Professor Tat-siong Benny Liew: Holy Cross College's resident clown

Crux Now is reporting that:

"A Massachusetts bishop has called the notions of a New Testament scholar in his diocese “highly offensive and blasphemous,” and has called on his Jesuit college to ask him to publicly disavow his writings on the sexuality of Jesus.

Professor Tat-siong Benny Liew, the chair of New Testament Studies at the College of the Holy Cross, has published articles claiming Jesus was a 'drag king' and said the relationship between the Father and Son was homosexual and masochistic in nature.

In one article, Liew said the centurion who approaches Jesus to heal his servant was actually speaking about his lover and described the relationship as 'pederastic.' Liew said the biblical author affirmed the relationship, adding this 'may also be consistent with Matthew’s affirmation of many sexual dissidents in her Gospel.'

Bishop Robert J. McManus of Worchester said he was 'deeply troubled and concerned' that someone who authored such things holds an endowed chair at the Catholic institution.

After the professor’s controversial writings - published a decade ago - were highlighted in a March 26 article in The Fenwick Review, an independent opinion journal based at the College of the Holy Cross, an online petition calling for Liew’s ouster gained over 10,000 signatures."

Sign this petition here.

Pope Saint John Paul II, in his Apostolic Constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae, had this to say:

§ 3. "In ways appropriate to the different academic disciplines, all Catholic teachers are to be faithful to, and all other teachers are to respect, Catholic doctrine and morals in their research and teaching. In particular, Catholic theologians, aware that they fulfil a mandate received from the Church, are to be faithful to the Magisterium of the Church as the authentic interpreter of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition."

If one is to be faithful to Christ and His Church, one cannot assert that what the Magisterium teaches is false and that the faithful may reject Magisterial teaching and replace it with their own opinions or those of theologians. In his encyclical letter Veritatis Splendor, Pope John Paul II explains that, "Dissent, in the form of carefully orchestrated protests and polemics carried on in the media, is opposed to ecclesial communion and to a correct understanding of the hierarchical constitution of the People of God." (No. 113).

When a Catholic dissents from Church teaching, he is not in living communion with the mind of Christ, which is made known to us through His Church's Magisterium. Such a person is not, therefore, in a proper condition to receive the sacraments. Pope John Paul II has stated this clearly: "It is sometimes claimed that dissent from the Magisterium is compatible with being a 'good Catholic' and poses no obstacle to the reception of the sacraments. This is a grave error." (Address to the U.S. Bishops, Los Angeles, September 16, 1987). See also Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1395).

Some erroneously hold that, "No school that regulates ideas can justly call itself a university."


The late Fr. Vincent P. Miceli, who was a classically-educated Jesuit scholar and a brilliant philosopher, would have disagreed. For he explained that, "The trouble with this understanding of academic freedom is that it takes for granted as a truth what is a falsity, indeed a complete illusion, namely, that academic freedom is absolutely immune from any reasonable bounds, limitations or restrictions. No human freedom is absolutely immune to restriction. Freedom is no longer freedom when it is reduced to being the unhindered pursuit of one’s whims and desires. This is especially true of freedom exercised in the field of philosophy where conflict with the authentic and infallible teachings of the Church is foreseeable. A true understanding of academic freedom, therefore, is in order so as to distinguish it clearly from academic license.

Academic freedom derives from the rational nature of man. It is rooted in the intellectual activity of man whereby he is called to a dominion and stewardship of the universe through a conquest of truth. Positively, then, academic freedom is a generous guarantee to the unimpeded access to the evidence of truth in any given science. Thus, academic freedom is always bounded by the canons and axiomatic truths of each discipline of learning. Thus, again positively, academic freedom is both purposive and responsible. It has its own built-in rules; its requirements are conditioned by pre-defined directions towards the truth of its particular science. The moral right to academic freedom arises from the inviolability of the proper action necessary to its scientific achievements of truth, founded on man’s connatural inner dynamism of the human intelligence’s hunger for truth. Negatively, academic freedom means at the very least the immunity from unreasonable restrictions, both from within and from outside the academic community, of the right to communicate the results of one’s researches through lectures and publications, and the right to be immune from unreasonable restriction in the pursuit of the teaching profession.

We are now in the position to ask, ‘How is academic freedom violated?’ Scholars, scientists and philosophers hold that whenever one of their members ventures consciously and freely to teach as truths doctrines that contradict the clearly established dogmas or unconditional truths of their disciplines, then such a member of the university is abusing his academic freedom, putting it at the service of stupidities or known falsehoods instead of using it to advance the horizons of truth. Now every science has its dogmas, theology, philosophy and all the natural sciences. Dogmas are not only the ultimate answers to some fundamental questions; they also prompt further questioning and research, leading thus to enlarged, more profound truth....a Catholic university that allows professors and lecturers to attack the authentic teachings of the Church, whether they are infallibly defined or not, is not faithful to the best canons of scholarship, nor to the Church or its own students who have a right in justice to receive the divinely revealed truths in their pristine purity." (The Antichrist, pp. 166-167).

Many Catholic institutions have devaluated the faith and have become enslaved to a narrow (and conceptually flawed) notion of academic freedom. And why have these institutions sold out to secularism? Again, Fr. Miceli, S.J., explains: "Gradually, over the years the essential purpose of the Catholic university has been radically changed. Lusting after secular academic excellence, huge student bodies, expensive science complexes, notoriety, publicity, political clout and financial power, the leaders of Catholic universities somehow lost sight of the unearthly purpose and spirit of the Catholic university. Thus, in today’s Catholic university, intellectualism is preferred to Catholicism; scientism to faith, relativism to truth, immanentism to transcendence, subjectivism to reality, situationism to moral integrity and anarchism to authority. The essential purpose of the Catholic university has de facto been changed, despite the lip service that is still paid to the original Catholic ideal. Conduct flows from convictions and when the conduct is consistently depraved [Such as allowing controversial plays like the Vagina Monologues, my note] it is because the convictions have been corrupted. For example, Judas, forerunner of the Antichrist, had radically changed his deepest convictions about the person and mission of Christ before he sold his Lord for thirty pieces of silver. No virtuosity at contorted rationalization can mask the massive turning away from the Catholic ideal that has taken place in the Catholic universities of the United States. The light and love of the world have made tragic advances against the light and love of Christ." (The Antichrist, p. 161).

Professor Tat-siong Benny Liew is a clown offering not the fine wheat of Catholic truth but rather asinine opinions which were hatched in a warped mind.

Sign the petition to have this fool removed from his teaching position at Holy Cross.

Blasphemy at Holy Cross College in Worcester...

A Holy Cross professor is suggesting that, "Jesus was a ‘Drag King’ with ‘Queer Desires’."

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2148, teaches that, "Blasphemy is directly opposed to the second commandment. It consists in uttering against God - inwardly or outwardly - words of hatred, reproach, or defiance; in speaking ill of God; in failing in respect toward him in one's speech; in misusing God's name. St. James condemns those 'who blaspheme that honorable name [of Jesus] by which you are called.' The prohibition of blasphemy extends to language against Christ's Church, the saints, and sacred things. It is also blasphemous to make use of God's name to cover up criminal practices, to reduce peoples to servitude, to torture persons or put them to death. The misuse of God's name to commit a crime can provoke others to repudiate religion.
Blasphemy is contrary to the respect due God and his holy name. It is in itself a grave sin."

Holy Cross College has long been a hotbed of dissent from Catholic teaching where a distorted notion of academic freedom has been advanced. See here.

Professor John Rist and a Cupich of nonsense...

LifeSite News reports:

A respected Catholic historian and philosopher challenged Cardinal Blase Cupich during a lecture last week about Pope’ Francis so-called “revolution of mercy” that has caused what many are defending as a “paradigm shift” in Catholic practice.

Professor John Rist, after listening to a February 9 lecture at Cambridge University in which Cardinal Cupich praised Pope Francis’ “paradigm shift” in Catholic practice, asked the Cardinal at the end of the lecture why Pope Francis “mercilessly” insults and eliminates his doctrinal opponents.

Rist asked the Cardinal:

Your Eminence, In view of your account of the sunny, caring and holistic features of Pope Francis’ revolution of mercy – described disturbingly by the leaflet for this meeting and by your Eminence as a ‘paradigm shift’ in the presentation of Catholicism – and of the Pope’s call for free and frank discussion of his challenging proposals and policies, I would like to ask why Pope Francis acts so mercilessly in insulting and eliminating doctrinal opponents:

Cardinal Burke removed from the leadership of the Roman Rota; Three loyal priests from the CDF dismissed without explanation, followed by the abrupt termination of Cardinal Mueller himself; The denial of a Cardinal’s hat to the much loved champion of the unborn, Archbishop Chaput; The removal of most of the original members of the Academy for Life;
The apparent selling-down the river of Cardinal Pell, who may have been framed; And more recently the banishment from Rome of the Professor of Patristics at the Lateran and editor of the challenging book Remaining in the Truth of Christ;

The list goes on and on, but I stop there  to ask again whether harsh actions of this sort — combined with the well-documented rigging of the Synod on the Family — indicate that the Pope’s 'paradigm shift' should be recognized as an attempt — under cover of offering solutions to genuine social problems in Western society — to impose on the Church radical changes of doctrine, developed not by laity but largely in Germany by a group of relativist Hegelian theologians?
Cupich sidestepped away from the question, replying that those who have such concerns should ask themselves: “Do we really believe that the Spirit is no longer guiding the Church?” reported the Catholic Herald.


The professor said after the event that if he had been given the chance to reply, he would have told the Cardinal that “the Church is indeed guided by the Holy Spirit, via good Catholic souls such as Cardinal Burke and many others.”

Rist is a Professor of Classics Emeritus at the University of Toronto and now holds a Chair in Philosophy at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. A native of the United Kingdom, Rist is a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. He is also a convert to Catholicism from agnosticism, thanks to his study of Plato, the Gospels and other ancient texts.

Rist, whose career as a philosopher and a classicist spans fifty years and three continents, has written 16 scholarly books and over a hundred journal articles on ancient and Christian philosophy or the Gospels. He also contributed to Remaining in the Truth of Christ, the defense of Catholic teaching that was “intercepted” at the Synod on the Family.

Rist told LifeSiteNews that he regards the Francis papacy as a “disaster.” 

“I regard this papacy as a disaster and Bergoglio as possibly — because of his tampering with established doctrine — as possibly the worst pope we have ever had,” he said. 

“Cupich's attempt to defend him [at Cambridge] was itself dependent on misrepresentations, the evading of legitimate questions, and in at least one case — that of my charge of the Synod on the Family being rigged — of downright lying. I was teaching in Rome at the time, and contributed to Remaining in the Truth of Christ, so I know about what happened firsthand,” he added.

The professor said that one of the principal difficulties in the Church today is when people confuse the Church with the person of the Pope.

"One of the basic problems we have is that too many Catholics (and others) confuse the pope with the Church,” he said. “Cupich tried to play that card by suggesting that Amoris Laetitia — even in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis — is de fide [i.e. doctrine that must be believed], which it manifestly is not.”

Rist suggested that Pope Francis is not doing his job well.

“It is the function of the Pope to provide unity in the Church by scrutinizing new ideas to see if they are compatible with the inherited regula fidei [rule of faith],” the professor continued. “Instead of unity Pope Francis has caused massive confusion and division – and many sad clergy are afraid of being sanctioned if they speak out.”

Father Linus Clovis makes the point that,“Obedience is owed to the pope, but the pope owes obedience to the word and the apostolic tradition. We have to obey the pope, but the pope himself must obey the written word. He must obey the tradition. He must respond to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Obedience is owed to the pope, but it is the duty of the pope to give the character of possibility to this obedience. The pope has to facilitate our obeying him, by himself being obedient to the Word of God. Pope Felix III told us, ‘an error that is not resisted is approved. A truth that is not defended is suppressed.’ So we have an obligation to resist error, and we must do everything that we can to promote the truth.”  Father Clovis made this remark in response to the crisis in the Church and the role of Pope Francis in this crisis.  See here.

The Pope has no authority to change the Deposit of Faith.  See here.

Actor Robert Pattinson asked to have sex with dog for new movie...

Daily Star reports:

"Robert Pattinson got the mother of all requests on his latest film.

The Twilight star, who used to date Kristen Stewart, told US TV host Jimmy Kimmel that he was asked to 'pleasure a dog' for his latest film Good Time.

R-Patz, 31, plays a New York criminal fighting to save his little brother in one night of chaos in the highly-anticipated film."

And there are those who doubt that America has become a haunt of demons!

In his excellent and prophetic book Trousered Apes, Professor Duncan Williams documented extensively the banishment of God from society in the West and said that as a result, "the Western world and its culture is saturated with violence and animalism....We are teaching savagery and are naively appalled at the success of our instruction."

Professor Williams continues, "What shocks an audience today will be acceptable tomorrow and thus the contemporary dramatist [or reality show producer, my note] is constantly impelled to seek further excesses to gratify a warped taste which he has himself implanted in the public mind....The whole modern cult of violence and animalism is in essence an admission of defeat.  Since we cannot be men to any idealistic extent, let us lapse into barbaric animalism but, still clinging to vestiges of a past which we hate but cannot escape, let us clothe our defeat in high-sounding terms: 'alienation,' 'cult of unpleasure,' 'realism,' and similar jargon.  Yet all this fashionable phraseology cannot conceal the fact that the Emperor has no clothes....The contemporary playwright or producer might well take as his motto, Apres moi, la secheresse (After me, the drought), and congratulate himself that he is writing before a morbid public appetite demands scenes of such repellent realism that actors and actresses will have to be killed on stage in order to satisfy it."

Just prior to the Reign of Antichrist, Venerable Bartholomew Holzhauser tells us that, "During this unhappy period there will be laxity in divine and human precepts. Discipline will suffer. The Holy Canons will be completely disregarded, and the clergy will not respect the law of the Church. Everyone will be carried away and led to believe and to do what he fancies, according to the manner of the flesh. They will ridicule Christian simplicity ; they will call it folly and nonsense, but they will have the highest regard for advanced knowledge...As a result no principle at all- however holy, authentic, ancient, and certain it may be, will remain free of censure, criticism, false interpretations, modifications, and delimitation by man.

These are evil times a century full of dangers and calamities. Heresy is everywhere, and the followers of heresy are in power, almost everywhere. Bishops, prelates, and priests say that they are doing their duty, that they are vigilant and that they live as befits their state of life. In like manner therefore they all seek excuses. But God will permit a great evil against His Church; Heretics and tyrants will come suddenly and unexpectedly; they will break into the Church while Bishops prelates and priests are asleep. They will enter Italy and lay Rome waste; they will burn down the churches and destroy everything."


The Reign of Antichrist will witness a celebration of sin and perversion the likes of which few can imagine. Pleasure is the new principle par excellence. If pleasure can justify homosexual behavior (and increasingly that is what our sin-sick society is saying), then other deviant forms of sexual activity which are viewed as pleasurable by some will also be logically justified. This will include pedophilia, pederasty, ephebophilia, gerontophilia, necrophilia, sadism, masochism and bestiality.

The New Sodom.  Presided over by a counterfeit church overshadowing the True Church.

Recommended reading, CCC, 675.

At the Vatican: Precursors of the Antichrist who will manage to abolish the Mass

Lifesite is reporting that, "This weekend the Vatican formally hosted one of Britain’s most virulently pro-abortion and pro-homosexual writers, as well as the head of an American organization promoting female ordination, at an officially sanctioned event inside Vatican City walls. Organizers spoke to Vatican Radio as well as the secular press, praising the new atmosphere within the Church’s leadership that made the conference possible.

As part of the Vatican’s official observance of International Women’s Day, this Sunday saw two events, one brought in from outside and the other organized by the Pontifical Council for Culture. The latter conference has come under public criticism for its “ham-

fisted,” “tone-deaf,” “uncatholic,” and feminist-inspired approach to “Women’s Cultures.”

The presence of the outside-organized event held inside the Vatican is being forthrightly hailed by organizers and the secular media as feminist victory over the traditional stance of the Church. Among the organizers and speakers were Deborah Rose-Milavec, one of the US’s most prominent agitators for female ordination, and Tina Beattie, a British feminist academic notorious for her advocacy for abortion, homosexual relations, and “gay marriage,” and who once compared the Catholic Mass to homosexual sex."   See full article here.

What is Professor Beattie doing speaking at the Vatican when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ordered her banned from Church properties after she signed a letter, in 2012, to the Times, in support of same-sex marriage.

This letter was signed by a number of Christian theologians who wrote, "...it is perfectly proper for Catholics, using fully informed consciences, to support the legal extension of civil marriage to same-sex couples."

On December 31, 1992, Our Lady told Father Gobbi of the Marian Movement of Priests:

"I have announced to you many times that the end of the times and the coming of Jesus in glory is very near. Now, I want to help you understand the signs described in the Holy Scriptures, which indicate that His glorious return is now close.

These signs are clearly indicated in the Gospels, in the letters of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and they are becoming a reality during these years.

-The first sign is the spread of errors, which lead to the loss of faith and to apostasy.

These errors are being propagated by false teachers, by renowned theologians who are no longer teaching the truths of the Gospel, but pernicious heresies based on errors and human reasonings. It is because of the teachings of these errors that the true faith is being lost and that the great apostasy is spreading everywhere.

'See that no one deceives you. For many will attempt to deceive many people. False prophets will come and will deceive very many.' (Mt 24:4-5)

'The day of the Lord will not come unless the great apostasy comes first.' (2 Thes 2:3).
'There will be false teachers among you. These will seek to introduce disastrous heresies and will even set themselves against the Master who ransomed them. Many will listen to them and will follow their licentious ways. Through their offense the Christian faith will be reviled. In their greed, they will exploit you with fabrications.' (2 Pt 2:1-3)

-The second sign is the outbreak of wars and fratricidal struggles, which lead to the prevalence of violence and hatred and a general slackening off of charity, while natural catastrophes, like epidemics, famines, floods and earthquakes (see here), become more and more frequent.

'When you hear the report of wars, close at hand or far away, see that you are not alarmed; for these things must happen. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in many places. All this will be only the beginning of greater sufferings to come. Evildoing will be so widespread that the love of many will grow cold. But God will save those who persevere until the end.' (Mt 24:6-8, 12-13)

-The third sign is the bloody persecution of those who remain faithful to Jesus and to His Gospel and who stand fast in the true faith. Throughout this all, the Gospel will be preached in every part of the world.
Think, beloved children, of the great persecutions to which the Church is being subjected; think of the apostolic zeal of the recent popes, above all my Pope, John-Paul II, as he brings to all the nations of the earth the announcement of the Gospel.

'They will hand you over to persecution and they will kill you. You will be hated by all because of me. And then many will abandon the faith; they will betray and hate one another. Meanwhile, the message of the kingdom of God will be preached in all the world; all nations must hear it. And then the end will come.' (Mt 24:9-10, 14)

-The fourth sign is the horrible sacrilege, perpetrated by him who sets himself against Christ, that is, the Antichrist. He will enter into the holy temple of God and will sit on his throne, and have himself adored as God.

'This one will oppose and exalt himself against everything that men adore and call God. The lawless one will come by the power of Satan, with all the force of false miracles and pretended wonders. He will make use of every kind of wicked deception, in order to work harm.' (2 Thes 2:4,9)


'One day, you will see in the holy place he who commits the horrible sacrilege. The prophet Daniel spoke of this. Let the reader seek to understand.' (Mt 24:15)

The Holy Mass is the daily sacrifice, the pure oblation which is offered to the Lord everywhere, from the rising of the sun to its going down.
The sacrifice of the Mass renews that which was accomplished by Jesus on Calvary. By accepting the protestant doctrine, people will hold that the Mass is not a sacrifice but only a sacred meal, that is to say, a remembrance of that which Jesus did at His last supper. And thus, the celebration of Holy Mass will be suppressed. In this abolition of the daily sacrifice consists the horrible sacrilege accomplished by the Antichrist.

[Saint Alphonsus Ligouri: "The devil has always managed to get rid of the Mass by means of the heretics making them the precursors of the Antichrist who, above all else, will manage to abolish, and in fact will succeed in abolishing as a punishment for the sins of men, the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar, precisely as Daniel predicted] -The fifth sign consists in extraordinary phenomena, which occur in the skies.

'The sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky; and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.' (Mt 24:29)

The miracle of the sun, which took place at Fatima during my last apparition, is intended to point out to you that you are now entering into the times when these events will take place, events which will prepare for the return of Jesus in glory."

(The miracle of the sun is also reported to have been witnessed many times at Medjugorje and Conyers, and elsewhere.)

'And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven. All the tribes of the earth will mourn, and men will see the Son of Man coming upon the clouds of heaven, with great power and splendor.' (Mt 24:30)

(The sign of the Son of Man has always been the Cross; Garabandal: 'a permanent sign'; Brother David Lopez: 'We will see in the sky one great red cross'; Fr. Anthony J. Paone, in 'My Daily Bread,' published by the Confraternity of the Precious Blood: 'The sign of the cross will appear in the sky.')

My beloved ones and children consecrated to my Immaculate Heart, I have wanted to teach you about these signs, which Jesus has pointed out to you in His Gospel, in order to prepare you for the end of the times, because they are about to take place in your days. " (To the Priests: Our Lady's Beloved Sons, pp. 750-753).

It is true that we don't know "the day or the hour." However, Our Lord tells us "Learn a lesson from the fig tree: when its branches become tender and sprout the first leaves, you know that summer is near. In the same way, when you see these things taking place, know that your liberation is near." (Matthew 24:32-33).

Let's learn the lesson of the fig tree as Jesus commands. Let's read the signs of the times while it is still day. Many have a veil over their eyes and cannot read these signs. We must pray and work to remove that veil.

Father Thomas Rosica and the leaven of infidelity

In an interview with Professor Gregory Baum for "Salt and Light TV," Father Thomas Rosica told the notorious dissident, “I’ve certainly admired very much your theology, your writings but also your love of the Church, your love of Christ, and you helped to keep alive not only the spirit of the Second Vatican council, but also the authentic teaching of the Council … you remain a faithful, deeply devoted Catholic, love Jesus, the Church, the Eucharist.”

Lifesite News has reported, "Liberal Catholic press-people have recently touted a man some call Canada’s leading dissenter since the 1960s - former Catholic priest Gregory Baum - because of his role as an expert, or peritus, to the Canadian bishops at Vatican II.  Baum, an advocate of homosexual ‘marriage’ and sex outside of marriage and contraception, was lauded by Fr. Thomas Rosica of Salt and Light TV, Michael Swan of the Catholic Register and also given free reign in the pages of the Scarboro Foreign Missions magazine.

Had he merely publicly rejected Catholicism, Baum would not have been as grave a danger to the Church and especially its moral teachings.

Despite the automatic excommunication he incurred for marrying an ex-nun while still a priest, Baum continued to speak lovingly of Jesus and the Gospels as he repudiated many of the principles of faith and morals revealed by Christ and in Sacred Scripture.  One of the tools of repudiation was the dissenting Catholic New Times newspaper co-founded by Baum and other dissenters in 1976 and eventually prohibited from one diocese after another.

Such two-facedness led one of Baum’s contemporaries, canon lawyer Monsignor Vincent Foy, to consider Baum as having “done more than any person to harm the Church in Canada…"

This is the disturbed soul which Father Thomas Rosica has publically lauded.  What would that suggest about Dr. Rosica?

Vatican II, in its' Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests (Presbyterorum Ordinis) No. 4, tells us that: "The People of God are joined together primarily by the word of the living God. And rightfully they expect this from their priests. Since no one can be saved who does not first believe, priests, as co-workers with their bishops, have the primary duty of proclaiming the Gospel of God to all. In this way they fulfill the command of the Lord: "Going therefore into the whole world preach the Gospel to every creature" (Mk 16:15), and they establish and build up the People of God. Through the saving word the spark of faith is lit in the hearts of unbelievers, and fed in the hearts of the faithful. This is the way that the congregation of faithful is started and grows, just as the Apostle describes: "Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ" (Rom 10:17).


To all men, therefore, priests are debtors that the truth of the Gospel which they have may be given to others. And so, whether by entering into profitable dialogue they bring people to the worship of God, whether by openly preaching they proclaim the mystery of Christ, or whether in the light of Christ they treat contemporary problems, they are relying not on their own wisdom for it is the word of Christ they teach, and it is to conversion and holiness that they exhort all men."

According to the Council, the task of priests is "not to teach their own wisdom but God's Word." And this task is of no less importance for the priest than his offering of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. Both of these are inseperably linked to each other: "The ministerial priesthood has the task not only of representing Christ - Head of the Church - before the assembly of the faithful, but also of acting in the name of the whole Church when presenting to God the prayer of the Church, and above all when offering the Eucharistic sacrifice." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1552).

For this reason, priests have the very serious obligation to teach the faithful under their care that it is never licit to have sexual relations outside of marriage; that a Catholic cannot (having been validly married in the Church) after divorce, marry another or otherwise pretend that sexual relations with another individual are somehow "marital"; that "formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense" and that '"the Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life" (CCC, 2272); and that "every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible, is intrinsically evil.." (CCC, No. 2370, citing Humanae Vitae, No. 14).

The Church proposes these (and other teachings) as true and it does so in the name of Christ. The priest is not to question them. He is not to ignore them or neglect them out of a false sense of "compassion" or "charity." It was Pope Paul VI who said that, "To diminish in no way the saving teaching of Christ constitutes an eminent form of charity for souls." (Humanae Vitae, No. 29).

Pope John Paul II reiterated these words in Familiaris Consortio, No. 33. We are reminded in Lumen Gentium 14 of the Second Vatican Council that: "He is not saved, however, who, though part of the body of the Church, does not persevere in charity. He remains indeed in the bosom of the Church, but, as it were, only in a "bodily" manner and not "in his heart." All the Church's children should remember that their exalted status is to be attributed not to their own merits but to the special grace of Christ. If they fail moreover to respond to that grace in thought, word and deed, not only shall they not be saved but they will be the more severely judged."

When a priest ignores or neglects his duty, his task, of serving the Word of God with fidelity, he fails to persevere in that charity described by Popes Paul VI and John Paul II as a charity which diminishes in no way the saving teaching of Christ. And he will be the more severely judged (Luke 12:48).

But so many priests have neglected their duty to proclaim the Gospel to all.  And the Church is now reaping the fruit of this infidelity.  Even though Canon Law states quite clearly that, "The Christian faithful have the right to receive assistance from the sacred pastors out of the spiritual goods of the Church, especially the word of God and the sacraments" (Canon 213), there has been a dearth of sound catechesis.  The People of God have not been formed by sound instruction based on Church doctrine and Church Tradition.  When was the last time (if ever) you heard a homily in your local parish citing the Catechism of the Catholic Church or papal documents?  Were it not for EWTN, you might never hear such authentic preaching.

And this is nothing short of shameful.  For such a foundation is vital.  Where it is absent, people will assume that they have the right to form their conscience according to their own opinions, their own whims.  The Catechism teaches us that, "Conscience must be informed and moral judgment enlightened.  A well-formed conscience is upright and truthful.  It formulates its judgments according to reason, in conformity with the true good willed by the wisdom of the Creator.  The education of conscience is indispensable for human beings who are subjected to negative influences and tempted by sin to prefer their own judgment and to reject authoritative teachings." (1783).

Those priests who remain silent while their people crave truth and direction are betraying their vocation.  And they will be (as Lumen Gentium 14 reminds us), the more severely judged.  As will every Catholic who knowingly rejects the authoritative teachings of Christ's Church.  Truly the words of Hosea apply to our own time:

"Sons of Israel, listen to the word of Yahweh, for Yahweh indicts the inhabitants of the country; there is no fidelity, no tenderness, no knowledge of God in the country, only perjury and lies, slaughter, theft, adultery and violence, murder after murder.  This is why the country is in mourning, and all who live in it pineaway, even the wild animals and the birds of heaven; the fish of the sea themselves are perishing."

And to the priests:

"But let no man denounce, no man rebuke; it is you, priest that I denounce.  Day and night you stumble along, the prophet stumbling with you, and you are the ruin of your people.  My people perish for want of knowledge.  As you have rejected knowledge so do I reject you from my priesthood; you have forgotten the teaching of your God, I in my turn will forget your children.  Many as they are, all of them have sinned against me, they have bartered their glory for shame.  They feed on the sin of my people, they are all greedy for their iniquity.  But as with the people, so let it be with the priest: I will make them for their conduct, I will pay them out for their deeds.  They will eat but never be satisfied, they will play the whore but still be sterile, because they have deserted Yahweh to give themselves up to whoring." (Hosea 4: 1-11).

The Church is in crisis because priests like Father Thomas Rosica continue to genuflect before the world in their zeal to serve the Prince of this world.

Pray for these confused clerics.

Professor Massimo Introvigne: U.S. may be on path toward anti-Christian violence

Professor Massimo Introvigne, Chairman of the newly created Observatory on Religious Liberty, a joint-creation of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the City of Rome, the purpose of which is to monitor religious freedom around the world, has expressed his concern that the United States is on the path to anti-Christian violence.

As reported by the Catholic News Agency here, "The inaugural meeting was held at Rome’s Foreign Press Association June 28. It heard Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore make the case that religious liberty in the United States is currently imperiled by the prevailing culture as well as by legislation such as the recent Department of Health & Human Services mandate.


Introvigne stressed that he did not want to create a 'false impression' that he was equating 'the bloody persecution of Christians' as presently occurs in some African and Asian countries with 'discriminatory legislation in the United States or Europe.'

However, the 57-year-old sociologist suggested that there was a 'three stage process' which could lead to anti-Christian violence in the West if action to protect religious liberty was not taken.

'It starts with intolerance which is a cultural phenomenon,' he explained 'and then if intolerance becomes so widespread and popular, some politicians will act upon it and introduce discriminatory legislation.'

It is in this 'climate of discrimination,' he said, that people can decide to take the law into their own hands and use violence to further suppress Christianity."

This isn't news to readers of this Blog.  For many years I have been issuing the same warning.  As I noted here:

Professor James Hitchcock, in his excellent work entitled 'Catholicism and Modernity' (New York:Seabury Press, 1979, p. 86), explains the role of the media in this entire process: "The media's alleged commitment to 'pluralism' is at base a kind of hoax. The banner of pluralism is raised in order to win toleration for new ideas as yet unacceptable to the majority. Once toleration has been achieved, public opinion is systematically manipulated first to enforce a status of equality between the old and the new, then to assert the superiority of the new over the old. A final stage is often the total discrediting, even sometimes the banning, of what had previously been orthodox."


This is the path Barack Obama and his secular socialist machine have put us on.  And the HHS Mandate is merely the beginning of a process which will lead to oppression and physical violence.  It was Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas who warned of the way in which oppression can subtly arise in our midst: "As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression.  In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."

"..there is in preparation a true schism which could soon become open and proclaimed.."

Gary Gutting, who teaches philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, has declared in the New York Times that the faithful "decide the nature and extent of episcopal authority" and what is moral or immoral.  He writes, "...haven’t the members of the Catholic Church recognized their bishops as having full and sole authority to determine the teachings of the Church? By no means. There was, perhaps, a time when the vast majority of Catholics accepted the bishops as having an absolute right to define theological and ethical doctrines. Those days, if they ever existed, are long gone. Most Catholics — meaning, to be more precise, people who were raised Catholic or converted as adults and continue to take church teachings and practices seriously — now reserve the right to reject doctrines insisted on by their bishops and to interpret in their own way the doctrines that they do accept. This is above all true in matters of sexual morality, especially birth control, where the majority of Catholics have concluded that the teachings of the bishops do not apply to them. Such “reservations” are an essential constraint on the authority of the bishops.


The bishops and the minority of Catholics who support their full authority have tried to marginalize Catholics who do not accept the bishops as absolute arbiters of doctrine. They speak of 'cafeteria Catholics' or merely 'cultural Catholics,' and imply that the only 'real Catholics' are those who accept their teachings entirely. But this marginalization begs the question I’m raising about the proper source of the judgment that the bishops have divine authority. Since, as I’ve argued, members of the church are themselves this source, it is not for the bishops but for the faithful to decide the nature and extent of episcopal authority. The bishops truly are, as they so often say, 'servants of the servants of the Lord.'

It may be objected that, regardless of what individual Catholics think, the bishops in fact exercise effective control over the church. This is true in many respects, but only to the extent that members of the church accept their authority. Stalin’s alleged query about papal authority ('How many divisions does the Pope have?') expresses more than just cynical realpolitik. The authority of the Catholic bishops is enforceable morally but not militarily or politically. It resides entirely in the fact that people freely accept it." (See here).

In his Encyclical Letter Humanum Genus (on Freemasonry), Pope Leo XIII warned that: "Wickedly, also, but at the same time quite consistently, do those act who do away with the expectation of the joys of heaven, and bring down all happiness to the level of mortality, and, as it were, sink it in the earth. Of what We have said the following fact, astonishing not so much in itself as in its open expression, may serve as a confirmation. For, since generally no one is accustomed to obey crafty and clever men so submissively as those whose soul is weakened and broken down by the domination of the passions, there have been in the sect of the Freemasons some who have plainly determined and proposed that, artfully and of set purpose, the multitude should be satiated with a boundless license of vice, as, when this had been done, it would easily come under their power and authority for any acts of daring.


What refers to domestic life in the teaching of the naturalists is almost all contained in the following declarations: that marriage belongs to the genus of commercial contracts, which can rightly be revoked by the will of those who made them, and that the civil rulers of the State have power over the matrimonial bond; that in the education of youth nothing is to be taught in the matter of religion as of certain and fixed opinion; and each one must be left at liberty to follow, when he comes of age, whatever he may prefer. To these things the Freemasons fully assent; and not only assent, but have long endeavoured to make them into a law and institution. For in many countries, and those nominally Catholic, it is enacted that no marriages shall be considered lawful except those contracted by the civil rite; in other places the law permits divorce; and in others every effort is used to make it lawful as soon as may be. Thus, the time is quickly coming when marriages will be turned into another kind of contract-that is into changeable and uncertain unions which fancy may join together, and which the same when changed may disunite....With the greatest unanimity the sect of the Freemasons also endeavours to take to itself the education of youth. They think that they can easily mold to their opinions that soft and pliant age, and bend it whither they will; and that nothing can be more fitted than this to enable them to bring up the youth of the State after their own plan. Therefore, in the education and instruction of children they allow no share, either of teaching or of discipline, to the ministers of the Church; and in many places they have procured that the education of youth shall be exclusively in the hands of laymen, and that nothing which treats of the most important and most holy duties of men to God shall be introduced into the instructions on morals.

What, therefore, sect of the Freemasons is, and what course it pursues, appears sufficiently from the summary We have briefly given. Their chief dogmas are so greatly and manifestly at variance with reason that nothing can be more perverse. To wish to destroy the religion and the Church which God Himself has established, and whose perpetuity He insures by His protection, and to bring back after a lapse of eighteen centuries the manners and customs of the pagans, is signal folly and audacious impiety. Neither is it less horrible nor more tolerable that they should repudiate the benefits which Jesus Christ so mercifully obtained, not only for individuals, but also for the family and for civil society, benefits which, even according to the judgment and testimony of enemies of Christianity, are very great. In this insane and wicked endeavor we may almost see the implacable hatred and spirit of revenge with which Satan himself is inflamed against Jesus Christ.


So also the studious endeavour of the Freemasons to destroy the chief foundations of justice and honesty, and to co-operate with those who would wish, as if they were mere animals, to do what they please, tends only to the ignominious and disgraceful ruin of the human race. The evil, too, is increased by the dangers which threaten both domestic and civil society. As We have elsewhere shown, in marriage, according to the belief of almost every nation, there is something sacred and religious; and the law of God has determined that marriages shall not be dissolved. If they are deprived of their sacred character, and made dissoluble, trouble and confusion in the family will be the result, the wife being deprived of her dignity and the children left without protection as to their interests and well being.

To have in public matters no care for religion, and in the arrangement and administration of civil affairs to have no more regard for God than if He did not exist, is a rashness unknown to the very pagans; for in their heart and soul the notion of a divinity and the need of public religion were so firmly fixed that they would have thought it easier to have city without foundation than a city without God. Human society, indeed for which by nature we are formed, has been constituted by God the Author of nature; and from Him, as from their principle and source, flow in all their strength and permanence the countless benefits with which society abounds. As we are each of us admonished by the very voice of nature to worship God in piety and holiness, as the Giver unto us of life and of all that is good therein, so also and for the same reason, nations and States are bound to worship Him; and therefore it is clear that those who would absolve society from all religious duty act not only unjustly but also with ignorance and folly."

Most people today have become so desensitized that they are incapable of seeing just how far this masonic agenda has advanced. The movement to eradicate Christianity is accelerating. Masonry, if it is to prepare the way for the Man of Sin, must concentrate its attacks on the one institution which stands in its way: the Holy Roman Catholic Church. After more than two thousand years of Christian history, the charge levelled against Christians by the pagan historian Tacitus is being revived: The Christians are the enemies of the human race. (Annals, XV, 44).

The new humanitarian religion of Antichrist must institute its own cult, ministers and temples which will be filled with its own faithful who have replaced the hope for Heaven with the idols of humanity, fertility, maternity and virility as surely as the Greco-Romans worshiped the statues of Venus and Apollo. Already we are witnessing an increasing hatred for the Crucifix. As Romano Guardini warned so long ago: "One day the Antichrist will come: a human being who introduces an order of things in which rebellion against God will attain its ultimate power. He will be filled with enlightenment and strength. The ultimate aim of all aims will be to prove that existence witout Christ is possible - nay rather, that Christ is the enemy of existence, which can be fully realized only when all Christian values have been destroyed. His arguments will be so impressive, supported by means of such tremendous power - violent and diplomatic, material and intellectual - that to reject them will result in almost insurmountable scandal, and everyone whose eyes are not opened by grace will be lost. Then it will be clear what the Christian essence really is: that which stems not from the world, but from the heart of God; victory of grace over the world; redemption of the world, for her true essence is not to be found in herself, but in God, from whom she has received it. When God becomes all in all, the world will finally burst into flower."

Our Lady warned us on November 15, 1990 that, "The great trial has arrived for your Church.  Thse errors which have brought people to the loss of the true faith have continued to spread.  Many pastors have been neither attentive nor vigilant and have allowed many rapacious wolves, clothed as lambs, to insinuate themselves into the flock in order to bring disorder and destruction.  How great is your responsibility, O pastors of the holy Church of God!  You continue along the path of division from the Pope and of the rejection of his Magisterium; indeed, in a hidden way, there is in preparation a true schism which could soon become open and proclaimed.  And then, there will remain only a small faithful remnant, over which I will keep watch in the garden of my Immaculate Heart." (To Father Gobbi).

The schism Our Lady spoke of is indeed beginning to emerge.  A new humanitarian religion and a new Future Church are being constructed.  The new religion will be devoid of the supernatural.  It will be man-centered.  Men will decide for themselves what is moral and immoral.  They will build this new Church in their own image and likeness.  Those who still adhere to Christ and His teaching will be declared enemies of progress and the new Moloch State.

Persecution Watch

Catholic professor Ken Howell has been fired by the University of Illinois and accused of hate speech for saying that he agrees with the Church's teaching that homosexual sex is immoral. See here. Vices must be turned into gods in the new humanitarian religion of Antichrist.

Those who refuse to embrace the New Order and to reject the Lord Jesus and His teaching will face increasing persecution. Already things are intensifying. A news writer has just compared the Holy Father with a terrorist. The hatred is mounting.

Related reading here.

Homosexuality must be normalized and Christianity demonized

Dianne Williamson: Annihilator of Common Sense


Five years ago this month, I explained in detail how the media would first plea for "tolerance" of aberrant sexuality and eventually would come to the point of legitimizing homosexuality and lesbianism and demonizing Christianity. See here. And increasingly such is taking place. Dianne Williamson, an anti-Catholic columnist for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette with a long history of attacking the Church and her teaching*, is now accusing Professor Michael Pakaluk of spewing "anti-homosexual blather disguised as intellectual morality" because of his recent column in The Pilot [ official newspaper of the Boston Archdiocese] addressing the recent controversy in Hingham, Massachusetts over the child of lesbian parents being denied admission to a Catholic school.

Williamson, annihilator of common sense that she is, writes, "Pakaluk's screed should come as no shock to anyone familiar with the intolerance of the Catholic Church, even as it's written on the heels of a well-publicized, 25 year study showing that the children of lesbian parents are less likely to have behavioral problems and 'rated higher in social, academic and total competence.'" See here.

Dutch psychologist Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg, Ph.D., a specialist on homosexuality [unlike Ms. Williamson] says that the claim that homosexuality is normal is one of those statements that are "so foolish that only intellectuals could believe them." It is like saying that anorexia nervosa is healthy. See here. Dr. Aardweg notes that, "The term neurotic describes such relationships well. It suggests the ego-centeredness of the relationship; the attention-seeking instead of loving...Neurotic, in short, suggests all kinds of dramas and childish conflicts as well as the basic disinterestedness in the partner, notwithstanding the shallow pretensions of 'love.' Nowhere is there more self-deception in the homosexual than in his representation of himself as a lover. One partner is important to the other only insofar as he satisfies that other's needs. Real, unselfish love for a desired partner would, in fact, end up destroying homosexual 'love'!" (Dr. Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg, The Battle for Normality, Ignatius Press, 1997, pp. 62-63).

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has warned that the adoption of children by homosexuals "would actually mean doing violence to these children" whose situation of dependence would place them "in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development" which this study has shown.


Dianne Williamson is blinded by her hatred for the Catholic Church. As a result, she is incapable of anything even remotely approaching objectivity when she writes on the Church. The irony here is that Ms. Williamson is guilty of the very thing she accuses Professor Pakaluk and the Catholic Church of: intolerance. Tolerance is for external conduct; it is not for the mind. The mind cannot tolerate error for even an instant. To do so would be to declare truth and error equally good. Which is why the Church so zealously protects and guards the truth even while showing love for those in error. The Church says with Saint Augustine: Kill the error, love the one who errs. She proposes while the world imposes.

But Ms. Williamson has demonstrated her intolerance toward the Church time and again.


Related reading: The health risks of homosexual sex here. And Homosexuality and mental health problems here.


* See here, here, here and here for example.

A Three Hour Tour...

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,

A tale of a fateful trip

That started from this tropic port

Aboard this tiny ship

The mate was a mighty sailing man,

The President lame and unsure

Five passengers set sail that day

For a three hour tour, a three hour tour

The weather started getting rough,

The tiny ship was tossed,

If not for the weight of the toxic sludge

The President would be lost, the President would be lost

The ship set ground on the shore of this unchartered lethal ruin

With Obama

The Skipper too

The BP Billionaire and his wife,

The professor and Janet N

Here on Obama's Isle

So this is the tale of the throwaways,

They're here for a long, long time

They'll have to fill that gaping hole,

It's an uphill climb

The first mate and the President too,

Will do their very best,

To make the others all forget

Who's responsible for this mess

So join us here each week my friend

You're sure to see a mile

Of poisonous slime and scorched wildlife

Here on Obama's Isle.

Culture of Sodomy: Seton Hall University to offer course on same-sex "marriage" by a homosexualist professor

The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in a document entitled Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons which was published on July 31, 2003, explains that marriage "is not just any relationship between human beings. It was established by the Creator with its own nature, essential properties and purpose" and that this truth is so evident that "no ideology can erase from the human spirit the certainty that marriage exists solely between a man and a woman." (No. 2).

Considerations goes on to explain that, "There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. Homosexual acts 'close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.' Sacred Scripture condemns homosexual acts 'as a serious depravity....This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.' This same moral judgment is found in many Christian writers of the first centuries 'and is unanimously accepted by Catholic Tradition.'" (No. 4).

In No. 5, the document explains that, "..the approval or legalization of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil.." and that even where homosexual unions have been legalized, "clear and emphatic opposition is a duty." In fact, "any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws" and even any "material cooperation on the level of their application" must be avoided.

The CDF has also taught clearly that, "All support should be withdrawn from any organizations which seek to undermine the teaching of the Church, which are ambiguous about it, or which neglect it entirely. Such support, or even the semblance of such support, can be gravely msinterpreted...Special attention should be given to the...use of Church buildings by these groups, including the facilities of Catholic schools and colleges. To some, such permission to use Church property may seem only just and charitable; but in reality it is contradictory to the purpose for which these institutions were founded, it is misleading and often scandalous." (Letter to Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons).

If Seton Hall University insists upon promoting the culture of sodomy and engaging in homosexual agitprop, the Church should withdraw all support for the institution. Seton Hall University wasn't founded for the purpose of advancing the cause of militant sodomy. It was founded to direct the formation of human persons created in the image and likeness of God to their final, eternal goal, to the common good of the society in which they live and to that intellectual and spiritual maturity which is achieved by growing in Christ Jesus.