CNS reports:
A top official from the Vatican Secretariat of State acknowledged allegations made by a New York priest in 2000 concerning Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick, according to a letter obtained by Catholic News Service.
Father Boniface Ramsey, pastor of St. Joseph's Church Yorkville in New York City, told CNS Sept. 7 that he received the letter dated Oct. 11, 2006, from then-Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, the former Vatican substitute for general affairs, asking for information regarding a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark who studied at Immaculate Conception Seminary and was being vetted for a post at a Vatican office. He made the letter available to CNS.
Then-Archbishop Sandri wrote to Father Ramsey, "I ask with particular reference to the serious matters involving some of the students of the Immaculate Conception Seminary, which in November 2000 you were good enough to bring confidentially to the attention of the then Apostolic Nuncio in the United States, the late Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo."
Father Ramsey had been on the faculty of the seminary from 1986 to 1996 and had sent a letter in 2000 to Archbishop Montalvo informing him of complaints he heard from seminarians studying at the seminary, located in South Orange, New Jersey.
In the letter, Father Ramsey told CNS, "I complained about McCarrick's relationships with seminarians and the whole business with sleeping with seminarians and all of that; the whole business that everyone knows about," Father Ramsey said.
Father Ramsey said he assumed the reason the letter from then-Archbishop Sandri, who is now a cardinal and prefect of the Congregation for Eastern Churches, only mentioned "serious matters involving " seminarians and not Archbishop McCarrick's behavior was because accusations against the former cardinal were "too sensitive."
"My letter November 22, 2000, was about McCarrick and it wasn't accusing seminarians of anything; it was accusing McCarrick."
While Father Ramsey has said he never received a formal response to the letter he sent in 2000, he told CNS he was certain the letter had been received because of the note he got from then-Archbishop Sandri in 2006 acknowledging the allegations he had raised in 2000.
The 2006 letter not only confirms past remarks made by Father Ramsey, but also elements of a document written by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who served as nuncio to the United States from 2011 to 2016.
In an 11-page statement, published Aug. 26, Archbishop Vigano accused church officials, including Pope Francis, of failing to act on accusations of sexual abuse, as well as abuse of conscience and power by now-Archbishop McCarrick.
Archbishop Vigano stated that the Vatican was informed as early as 2000 -- when he was an official at the Secretariat of State -- of allegations that Archbishop McCarrick "shared his bed with seminarians." Archbishop Vigano said the Vatican heard the allegation from the U.S. nuncios at the time: Archbishop Montalvo, who served from 1998 to 2005 and Archbishop Pietro Sambi, who served from 2005 to 2011.
In late June, then-Cardinal McCarrick, the 88-year-old retired archbishop of Washington, said he would no longer exercise any public ministry "in obedience" to the Vatican after an allegation he abused a teenager 47 years ago in the Archdiocese of New York was found credible. The then-cardinal has said he is innocent.
Since then, several former seminarians have claimed that the then-cardinal would invite groups of them to a beach house and insist individual members of the group share a bed with him.
Now we know with certainty why Francis refused to answer journalist's questions when pressed about Archbishop Vigano's 11 page letter. See here.
Francis rehabilitated McCarrick after Pope Benedict XVI placed censures on him.
As I noted nine years ago (see here):
In the sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church, those who dealt with the bishops have consistently remarked that the bishops never expressed outrage or righteous anger, even at the most horrendous cases of abuse and sacrilege. Bishops seem to think that anger at sin is un-Christian. Gilbert Kilman, a child psychiatrist, commented, 'What amazes me is the lack of outrage the church feels when its good work is being harmed. So, if there is anything the church needs to know, it needs to know how to be outraged.'
Mark Serrano confronted Bishop Frank Rodimer, asking why he had let his priest-friend Peter Osinski sleep with boys at Rodimer’s beach house while Rodimer was in the next bedroom: 'Where is your moral indignation?' Rodimer’s answer was, 'Then I don’t get it. What do you want?' What Serrano wanted Rodimer to do was to behave like a man with a heart, a heart that is outraged by evil. But Rodimer couldn’t; his inability to feel outrage was a quality that had helped make him a bishop. He would never get into fights, never rock the boat, never 'divide' but only 'unify.' Rodimer could not understand why he should feel deep anger at evil, at the violation of the innocent, at the oppression of the weak.
Emotional Deformation
The emotions that are now suppressed are hatred and anger. Christians think that they ought not to feel these emotions, that it is un-Christian to feel them. They secretly suspect that Jesus was being un-Christian in his attitude to the scribes and Pharisees when he was angry at them, that he was un-Christian when he drove the moneychangers out of the temple or declared that millstones (not vacations in treatment centers) were the way to treat child abusers.
Conrad Baars noticed this emotional deformation in the clergy in the mid-twentieth century. He recognized that there had been distortions in 'traditional' Catholic spirituality. It had become too focused upon individual acts rather than on growth in virtue; it had emphasized sheer naked strength of will. In forgetting that growth in virtue was the goal of the Christian’s moral life, it forgot that the emotions, all emotions, including anger and hate, are part of human nature and must be integrated into a virtuous life.
Baars had been imprisoned by the Nazis. He knew iniquity firsthand and that there was something wrong with those who did not hate it:
A little reflection will make it clear that there is a big difference between the person who knows solely that something is evil and ought to be opposed, and the one who in addition also feels hate for that evil, is angry that it is corrupting or harming his fellow-men, and feels aroused to combat it courageously and vigorously.
Just Wrath
Wrath is a necessary and positive part of human nature: 'Wrath is the strength to attack the repugnant; the power of anger is actually the power of resistance in the soul,' wrote Josef Pieper. The lack of wrath against injustice, he continued, is a deficiency: 'One who does good with passion is more praiseworthy than one who is ‘not entirely’ afire for the good, even to the forces of the sensual realm.'
Aquinas, too, says that 'lack of the passion of anger is also a vice' because a man who truly and forcefully rejects evil will be angry at it. The lack of anger makes the movement of the will against evil 'lacking or weak.' He quotes John Chrysostom: 'He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins. For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but the good to do wrong'..."
The spiritually mature Christian understands that not all anger is unjust. That there is such a thing as just or righteous anger. Such a Christian strives to control anger through prayer and by considering the example of Christ. Let's all pray for those in leadership positions in the Church. That they may come to a mature faith which is able to discern between just and unjust anger.
One shepherd [and he is that in every sense of the word] who possesses such a mature faith is The Most Rev. Fabian Bruskewitz, Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska. His Excellency has been quoted as having said, "No words that are printable, or even conceivable, are adequate to express my outrage, fury, and depression upon learning that anyone, much less a priest, would sexually molest any children. Such a thing is an unspeakable abomination. Upon hearing such things, I must confess that I am tempted to look for my shotgun and baseball bat, much sooner that I am tempted to give any consideration to a possible 'sickness' in a perpetrator. Molestation victims and their families are certainly entitled to anger. Sometimes their excessive anger and demands, while often becoming unacceptable and unreasonable, are still understandable to me." Read full statement here.
How much more just anger* should a shepherd demonstrate against those who would spiritually molest faithful Catholics.
* See here
Showing posts with label Anger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anger. Show all posts
Saturday, September 08, 2018
Thursday, August 09, 2018
Bishop Shawn McKnight: A change of culture among the clergy is needed
The Catholic Herald reports:
"The new Bishop of Jefferson City, Missouri has expressed his shock at the McCarrick scandal and 'the silence of so many bishops who knew about him.'
Writing on the diocesan website, Bishop Shawn McKnight said the reports were 'almost unbearable', adding: 'How could a brother bishop disrespect with such callousness the dignity of young boys, seminarians and priests over decades and no one called him on the carpet?'
'It is inexplicable to me. This cannot continue, and I hope with God’s grace there will be a change of culture among the clergy.'
The bishop, who was installed just six months ago, also urged any victim who has not yet come forward to do so now 'so that justice may be served and healing can take place.'
Bishop McKnight was ordained in 1994 for Diocese of Wichita, Kansas and has held teaching posts at Newman University and at the Pontifical College Josephinum Seminary in Columbus, Ohio. From 2010 to 2015 he was a member of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat for Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations.
His comments come as bishops call for an inquiry into the allegations surrounding Archbishop Theodore McCarrick.
Cardinal Donald Wuerl suggested on Monday that a panel of bishops could investigate claims and rumours against their fellow prelates and report the findings to Rome.
However, two bishops have said any investigation must be independent. Bishop Timothy Doherty of Lafayette said the US Conference of Catholic Bishops could hire an outside investigator to find out 'who knew what, and when' over the McCarrick affair.
Bishop Edward Scharfenberger of Albany also said any investigative panel 'would have to be separated from any source of power whose trustworthiness might potentially be compromised.'
'While I am heartened by my brother bishops proposing ways for our Church to take action in light of recent revelations – and I agree that a national panel should be commissioned, duly approved by the Holy See – I think we have reached a point where bishops alone investigating bishops is not the answer,' Bishop Scharfenberger said."
A change in clerical culture is indeed sorely needed. We need priests and Bishops who are capable of being outraged at sexual abuse and perversion. See my post here.
It's time to fashion a whip and drive the filth out of the Church. Something Pope Benedict XVI called for years ago.
"The new Bishop of Jefferson City, Missouri has expressed his shock at the McCarrick scandal and 'the silence of so many bishops who knew about him.'
Writing on the diocesan website, Bishop Shawn McKnight said the reports were 'almost unbearable', adding: 'How could a brother bishop disrespect with such callousness the dignity of young boys, seminarians and priests over decades and no one called him on the carpet?'
'It is inexplicable to me. This cannot continue, and I hope with God’s grace there will be a change of culture among the clergy.'
The bishop, who was installed just six months ago, also urged any victim who has not yet come forward to do so now 'so that justice may be served and healing can take place.'
Bishop McKnight was ordained in 1994 for Diocese of Wichita, Kansas and has held teaching posts at Newman University and at the Pontifical College Josephinum Seminary in Columbus, Ohio. From 2010 to 2015 he was a member of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat for Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations.
His comments come as bishops call for an inquiry into the allegations surrounding Archbishop Theodore McCarrick.
Cardinal Donald Wuerl suggested on Monday that a panel of bishops could investigate claims and rumours against their fellow prelates and report the findings to Rome.
However, two bishops have said any investigation must be independent. Bishop Timothy Doherty of Lafayette said the US Conference of Catholic Bishops could hire an outside investigator to find out 'who knew what, and when' over the McCarrick affair.
Bishop Edward Scharfenberger of Albany also said any investigative panel 'would have to be separated from any source of power whose trustworthiness might potentially be compromised.'
'While I am heartened by my brother bishops proposing ways for our Church to take action in light of recent revelations – and I agree that a national panel should be commissioned, duly approved by the Holy See – I think we have reached a point where bishops alone investigating bishops is not the answer,' Bishop Scharfenberger said."
A change in clerical culture is indeed sorely needed. We need priests and Bishops who are capable of being outraged at sexual abuse and perversion. See my post here.
It's time to fashion a whip and drive the filth out of the Church. Something Pope Benedict XVI called for years ago.
Thursday, August 10, 2017
Devout, Faithful Catholics are angry...and this is bad because....why?
Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons disects the asinine criticism of "anger" emanating from Rome and directed against faithful Catholics here.
Faithful Catholics have come under near constant criticism from a Vatican which is more sympathetic toward sexual deviants and dissident "Catholics" who are Hell bent on changing the perennial and immutable teachings of the Church founded by Christ Jesus than toward devout Catholics who adhere to those same teachings.
Those of us who refuse to roll dice every week to determine which teachings of Christ we will accept And which are to be shit-canned in the name of self-worship are accused of being "angry" for having the sheer, unmitigated fall to oppose the zeitgeist And the encroaching Moloch State, a haunt of demons.
And what of anger? Is anger always evil or unholy? The Vatican should know better. But many there have succumbed to evil and, like Salome who demanded the head of the Baptist (that scary and angry man), those who have embraced sin almost always mistake zeal for unholy anger or fanaticism).
Our age has succumbed to a cult of softness. It is fashionable to believe that any display of anger is due to a lack of charity or to some psychological problem. This cult of softness has, in turn, contributed much to an effeminate Christianity which is incapable of opposing the evils of our present epoch.
It is forgotten that sometimes anger is the proper response to value. In the words of Fr. Bede Jarrett, O.P., "Not only may I sin by being angry when I should not, but I may sin by not being angry when I should be. If my reason tells me that it is right to be angry, then I disobey God when I refuse to give place to wrath; for, as the New Testament teaches, it is possible to "be angry and sin not" (Ephesians 4:26). Our Lord Himself, when need arose, roped together a bundle of cords and drove from the Temple those who trafficked in the House of Prayer, and down the front steps He flung the tables of the money-changers. Perhaps for most of us, the fault is not that we are too angry, but that we are not angry enough. Think of the evils that are in the world, that are known to all, admitted to exist by public press and on public platform. Would they have survived thus far, had folk all shown the indignant anger of Christ? Hypocrisy, cant, and the whole blatant injustice that stalks naked and unashamed in national life - may not our own weakness and silence have helped to render impotent all efforts to reduce these terrible things?....I have got to make myself realize that anger is itself neither evil nor good, and that it can be either. Hence I must pledge myself to see how far I allow anger to rule me when it should not, and how far I overrule it when I should give it a free hand." (Classic Catholic Meditations, p. 168, Sophia Institute Press).
Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand (whom Pope Pius XII referred to as the "20th century Doctor of the Church"): "St. Paul says there always will be heresies and he adds that God permits them to test the faithful. The disunity that is based on the incompatibility of truth and falsehood cannot and should not be avoided...To deplore disunity as such, instead of deploring heresies, instead of condemning these and calling them by their name, implies first of all that one would keep unity even at the cost of truth. But, of course, true unity presupposes unity in truth. Error, falsehood, can never be the basis for true unity. That holy, supernatural unity of which our Lord speaks in the priestly prayer ut unum sint - that all may be one - can come to pass only in the profession of divine truth, in the membership of the Mystical Body of Christ. It is a unity which includes some but, by the same token, excludes others. As Father Werenfried van Straaten [the Bacon priest, my note] reminds us, 'Jesus' prayer that all may be one'...may not be separated from His other words: 'I say unto you that whoever does not enter by the door of the sheepfold is a thief and a robber...I am the door!' The same principle is expressed in the first encyclical of Pope Pius XI: Pax Christi in regno Christi, the peace of Christ in the reign of Christ. Even on the natural level, unity that is not grounded in truth is either a very silly or a very dangerous thing. That shallow comradeship so typical of modern society, for example, in which we approach everyone regardless of his relation to God in a spirit of 'tolerance' - the spirit incarnated in the words of Frederick II of Prussia: 'Let everyone attain beatitude in his own fashion' - that is a foolish pseudo-unity lacking any common principle to truly unite men. Such 'togetherness,' however, can be worse than foolish; it can be a sinister force when it is based not on a lack of principle, but on a common error - on an idol. The togetherness found in Nazism or in Communism is an amazing thing. Devotion to the common idol goes so far that the devotees are ready to die for it. So many young Germans gave their lives in the war while screaming, 'Heil Hitler!' They had given themselves in unity, to the devil." (The Charitable Anathema, pp. 3-4).
Under Francis, the Vatican does not deplore error and falsehood as much as it deplores disunity. This is a great tragedy. A Vatican which has succumbed to "gay" sex orgies has no business casting aspersions at those of us who understand that authentic unity is based in truth. Weak and effeminate "shepherds" in the Vatican may believe that Catholics who are firm in faith are guilty of "attitudes and practices" which do "irreparable damage to the communion of the Church." But faithful Catholics know that it is a false irenicism which really damages the communion of the Church.
Dissent in the Church leads to polarization and destroys peace within the Church. Faithful Catholics who refuse to accept a dissenting view must resist it for the sake of restoring an authentic peace, a peace which Pope John XXIII taught: "is not completely untroubled and serene; it is active, not calm and motionless. In short, this is a peace that is ever at war. It wars with every sort of error, including that which falsely wears the face of truth; it struggles against the enticements of vice, against those enemies of the soul, of whatever description, who can weaken, blemish, or destroy our innocence or Catholic faith." (Ad Petri cathedram, AAS 51 (1959) 517, PE, 263.93).
Pray for Our "shepherds" in Rome. That they may re-discover the Holy Spirit's Gift of Fortitude and return to fidelity.
Faithful Catholics have come under near constant criticism from a Vatican which is more sympathetic toward sexual deviants and dissident "Catholics" who are Hell bent on changing the perennial and immutable teachings of the Church founded by Christ Jesus than toward devout Catholics who adhere to those same teachings.
Those of us who refuse to roll dice every week to determine which teachings of Christ we will accept And which are to be shit-canned in the name of self-worship are accused of being "angry" for having the sheer, unmitigated fall to oppose the zeitgeist And the encroaching Moloch State, a haunt of demons.
And what of anger? Is anger always evil or unholy? The Vatican should know better. But many there have succumbed to evil and, like Salome who demanded the head of the Baptist (that scary and angry man), those who have embraced sin almost always mistake zeal for unholy anger or fanaticism).
Our age has succumbed to a cult of softness. It is fashionable to believe that any display of anger is due to a lack of charity or to some psychological problem. This cult of softness has, in turn, contributed much to an effeminate Christianity which is incapable of opposing the evils of our present epoch.
It is forgotten that sometimes anger is the proper response to value. In the words of Fr. Bede Jarrett, O.P., "Not only may I sin by being angry when I should not, but I may sin by not being angry when I should be. If my reason tells me that it is right to be angry, then I disobey God when I refuse to give place to wrath; for, as the New Testament teaches, it is possible to "be angry and sin not" (Ephesians 4:26). Our Lord Himself, when need arose, roped together a bundle of cords and drove from the Temple those who trafficked in the House of Prayer, and down the front steps He flung the tables of the money-changers. Perhaps for most of us, the fault is not that we are too angry, but that we are not angry enough. Think of the evils that are in the world, that are known to all, admitted to exist by public press and on public platform. Would they have survived thus far, had folk all shown the indignant anger of Christ? Hypocrisy, cant, and the whole blatant injustice that stalks naked and unashamed in national life - may not our own weakness and silence have helped to render impotent all efforts to reduce these terrible things?....I have got to make myself realize that anger is itself neither evil nor good, and that it can be either. Hence I must pledge myself to see how far I allow anger to rule me when it should not, and how far I overrule it when I should give it a free hand." (Classic Catholic Meditations, p. 168, Sophia Institute Press).
Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand (whom Pope Pius XII referred to as the "20th century Doctor of the Church"): "St. Paul says there always will be heresies and he adds that God permits them to test the faithful. The disunity that is based on the incompatibility of truth and falsehood cannot and should not be avoided...To deplore disunity as such, instead of deploring heresies, instead of condemning these and calling them by their name, implies first of all that one would keep unity even at the cost of truth. But, of course, true unity presupposes unity in truth. Error, falsehood, can never be the basis for true unity. That holy, supernatural unity of which our Lord speaks in the priestly prayer ut unum sint - that all may be one - can come to pass only in the profession of divine truth, in the membership of the Mystical Body of Christ. It is a unity which includes some but, by the same token, excludes others. As Father Werenfried van Straaten [the Bacon priest, my note] reminds us, 'Jesus' prayer that all may be one'...may not be separated from His other words: 'I say unto you that whoever does not enter by the door of the sheepfold is a thief and a robber...I am the door!' The same principle is expressed in the first encyclical of Pope Pius XI: Pax Christi in regno Christi, the peace of Christ in the reign of Christ. Even on the natural level, unity that is not grounded in truth is either a very silly or a very dangerous thing. That shallow comradeship so typical of modern society, for example, in which we approach everyone regardless of his relation to God in a spirit of 'tolerance' - the spirit incarnated in the words of Frederick II of Prussia: 'Let everyone attain beatitude in his own fashion' - that is a foolish pseudo-unity lacking any common principle to truly unite men. Such 'togetherness,' however, can be worse than foolish; it can be a sinister force when it is based not on a lack of principle, but on a common error - on an idol. The togetherness found in Nazism or in Communism is an amazing thing. Devotion to the common idol goes so far that the devotees are ready to die for it. So many young Germans gave their lives in the war while screaming, 'Heil Hitler!' They had given themselves in unity, to the devil." (The Charitable Anathema, pp. 3-4).
Under Francis, the Vatican does not deplore error and falsehood as much as it deplores disunity. This is a great tragedy. A Vatican which has succumbed to "gay" sex orgies has no business casting aspersions at those of us who understand that authentic unity is based in truth. Weak and effeminate "shepherds" in the Vatican may believe that Catholics who are firm in faith are guilty of "attitudes and practices" which do "irreparable damage to the communion of the Church." But faithful Catholics know that it is a false irenicism which really damages the communion of the Church.
Dissent in the Church leads to polarization and destroys peace within the Church. Faithful Catholics who refuse to accept a dissenting view must resist it for the sake of restoring an authentic peace, a peace which Pope John XXIII taught: "is not completely untroubled and serene; it is active, not calm and motionless. In short, this is a peace that is ever at war. It wars with every sort of error, including that which falsely wears the face of truth; it struggles against the enticements of vice, against those enemies of the soul, of whatever description, who can weaken, blemish, or destroy our innocence or Catholic faith." (Ad Petri cathedram, AAS 51 (1959) 517, PE, 263.93).
Pray for Our "shepherds" in Rome. That they may re-discover the Holy Spirit's Gift of Fortitude and return to fidelity.
Sunday, October 16, 2016
Francis: An authority on spiritual schizophrenia
Francis on hypocrisy:
“Beware of bad leaven, that of the Pharisees.’ And what is that? It’s hypocrisy. Be on your guard against the Pharisees’ leaven which is hypocrisy.”
Hypocrisy, the Holy Father pointed out, is when we invoke God with our lips, but our hearts are distant from Him.
Spiritual Schizophrenia
“Hypocrisy is an internal division. We say one thing and we do another. It’s a kind of spiritual schizophrenia.."
Spiritual schizophrenia? Such as exhorting other Bishops to be patient while failing to practice patience yourself Francis?
Saying one thing and doing another: The way of Francis.
Who's "non-Christiano"?
Related reading here
“Beware of bad leaven, that of the Pharisees.’ And what is that? It’s hypocrisy. Be on your guard against the Pharisees’ leaven which is hypocrisy.”
Hypocrisy, the Holy Father pointed out, is when we invoke God with our lips, but our hearts are distant from Him.
Spiritual Schizophrenia
“Hypocrisy is an internal division. We say one thing and we do another. It’s a kind of spiritual schizophrenia.."
Spiritual schizophrenia? Such as exhorting other Bishops to be patient while failing to practice patience yourself Francis?
Saying one thing and doing another: The way of Francis.
Who's "non-Christiano"?
Related reading here
Thursday, September 15, 2016
Father Malachi Martin on perfect possession
"The symptoms of possession, Father [Malachi] Martin says, are often confused with mental illness. 'Science spent a lot of time trying to prove that these people were, so to speak, loonies,' he says. 'Now most of my cases are referred to me by psychiatrists.' Victims tend to undergo a startling change of personality. They may become unpredictable, violent and treacherous. They humiliate their families, plot against their friends
, lie to their colleagues. 'They have become alien entities. They have surrendered their wills. The most extreme state is ‘perfect possession’, when the demon has taken complete control. The perfectly possessed person is totally lost. There is nothing I can do,' says Father Martin.
'The peculiar thing is that these people are usually highly sophisticated, and the last thing you would suspect is that they were in league with the Devil. But there is always something about them. It may be a look in their eyes, a tone of voice, a sense of coldness, of contempt. Some- thing inhuman. When you encounter it, you know you have met the true enemy.'" Full article here.
'The peculiar thing is that these people are usually highly sophisticated, and the last thing you would suspect is that they were in league with the Devil. But there is always something about them. It may be a look in their eyes, a tone of voice, a sense of coldness, of contempt. Some- thing inhuman. When you encounter it, you know you have met the true enemy.'" Full article here.
Saturday, July 30, 2016
Did Hillary Clinton have another seizure or is something else going on? Is she devil possessed?
World Net Daily reports: "Hillary Clinton, who’s been plagued by health issues in recent months, apparently has another to deal with now.
A July 21 video posted on YouTube shows Clinton’s head suddenly turning and shaking vigorously for several seconds.
Blogger Jim Hoft of the Gateway Pundit headline it: 'Wow! Did Hillary Clinton Just Suffer a Seizure on Camera?'
'The poor woman is in worse shape than we thought,' he wrote.
In the video, Clinton’s eyes close then open and stare, but she never loses her huge smile.
She says, 'You guys have got to try this cold [drink].'
It’s not the first time health issues have arisen."
But can we be sure that Hillary Clinton is merely suffering from "health issues"? It is my firm belief that Hillary Clinton is either demon infested or possessed by devils and that her angry speeches (screaming into a microphone as Hitler did in his speeches), her persistent cough, and her seizure-like activity, is evidence of demonic activity. See here.
Hillary Clinton has been living apart from God for her entire adult life. Her support for abortion and sodomy, Same-Sex "Marriage," and contraception and her personal lifestyle have opened her up to demonic activity. And we are witnessing physical manifestations of this evil.
A July 21 video posted on YouTube shows Clinton’s head suddenly turning and shaking vigorously for several seconds.
Blogger Jim Hoft of the Gateway Pundit headline it: 'Wow! Did Hillary Clinton Just Suffer a Seizure on Camera?'
'The poor woman is in worse shape than we thought,' he wrote.
In the video, Clinton’s eyes close then open and stare, but she never loses her huge smile.
She says, 'You guys have got to try this cold [drink].'
It’s not the first time health issues have arisen."
But can we be sure that Hillary Clinton is merely suffering from "health issues"? It is my firm belief that Hillary Clinton is either demon infested or possessed by devils and that her angry speeches (screaming into a microphone as Hitler did in his speeches), her persistent cough, and her seizure-like activity, is evidence of demonic activity. See here.
Hillary Clinton has been living apart from God for her entire adult life. Her support for abortion and sodomy, Same-Sex "Marriage," and contraception and her personal lifestyle have opened her up to demonic activity. And we are witnessing physical manifestations of this evil.
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
Message for World Youth Day: Violence is never the answer, we can do nothing else but love, love, love...
As noted here, "Msgr. Olivier Ribadeau Dumas, secretary general of the French Bishops Conference, told reporters in Krakow..that the atrocity (a priest having been martyred by having his head cut off) was 'an unbelievable, unspeakable and heinous act.'

But he added that it means World Youth Day 'needs to proceed with even greater intensity and power so young people who are the present and the future can show a path for the Church, and for being within the Church.'
'We need to see a horizon of peace, joy, brotherhood and prayer,' he continued. 'We are rooted in Christ and, I repeat, we believe evil and violence will not have the upper hand.'
Noting that many young people from Rouen are in Krakow for WYD, he said they have come 'to build a new civilization of love that Pope St. John Paul II had called for — we want to build it and that’s why we’re gathered here in such big numbers.'
He stressed that 'anger and revenge would be the easiest ways out but all of this can crush us' and called for mercy on the perpetrators, saying that we all 'live thanks to Jesus and we’re all gathered here because of the mercy he has lavished on us all.' Neither violence nor hate 'are a way out', he said, and one 'cannot surrender to these sentiments,' nor to 'suspicion of neighbors.'
He also recalled that in every part of the world today people are 'killed because they’re Christians or Muslims, more Muslims than Christians.' Asked by the Register if what is really needed is for Muslims to hear the Gospel and convert, he said 'sure', but added that what is important now is dialogue, collaboration and fraternity.
'The answer is only love,' he said. 'We cannot do anything else: love, love, love, dialogue, dialogue and also mercy for all those who are totally destroyed by the violence.'"
Msgr. Ribadeau has forgotten that it is possible to "be angry and sin not" (Ephesians 4: 26), and he is not alone.
Writing for Touchstone Magazine, Dr. Leon J. Podles explains that, "..many Christians have a false understanding of the nature and role of anger. It is seen as something negative, something that a Christian should not feel.
In the sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church, those who dealt with the bishops have consistently remarked that the bishops never expressed outrage or righteous anger, even at the most horrendous cases of abuse and sacrilege. Bishops seem to think that anger at sin is un-Christian. Gilbert Kilman, a child psychiatrist, commented, 'What amazes me is the lack of outrage the church feels when its good work is being harmed. So, if there is anything the church needs to know, it needs to know how to be outraged.'
Mark Serrano confronted Bishop Frank Rodimer, asking why he had let his priest-friend Peter Osinski sleep with boys at Rodimer’s beach house while Rodimer was in the next bedroom: 'Where is your moral indignation?' Rodimer’s answer was, 'Then I don’t get it. What do you want?' What Serrano wanted Rodimer to do was to behave like a man with a heart, a heart that is outraged by evil. But Rodimer couldn’t; his inability to feel outrage was a quality that had helped make him a bishop. He would never get into fights, never rock the boat, never 'divide' but only 'unify.' Rodimer could not understand why he should feel deep anger at evil, at the violation of the innocent, at the oppression of the weak.
Emotional Deformation
The emotions that are now suppressed are hatred and anger. Christians think that they ought not to feel these emotions, that it is un-Christian to feel them. They secretly suspect that Jesus was being un-Christian in his attitude to the scribes and Pharisees when he was angry at them, that he was un-Christian when he drove the moneychangers out of the temple or declared that millstones (not vacations in treatment centers) were the way to treat child abusers.
Conrad Baars noticed this emotional deformation in the clergy in the mid-twentieth century. He recognized that there had been distortions in 'traditional' Catholic spirituality. It had become too focused upon individual acts rather than on growth in virtue; it had emphasized sheer naked strength of will. In forgetting that growth in virtue was the goal of the Christian’s moral life, it forgot that the emotions, all emotions, including anger and hate, are part of human nature and must be integrated into a virtuous life.
Baars had been imprisoned by the Nazis. He knew iniquity firsthand and that there was something wrong with those who did not hate it:
A little reflection will make it clear that there is a big difference between the person who knows solely that something is evil and ought to be opposed, and the one who in addition also feels hate for that evil, is angry that it is corrupting or harming his fellow-men, and feels aroused to combat it courageously and vigorously.
Just Wrath
Wrath is a necessary and positive part of human nature: 'Wrath is the strength to attack the repugnant; the power of anger is actually the power of resistance in the soul,' wrote Josef Pieper. The lack of wrath against injustice, he continued, is a deficiency: 'One who does good with passion is more praiseworthy than one who is ‘not entirely’ afire for the good, even to the forces of the sensual realm.'
Aquinas, too, says that 'lack of the passion of anger is also a vice' because a man who truly and forcefully rejects evil will be angry at it. The lack of anger makes the movement of the will against evil 'lacking or weak.' He quotes John Chrysostom: 'He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins. For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but the good to do wrong'..."
The spiritually mature Christian understands that not all anger is unjust. That there is such a thing as just or righteous anger. Such a Christian strives to control anger through prayer and by considering the example of Christ. Let's all pray for those in leadership positions in the Church. That they may come to a mature faith which is able to discern between just and unjust anger.
The time has come for a Crusade against the satanic forces of radical Islam. Now is not the time for cowardice or a deformed spirituality. Now is the time for real men to stand up and fight for Christian civilization (what's left of it).
We don't need the "moral" advice of sissy clerics who lack testosterone. We need to listen to authentic men who understand that there is a time for peace and a time for war and that war has been declared on us by the antiChrist forces of militant Islam.
In the words of Cicero: "Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war."

But he added that it means World Youth Day 'needs to proceed with even greater intensity and power so young people who are the present and the future can show a path for the Church, and for being within the Church.'
'We need to see a horizon of peace, joy, brotherhood and prayer,' he continued. 'We are rooted in Christ and, I repeat, we believe evil and violence will not have the upper hand.'
Noting that many young people from Rouen are in Krakow for WYD, he said they have come 'to build a new civilization of love that Pope St. John Paul II had called for — we want to build it and that’s why we’re gathered here in such big numbers.'
He stressed that 'anger and revenge would be the easiest ways out but all of this can crush us' and called for mercy on the perpetrators, saying that we all 'live thanks to Jesus and we’re all gathered here because of the mercy he has lavished on us all.' Neither violence nor hate 'are a way out', he said, and one 'cannot surrender to these sentiments,' nor to 'suspicion of neighbors.'
He also recalled that in every part of the world today people are 'killed because they’re Christians or Muslims, more Muslims than Christians.' Asked by the Register if what is really needed is for Muslims to hear the Gospel and convert, he said 'sure', but added that what is important now is dialogue, collaboration and fraternity.
'The answer is only love,' he said. 'We cannot do anything else: love, love, love, dialogue, dialogue and also mercy for all those who are totally destroyed by the violence.'"
Msgr. Ribadeau has forgotten that it is possible to "be angry and sin not" (Ephesians 4: 26), and he is not alone.
Writing for Touchstone Magazine, Dr. Leon J. Podles explains that, "..many Christians have a false understanding of the nature and role of anger. It is seen as something negative, something that a Christian should not feel.
In the sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church, those who dealt with the bishops have consistently remarked that the bishops never expressed outrage or righteous anger, even at the most horrendous cases of abuse and sacrilege. Bishops seem to think that anger at sin is un-Christian. Gilbert Kilman, a child psychiatrist, commented, 'What amazes me is the lack of outrage the church feels when its good work is being harmed. So, if there is anything the church needs to know, it needs to know how to be outraged.'
Mark Serrano confronted Bishop Frank Rodimer, asking why he had let his priest-friend Peter Osinski sleep with boys at Rodimer’s beach house while Rodimer was in the next bedroom: 'Where is your moral indignation?' Rodimer’s answer was, 'Then I don’t get it. What do you want?' What Serrano wanted Rodimer to do was to behave like a man with a heart, a heart that is outraged by evil. But Rodimer couldn’t; his inability to feel outrage was a quality that had helped make him a bishop. He would never get into fights, never rock the boat, never 'divide' but only 'unify.' Rodimer could not understand why he should feel deep anger at evil, at the violation of the innocent, at the oppression of the weak.
Emotional Deformation
The emotions that are now suppressed are hatred and anger. Christians think that they ought not to feel these emotions, that it is un-Christian to feel them. They secretly suspect that Jesus was being un-Christian in his attitude to the scribes and Pharisees when he was angry at them, that he was un-Christian when he drove the moneychangers out of the temple or declared that millstones (not vacations in treatment centers) were the way to treat child abusers.
Conrad Baars noticed this emotional deformation in the clergy in the mid-twentieth century. He recognized that there had been distortions in 'traditional' Catholic spirituality. It had become too focused upon individual acts rather than on growth in virtue; it had emphasized sheer naked strength of will. In forgetting that growth in virtue was the goal of the Christian’s moral life, it forgot that the emotions, all emotions, including anger and hate, are part of human nature and must be integrated into a virtuous life.
Baars had been imprisoned by the Nazis. He knew iniquity firsthand and that there was something wrong with those who did not hate it:
A little reflection will make it clear that there is a big difference between the person who knows solely that something is evil and ought to be opposed, and the one who in addition also feels hate for that evil, is angry that it is corrupting or harming his fellow-men, and feels aroused to combat it courageously and vigorously.
Just Wrath
Wrath is a necessary and positive part of human nature: 'Wrath is the strength to attack the repugnant; the power of anger is actually the power of resistance in the soul,' wrote Josef Pieper. The lack of wrath against injustice, he continued, is a deficiency: 'One who does good with passion is more praiseworthy than one who is ‘not entirely’ afire for the good, even to the forces of the sensual realm.'
Aquinas, too, says that 'lack of the passion of anger is also a vice' because a man who truly and forcefully rejects evil will be angry at it. The lack of anger makes the movement of the will against evil 'lacking or weak.' He quotes John Chrysostom: 'He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins. For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but the good to do wrong'..."
The spiritually mature Christian understands that not all anger is unjust. That there is such a thing as just or righteous anger. Such a Christian strives to control anger through prayer and by considering the example of Christ. Let's all pray for those in leadership positions in the Church. That they may come to a mature faith which is able to discern between just and unjust anger.
The time has come for a Crusade against the satanic forces of radical Islam. Now is not the time for cowardice or a deformed spirituality. Now is the time for real men to stand up and fight for Christian civilization (what's left of it).
We don't need the "moral" advice of sissy clerics who lack testosterone. We need to listen to authentic men who understand that there is a time for peace and a time for war and that war has been declared on us by the antiChrist forces of militant Islam.
In the words of Cicero: "Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war."
Friday, August 07, 2015
Cardinal Cottier has forgotten that mercy and anger alike are with God
The Catholic Herald reports:
"In being a minister of God’s mercy and a guide on the path to holiness, the Catholic Church must develop better ways to 'accompany' people in their family life and not simply condemn those who fail, said a diverse group of theologians, including the former theologian of the papal household.
Cardinal Georges Cottier, who served as the papal theologian from 1989 to 2005, said, 'In rigorism, there is an innate brutality that is contrary to the delicacy with which God guides each person.'
La Civilta Cattolica, a Jesuit journal reviewed at the Vatican prior to publication, published an interview last Thursday with Cardinal Cottier about mercy and the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the family.
The cardinal said he was certain that the Year of Mercy proclaimed by Pope Francis would influence the synod’s work, which has the task of proclaiming God’s plan for the human family and assisting all Catholics – including those in what the church would define as 'irregular' situations – to grow in holiness.
'Some people have been scandalised by the Church because of a negative judgment issued in an impersonal and soulless way,' Cardinal Cottier said. 'They have felt driven away, rejected in a serious manner.'
While the Church’s ministers must uphold Church teaching, he said, 'this must be presented and explained in a language that clearly transmits the maternal concern of the church.'
'Through the voice of its pastors,' Cardinal Cottier said, 'the Church always must demonstrate that it is guided by the requirements of divine mercy.'"
And what of the requirements of divine justice? On that subject the Cardinal is silent. Anyone who, like Cardinal Cottier, believes that the Church suffers from "rigorism," is not in touch with reality. Quite the contrary is true. The Church suffers today not from rigorism but from laxity. And this is driving people out of the Church today as it has driven them from those churches which have embraced liberalism and modernism. The fruit of this laxity is Catholics who decide to sleep in on Sunday morning with the mindset, "What do I need Mass for, God will save me in His mercy. I am basically a good person."
Oscar Romero, the martyred Archbishop of San Salvador, once said: "A preaching that does not point out sin is not the preaching of the gospel. A preaching that makes sinners feel good, so that they are secured in their sinful state, betrays the gospels call...A preaching that awakens, a preaching that enlightens - as when a light turned on awakens and of course annoys a sleeper - that is the preaching of Christ, calling: Wake up! Be converted! That is the Church's authentic preaching."
While there are so many good and faithful priests who do preach on the reality of sin and the need for reconciliation, there are those who have no love for the souls under their care. As a consequence, these priests neglect the souls entrusted to them and make no attempt to stress the reality of sin and the need for ongoing conversion.
When Jesus began His public ministry, He did so with the word "repent" (Matthew 4:17). And He advised the woman caught in adultery to "sin no more" (John 8:11). Likewise, in the case of the man cured at the Pool of Bethesda, Jesus advised him to "sin no more lest something worse befall thee" (John 5:14). Was Jesus guilty of "rigorism"? When queried on the subject of how many would be saved, Jesus replied "few" because the "gate" to Heaven is "narrow" (Matthew 7:13-14). And while no one can pinpoint the precise meaning of the word "few," still, it is sobering that Jesus chose the image of a narrow gate.
Jesus is likened in the gospel to a stern master who has lazy servants flogged and murderous ones put to death (Matthew 21:41; Luke 12:47). And while it is true that Jesus is Mercy, He is also Justice. And for every parable illustrative of His mercy, there are three or four threatening divine retribution.
The Judgment Day is always described as a day of wrath and never as a day of rejoicing (Proverbs 11:4; Zephaniah 1:15; Sirach 5:10; Romans 2:5; Revelation 6:17). Why is this? If everyone (or even a large segment of mankind) is headed for Heaven, why does Sacred Scripture refer to the Judgment Day as a day of wrath?
The smug, self-satisfied "we-are-all-saved-already" attitude found in so many Catholic parishes is the result of the sin of presumption. Because there are priests who are betraying Jesus by refusing to preach on the reality of sin and the reality of Hell, a spiritual dry-rot has infected much of the Church. This is why nearly everyone receives Holy Communion at Mass but nearly no one goes to Confession.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church has this to say about presumption: "There are two kinds of presumption. Either man presumes upon his own capacities, (hoping to be able to save himself without help from on high), or he presumes upon God's almighty power or his mercy (hoping to obtain his forgiveness without conversion and glory without merit)." (CCC, 2092).
The words of Sacred Scripture remind us that such an attitude is very, very wrong: "Of forgiveness be not overconfident, adding sin upon sin. Say not:' Great is his mercy; my many sins he will forgive.' For mercy and anger alike are with him; upon the wicked alights his wrath." (Sirach 5:5-7).
Cardinal Cottier has forgotten this truth.
"In being a minister of God’s mercy and a guide on the path to holiness, the Catholic Church must develop better ways to 'accompany' people in their family life and not simply condemn those who fail, said a diverse group of theologians, including the former theologian of the papal household.
Cardinal Georges Cottier, who served as the papal theologian from 1989 to 2005, said, 'In rigorism, there is an innate brutality that is contrary to the delicacy with which God guides each person.'
La Civilta Cattolica, a Jesuit journal reviewed at the Vatican prior to publication, published an interview last Thursday with Cardinal Cottier about mercy and the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the family.
The cardinal said he was certain that the Year of Mercy proclaimed by Pope Francis would influence the synod’s work, which has the task of proclaiming God’s plan for the human family and assisting all Catholics – including those in what the church would define as 'irregular' situations – to grow in holiness.
'Some people have been scandalised by the Church because of a negative judgment issued in an impersonal and soulless way,' Cardinal Cottier said. 'They have felt driven away, rejected in a serious manner.'
While the Church’s ministers must uphold Church teaching, he said, 'this must be presented and explained in a language that clearly transmits the maternal concern of the church.'
'Through the voice of its pastors,' Cardinal Cottier said, 'the Church always must demonstrate that it is guided by the requirements of divine mercy.'"
And what of the requirements of divine justice? On that subject the Cardinal is silent. Anyone who, like Cardinal Cottier, believes that the Church suffers from "rigorism," is not in touch with reality. Quite the contrary is true. The Church suffers today not from rigorism but from laxity. And this is driving people out of the Church today as it has driven them from those churches which have embraced liberalism and modernism. The fruit of this laxity is Catholics who decide to sleep in on Sunday morning with the mindset, "What do I need Mass for, God will save me in His mercy. I am basically a good person."
Oscar Romero, the martyred Archbishop of San Salvador, once said: "A preaching that does not point out sin is not the preaching of the gospel. A preaching that makes sinners feel good, so that they are secured in their sinful state, betrays the gospels call...A preaching that awakens, a preaching that enlightens - as when a light turned on awakens and of course annoys a sleeper - that is the preaching of Christ, calling: Wake up! Be converted! That is the Church's authentic preaching."
While there are so many good and faithful priests who do preach on the reality of sin and the need for reconciliation, there are those who have no love for the souls under their care. As a consequence, these priests neglect the souls entrusted to them and make no attempt to stress the reality of sin and the need for ongoing conversion.
When Jesus began His public ministry, He did so with the word "repent" (Matthew 4:17). And He advised the woman caught in adultery to "sin no more" (John 8:11). Likewise, in the case of the man cured at the Pool of Bethesda, Jesus advised him to "sin no more lest something worse befall thee" (John 5:14). Was Jesus guilty of "rigorism"? When queried on the subject of how many would be saved, Jesus replied "few" because the "gate" to Heaven is "narrow" (Matthew 7:13-14). And while no one can pinpoint the precise meaning of the word "few," still, it is sobering that Jesus chose the image of a narrow gate.
Jesus is likened in the gospel to a stern master who has lazy servants flogged and murderous ones put to death (Matthew 21:41; Luke 12:47). And while it is true that Jesus is Mercy, He is also Justice. And for every parable illustrative of His mercy, there are three or four threatening divine retribution.
The Judgment Day is always described as a day of wrath and never as a day of rejoicing (Proverbs 11:4; Zephaniah 1:15; Sirach 5:10; Romans 2:5; Revelation 6:17). Why is this? If everyone (or even a large segment of mankind) is headed for Heaven, why does Sacred Scripture refer to the Judgment Day as a day of wrath?
The smug, self-satisfied "we-are-all-saved-already" attitude found in so many Catholic parishes is the result of the sin of presumption. Because there are priests who are betraying Jesus by refusing to preach on the reality of sin and the reality of Hell, a spiritual dry-rot has infected much of the Church. This is why nearly everyone receives Holy Communion at Mass but nearly no one goes to Confession.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church has this to say about presumption: "There are two kinds of presumption. Either man presumes upon his own capacities, (hoping to be able to save himself without help from on high), or he presumes upon God's almighty power or his mercy (hoping to obtain his forgiveness without conversion and glory without merit)." (CCC, 2092).
The words of Sacred Scripture remind us that such an attitude is very, very wrong: "Of forgiveness be not overconfident, adding sin upon sin. Say not:' Great is his mercy; my many sins he will forgive.' For mercy and anger alike are with him; upon the wicked alights his wrath." (Sirach 5:5-7).
Cardinal Cottier has forgotten this truth.
Sunday, March 08, 2015
Father Brian O'Toole and the lack of the passion of anger
In a past post, I noted how it is possible to "be angry and sin not" (Ephesians 4: 26), something which Father Brian O'Toole, "pastor" of the failing Sacred Heart Parish in Gardner, apparently does not understand. And he is not alone.
Writing for Touchstone Magazine, Dr. Leon J. Podles explains that, "..many Christians have a false understanding of the nature and role of anger. It is seen as something negative, something that a Christian should not feel.
In the sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church, those who dealt with the bishops have consistently remarked that the bishops never expressed outrage or righteous anger, even at the most horrendous cases of abuse and sacrilege. Bishops seem to think that anger at sin is un-Christian. Gilbert Kilman, a child psychiatrist, commented, 'What amazes me is the lack of outrage the church feels when its good work is being harmed. So, if there is anything the church needs to know, it needs to know how to be outraged.'
Mark Serrano confronted Bishop Frank Rodimer, asking why he had let his priest-friend Peter Osinski sleep with boys at Rodimer’s beach house while Rodimer was in the next bedroom: 'Where is your moral indignation?' Rodimer’s answer was, 'Then I don’t get it. What do you want?' What Serrano wanted Rodimer to do was to behave like a man with a heart, a heart that is outraged by evil. But Rodimer couldn’t; his inability to feel outrage was a quality that had helped make him a bishop. He would never get into fights, never rock the boat, never 'divide' but only 'unify.' Rodimer could not understand why he should feel deep anger at evil, at the violation of the innocent, at the oppression of the weak.
Emotional Deformation
The emotions that are now suppressed are hatred and anger. Christians think that they ought not to feel these emotions, that it is un-Christian to feel them. They secretly suspect that Jesus was being un-Christian in his attitude to the scribes and Pharisees when he was angry at them, that he was un-Christian when he drove the moneychangers out of the temple or declared that millstones (not vacations in treatment centers) were the way to treat child abusers.
Conrad Baars noticed this emotional deformation in the clergy in the mid-twentieth century. He recognized that there had been distortions in 'traditional' Catholic spirituality. It had become too focused upon individual acts rather than on growth in virtue; it had emphasized sheer naked strength of will. In forgetting that growth in virtue was the goal of the Christian’s moral life, it forgot that the emotions, all emotions, including anger and hate, are part of human nature and must be integrated into a virtuous life.
Baars had been imprisoned by the Nazis. He knew iniquity firsthand and that there was something wrong with those who did not hate it:
A little reflection will make it clear that there is a big difference between the person who knows solely that something is evil and ought to be opposed, and the one who in addition also feels hate for that evil, is angry that it is corrupting or harming his fellow-men, and feels aroused to combat it courageously and vigorously.
Just Wrath
Wrath is a necessary and positive part of human nature: 'Wrath is the strength to attack the repugnant; the power of anger is actually the power of resistance in the soul,' wrote Josef Pieper. The lack of wrath against injustice, he continued, is a deficiency: 'One who does good with passion is more praiseworthy than one who is ‘not entirely’ afire for the good, even to the forces of the sensual realm.'
Aquinas, too, says that 'lack of the passion of anger is also a vice' because a man who truly and forcefully rejects evil will be angry at it. The lack of anger makes the movement of the will against evil 'lacking or weak.' He quotes John Chrysostom: 'He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins. For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but the good to do wrong'..." (Full article here).
The spiritually mature Christian understands that not all anger is unjust. That there is such a thing as just or righteous anger. Such a Christian strives to control anger through prayer and by considering the example of Christ. Let's all pray for those in leadership positions in the Church. That they may come to a mature faith which is able to discern between just and unjust anger.
One shepherd [and he is that in every sense of the word] who possesses such a mature faith is The Most Rev. Fabian Bruskewitz, Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska. His Excellency has been quoted as having said, "No words that are printable, or even conceivable, are adequate to express my outrage, fury, and depression upon learning that anyone, much less a priest, would sexually molest any children. Such a thing is an unspeakable abomination. Upon hearing such things, I must confess that I am tempted to look for my shotgun and baseball bat, much sooner that I am tempted to give any consideration to a possible 'sickness' in a perpetrator. Molestation victims and their families are certainly entitled to anger. Sometimes their excessive anger and demands, while often becoming unacceptable and unreasonable, are still understandable to me."
How much more just anger should a shepherd demonstrate against those who would spiritually molest faithful Catholics.
At his homily delivered at the 10:30 AM Mass at Sacred Heart Parish today, Father Brian O'Toole said that Jesus "lost it," and drove out the money changers who "weren't really doing anything wrong." This even though Our Lord rebuked them for making His Father's House a "Den of Thieves."
Father O'Toole, as with many of his effeminate contemporaries who have succumbed to the Cult of Softness, doesn't understand this Gospel passage because he lacks the passion of anger.
And that is a vice.
Writing for Touchstone Magazine, Dr. Leon J. Podles explains that, "..many Christians have a false understanding of the nature and role of anger. It is seen as something negative, something that a Christian should not feel.
In the sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church, those who dealt with the bishops have consistently remarked that the bishops never expressed outrage or righteous anger, even at the most horrendous cases of abuse and sacrilege. Bishops seem to think that anger at sin is un-Christian. Gilbert Kilman, a child psychiatrist, commented, 'What amazes me is the lack of outrage the church feels when its good work is being harmed. So, if there is anything the church needs to know, it needs to know how to be outraged.'
Mark Serrano confronted Bishop Frank Rodimer, asking why he had let his priest-friend Peter Osinski sleep with boys at Rodimer’s beach house while Rodimer was in the next bedroom: 'Where is your moral indignation?' Rodimer’s answer was, 'Then I don’t get it. What do you want?' What Serrano wanted Rodimer to do was to behave like a man with a heart, a heart that is outraged by evil. But Rodimer couldn’t; his inability to feel outrage was a quality that had helped make him a bishop. He would never get into fights, never rock the boat, never 'divide' but only 'unify.' Rodimer could not understand why he should feel deep anger at evil, at the violation of the innocent, at the oppression of the weak.
Emotional Deformation
The emotions that are now suppressed are hatred and anger. Christians think that they ought not to feel these emotions, that it is un-Christian to feel them. They secretly suspect that Jesus was being un-Christian in his attitude to the scribes and Pharisees when he was angry at them, that he was un-Christian when he drove the moneychangers out of the temple or declared that millstones (not vacations in treatment centers) were the way to treat child abusers.
Conrad Baars noticed this emotional deformation in the clergy in the mid-twentieth century. He recognized that there had been distortions in 'traditional' Catholic spirituality. It had become too focused upon individual acts rather than on growth in virtue; it had emphasized sheer naked strength of will. In forgetting that growth in virtue was the goal of the Christian’s moral life, it forgot that the emotions, all emotions, including anger and hate, are part of human nature and must be integrated into a virtuous life.
Baars had been imprisoned by the Nazis. He knew iniquity firsthand and that there was something wrong with those who did not hate it:
A little reflection will make it clear that there is a big difference between the person who knows solely that something is evil and ought to be opposed, and the one who in addition also feels hate for that evil, is angry that it is corrupting or harming his fellow-men, and feels aroused to combat it courageously and vigorously.
Just Wrath
Wrath is a necessary and positive part of human nature: 'Wrath is the strength to attack the repugnant; the power of anger is actually the power of resistance in the soul,' wrote Josef Pieper. The lack of wrath against injustice, he continued, is a deficiency: 'One who does good with passion is more praiseworthy than one who is ‘not entirely’ afire for the good, even to the forces of the sensual realm.'
Aquinas, too, says that 'lack of the passion of anger is also a vice' because a man who truly and forcefully rejects evil will be angry at it. The lack of anger makes the movement of the will against evil 'lacking or weak.' He quotes John Chrysostom: 'He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins. For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but the good to do wrong'..." (Full article here).
The spiritually mature Christian understands that not all anger is unjust. That there is such a thing as just or righteous anger. Such a Christian strives to control anger through prayer and by considering the example of Christ. Let's all pray for those in leadership positions in the Church. That they may come to a mature faith which is able to discern between just and unjust anger.
One shepherd [and he is that in every sense of the word] who possesses such a mature faith is The Most Rev. Fabian Bruskewitz, Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska. His Excellency has been quoted as having said, "No words that are printable, or even conceivable, are adequate to express my outrage, fury, and depression upon learning that anyone, much less a priest, would sexually molest any children. Such a thing is an unspeakable abomination. Upon hearing such things, I must confess that I am tempted to look for my shotgun and baseball bat, much sooner that I am tempted to give any consideration to a possible 'sickness' in a perpetrator. Molestation victims and their families are certainly entitled to anger. Sometimes their excessive anger and demands, while often becoming unacceptable and unreasonable, are still understandable to me."
How much more just anger should a shepherd demonstrate against those who would spiritually molest faithful Catholics.
At his homily delivered at the 10:30 AM Mass at Sacred Heart Parish today, Father Brian O'Toole said that Jesus "lost it," and drove out the money changers who "weren't really doing anything wrong." This even though Our Lord rebuked them for making His Father's House a "Den of Thieves."
Father O'Toole, as with many of his effeminate contemporaries who have succumbed to the Cult of Softness, doesn't understand this Gospel passage because he lacks the passion of anger.
And that is a vice.
Saturday, February 04, 2012
Clark University's need to demonize any and all opposition to its ideology...
The Scarlet, a Clark University publication, wants its readers to believe that I am "angry." You see, it is much easier to dismiss honest criticism that way. But I'm not the one attacking the Natural Law and Catholic moral teaching while slandering the memory of a great Pontiff. It would seem that it is Clark University which has succumbed to anger and ideology.
As readers of this Blog know, I have documented Clark University's attempt to demonize moral opposition toward homosexuality and same-sex "marriage." For Clark University, moral opposition to the radical homosexual agenda is equivalent to being "anti-gay." It is termed "heterosexism" and is put in the same category as rape and sexual assault. This is tantamount to saying that the Natural Law is "anti-gay," a position which is so absurd that it could only originate from a place like Clark University.
Deborah Dwork, Director of Clark University's Strassler Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, has slandered the memory of Pope Pius XII, suggesting that he "failed Europe's Jews miserably, unconscionably," a position which I have totally refuted. See here.
Clark University's "Freethought Society" posted a message on Facebook saying that it is "okay" to mock Christianity. See here. Before that, simply because I do not agree with the radical homosexual agitprop and Christianophobic ideology coming out of Clark University, members of the Clark University "Freethought Society" asserted [again on Facebook] that I am "a delusional nutter" who "appears to have some major persecution fantasies." I was called an "ass...." who is simply "crazy." See here.
And I am the angry one?
But even if I were "angry," such anger would be justified. This point is not understood by many at Clark University who have replaced thought with slogans and knee-jerk responses. It was Blaise Pascal who said that, "It is as much a crime to disturb the peace when truth prevails as it is a crime to keep the peace when truth is violated. There is therefore a time in which peace is justified and another time when it is not justifiable. For it is written that there is a time for peace and a time for war and it is the law of truth that distinguishes the two. But at no time is there a time for truth and a time for error, for it is written that God's truth shall abide forever. That is why Christ has said that He has come to bring peace and at the same time He has come to bring the sword. But He does not say that He has come to bring both the truth and the falsehood."
Because our age has succumbed to a cult of softness, it is fashionable to believe that any display of anger is due to a lack of charity or to some psychological problem. This cult of softness has, in turn, contributed much to an effeminate Christianity which is incapable of opposing the evils of our present epoch.
It is forgotten that sometimes anger is the proper response to value. In the words of Fr. Bede Jarrett, O.P., "Not only may I sin by being angry when I should not, but I may sin by not being angry when I should be. If my reason tells me that it is right to be angry, then I disobey God when I refuse to give place to wrath; for, as the New Testament teaches, it is possible to "be angry and sin not" (Ephesians 4:26). Our Lord Himself, when need arose, roped together a bundle of cords and drove from the Temple those who trafficked in the House of Prayer, and down the front steps He flung the tables of the money-changers. Perhaps for most of us, the fault is not that we are too angry, but that we are not angry enough. Think of the evils that are in the world, that are known to all, admitted to exist by public press and on public platform. Would they have survived thus far, had folk all shown the indignant anger of Christ? Hypocrisy, cant, and the whole blatant injustice that stalks naked and unashamed in national life - may not our own weakness and silence have helped to render impotent all efforts to reduce these terrible things?....I have got to make myself realize that anger is itself neither evil nor good, and that it can be either. Hence I must pledge myself to see how far I allow anger to rule me when it should not, and how far I overrule it when I should give it a free hand." (Classic Catholic Meditations, p. 168, Sophia Institute Press).
There is then just and unjust anger. Is it an expression of just anger to slander a great Pontiff? To mock Christian beliefs simply because you do not share them? To label another an "ass...." and a "delusional nutter" because he is personally opposed to the radical homosexual agenda?
Here again we see that Clark University is not interested in authentic dialogue and free thought. It is more concerned with placing opposing views in an intellectual ghetto and in demonizing those who refuse to embrace its secular humanist ideology as "crazy" and "hateful."
What a shame.
Friday, September 04, 2009
"He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins.."
In my previous post, I noted how it is possible to "be angry and sin not" (Ephesians 4: 26), something which Cardinal Sean O'Malley obviously does not understand. And he is not alone. Writing for Touchstone Magazine, Dr. Leon J. Podles explains that, "..many Christians have a false understanding of the nature and role of anger. It is seen as something negative, something that a Christian should not feel.
In the sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church, those who dealt with the bishops have consistently remarked that the bishops never expressed outrage or righteous anger, even at the most horrendous cases of abuse and sacrilege. Bishops seem to think that anger at sin is un-Christian. Gilbert Kilman, a child psychiatrist, commented, 'What amazes me is the lack of outrage the church feels when its good work is being harmed. So, if there is anything the church needs to know, it needs to know how to be outraged.'
Mark Serrano confronted Bishop Frank Rodimer, asking why he had let his priest-friend Peter Osinski sleep with boys at Rodimer’s beach house while Rodimer was in the next bedroom: 'Where is your moral indignation?' Rodimer’s answer was, 'Then I don’t get it. What do you want?' What Serrano wanted Rodimer to do was to behave like a man with a heart, a heart that is outraged by evil. But Rodimer couldn’t; his inability to feel outrage was a quality that had helped make him a bishop. He would never get into fights, never rock the boat, never 'divide' but only 'unify.' Rodimer could not understand why he should feel deep anger at evil, at the violation of the innocent, at the oppression of the weak.
Emotional Deformation
The emotions that are now suppressed are hatred and anger. Christians think that they ought not to feel these emotions, that it is un-Christian to feel them. They secretly suspect that Jesus was being un-Christian in his attitude to the scribes and Pharisees when he was angry at them, that he was un-Christian when he drove the moneychangers out of the temple or declared that millstones (not vacations in treatment centers) were the way to treat child abusers.
Conrad Baars noticed this emotional deformation in the clergy in the mid-twentieth century. He recognized that there had been distortions in 'traditional' Catholic spirituality. It had become too focused upon individual acts rather than on growth in virtue; it had emphasized sheer naked strength of will. In forgetting that growth in virtue was the goal of the Christian’s moral life, it forgot that the emotions, all emotions, including anger and hate, are part of human nature and must be integrated into a virtuous life.
Baars had been imprisoned by the Nazis. He knew iniquity firsthand and that there was something wrong with those who did not hate it:
A little reflection will make it clear that there is a big difference between the person who knows solely that something is evil and ought to be opposed, and the one who in addition also feels hate for that evil, is angry that it is corrupting or harming his fellow-men, and feels aroused to combat it courageously and vigorously.
Just Wrath
Wrath is a necessary and positive part of human nature: 'Wrath is the strength to attack the repugnant; the power of anger is actually the power of resistance in the soul,' wrote Josef Pieper. The lack of wrath against injustice, he continued, is a deficiency: 'One who does good with passion is more praiseworthy than one who is ‘not entirely’ afire for the good, even to the forces of the sensual realm.'
Aquinas, too, says that 'lack of the passion of anger is also a vice' because a man who truly and forcefully rejects evil will be angry at it. The lack of anger makes the movement of the will against evil 'lacking or weak.' He quotes John Chrysostom: 'He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins. For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but the good to do wrong'..." (Full article here).
The spiritually mature Christian understands that not all anger is unjust. That there is such a thing as just or righteous anger. Such a Christian strives to control anger through prayer and by considering the example of Christ. Let's all pray for those in leadership positions in the Church. That they may come to a mature faith which is able to discern between just and unjust anger.
In the sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church, those who dealt with the bishops have consistently remarked that the bishops never expressed outrage or righteous anger, even at the most horrendous cases of abuse and sacrilege. Bishops seem to think that anger at sin is un-Christian. Gilbert Kilman, a child psychiatrist, commented, 'What amazes me is the lack of outrage the church feels when its good work is being harmed. So, if there is anything the church needs to know, it needs to know how to be outraged.'
Mark Serrano confronted Bishop Frank Rodimer, asking why he had let his priest-friend Peter Osinski sleep with boys at Rodimer’s beach house while Rodimer was in the next bedroom: 'Where is your moral indignation?' Rodimer’s answer was, 'Then I don’t get it. What do you want?' What Serrano wanted Rodimer to do was to behave like a man with a heart, a heart that is outraged by evil. But Rodimer couldn’t; his inability to feel outrage was a quality that had helped make him a bishop. He would never get into fights, never rock the boat, never 'divide' but only 'unify.' Rodimer could not understand why he should feel deep anger at evil, at the violation of the innocent, at the oppression of the weak.
Emotional Deformation
The emotions that are now suppressed are hatred and anger. Christians think that they ought not to feel these emotions, that it is un-Christian to feel them. They secretly suspect that Jesus was being un-Christian in his attitude to the scribes and Pharisees when he was angry at them, that he was un-Christian when he drove the moneychangers out of the temple or declared that millstones (not vacations in treatment centers) were the way to treat child abusers.
Conrad Baars noticed this emotional deformation in the clergy in the mid-twentieth century. He recognized that there had been distortions in 'traditional' Catholic spirituality. It had become too focused upon individual acts rather than on growth in virtue; it had emphasized sheer naked strength of will. In forgetting that growth in virtue was the goal of the Christian’s moral life, it forgot that the emotions, all emotions, including anger and hate, are part of human nature and must be integrated into a virtuous life.
Baars had been imprisoned by the Nazis. He knew iniquity firsthand and that there was something wrong with those who did not hate it:
A little reflection will make it clear that there is a big difference between the person who knows solely that something is evil and ought to be opposed, and the one who in addition also feels hate for that evil, is angry that it is corrupting or harming his fellow-men, and feels aroused to combat it courageously and vigorously.
Just Wrath
Wrath is a necessary and positive part of human nature: 'Wrath is the strength to attack the repugnant; the power of anger is actually the power of resistance in the soul,' wrote Josef Pieper. The lack of wrath against injustice, he continued, is a deficiency: 'One who does good with passion is more praiseworthy than one who is ‘not entirely’ afire for the good, even to the forces of the sensual realm.'
Aquinas, too, says that 'lack of the passion of anger is also a vice' because a man who truly and forcefully rejects evil will be angry at it. The lack of anger makes the movement of the will against evil 'lacking or weak.' He quotes John Chrysostom: 'He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins. For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but the good to do wrong'..." (Full article here).
The spiritually mature Christian understands that not all anger is unjust. That there is such a thing as just or righteous anger. Such a Christian strives to control anger through prayer and by considering the example of Christ. Let's all pray for those in leadership positions in the Church. That they may come to a mature faith which is able to discern between just and unjust anger.
One shepherd [and he is that in every sense of the word] who possesses such a mature faith is The Most Rev. Fabian Bruskewitz, Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska. His Excellency has been quoted as having said, "No words that are printable, or even conceivable, are adequate to express my outrage, fury, and depression upon learning that anyone, much less a priest, would sexually molest any children. Such a thing is an unspeakable abomination. Upon hearing such things, I must confess that I am tempted to look for my shotgun and baseball bat, much sooner that I am tempted to give any consideration to a possible 'sickness' in a perpetrator. Molestation victims and their families are certainly entitled to anger. Sometimes their excessive anger and demands, while often becoming unacceptable and unreasonable, are still understandable to me." Read full statement here.
How much more just anger should a shepherd demonstrate against those who would spiritually molest faithful Catholics.
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Cardinal Sean O'Malley: Unity over truth?
"It is as much a crime to disturb the peace when truth prevails as it is a crime to keep the peace when truth is violated. There is therefore a time in which peace is justified and another time when it is not justifiable. For it is written that there is a time for peace and a time for war and it is the law of truth that distinguishes the two. But at no time is there a time for truth and a time for error, for it is written that God's truth shall abide forever. That is why Christ has said that He has come to bring peace and at the same time He has come to bring the sword. But He does not say that He has come to bring both the truth and the falsehood." - Blaise Pascal.
In an article entitled "O'Malley defends role at Kennedy rites," The Boston Globe says that the Cardinal has refused to join the ranks of those Bishops "who would deny Communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion rights.." In other words, he has refused to act in accordance with Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law which states clearly, "Those who are excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion." And this represents a direct challenge to the teaching authority of the Magisterium which tells us (in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1395) that "The Eucharist is properly the sacrament of those who are in full communion with the Church."
Dismissing the concerns of those who view Senator Edward Kennedy's Catholic funeral (which was televised and therefore very public) as a source of scandal, the Cardinal was quoted as having said that, "If any cause is motivated by judgment, anger or vindictiveness it will be doomed to marginalization." But doesn't this represent a judgment aimed at those who oppose genuflecting before the Culture of Death and who viewed the Senator's funeral as a source of scandal? In other words, isn't His Eminence guilty of the very fault he would attribute to others?
And what of anger? Is anger always evil or unholy? His Eminence should know better. Our age has succumbed to a cult of softness. It is fashionable to believe that any display of anger is due to a lack of charity or to some psychological problem. This cult of softness has, in turn, contributed much to an effeminate Christianity which is incapable of opposing the evils of our present epoch.
It is forgotten that sometimes anger is the proper response to value. In the words of Fr. Bede Jarrett, O.P., "Not only may I sin by being angry when I should not, but I may sin by not being angry when I should be. If my reason tells me that it is right to be angry, then I disobey God when I refuse to give place to wrath; for, as the New Testament teaches, it is possible to "be angry and sin not" (Ephesians 4:26). Our Lord Himself, when need arose, roped together a bundle of cords and drove from the Temple those who trafficked in the House of Prayer, and down the front steps He flung the tables of the money-changers. Perhaps for most of us, the fault is not that we are too angry, but that we are not angry enough. Think of the evils that are in the world, that are known to all, admitted to exist by public press and on public platform. Would they have survived thus far, had folk all shown the indignant anger of Christ? Hypocrisy, cant, and the whole blatant injustice that stalks naked and unashamed in national life - may not our own weakness and silence have helped to render impotent all efforts to reduce these terrible things?....I have got to make myself realize that anger is itself neither evil nor good, and that it can be either. Hence I must pledge myself to see how far I allow anger to rule me when it should not, and how far I overrule it when I should give it a free hand." (Classic Catholic Meditations, p. 168, Sophia Institute Press).
All too many Catholics refuse to give vent to a righteous anger which opposes the myriad evils of our time. Has the Cardinal's way worked? Senator Kennedy wrote a letter to our Holy Father in which he sought to justify his pro-abortion stance. His Eminence has forgotten a truth expressed by my dear friend Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand (whom Pope Pius XII referred to as the "20th century Doctor of the Church"): "St. Paul says there always will be heresies and he adds that God permits them to test the faithful. The disunity that is based on the incompatibility of truth and falsehood cannot and should not be avoided...To deplore disunity as such, instead of deploring heresies, instead of condemning these and calling them by their name, implies first of all that one would keep unity even at the cost of truth. But, of course, true unity presupposes unity in truth. Error, falsehood, can never be the basis for true unity. That holy, supernatural unity of which our Lord speaks in the priestly prayer ut unum sint - that all may be one - can come to pass only in the profession of divine truth, in the membership of the Mystical Body of Christ. It is a unity which includes some but, by the same token, excludes others. As Father Werenfried van Straaten [the Bacon priest, my note] reminds us, 'Jesus' prayer that all may be one'...may not be separated from His other words: 'I say unto you that whoever does not enter by the door of the sheepfold is a thief and a robber...I am the door!' The same principle is expressed in the first encyclical of Pope Pius XI: Pax Christi in regno Christi, the peace of Christ in the reign of Christ. Even on the natural level, unity that is not grounded in truth is either a very silly or a very dangerous thing. That shallow comradeship so typical of modern society, for example, in which we approach everyone regardless of his relation to God in a spirit of 'tolerance' - the spirit incarnated in the words of Frederick II of Prussia: 'Let everyone attain beatitude in his own fashion' - that is a foolish pseudo-unity lacking any common principle to truly unite men. Such 'togetherness,' however, can be worse than foolish; it can be a sinister force when it is based not on a lack of principle, but on a common error - on an idol. The togetherness found in Nazism or in Communism is an amazing thing. Devotion to the common idol goes so far that the devotees are ready to die for it. So many young Germans gave their lives in the war while screaming, 'Heil Hitler!' They had given themselves in unity, to the devil." (The Charitable Anathema, pp. 3-4).
I have nothing but love and respect for His Eminence. But it would appear that he does not deplore error and falsehood as much as he deplores disunity. This is a great tragedy and more than likely the result of a lack of the Holy Spirit's gift of Fortitude. Something His Eminence should pray for. But he should refrain from casting aspersions at those of us who understand that authentic unity is based in truth. His Eminence may believe that Catholics who are firm in faith are guilty of "attitudes and practices" which do "irreparable damage to the communion of the Church." But faithful Catholics know that it is a false irenicism which really damages the communion of the Church.
In an article entitled "O'Malley defends role at Kennedy rites," The Boston Globe says that the Cardinal has refused to join the ranks of those Bishops "who would deny Communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion rights.." In other words, he has refused to act in accordance with Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law which states clearly, "Those who are excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion." And this represents a direct challenge to the teaching authority of the Magisterium which tells us (in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1395) that "The Eucharist is properly the sacrament of those who are in full communion with the Church."
Dismissing the concerns of those who view Senator Edward Kennedy's Catholic funeral (which was televised and therefore very public) as a source of scandal, the Cardinal was quoted as having said that, "If any cause is motivated by judgment, anger or vindictiveness it will be doomed to marginalization." But doesn't this represent a judgment aimed at those who oppose genuflecting before the Culture of Death and who viewed the Senator's funeral as a source of scandal? In other words, isn't His Eminence guilty of the very fault he would attribute to others?
And what of anger? Is anger always evil or unholy? His Eminence should know better. Our age has succumbed to a cult of softness. It is fashionable to believe that any display of anger is due to a lack of charity or to some psychological problem. This cult of softness has, in turn, contributed much to an effeminate Christianity which is incapable of opposing the evils of our present epoch.
It is forgotten that sometimes anger is the proper response to value. In the words of Fr. Bede Jarrett, O.P., "Not only may I sin by being angry when I should not, but I may sin by not being angry when I should be. If my reason tells me that it is right to be angry, then I disobey God when I refuse to give place to wrath; for, as the New Testament teaches, it is possible to "be angry and sin not" (Ephesians 4:26). Our Lord Himself, when need arose, roped together a bundle of cords and drove from the Temple those who trafficked in the House of Prayer, and down the front steps He flung the tables of the money-changers. Perhaps for most of us, the fault is not that we are too angry, but that we are not angry enough. Think of the evils that are in the world, that are known to all, admitted to exist by public press and on public platform. Would they have survived thus far, had folk all shown the indignant anger of Christ? Hypocrisy, cant, and the whole blatant injustice that stalks naked and unashamed in national life - may not our own weakness and silence have helped to render impotent all efforts to reduce these terrible things?....I have got to make myself realize that anger is itself neither evil nor good, and that it can be either. Hence I must pledge myself to see how far I allow anger to rule me when it should not, and how far I overrule it when I should give it a free hand." (Classic Catholic Meditations, p. 168, Sophia Institute Press).
All too many Catholics refuse to give vent to a righteous anger which opposes the myriad evils of our time. Has the Cardinal's way worked? Senator Kennedy wrote a letter to our Holy Father in which he sought to justify his pro-abortion stance. His Eminence has forgotten a truth expressed by my dear friend Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand (whom Pope Pius XII referred to as the "20th century Doctor of the Church"): "St. Paul says there always will be heresies and he adds that God permits them to test the faithful. The disunity that is based on the incompatibility of truth and falsehood cannot and should not be avoided...To deplore disunity as such, instead of deploring heresies, instead of condemning these and calling them by their name, implies first of all that one would keep unity even at the cost of truth. But, of course, true unity presupposes unity in truth. Error, falsehood, can never be the basis for true unity. That holy, supernatural unity of which our Lord speaks in the priestly prayer ut unum sint - that all may be one - can come to pass only in the profession of divine truth, in the membership of the Mystical Body of Christ. It is a unity which includes some but, by the same token, excludes others. As Father Werenfried van Straaten [the Bacon priest, my note] reminds us, 'Jesus' prayer that all may be one'...may not be separated from His other words: 'I say unto you that whoever does not enter by the door of the sheepfold is a thief and a robber...I am the door!' The same principle is expressed in the first encyclical of Pope Pius XI: Pax Christi in regno Christi, the peace of Christ in the reign of Christ. Even on the natural level, unity that is not grounded in truth is either a very silly or a very dangerous thing. That shallow comradeship so typical of modern society, for example, in which we approach everyone regardless of his relation to God in a spirit of 'tolerance' - the spirit incarnated in the words of Frederick II of Prussia: 'Let everyone attain beatitude in his own fashion' - that is a foolish pseudo-unity lacking any common principle to truly unite men. Such 'togetherness,' however, can be worse than foolish; it can be a sinister force when it is based not on a lack of principle, but on a common error - on an idol. The togetherness found in Nazism or in Communism is an amazing thing. Devotion to the common idol goes so far that the devotees are ready to die for it. So many young Germans gave their lives in the war while screaming, 'Heil Hitler!' They had given themselves in unity, to the devil." (The Charitable Anathema, pp. 3-4).
I have nothing but love and respect for His Eminence. But it would appear that he does not deplore error and falsehood as much as he deplores disunity. This is a great tragedy and more than likely the result of a lack of the Holy Spirit's gift of Fortitude. Something His Eminence should pray for. But he should refrain from casting aspersions at those of us who understand that authentic unity is based in truth. His Eminence may believe that Catholics who are firm in faith are guilty of "attitudes and practices" which do "irreparable damage to the communion of the Church." But faithful Catholics know that it is a false irenicism which really damages the communion of the Church.
Dissent in the Church leads to polarization and destroys peace within the Church. Faithful Catholics who refuse to accept a dissenting view must resist it for the sake of restoring an authentic peace, a peace which Pope John XXIII taught: "is not completely untroubled and serene; it is active, not calm and motionless. In short, this is a peace that is ever at war. It wars with every sort of error, including that which falsely wears the face of truth; it struggles against the enticements of vice, against those enemies of the soul, of whatever description, who can weaken, blemish, or destroy our innocence or Catholic faith." (Ad Petri cathedram, AAS 51 (1959) 517, PE, 263.93).
Dear Cardinal O'Malley please meditate carefully on these words from St. Paul, my patron saint, "Am I now currying favor with human beings or God? Or am I seeking to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a slave of Christ." (Galatians 1: 10).
Your Eminence, ask yourself the very same question.
You are in my prayers.
Dear Cardinal O'Malley please meditate carefully on these words from St. Paul, my patron saint, "Am I now currying favor with human beings or God? Or am I seeking to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a slave of Christ." (Galatians 1: 10).
Your Eminence, ask yourself the very same question.
You are in my prayers.
Related reading here.
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