy, to first cast doubt on and then to totally deny, a well established, Traditional teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. One must admit that, unfortunately, he is marvelously skillful at his craft.

Groome often attempts to validate his arguments by citing opinions proposed by well know dissident theologians. In Sharing Faith Groome eagerly embraces an assertion by the well known revisionist theologian Fr. Raymond E. Brown on the ministerial priesthood, which Groome claims is “now generally accepted”; in which Brown proclaims; “In spite of the long tradition of this view, contemporary scholars find no basis for such an interpretation. In other words, Jesus did not ordain the apostles at this final supper to be ‘priests,’ giving them thereby the power to celebrate the eucharist (sic).” [Emphasis added] [ Thomas Groome, Sharing Faith, op. cit. p. 314, 512n. 27.]

Groome’s repudiation of the Church’s teaching on the origin of the ministerial priesthood becomes manifestly evident as he expounds on Brown’s hypothesis. “ Brown is proposing, and his thesis now seems generally accepted, that the first Christians did not see the confecting of the Eucharist as a personal and ontological power invested in one person who rendered Eucharist for the community. Instead, through the presence of the Holy Spirit, the ‘sacramental powers’ resided in the whole community, ……, the community chose certain people to preside at divine worship for the sake of ‘holy order’. Usually … this designation fell to the community leader, not because of a sacral power, but by HER or his function of leadership[Emphasis added].

[Thomas Groome, Sharing Faith, op. cit. p. 310.]

Elsewhere, in his attempt to discredit the church’s consistent teaching on the Hierarchical structure of Holy Orders, Groome claims that “the function of bishop as we might recognize it today did not begin until the second century.” [Sharing Faith, op. cit. p. 314]

Again quoting Raymond Brown, Groome concurs with Brown’s denial of the church’s teaching on Apostolic succession: “There is simply no compelling evidence for the classic thesis that…there was a chain of ordination passing the power of presiding at the Eucharist from the Twelve to missionary apostles to presbyter-bishops. How one got the right to preside and whether it endured beyond a single instance we do not know.” [Emphasis added] [Sharing Faith, op. cit. p. 310]

Commenting on what Groome defines as the “Tridentine perspective” on the “ministry”, which emphasized the division of the Ordained Ministry into bishop, priest and deacon, Groome declares: “New Testament evidence suggests…the Tridentine perception of ministry is much more the product of history and of the socio-cultural contexts in which the church found herself than of any blueprint to be found in the New Testament communities.” [Ibid. p. 311-12.]

Groome concludes that “the notion that presiding at Eucharist is an exclusively priestly function did not become widespread until the beginning of the third century. The association of priesthood with Eucharist emerged as later Christians began to allegorize sacrifices of the Hebrew covenant, which were offered by priests. As Christianity became separated from Judaism and thus from Jewish priesthood, Eucharist was perceived as replacing the sacrifices no longer offered in the now destroyed temple, and thus requiring the sacerdotal function of the priest.” [Emphasis added].[Ibid.]

How many innocent young minds have read or heard these words of Dr. Groome pronounced by a teacher of religious education who is a disciple of Groome and have, to the destruction of their faith and possibly the loss of their immortal souls, concluded that the Eucharist has no more significance than the burnt offerings of the Old Testament priests? In stark contrast to the stated beliefs of Dr. Groome, the Catholic Church has definitively, emphatically and consistently taught:

· “It has always been the conviction of the Church of God …that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change in the whole substance of the bread into the whole substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood.” [Council of Trent, (DS 1642), cf. CCC, 1376]

· “ …. the Eucharist “is the principal and central raison d'être of the sacrament of priesthood, which effectively came into being at the moment of the institution of the Eucharist”. Apostolic Letter Dominicae Cenae(24 February 1980), 2: AAS 72 (1980), 115.]

· The Council of Trent affirmed the Catholic doctrine on the Eucharist and ministerial priesthood with the following words; “Sacrifice and priesthood are by the ordinance of God so united that both have existed in every law. Since therefore in the New Testament the Catholic Church has received from the institution of Christ the holy, visible sacrifice of the Eucharist, it must also be confessed that there is in that Church a new, visible and external priesthood, into which the old has been translated. That this was instituted by the same Lord our Savior, and that to the Apostles and their successors in the priesthood was given the power of consecrating, offering and administering His body and blood … is shown by the Sacred Scriptures and has always been taught by the tradition of the Catholic Church. [Emphasis [Council of Trent, Session 23, Chapter 1]

· Pope John Paul II in his 2003 encyclical on the Eucharist cautions: “At times one encounters an extremely reductive understanding of the Eucharistic mystery. Stripped of its sacrificial meaning, it is celebrated as if it were simply a fraternal banquet. Furthermore, the necessity of the ministerial priesthood, grounded in apostolic succession, is at times obscured and the sacramental nature of the Eucharist is reduced to its mere effectiveness as a form of proclamation”. [Emphasis added]. [ECCLESIA DE EUCHARISTIA n.10]

· “The Eucharist too has its foundation in the Apostles … because it was entrusted by Jesus to the Apostles and has been handed down to us by them and by their successors. It is in continuity with the practice of the Apostles, in obedience to the Lord's command, that the Church has celebrated the Eucharist down the centuries” ECCLESIA DE EUCHARISTIA n.10]

· Vatican Council II teaches that it is the ordained priest who: “acting in the person of Christ, brings about the Eucharistic Sacrifice and offers it to God in the name of all the people”. [Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 10.]

· “the Eucharist … is a gift which radically transcends the power of the assembly and is … essential for validly linking the Eucharistic consecration to the sacrifice of the Cross and to the Last Supper. The assembly gathered together for the celebration of the Eucharist … absolutely requires the presence of an ordained priest as its president. … the community is by itself incapable of providing an ordained minister. This minister is a gift which the assembly receives through episcopal succession going back to the Apostles. It is the Bishop who, through the Sacrament of Holy Orders, makes a new presbyter by conferring upon him the power to consecrate the Eucharist.”[Emphasis added] [ECCLESIA DE EUCHARISTIA n.29]

· “ …. the Eucharistic mystery cannot be celebrated in any community except by an ordained priest, as the Fourth Lateran Council expressly taught”. [Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Letter Sacerdotium Ministeriale (6 August 1983), III.4: AAS 75 (1983), 1006]

· The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: “The Lord, having loved those who were his own, loved them to the end. Knowing that the hour had come to leave this world and return to the Father, in the course of a meal he washed their feet and gave them the commandment of love. In order to leave them a pledge of this love, in order never to depart from his own and to make them sharers in his Passover, he instituted the Eucharist as the memorial of his death and Resurrection, and commanded his apostles to celebrate it until his return; ‘thereby he constituted them priests of the New Testament’." [CCC. n. 1337]

· The Council of Trent declared: “If anyone shall say that in the Catholic Church there is not instituted a hierarchy by divine ordinance, which consists of bishops, priests and ministers [i.e. Deacons] - anathema sit.” [Council of Trent, Canons on the Sacrament of Order, Denz. 1776.]

· Pope Pius VI emphatically proclaimed that it is “heretical” to assert: “the power of the ministry and of ecclesial rule comes to the pastors from the community of the faithful.” [Pope Pius VI, Const. Auctorem Fidei, August 28, 1794, Denz. 1502]

· St. Paul in his farewell discourse to the presbyters of Miletus admonishes: “Now be solicitous for yourselves and for the whole flock in which the Holy Spirit has appointed you as bishops to pasture the Church of God, which he purchased with his own blood” [Acts 20:28].

· Cardinal Ratzinger notes how Acts 20:28 illustrates “ … that the Holy Spirit places men in this office [i.e. the ordained ministry]: it is not a delegation on the part of the community…but the gift of the Lord, who gives personally what only he can give.” [Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Called to Communion, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1996, p. 122.]

· St. Paul, himself, left us testimony regarding the bestowal of the ordained ministry effected through the sacramental rite of “laying on of hands”, which transmits the special gift of the Holy Spirit, in his letters to Timothy: “I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands" (2 Tim 1:6), and "If any one aspires to the office of bishop, he desires a noble task" (1Tim 3:1).[64] To Titus he said: “This is why I left you in Crete, that you amend what was defective, and appoint presbyters in every town, as I directed you,” adding that “a bishop, as God’s steward, must be blameless…he must hold fast to the sure doctrine and also refute those who contradict it.” [Emphasis added] (Titus 1:5-9).

On the Ordination of Women Priests:

Dr. Groome has consistently and emphatically publicly proclaimed his unwavering commitment to the cause of the ordination of women.

As early as 1982, Groome accused the Church of using“false” reasons to justify excluding women from the ordained priesthood. He insisted that women must be admitted to the ministries of“deacon, priest, bishop and pontiff” in order to establish “a Church of mutuality and inclusiveness. [Thomas Groome, Signs of Hope, PACE 12, Direction A, St. Mary’s Press. Winona 1982, pp. 4,6]
 

Groome asserts that the Church’s doctrine regarding the reservation of the ordained priesthood to men alone “is the result of a patriarchal mind-set and culture and is not of Christian faith.” [Thomas Groome, Sharing Faith: A Comprehensive Approach to Religious Education &Pastoral Ministry, Harper, San Francisco, 1991, p. 328.]

Groome castigates the Church with his accusation that: “the injustice of excluding women from priesthood debilitates the church’s sacramentality in the world … it is a countersign to God’s reign." [Ibid.]

Groome alleges that the position of the Church is “ … doing spiritual and moral harm to society.” [Ibid. p. 518.n.114.]

In his program of study for use of inclusive language in the Church, Groome declares that: “the continued exclusion of women from ordained ministry in the Catholic Church is seen by fair-minded scholars as without theological or biblical warrant.” [Thomas Groome, Language for a ‘Catholic’ Church: A Program of Study (revised and updated edition), Sheed&Ward, Kansas City 1995, p. 31]

Dr. Groome is often a featured speaker at Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) affairs where he consistently seizes on the VOTF mantra that the Catholic Church must be restructured along democratic lines in order that: “…we reconstruct the Catholic priesthood” to facilitate the ordination of“ women as priests and bishops.” [Thomas Groome, Boston Globe, May 19, 2002]

In an interview with the Boston Globe in 2003 Dr. Groome made his position on priestly celibacy and the ordination of women to the priesthood perfectly clear by proclaiming: “The present church's legislation requires celibacy, and many of the bishops and the present pope would see that as close to being divinely inspired. That wouldn't be my sentiment at all. I think it's a human regulation that we should dispense with. It should be optional. I would have a similar sentiment on the ordination of women.” [Emphasis added]. [Thomas Groome, Boston Globe, June 26, 2003].

Here again, Dr. Groome skillfully employs the tactic of equating two issues, that of priestly celibacy and the ordination of woman, as being doctrinally equivalent when in fact they are not and cannot be treated as such. Although the Church, for very good reasons, requires and is committed to maintaining mandatory clerical celibacy in the Latin Rite, it does so in its capacity as administrator over God’s Church in which role it demands obedience from its priests. However, the Church’s doctrine on the male-only ministerial priesthood is instituted by Christ and therefore is not within the Church’s power to change. That fact is conveniently glossed over by Dr. Groome.

· “The Catholic Church has never felt that priestly or episcopal ordination can be validly conferred on women. A few heretical sects in the first centuries, especially Gnostic ones, entrusted the exercise of the priestly ministry to women: This innovation was immediately noted and condemned by the Fathers, who considered it as unacceptable in the Church”. [Inter Insigniores Declaration of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the question of admission of women to the ministerial priesthood, 1976.]

· “It should not be supposed that the issue of women’s orders is novel: it dates back to the Montanist heresy of the second and third centuries, and since then has surfaced intermittently in association with comparably gnostic and anti-historical interpretations of Christianity.” [Fr. Donald Keefe, S.J., Covenantal Theology: The Eucharistic Order of History, Presidio Press, Novato, California, 1996, p. 42]

· In 1994, Pope John Paul II published the apostolic letter In Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, stating the Church’s position on conferring priestly ordination on women. The Holy Father proclaims that this teaching is founded on the example of Christ, as recorded in the Gospels and on the universal Tradition of the Church. Therefore the Holy Father declared: “Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.” [Emphasis added]. [Pope John Paul II, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, n. 4 ; cf. nn. 1, 2]


Source document may be found here.

As I said in a previous post, the Worcester Diocese has succumbed over the years to the tragic tendency to place unity above the truth. The company man who is willing to "go along" with sin and error "for the sake of friendship" is most welcome in this distorted notion of "community." But the man who puts the truth first is pushed to the margins and ostracized.