The "pastoral" team at Our Lady Immaculate Parish in Athol: Promoting an atmosphere of hatred and violence

Last September, I noted how Deacon Scott Colley, the administrator (at least at the time if not still so) of the Facebook page for the North Quabbin Catholic Community, which includes several parishes in and around Athol, Massachusetts, banned me for taking issue with the applause which often breaks out during Holy Mass at Our Lady Immaculate Parish in Athol.  See here.  And back in 2011, I disagreed with Father Krzysztof Korcz when he blamed parents as being the sole cause of the lack of vocations and the exodus of young people from Catholic life.  See here.  Lastly, I noted how Father Krzysztof Korcz conducted a 'Cluster Survey" which included suggestions that the parish become "more tolerant" in its preaching (no need to mention any of that pesky Hell and sin business) and that it model itself after the Paulist Center - a bastion of radical homosexual agitprop which The Weekly Standard described (see here) as the place, "where people who hate the Church go to church."  See here.

In one of his last homilies, Archbishop Oscar Romero, the martyred Archbishop of San Salvador, 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 become entrenched in their sinful state, betrays the gospel's call. A preaching that does not discomfit sinners but lulls them in their sin leaves Zebulun and Naphtali in the shadow of death. 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!" this is the church's authentic preaching. Naturally, such preaching must meet conflict, must spoil what is miscalled prestige, must disturb, must be persecuted. It cannot get along with the powers of darkness and sin."


We've had enough of a preaching which leaves Zebulun and Naphtali in the shadow of death.  We've had enough of a Cotton-Candy Catholicism which offers Chicken-Soup Homilies and asinine theatrics rather than the solid meat of sound preaching and liturgical reverence.  Sadly, so many of our priests haven't caught on to this.  And so they continue to spoon-feed us the unsatisfying pablum.

The time for lying is over.  I have been saying this for years.  Back in 2009, Archbishop Charles Chaput noted that, "40 years of American Catholic complacency and poor formation are bearing exactly the fruit we should have expected...We can't talk about following St. Paul and converting our culture until we sober up and get honest about what we've allowed ourselves to become.  We need to stop lying to each other..." (See here).

The lying must stop.  For this to happen, we need priests and Bishops who fear God more than they do men.  Cowards will not lead us out of the valley of death.  Only shepherds who have the spiritual strength, the Cardinal Gift of Fortitude, to brave the risk of worldly criticism, will be able to lead the American Catholic Church out of the valley of the Culture of Death and back on the road to the Civilization of Love which Pope John Paul II spoke of so often.

Why have so many priests succumbed to fear?  Why is it that their preaching no longer points out sin?  Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange provides us with an answer:


"The reason for this is not difficult to find.  A sermon is the result of the combined effort of all the priest's powers; it reveals his entire person; it is his struggle against the vices of the surrounding world."  In other words, if the preaching is unsound, it is because the priest's spiritual life is unsound.  Fr. Lagrange continues, "Everything in the priest cooperates in his preaching - study, reflection, his powers to compose and revise, the activity of his intellect, his imagination, his memory, his feelings, his voice.  Therefore, when he preaches, the priest stands exposed for all to study; some will be attracted, others will not.  Some will accept what he says, others will simply criticize.  So if the priest approaches his task from the human angle, he will say to himself: 'I cannot afford to lose my reputation; people of weight in the parish who take offense easily must be spared their feelings and not provoked; I must proceed warily so as not to incur criticism.'  In that way Christian eloquence is invaded by a profane eloquence in which the preacher looks after his own interests, not the glory of God or the saving of souls." (The Priest In Union With Christ, p. 156).

I've never been a fan of lying.  And this because Our Lord tells us that the Devil is the Father of all lies (John 8:44),  If it's lying you want, this Blog is not for you.  Forty years of lying has wrought so much damage to the American Catholic Church.  Archbishop Chaput is right, we are merely reaping the fruit of what we've planted.  St. Paul tells us that, "...the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.." (Galatians 5: 22).  But what fruit have we witnessed in the American Catholic Church?  The Church has been infected with dry-rot as so many Catholics have succumbed to the works of the flesh.

We need heroic shepherds.  Men who, like Blessed Miguel Pro, S.J., are willing to give their very lives for the Catholic Church and her teaching.
Because I do not believe in lying; because I believe in standing up for the Church's Magisterial teaching at all cost (and I have paid dearly), I have been banned from the Facebook Page of the North Quabbin Catholic Community which is now engaging in libel against me while publishing posts which threaten violence against my person.  And this from a community which regularly sings the song "All are welcome."  Yes....as long as they dissent from Church teaching or are not "too faithful" to the Magisterium.

Now the North Quabbin "Catholic" Community has published an angry post written by Kathleen M. Progen [no doubt because Father Krzysztof Korcz has been removed from Our Lady Immaculate and replaced as pastor - after the Bishop received numerous complaints about him from disaffected parishioners] in which she  slanders me by falsely asserting that I have said "hateful things" which were "disgusting" and then writes, "I want to go punch him....praying for him to see the error of his ways."  And the North Quabbin Catholic Community responds: "I have blocked him from this page."  To which Ms. Progen, a pillar of Catholic charity and welcoming herself, replies, "Thank you, whoever blocked him.  I wonder if he will have the guts to answer my chastising note to him.."

One can almost hear Ms. Progen at Our Lady Immaculate loudly singing:

Let us build a house
where love can dwell
And all can safely live,
A place where
saints and children tell
How hearts learn to forgive.

Built of hopes and dreams and visions,
Rock of faith and vault of grace;
Here the love of Christ shall end divisions;

Let us build a house where prophets speak,
And words are strong and true,
Where all God's children dare to seek
To dream God's reign anew.

Here the cross shall stand as witness
And a symbol of God's grace;
Here as one we claim the faith of Jesus:

Let us build a house where love is found
In water, wine and wheat:
A banquet hall on holy ground,
Where peace and justice meet.

Here the love of God, through Jesus,
Is revealed in time and space;
As we share in Christ the feast that frees us:

All are welcome, all are welcome,
All are welcome in this place.

This even as she engages in calumny while proclaiming her desire to commit violence against me.  Father Peter Carota is right, progressive "Catholicism" is dying.  It is no match for authentic love as found in traditional Catholicism.


http://lasalettejourney.blogspot.com/2014/04/father-peter-carota-traditional.html


If the North Quabbin Catholic Community is in crisis today, it is no mystery.  Young people are not attracted by hatred and violence.  It is Gospel values they thirst for.  Thus far, the NQCC has offered not wheat but chaff.  And young people sense this.

  

Bonnie Toomey and the Sentinel & Enterprise: Promoting satanic gender confusion

Harry Hay, the founder of the homosexual movement, began his manifesto for the Mattachine Society with these words: "We, the androgynes of the world.." Homosexual writer and activist Paul Varnell explains how Hay gave androgyny vital importance in the homosexual movement: "Hay's 'idealism' had three components: a) gays are qualitatively different from heterosexuals, mentally, psychologically, spiritually, not just in 'what they do in bed;' b) the core difference lies in the natural androgyny of homosexuals, that they embody both male and female elements; and c) in order to help promote their acceptance gays need to explain the contribution this difference makes to society." (Paul Varnell, "Harry Hay: One Big Idea).

Pope Benedict XVI, in a Christmas Address given in 2008, denounced the contemporary notion that gender is a malleable definition and said, "The Church speaks of the human being as man and woman, and asks that this order is respected." But our sin-sick culture, in its hatred for God and His Commandments, has another agenda. God's order is rejected. And this is most significant because, as Father Vincent Miceli, S.J., has noted, "It has been a special scar on the worst pagan cultures and the worst idolatrous religions that they openly attacked the gender identities of the sexes. They celebrated sexual indulgence, sexual experimentation, sexual symbols, fertility rites, temple prostitution, seasonal sex orgies, sexual abuse and enslavement of young women, girls and boys....But sex is not an accidental characteristic of man and woman. A human person without sex is a monstrous abstraction. Sex entails the very identity of each person; sex plunges to the deepest mystery of each person. Hence the sexes and the vocations pertaining thereto are not interchangeable. Each person is called to serve God and his fellowman, accepting gladly the sex with which one is endowed and the vocation attached to that sex." (The Antichrist, P. 231).

The forces of darkness continue to assault God's order by promoting gender confusion.  Exactly one year ago today, on Easter Sunday 2011 - which is, in itself, a sign of the spiritual battle we find ourselves in - the Fitchburg Sentinel & Enterprise published an article from Bonnie J. Toomey, a homosexual propagandist who writes a regular column for that newspaper, entitled "Why should pink have us seeing red?"  This article was a response to the controversy which erupted when the president of Abercrombie & Fitch, Jenna Lyons, painted her five year old son's toenails pink.

Ms. Toomey wrote, "...pink is a beautiful color, and I think it looks great on a guy.  It doesn't mean anything.  But why do we get so uncomfortable when it comes to boys and pink?  Traditions, religions and a patriarchal society have put pink where they want it, not necessarily where it rightfully belongs.  My sons wore their sister's costumes and dresses many times..."  Ms. Toomey, ardent propagandist for satanic gender confusion that she is, goes on to insist that homosexuality is innate and natural.  I refuted her nonsense here.

Here we are on Easter Sunday, precisely one year to the day after this assault on God's order and His plan for the sexes, and the Sentinel & Enterprise is at it again.  This time, in a piece entitled "Give your daughter girl power," Bonnie Toomey insists that "Being wrapped in a pink and protected world did not appear to pave the road to success" for her daughter.  While Toomey believes that pink "looks great on a guy," and that "religions and a patriarchal society" have made us uncomfortable with boys wearing pink, a concern she finds unjustifiable, she nevertheless has a problem with toy stores which "push parents of girls into a plastic pink aisle bursting with Barbies, baby dolls, and princesses."

Toomey is a propagandist for demonic gender confusion.  Which is why she wants boys to wear pink but insists that parents who shop the "plastic pink aisle" with their daughters have joined the "indoctrinated ranks of bamboozled parents" who have allowed themselves to be "beaten into stereotyping submission."  Pink dresses and toenails are fine for boys but "a set of Legos or helping Daddy will help our daughters to shine more than any set of glittery Princess Press-on Nails Disney tries to peddle as art."

Toomey wants little boys to glitter like little girls and girls to play with Legos and [presumably] G.I. Joe - with the Kung-Fu Grip.  Although she heartily endorses pink for boys,  she sees pink as dangerous for little girls - something which will hold them back by instilling in them (gasp) femininity.  She writes, "I shared my girl power message with a young parent of a little girl.  I warned her of the pitfalls of pink.." (See here for full article).

Father Miceli warns that, "Women, in ever growing numbers, are despising and abandoning their femaleness.  They thus cripple themselves for the fulfillment of their sublime vocation of mothering children to maturity.  Men, frightened by the blazing fury of the women's liberation movement, are surrendering male roles and positions to psychologically desexualized women.."

St. Nilus prophesied that the day would come when gender confusion would be rampant.  And he warned that this would be one of the signs of the proximity of Antichrist.

Clark University: Promoting a Theology of Violence

At their website, the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute has an excellent article refuting the lies of those who promote the anti-Catholic production The Vagina Monologues, a pornographic play which encourages violence against women.  Entitled, "The Vagina Monologues Facts vs. Fallacies," the article refutes the top ten common claims made by V-Day organizers and supporters:

1) Claim: "The play empowers/liberates women."

False: The Vagina Monologues is a lie. It does not empower women with its message that: women's identity and image are wrapped up in their sexual organs. True empowerment lies in the heart and the mind. Consider these images from the play:

•"The Woman Who Loved To Make Vaginas Happy" is a monologue about a successful tax attorney who leaves her career to become a lesbian dominatrix prostitute, specializing in the use of sexual "props," i.e. whips, handcuffs and ropes. Liberating or ironically violent?

•"The Vagina Workshop" describes a woman who attends an orgasm workshop and participates in a group masturbation session. The workshop leader tells the woman her sexual organs are "the essence of me, both the doorbell to my house and the house itself." This mindset is exactly what the early suffragettes were fighting against.

•Reclaiming C**t” invites the audience to participate in cult-like chanting of an explicit word to describe a woman's private parts. And this exercise empowers women because?


2) Claim: "The play raises awareness about violence against women."

False: The play offers women little more than encouragement to view themselves as a single body part and become obsessed with their sexuality and sexual behavior. It does not provide healthy or practical information about how to protect themselves against violence and/or recover from a violent experience.

•The opening monologue states that playwright Eve Ensler's biggest anxiety was not about adequately and responsibly addressing violence against women. She wrote this play because she “was worried about [her] own vagina” as far as “what we think about vaginas and even more worried that we don't think about them.” How about worrying that laws setting punishments for sexual offenders are not strong enough? Or that most women are unfamiliar with basic self-defense techniques?

•Questions raised throughout the play make a mockery of meaningful ways to address and learn about violence against women. They include, “If your vagina got dressed, what would it wear?,” “If your vagina could talk, what would it say?,” and “What does a vagina smell like?"

3) Claim: "The play is not anti-male."

False: Men are only mentioned in a negative way throughout the play as adulterers, abusers, weirdos, and rapists. Consider the following examples:

•The cheating husband who “forced” his wife to shave her vagina in the monologue “Hair.”

•Andy Leftkov, who in “The Flood,” calls his date “a stinky weird girl.”

•Supporters of the play will often ask, “What about Bob?” Bob is featured in “Because He Like To Look At It.” “It” meaning a woman's vagina. What we learn is that Bob is ordinary, boring, and unappealing, that is, until the woman character discovers his one redeeming quality: a perverted obsession with women's private parts.

4) Claim: "If you don't want to see the play, you don't have to."

False: Advertisements, promotional materials, and other events surrounding the play around campus are equally offensive and degrading.

•Roger Williams University was flooded with signs that read, "My Vagina is Huggable," "My Vagina is Flirty," and "My Vagina is Regal."

•University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill allowed tee shirts that read "I Heart My Vagina."

•Boise State University distributed vagina lollipops.

•Florida State University had an orgasm workshop.

•Arizona State University constructed a 40-foot inflatable vagina on campus.

5) Claim: "The play is not pornographic"

False: It includes extremely graphic descriptions of women's sexual experiences.

•One monologue has an explicit depiction of two lesbians having sex. “She's inside me. I'm inside me.” And it gets much, much worse.

•“The Vagina Workshop” describes one woman's experience with masturbation. “I bounced and landed, landed and bounced. I came into my own muscles and blood cells and then I just slid into my vagina.”

6) Claim: "Opponents of the play are anti-feminist."

False: Those who oppose the play are pro-woman. We reject the effort to convince women to think of themselves as sexual objects. And we object to this play as a way to bring meaningful attention to the serious issue of violence against women. In addition, the early suffragettes—the original feminists—fought hard for equal rights and treatment under the law for women. They fought against the very notion that a woman is reducible to a single body part. By opposing this play, we honor their efforts.

7) Claim: "The play does not venerate child rape."

False: The child rape that occurs in “The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could” is presented as a sympathetic and spiritually redeeming experience for the young girl who is violated. She describes the rape as “surprising, unexpected, politically incorrect salvation” that “transformed my sorry-ass coochi snorcher and raised it up into a kind of heaven.” The monologue describes how a 24-year-old woman plies a 16-year-old girl (she is 13 in the original version) with vodka and then sexually violates her. And in the original version, this monologue ended with the line: “If it was rape, it was a good rape.”

8) Claim: "Funds raised by the play are ending violence against women."

While some of the funds are being sent to community programs and organizations that help victims of violence, the play itself does not effectively address this issue, its cause or any meaningful solutions. Rather, it encourages the very attitude that often leads to sexual violence: treating women as objects. According to V-Day organizers, groups who have also received proceeds from the play include Equality Now, Feminist.com, gay and lesbian centers, Planned Parenthood, and Girls, Inc.—groups with specific political agendas that reach way beyond violence against women.

We hope the V-Day marketing ploy and the lunacy of the play will be exposed. We also hope women, men, professors, and administrators will reject this demeaning portrayal of women. Until then, our approach is to inform, equip, and support reasonable students who are offended.

9) Claim: "The play is based on real women's stories."

False: In her book, Eve Ensler states, “Some of the monologues are close to verbatim interviews, some are composite interviews, and with some I just began with the seed of an interview and had a good time.” The "V-Day" website provides no evidence these interviews actually occurred or that any of the women mentioned exist.

10) Claim: "Opponents of the play are against free speech."

False: Opposing the play and advocating censorship are two very different things. We do not propose violating the First Amendment. In the free marketplace of ideas, the best idea will win out.

V-Day Unveiled was created to offer positive approaches that students can use to offer alternatives and/or express their disapproval of the play being performed on campus and with school funds. (See here).

But Jeremy Levine, a student who writes for Clark University's student newspaper The Scarlet, is quite content with the pornographic agitprop which encourages violence against women.  For Jeremy, true empowerment does not lie in the heart and mind.  For Jeremy, a woman's identity is wrapped up in her sexual organs.  He writes, "The vagina is much more than a body part, its the essence of what it is to be female, the epitome of feminine empowerment, and every single one is unique, not just on a biological level."

And this at a time when a student was sexually assaulted on Clark's campus.


Jeremy's review of The Vagina Monologues is so disturbing that it reads like the transcript of a serial rapist who is fixated on women's vaginas: "The performances themselves were fabulous. Stage productions often rely on acting, but not this one. Sure, the lines were memorized, and agonizing hours went into rehearsal, but the feeling was sincere. The people on stage really cared about vaginas, and really understood how the women they were portraying felt. This made [it] much easier to connect to the message....I learned about angry vaginas, young vaginas, old vaginas, neglected vaginas, adored vaginas, mysterious vaginas, overeager vaginas, and shy vaginas. One woman described her vagina as being “better than the grand canyon,” while another stated that hers “stays closed, and [she] doesn’t go down there.”..I always knew that sexuality was complicated, but this brought it to a whole new level... Every person on stage had a completely different take on her vagina and her interactions involving it...Vaginas are complicated, but their complications go beyond the physical. Each individual woman (and each individual man) has his or her own relationship with particular vaginas, and vaginas in general. These are not relationships to oversimplify, neglect, or generalize. They are the epitome of understanding one’s sexuality, and the beginning of trying to understand that of other people." (See here).

What Jeremy (and Clark University) is advancing is a theology from Hell. It is most ironic that his article is entitled "Peace, love and Vagina Monologues," for this pornographic play has nothing to do with love.  It is, rather, representative of today's cruel demand for sex without love, for a licentiousness in sex which has wrought a heartless society in which individuals do not care for anyone but themselves. The fruit of this demonic theology is the slaughter through abortion and euthanasia of human beings created in the Imago Dei. It is a theology of violence which is rooted in hatred of truth. For at the heart of immorality is falsity, the hatred of truth. Fr. Vincent Miceli explains: "...violence entered creation from the rebellion of Lucifer. This rebellion arose from the heart of pride. But the sin of pride is the offspring of the vice known as hatred of truth. Hatred of truth is the result of the creature's attempt to rearrange God's hierarchy of beings and values into an order which the creature prefers to the plan of God. This attempt immediately produces the violence of disorder, the chaos of falsity and immorality. For hatred of truth is really hatred of God who creates all things wisely and governs them lovingly. Lucifer, the Morning Star, was instantly deformed into the Prince of Darkness because he attempted to live a lie. He wanted to dethrone God and become God himself..." ( Essay entitled The Taproot of Violence).

At one university, the student Knights of Columbus group issued an open letter deploring the, "..performance of trash that demeans women and only serves to degrade the dignity of the human person...The Monologues will not further the mission of our University. A woman is a person, not an object. God blessed humanity with the gift of sex as a way of celebrating the love between spouses and of bringing new life into His world...."

This is the essence of the new anti-Christian sex education in preparation for the Moloch State. As George Kendall explains in Witness for the Truth, this sex education "radically separates sex from the very idea of the covenanted love of man and woman. Sex becomes merely a self-centered appetite to be satisfied and not a gift of self to another. As a result, what this kind of education produces is the lonely, autonomous individual. This is the ultimate in alienation. The autonomous individual is alienated even from his own body, which becomes to him only a thing, too - a thing to be used as a means to his autonomous pleasure. The end result is depersonalization which, if it lasts into eternity without being healed, means eternal loss.

Few have put it as eloquently as Randy Engel did: 'Is it any wonder that the state must wage war against the family? For the state requires not individuals who dream, and think, and pray, but rather what has come to be called 'the mass man' - rootless, unaffirmed, a reactor - a mere reed blowing in the wind - a thing to be manipulated, to be used, to be disposed of, but never, never, to be loved, for the giant has no heart. And since the modern state has no heart, that which men previously have done out of love, must now be done out of fear, and hatred, and brute force.' So clearly, contemporary sex education, 'Catholic' or otherwise, is a profound attack on human dignity and on the human person.." (Witness for the Truth, pp. 399-400. citing Randy Engel "The Family Under Siege," Wanderer, March 6, 1980).

And now I would add, satanic. The United States, like the other Termite Nations of the West, is fast-becoming a Moloch State which claims total jurisdiction over man. It is becoming a demon-state which rejects God's Commandments and His plan for the human family. This demon-state (and make no mistake about it, our leaders increasingly have recourse to demons) denies that there is any transcendent, higher-than-human voice or authority that cares for man. R.J. Rushdoony explains that:

"The Moloch State simply represents the supreme effort of man to command the future, to predestine the world, and to be as God. Lesser efforts, divination, spirit-questing, magic and witchcraft are equally anathema to God. All represent efforts to have the future on other than God's terms, to have a future apart from and in defiance of God. They are assertions that the world is not of God but of brute factuality, and that man can somehow master the world and the future by going directly to the raw materials thereof."

Clark University has succumbed to hatred of truth.  For this reason, the institution is now succumbing to a lust for violence.  Our Lord warned the Pharisees that men who reject God's plan for their salvation will imitate Satan's deeds.  Enter the Moloch State and he who will rule it with hatred and violence in his own name. (John 5: 43).

Department of Veterans Affairs censoring the words "God" and "Jesus" during funeral services at Houston National Cemetery

Veterans in Houston, Texas claim that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is censoring their prayers by banning the use of the words "God" and "Jesus" during funeral services at Houston National Cemetery.  According to a Fox News story, "Three organizations - the Veterans of Foreign Wars, The American Legion and the National Memorial Ladies -- allege that the cemetery's director and other government officials have created 'religious hostility' at the cemetery and are violating the First Amendment. According to court documents filed this week in federal court, the cemetery's director, Arleen Ocasio, has banned saying 'God' at funerals and requires prayers be submitted in advance for government approval.."

Government approval?

Increasingly we are witnessing hostility from the government toward Christianity.  Military chaplains who object to homosexuality because of their Christian faith are being threatened with court martial.  And while there are those who are attempting to censor Christians and marginalize Christianity, witchcraft and satanism are finding governmental approval.  In fact, the Air Force Academy has opened a chapel for pagans.  See here.

In an article published in Polish in Panorama and written by Dr. J. Coleman, an Intelligence officer, Dr. Coleman is quoted as having said that, "The One-World Government is going to consist of hereditary oligarchs who will divide the power between themselves. There is going to be only one legal religion and only one state church. Only Satanism and Luciferism will be the legal religious subjects in state schools. No other schools (private, Catholic, etc.) will be allowed. All present Christian education systems are going to be destroyed (and the fact is — they are destroyed in the most part) from inside, and become extinct. Satanism is already considered to be a 'true and legal religion'. In fact, in some U.S. military bases, they already celebrate black masses and worship Satan."

We are approaching the day prophesied by Romano Guardini in The Lord, "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 without 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.." (p. 513).


Inflated in their rebellion against the God-Man, the Sons of Satan, those committed toward the atheistic program of attacking the Church from without and undermining it from within in preparation for the Man-God, will continue to intensify their persecution of craftiness and subversion until it reaches its culmination in an explosion of hate-filled rage which will bear much blood and death. Father Livio Fanzaga, writing about the Antichrist, says that, "Catholicism alone will resist him. How then do we destroy this superstition which alone obstructs the world's self-revelation? How do we destroy this superstition which divides mankind and which prevents man from being truly brotherly and free? The true Antichrist is revealed in the replies to these questions. Here is perceived his profound being as the man of iniquity. He will not tolerate the idea of men who adore any god other than himself. His intolerance obliges him to make an exception to his pacifism and his philosophy of non-violence. He is the greatest pacifist in the history of the human race, but because peace and justice really reign on earth he will make an exception to kill and destroy the great superstition of Catholicism, once and for all time..." (Wrath of God: The Days of the Antichrist, p. 124).

St. Cecilia's Parish in Boston: Promoting legalism and false compassion

Dr. Germain Grisez, in a talk entitled "Legalism, Moral Truth and Pastoral Practice" given at a 1990 symposium held in Philadelphia, had this to say: "Theologians and pastors who dissent from received Catholic teaching think they are rejecting legalism because they set aside what they think are mere rules in favor of what they feel are more reasonable standards. Their views are thoroughly imbued with legalism, however. For dissenters think of valid moral norms as rules formulated to protect relevant values. Some even make their legalism explicit by denying that there is any necessary connection between moral goodness (which they restrict to the transcendental level of a love with no specific content) and right action (which they isolate at the categorical level of inner-worldly behavior). But whether their legalism is explicit or not, all the dissenters hold that specific moral norms admit exceptions whenever, all things considered, making an exception seems the best - or least bad - thing to do. Most dissenters also think that specific moral norms that were valid in times past can be inappropriate today, and so they regard the Church's contested moral teachings as outdated rules that the Church should change."

Dr. Grisez reminded his listeners at the Philadelphia symposium that, "During the twentieth century, pastoral treatment of repetitious sins through weakness - especially masturbation, homosexual behavior, premarital sex play and contraception within marriage - grew increasingly mild. Pastors correctly recognized that weakness and immaturity can lessen such sins’ malice. Thinking legalistically, they did not pay enough attention to the sins’ inherent badness and harmfulness, and they developed the idea that people can freely choose to do something that they regard as a grave matter without committing a mortal sin. This idea presupposes that in making choices people are not responsible precisely for choosing what they choose. That presupposition makes sense within a legalistic framework, because lawgivers can take into account mitigating factors and limit legal culpability. But it makes no sense for morality correctly understood, because moral responsibility in itself is not something attached to moral acts but simply is moral agents’ self-determination in making free choices. Repetitious sinners through weakness also were handicapped by their own legalism. Not seeing the inherent badness of their sins, they felt that they were only violating inscrutable rules. When temptation grew strong, they had little motive to resist, especially because they could easily go to confession and have the violation fixed. Beginning on Saturday they were holy; by Friday they were again sinners. This cyclic sanctity robbed many people’s lives of Christian dynamism and contributed to the dry rot in the Church that became manifest in the 1960s, when the waves of sexual permissiveness battered her."

Dr. Grisez then went on to explain that, "Pastors free of legalism will teach the faithful how sin makes moral requirements seem to be alien impositions, help them see through this illusion, and encourage them to look forward to and experience the freedom of God’s children, who rejoice in the fruit of the Spirit and no longer experience the constraint of law..They will explain that while one sometimes must choose contrary to positive laws and cannot always meet their requirements, one always can choose in truth and abide in love. They will acknowledge the paradox of freedom - that we seem unable to resist freely choosing to sin - the paradox that Saint Paul neatly formulates: ‘I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate’ (Romans 7:15). But they also will proclaim the liberating power of grace, and help the faithful learn by experience that when one comes to understand the inherent evil of sin and intrinsic beauty of goodness, enjoys the support of a community of faith whose members bear one another’s burdens, begs God for His help, and confidently expects it, then the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead raises him from his sins, and he discovers that with the Spirit’s grace one can consistently resist sin and choose life."

St. Cecilia's Parish in Boston, home of the "Rainbow Ministry" which refuses to call people to holiness, has an article written by Kathy Coffey in its latest bulletin.  Ms. Coffey, who obviously suffers from the same legalism described by Dr. Grisez above, also views received Catholic teaching as "mere rules."  The article is entitled "No more time to waste: Challenges for the Church."  Ms. Coffey writes, "Where would I like to see the Catholic Church move next?  In a radical direction, meaning 'back to its roots'....Unfortunately, many now know Catholics only by what they oppose: same-sex marriage, women's ordination, abortion, etc.  In the future, let's be known by what we advocate.  Let's focus on the positive.." 

Ms. Coffey insists, "Given the challenges the human race will face in the next century, Christians can't waste time judging, carping, and condemning.  Let's get on with the task of being Christ to a hungry, hurting world." 

What Ms. Coffey fails to understand is that it is our duty as Catholics to remind others of Gospel truths and to expose those who are promoting sin or error. Often we will find ourselves being criticized (even by other Catholics, whose commitment toward Catholic teaching is, at best, questionable) for doing so.  We will be accused of "judging" and "condemning." This should never deter us. When such people accuse us of "negativity," [or even as "threatening peace and order"], we should recall the words of Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand: "..the rejection of evil and of sin is a response which is purely positive and morally called for, and it possesses a high moral value. One cannot truly love God, without hating the devil. One cannot really love the truth, without hating error. One cannot find the truth and grasp it clearly as such, without seeing through errors. Knowledge of truth is inseparably linked with knowledge of error, with the unmasking of error. All talk about the superiority of 'yes' over 'no,' about the 'negativity' of rejecting that which should be rejected, is so much idle chatter." (The Cult of the 'Positive').


Indeed, as John Cardinal Newman said in his Grammar of Assent, "I would maintain that fear of error is simply necessary to the genuine love of truth." In his Introduction to the Devout Life, that precious and popular work, St. Francis de Sales, a Doctor of the Church, says that, "If the declared enemies of God and of the Church ought to be blamed and censured with all possible vigor, charity obliges us to cry wolf when the wolf slips into the midst of the flock and in every way and place we may meet him."

Pope John XXIII said essentially the same thing: "...as long as we are journeying in exile over this earth, our peace and happiness will be imperfect. For such peace 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 No. 93).

Simply put, Kathy Coffey is wrong.  She is not a Pope.  She is not a saint.  She may honestly believe that it is her God-given role to "correct" the wisdom of the Church and her saints.  But sane people will know better.