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Earlier this year, a Mars Hill Church (Seattle) member, Jeff Bethke, made a popular YouTube video about the problem with today’s Christianity and its adherents:
Bethke is half-right and half-misguided. As Brian — a reader of the White Horse Inn blog — noted:
The insidious nature of self-justification is brought out well here. Although the “rapper” thinks he’s denouncing works righteousness, he’s actually practicing it – and the worst possible way because he thinks he understands grace.
‘J Fisk’, a young Lutheran (LCMS) pastor (it seems), posted a response in a similar style, noting Bethke’s correct observations about Christianity and correcting his errors:
Back to the post at the White Horse Inn blog and the commentary there:
One of the really encouraging things today is seeing people raised in “moralistic-therapeutic-deism” coming to understand and embrace the gospel. At the same time, the antithesis between “religion” and “grace” (or being “spiritual but not religious”) is still trapped in its own kind of moralism. It fails to recognize that Christ came to fulfill rather than abolish the Law and religion. If religion is a community with certain doctrines and practices, then certainly Christianity is a religion. It’s bad religion that Jesus abolishes, because he gives himself as the Life of the world in the gospel through preaching and sacrament. Take away this religion and you are just left once again with a religion of your own making.
Indeed, it does seem as if Bethke (the Mars Hill member) is substituting socio-political works for outward holiness works. Fisk does a great job of dismantling this argument and steering it away from either type of semi-Pelagianism. On the YouTube page, he summarises the problem succinctly:
rightly distinguishing Law and Gospel is an art that bashing “religion” won’t help any one learn any time soon.
Paula on the White Horse Inn blog observes:
As Fisk points out, [Bethke] is ranting against a religion of works, and then immediately complaining about people not having enough in the way of good works. I find this over and over again among well meaning Christians who desire to tell everyone else they need to “walk worthy” and they have just the thing to show them how. The law, and threats of God’s displeasure, or even loss of heavenly reward, if you don’t!
A Catholic priest, the Revd Claude ‘Dusty’ Burns (aka ‘Pontifex’), also taped a response to Bethke’s original, shorter but worth watching:
I also had the same questions as Bethke when I was younger, despite my many years of Catholic education in school and at home.
As I mentioned yesterday, many Christians do not understand their own faith and fall into semi-Pelagianism with the full help of pastors and lay leaders.
Then the problem arises of what sort of semi-Pelagianism is the desirable one. Urban church members, like Bethke, see socio-political activism as ‘correct’ discipleship. Suburban and rural church members are likely to be more concerned with personal outer holiness. This gives rise to the American religious conflicts we see today — on the left and the right.
The result is that many young people in high school and university fail to understand the difference between manmade works and grace-inspired fruits of faith. It is important that they know the difference. For this reason, I prefer Fisk’s Lutheran video, because it is more biblical and doctrinal, responding point by point. Youth directors would do well to show it to young people in their congregations.
Tomorrow: Why Americans fall into semi-Pelagianism
The past two posts have featured common sense from the Revd Dr Peter Mullen, an Anglican priest who is Rector of St Michael, Cornhill and St Sepulchre-without-Newgate in the City of London. He is Chaplain to six Livery Companies of the City of London and has written for many publications including the Wall Street Journal.
Every service at St Michael Cornhill uses the 1662 Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Excellent!
Unfortunately, Dr Mullen is due to retire on his 70th birthday on January 11, 2012. It is to be hoped that he continues his Daily Mail and Telegraph columns, which Llew of Lleweton’s Blog — also highly recommended — recently brought to my attention.
This post shares Mullen’s thoughts on Occupy London, which has been making a scatalogical mess of St Paul’s Cathedral over the past several weeks. If you had told me a year ago this was going to happen, I would have thrown you out of the mousehole. Now it is a sad reality of the unchurched, lazy and greedy.
What follows are excerpts of what Mullen posted in the Mail on November 6, 2011 (emphases mine):
But what exactly are the protesters protesting about? Nothing I’ve heard makes me think that they are saying anything other than that some people are richer than others – and it’s not fair. “It’s not fair! – it is the cry of every child in the infants’ class. And so a competent teacher will agree and say, “Yes, life isn’t fair. It never was and it never will be. You’ve just got to work hard and get on with it.”
Work? The word is English as a foreign language to the gang outside St Paul’s who, so far as we can tell, are living on either daddy’s misplaced generosity or state benefits – or, of course, since the human heart is greedy beyond measure, both. They claim to be against capitalism. There is their big banner CAPITALISM IS CRISIS. Do they think we don’t know that? All political systems involve crisis. In fact in Marxism, the preferred philosophy – insofar as this lumpen band of professional narcissists are capable of philosophising – crisis is built into the system, based as it is on the dialectic which makes disagreement and class war not only necessary but desirable. Have they never read Das Kapital? …
The main alternative to capitalism remains socialism. And wherever socialism has been tried it has led at best to economic stagnation and widespread poverty. Of course it has generally progressed to incompetent rule by a privileged and corrupt elite, to the bureaucratisation of society – with all its attendant inefficiency and over-regulation – and usually to the gulag and mass murder as well. It is a pity that the protesters don’t read anything, otherwise they might learn the truth about the history of socialism, communism and the attempt at levelling since the French Revolution and through the monstrous genocides of Stalin and Mao who between them murdered 100 million of their own people in the name of socialism.
Let me give you a tip: whenever you hear the cry, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!” listen out keenly for the next sound, because it will be the sound of the tumbrels.
There is this crazy idea that communism/socialism is based on a sense of fairness and kindness of heart. This view is a particular superstition among clergymen. But socialism is not based on those desirable qualities. It is based on control and repression. Eliot warned us against “dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.” That is the fatuous fantasy of society’s sentimental socialists, especially in the church and in the media: that you can regulate to produce goodness.
There is some excuse for the media. Most journalists never attended their Confirmation classes. But there is no excuse for churchmen, for we have been taught the reality of Original Sin from our youth up. Original Sin is not some sort of supernatural perversity. It is simply the way it is with us.
Capitalism is simply the least worst way of going on available to us. It works with rather than against the grain of human nature. Entrepreneurship is good for you! Make a decent mousetrap in order to enrich yourself by its sales and you will rid a million households of vermin. Of course there are people who are richer than others. There always were. And, as someone [Jesus] said, “The poor are always with you” [Matt. 26:11, Mark 14:7, John 12:8] …
Many still mistakenly believe that eschewing capitalism and ‘harmful’ products (e.g. tobacco, transfats) can save their souls. It’s the Pelagian works-based belief in ‘holiness’, as if anything we could do could merit our own salvation.
Yet, there is another side to this which is those who refuse to do nothing to help themselves and quote New Testament verses ad infinitium in order to make an (erroneous) point in order to make hard-working people feel guilty.
May God help them and us as we attempt to navigate this destructive way between truth and error.
More Peter Mullen editorials to come in the New Year.
Tomorrow: St Paul’s Cathedral latest
Yesterday, I featured a post with perspectives from the Revd Dr Peter Mullen on the State’s persecution of Christians in Britain.
Dr Mullen currently serves as Rector of St Michael’s Cornhill and at St Sepulchre-without-Newgate in the City of London. (At St Michael’s the Book of Common Prayer is used in every service.) He also serves as Chaplain to six Livery Companies of the City of London and has written for several publications, including the Wall Street Journal. As such, I am very sorry to read that he will be retiring when he turns 70 on January 11, 2012. Dr Mullen’s pastoral leadership and guidance will be sorely missed by many.
Whether Mullen maintains his columns in the Daily Mail and Telegraph, I don’t know. However, I have enjoyed reading his columns, which were kindly brought to my attention only recently.
What follows is a speech that Mullen gave to UKIP — the UK Independence Party — in Chichester on March 24, 2010. A substantial part of it concerns Islam in the world, specifically throughout European history. If you are unfamiliar with this aspect of history, I would highly recommend that you read Mullen’s brief précis which covers what you will need to know going forward.
For the purposes of this post, his views on Europe and the European Union may be of interest (emphases mine):
My Lord, ladies and gentlemen, it is a privilege and a delight for me to have the opportunity to address supporters of the only party with the character and will to rouse our country to face the existential dangers which threaten us. I must begin by saying that, although I am Rector of St Michael’s, Cornhill, I am speaking for myself this evening and my words will in no respect present the views of the Church. The hierarchy will surely be rather relieved to hear this!
Before we can overcome the problems we must, of course, understand precisely what these problems are. Again, UKIP seems to me to be the only party with the wit to identify these great dangers and to explain their nature without woolliness or that cowardly evasiveness based on the deadly euphemisms of political correctness. Twelve years ago, when totalitarian regimes were falling in the east – falling faster even than today’s Conservative party in the opinion polls – the distinguished poet and administrator C.H.Sisson said to me, “It is a pity that, just when the tyrannical bureaucracies of Eastern Europe are collapsing, we are so keen to construct something very like them in the West”. He was talking, of course, about the burgeoning of authoritarian power in the EU.
At this point I must insert a disclaimer. I am not anti-European. So often our party is sneered at as being full of little Englanders, but I am sure most of us are not such backwoodsmen. I love the Europe of Montaigne, Pascal and Immanuel Kant, of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven; of Goethe, Schiller, Rembrandt; the Europe in which the great philosophical theologians Aquinas and Anselm felt at home in monasteries and universities that were truly international and fraternal. I am talking about European culture and civilisation which, for fifteen hundred years and more, has been one of the greatest achievements of human endeavour.
They try to sell us the EU as if it were this European heritage. It isn’t! The EU is the opposite of civilisation. The EU is the enemy of Europe. It represents Europe in its decadence and its death throes. Whenever a civilisation is in decline, it does what the EU is doing today. Instead of creativity and bold involvement with the world, it turns inwards upon itself and becomes obsessed with its own structures. It begins to despise its own history and tradition and so, instead of being confident in its historic culture, it becomes paranoid and nit-picking, setting up what are called ‘systems’ and ‘structures’ – in T.S.Eliot’s phrase …”dreaming of systems so perfect that no-one will need to be good”. We are dying because the elites which control us actually hate what we have achieved, all the good things we have fought for over the centuries.
But, of course, the systems it invents are not perfect. The labyrinthine, Kafkaesque nightmare of EU procedures is one monstrous lie. And upon this lie, all other lies are constructed like some modern version of the Tower of Babel. The lie that people of Europe have democracy, when actually we are all dominated by the diktats of a corrupt and self-serving elite. The lie that we shall have a say in governance of our continent, when actually all the plebiscites and referenda which go against the wishes of the lying elite are cancelled or re-jigged until they produce the required result. The lie that the business of the super-state is being conducted efficiently and honestly when, in reality, it is a continental bureaucracy run on a system of bribes, with proper accounts neither produced nor audited for decades. The lie propagated by the bureaucratic elite that European culture and values will be preserved – while what they are really up to is fixing immigration policy on a model which will create a Europe essentially Muslim within a generation …
Meanwhile, you can tell that Doomsday is just around the corner when the drowsy sophisticates at The Spectator use an editorial to speak of “western Christian nations”. And to urge, “We must defend our own traditions and our own religion”. There are only two possible comments on this: there are no western Christian nations – not in Europe anyhow – and consequently we have no Christian traditions. The reality is as follows:
Devout Muslims in Britain desire to promote their own moral and religious standards among us. We say, “It’s kind of you, but actually we have our own standards”.
And the Muslim asks, “What are they?”
And we reply: “Take a look for yourself. Practical atheism in our schools…where teachers are bound to teach that any god is as good as any other – or none. Anarchy in personal and sexual morality, as any coupling between any two (or more) pieces of flesh is celebrated. A brief, furtive exchange between (or among) strangers, without either commitment or affection, ascribed the same value as Christian marriage. The consequent near-abolition of marriage and family. What were once mortal sins are now only lifestyle choices.
Abortion used as a form of contraception and amounting to 200,000 every year. A mass media which sexualises young children. Casual fornication taught to junior school children as part of the “diversity” agenda. But what is the difference between “diversity” and perversity?” A debauched customer culture of mingled celebs, Big Brother – who would have thought Orwell so right and yet so wrong? – cocaine, heroin, a government that declares a “war on drugs” and the hands out knighthoods to drug-crazed rock stars. Clubbing, TV nuts’n'sluts shows wall-to-wall, and hyper-shopping.
All this uneasily hitched to a totalitarianism and bullying political correctness which everywhere seeks to curtail our natural freedoms – from foxhunting to smoking, from the sorts of games allowed in the playground to what’s written on packets of sweeties. And – have you noticed? – we have complete freedom of speech – only you’re not allowed to say anything. Yes, we say, Britain has standards all right …
The decadent godlessness we now inhabit is generally agreed to have begun with the permissiveness of the 1960s when we sang “All you need is love” and let it all hang out, debauching our institutions in the process. There is some truth in this and certainly the 1960s was the decade in which the Church of England effectually resigned – throwing out the real Bible and the real Prayer Book and replacing them with unspeakable modern parodies which obscured the fact of sin and so rendered all promises of redemption worthless.
Sin is not something mystical and so old fashioned you couldn’t believe it: it is just the old religious word for a constant human characteristic – that we have a capacity to foul things up, to act against our own best interests. If anyone doubts that the notion of progress is just plain stupid, let them look at Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Vietnam, Rwanda, Sudan, Somalia – take your pick from the repertoire of genocides. The mass media loves to derogate the middle ages and everything in the past as medieval, but there were many more slaughtered in the wars and genocides of the 20th century than in all the previous centuries put together.
In reality, we face not one enemy but two: militant Islam is the alien peril; valueless secularism is the decadence within.
I am not here to ram religion down your throat … but I will say this: what has befallen us is our being persuaded that we can ditch traditional English Christianity and the traditional English values which are part of it, and yet everything else – all the good things – will stay the same. They will not. Throw away our Judeao-Christian inheritance and the lot goes with it. Every intellectual standard of excellence. Every moral imperative. All etiquette, politeness, chivalry. Well, you only have to take a walk through the streets of our towns and cities to see that this has happened already …
Tomorrow: Peter Mullen on Occupy London
The next few posts are later than anticipated. My thanks to Llew of Lleweton’s Blog for sending me a link to the Revd Dr Peter Mullen’s Daily Mail article on persecution of Christians in Britain.
Before this, I had not realised that Dr Mullen had columns in the Mail as well as in the Telegraph. Mullen has been Rector of St Michael’s Cornhill and St Sepulchre-without-Newgate in the City of London, where he has served since 1998. He is Chaplain to six Livery Companies of the City of London and has written for many publications including the Wall Street Journal. He is a staunch champion of orthodox Anglicanism and uses the Book of Common Prayer in all services at St Michael’s Cornhill.
Although Mullen had a period of church discipline between 1989 and 1997, he has repented and has become a rare guiding, orthodox light in a Church of England that, sadly, appears to favour darkness of theology and spirit.
It is with great pleasure that I start the first of three posts with Llew’s hat tip on Mullen’s views on the persecution of Christians in Britain. I would encourage my readers in the United States to kindly take note of what this priest says, regardless of your denomination. It seems to me as if you are not far behind us.
Mullen’s editorial begins by citing horrifying incidents in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt and China.
Then he looks at Great Britain (emphases mine) and the psychological violence against Christians:
In England a Muslim girl who converted to Christianity from Islam has been removed from the home of her carer after she chose to be baptised. She was placed in a foster home because her father beat her and threatened to send her to Pakistan for a forced marriage. Her carer, who has fostered more than eighty children, did nothing to encourage her to convert
In Sheffield, a primary school head teacher, described by her colleagues and pupils’ parents as marvellous, has resigned after being accused of racism by parents of Muslim students. The accusation comes after she proposed that the school stop holding separate assemblies for Muslim children and replace them with assemblies which would include all pupils.
Also in England, three Coptic Christian children have been placed by social services with a Muslim foster family after their parents divorced. They were originally placed in the custody of the city mosque. The authority has refused to return the children to the custody of the Coptic Church.
And so on. The nurse who offered prayer to a patient, as part of her ministry to body and soul, is sacked. The airline worker who wears a discreet Cross is sacked also. A child was reprimanded for discussing God at junior school. Public libraries have been instructed to place Bibles on the highest shelf – as if they were some sort of pornography likely to deprave and corrupt.
Despite the conclusion that many of us in Britain would draw in the blame game, Mullen states:
I have not come across many Muslims who object to Christmas decorations or the wearing of the Cross or the public exhibition of the Bible. The truth is more sinister. We are dominated by a secular elite which hates Islam every bit as much it hates Christianity. This elite of atheists and metro-political despisers is also a cowardly elite and dare not attack Islam for fear of getting its corporate throat slit. But it finds it useful to invoke an allegedly outraged Islamic sensitivity in order to persecute the Christian faith.
This secular elite – the Dawkins, Pullmans, Toynbees, Graylings and the BBC entire, targets Christianity because it sees Christianity as the embodiment of those historic and traditional values which, until the contemporary reversal, made this country a place worth living in.
Too right. The social change that has occurred in the UK over the past two decades is startling.
Many of us wonder where the voices of the Church of England hierarchy, so eager to preach to us on ‘social justice’ and ‘fairness’, are on this issue. Surely, Christian persecution should rank higher than issues of perceived ‘equality’? Mullen agrees:
Why is the Church of England’s hierarchy not out on the streets protesting about the persecution of Christians? Because, shocking as it sounds, many of its members are effectively non-believers who reject the traditional teachings of the church – the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection and Ascension of Our Lord – and reinterpret them in secular categories as mere metaphors for social involvement. Their ideal image of Jesus Christ is that of a social worker and preacher of the multicultural society. What was it Muggeridge said of the “liberal” Christian view of Christ – that they regarded him as the Labour member for Galilee South…
The Bishops and Synod have sidelined The Book of Common Prayer and The King James Bible and introduced their mindless jogging for Jesus new liturgies and unreadable versions of Scripture. These people are virtually unbelieving in any sense that St Augustine would have understood. For them, Christian doctrine is a sort of long-running metaphor for the social policies of the soft left. And their eschatology amounts only to a slavish acceptance of the pagan fantasy of global warming. The Bishops and the Synod have also accommodated the church to the secular social agenda which gnaws away at the fabric of the family and public life like a moth fretting a garment.
He adds:
The plain fact is that Europe, and particularly our nation, was formed out of Christian values. The secular assumption nowadays is that you can remove Christianity and all the other good things will stay in place. They won’t. If Christianity goes, the lot goes with it. T.S. Eliot saw the way things were going more than sixty years ago when he wrote:
… If Christianity goes, the whole of our culture goes. Then you must start painfully again, and you cannot put on a new culture ready-made. You must wait for the grass to grow to feed the sheep to give the wool out of which your new coat will be made. You must pass through many centuries of barbarism. We should not live to see the new culture, nor would our great-great-great grandchildren: and if we did, not one of us would be happy in it.
He warns us about the current culture of bread and circuses:
As in St Augustine’s day, the repression of freedom is accompanied by the tawdriest and lewdest entertainments and public spectacles. What a falling off there has been. We inhabit the electronic, techno-digital version of the bread and circuses of Augustine’s time. The celebration of low life in mass entertainments such as Big Brother. The debauched worship of celeb-trash. But a serious civilization and culture can overcome any amount of aggression from external enemies. It cannot, of course, survive its own suicide.
However, Mullen boldly sees a positive side:
Christianity in Britain today is under severe persecution. And it will get much worse. I do not resent this persecution. I welcome it. For it will weed out the pseudo-Christians, the wimpish bishops and the caved-in Synod. By persecution we discover who our true friends actually are. Persecution? Bring it on, I say. We will stand for what is good and right as Christian men knowing whose subjects we are. And if there should come the day when we are murdered by the unholy alliance between the Islamist terrorist and the secular commissar, then so be it. For the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.
Mullen ends by quoting New Testament verses — Matthew 24:9:
They shall deliver you up to be afflicted and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated for my name’s sake
And Matthew 5:12:
rejoice and be exceeding glad, for so persecuted they the prophets that were before you.
Mullen received five comments, two excerpts of which are below (edited slightly for spelling and grammar):
Ian Vallance: The barbarism will only happen if their are none in society organised enough to take advantage of the vacuum that occurs when a society collapses. (E.g. Islamic princes ruled a successful Egypt for 3 centuries before Islam and Arabic became the commonest religion and language in the region). OK, Islamic armies were the final cause of the Egyptian collapse but the rot had set in centuries before which was why it wasn’t hard for them …
Michael Grinzaid: I know what atheist state is. I’m from Russia. In our country some people were trying to build an atheist state, the atheism was the only ideology in our country. If in Bolshevik Russia people were free to criticize faith (actually they destroyed state, but not the faith, it can’t be destroyed, because it HAS something objectively behind it, so no one can destroy it), in Soviet Russia everyone was just a slave, and did everything what state said or was in prison, or he could be killed (many people were killed just because Stalin was afraid they would capture the power). Many people were killed for their faith, churches were destroyed … In Soviet Russia, there w[as] no light. And now this state is gone … But the moral collapse that was in Soviet Russia is still in heart of our people …
Tomorrow: Peter Mullen on the EU
No good deed goes unpunished.
A week ago, the Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, the Revd Dr Giles Fraser, dismissed the police who were prepared to ask Occupy LSX protesters to leave the grounds. The Canon Chancellor declined their intervention and invited protestors to the Sunday service instead.
Late last week, the Cathedral reduced its opening times because of the increased number of protestors in the churchyard. This has now become a health and safety issue. As I said then, it’s a pity that Dr Fraser was so airy-fairy. Many of us could see this coming a mile away.
And today?
It emerges that St Paul’s is closed, putting a question mark over its upcoming Remembrance Day service on November 13 and, quite possibly, Christmas services.
On Friday, October 21, 2011, the Telegraph reported (emphases mine):
St Paul’s closed for the first time since the Blitz, claiming it had no choice because of the dangers posed by the growing numbers on its doorstep.
With 250 people living in the London churchyard, the “unprecedented” decision, which will cost the church £23,000 a day, was announced by the dean, the Rt Rev Graeme Knowles.
Although he supported the protesters’ right to be heard, he said, he now asked that they leave.
The decision was met with criticism from both sides. One American tourist, who had planned to go to evensong, said: “I guess you reap what you sow. They should have nipped this in the bud.”
Protesters described the decision as a “shame” and voted to ignore the plea.
What would Jesus do? Most probably, He would have asked them to go elsewhere, just as He drove the money lenders from the temple. The temple was for the worship of God, not a venue for secular interests. Furthermore:
Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence. (John 18:36)
He also said:
For ye have the poor always with you; but you do not always have Me (Matt. 26:11, John 12:8, Mark 14:7).
St Paul wrote:
For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. (2 Thess. 3:10)
The American tourist is correct. Dr Fraser should have allowed the police to put a stop to this straightaway. Now it may be difficult. Police might not be able to ask the protesters to move on now that they have been there for over a week with the Canon Chancellor’s permission, perceived or implied.
The Telegraph states:
The last time St Paul’s closed for a significant period was for four days in September 1940 when an unexploded bomb was found near the south-west tower.
A poll accompanying the article shows that 41.25% of readers believe there shouldn’t be an Occupy protest in the first place, whilst 47.76% say that the group should protest elsewhere.
On October 24, the Daily Mail reported:
Demonstrators discussed plans to dig up the paving stones around the cathedral and start growing vegetables.
Some were accused of defacing a nearby memorial to firemen who died during the Blitz after the letters reading ‘CAC’ – apparently standing for Campaign Against Capitalism – were scrawled in white chalk on it. City of London Police said there was no criminal investigation because the graffiti was quickly washed off.
Note the lack of respect that they have for property which does not belong to them.
There is a certain irony in their defacing a monument to firemen who died during the Blitz — men who had the bravery to defend their city in the name of freedom. And it was thanks to the spirit of like-minded men and women that Occupy can occupy the places they do. Something these iPodded tykes don’t seem to understand.
In closing, please note the Zeitgeist Movement banner in one of the Mail‘s photos. I cautioned readers about this movement’s Communist and Theosophical origins earlier this year.
(Photo credit: St Paul’s Cathedral website)
Earlier this year, one of my cyberfriends sent me a link to an article saying that atheists were better behaved than Christians.
My friend asked, ‘Why is this? Your observations would be helpful.’
Well, I’ll be darned if I can find the original correspondence or the link, which is unusual for me, as I squirrel everything away for future use. So, my apologies to my correspondent for a late online response (although I recall sending a brief reply at the time). I also apologise for being unable to give you the link to the article he sent.
However, there is an element of truth in this notion. Furthermore, the atheist loses no time in endlessly pointing out the Christian’s faults. It happened to me many times with one of my ex-colleagues, over 15 years ago. Often, it’s a battle a believer cannot win. At some point, after offering all your apologetic arguments, you just have to ignore the jibes.
That said, I published observations on this subject on July 12, 2010 — ‘The perceived dichotomy between unbelievers and Christians’. The post discusses Anglican and Catholic perspectives, with the following salient points:
First, an Episcopal priest offered a summary of the dichotomy as the Revd Bernard Tyrrell, a Jesuit, sees it:
While moral conversion is interrelated with religious conversion they are also different. He also includes conversion from addiction and conversion from neurosis. This is why a pagan can be a moral person and a Christian can be an addict …
I think it goes a long way in explaining how people who sincerely believe themselves to be born again Christians can think and behave the way they do. That is why monastics are involved in what is called “conversion of manners”.
Second, another Jesuit, a Fr Lonergan — also named Bernard — explains a three-fold conversion. A biography featured on the Boston University website says this:
Conversion as Lonergan understands it is three-fold … It is about coming to the realization that one’s knowing is commonly a mixture of two different kinds of knowing, and about the process of learning to distinguish between the two and to discern their proper roles. To this … [add] moral and religious conversion. Moral conversion is the shift from self-satisfaction to value as the criterion of one’s decision-making and action. Finally, Lonergan conceives of religious conversion as a being-in-love in an unrestricted fashion. It is the gift of God’s grace flooding our hearts.
I offered an analysis of these observations as well as of the atheist’s outlook. What follows is a summary — more at the aforementioned link to my 2010 post (emphases mine):
So, one might say that moral conversion — no sinful excesses — is the individual’s move from self-gratification to love. In an unbeliever, this would translate as valuing oneself, one’s family and friends as well as one’s neighbour. A Christian would do the same, but above these would be a love of God informing all of his decisions. Again, the St Augustine quote: ‘Love God and do as you will’.
Yet, because all of us – Christians or not — are fallen men in a fallen world, some of us struggle with progressing from religious conversion to moral conversion. Moral conversion for the Christian, however, is not legalism, which follows man’s laws, but a grace-filled love of God which translates towards himself and his fellow man.
Conversely, unbelievers have a moral conversion without a religious one. This is why they often ‘look better’ in their social acceptability than a Christian who struggles with substance abuse or sexual addiction …
To be an ideal Christian requires a combination of the two. Unbelievers have only one (moral conversion) and many Christians have only one (religious conversion). To be regenerate is to have the blessings of both. It’s the reason why so many Christians say that conversion takes a lifetime.
This is a topic worth revisiting from time to time. It raises good questions. I hope that these quotations go some way to answering them.
A couple of weeks ago I read in a Catholic church’s Sunday bulletin a notice from the parish priest which said that the new Missal, which contains a number of prayers to be sung would require revised Mass times.
He said that the revised liturgy has a number of prayers which must be sung instead of spoken. He wanted his parishoners to know that the guidelines for the new Missal strongly suggest that the priest have a period of time after Mass to rest and regroup for the next celebration of the liturgy. He added that some priests, not surprisingly, would find the increase in sung prayers difficult to master, at least in the short term. He warned the parishoners that, as a result, there would need to be more time between Masses and that the current schedule would have to change.
I wonder if this is why, in the Latin Mass, the priest recited the prayers in a soft voice. If you have attended a Latin Mass, there appear to be many more prayers for the priest to recite. When I last attended in Cannes two years ago, the books we were given were quite thick, about 60 pages altogether.
In principle, the new Missal sounds as if it is an improvement on the current one. However, I do wonder about the wisdom of saying that more designated prayers must be sung at each Mass. My late father, certainly, almost always preferred a Low Mass. Had he lived, he would have been attending this revised Novus Ordo. I think he would have decided that he was too old to attend, which he would be, if he were alive today.
There was a time when priests learned how to sing and chant at seminary. (They also used to learn ecclesiastical Latin, which has been dispensed with in far too many.) In any event, I hope in all seriousness that priests will be taught how to sing and breathe properly. Otherwise, the new Mass will wreak havoc with their vocal chords, possibly on a chronic basis. This often happens with child singers, who perform on stage without proper voice training. I hope this will not befall Catholic clergy, who have enough to deal with as it is. Some in England are responsible for two churches, depending on the number of parishoners at each.
In July 2011, the Irish Government released the Cloyne Report, which details laxity on the part of the Catholic Church in investigating claims of paedophilia in the rural diocese of Cloyne between 1996 and 2009.
Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister — pronounced ‘teashock’) Enda Kenny, a practising Catholic, said:
Because for the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual abuse exposes an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago …
And in doing so, the Cloyne report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism, the narcissism, that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.
The rape and torture of children were downplayed or “managed” to uphold instead the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and “reputation”.’
At the centre of the controversy is retired bishop
John Magee, who had been private secretary to three successive popes – Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II.
Bishop Magee retired last year. The Cloyne Report states that he had:
to a certain extent detached himself from the day to day management of child abuse cases.
The report and the prime minister’s reaction to it has created a real buzz in Ireland. Many Catholics, like Kenny, want to see this dark chapter in the Church resolved. However, a number of secularists are also airing their views. The Vatican expressed the desire for an ‘objective’ debate on the subject, but as the Telegraph reported on July 25, 2011, recalled the Ambassador to Ireland, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, the Papal Nuncio. Emphases mine below.
‘The recalling of the Nuncio, a measure rarely used by the Holy See, denotes the seriousness of the situation, and the desire of the Holy See to deal with it (with) objectivity and with determination, as well as a certain note of surprise and regret regarding some excessive reactions,’ spokesman, Fr Ciro Benedettini said.
Mr Kenny threw off generations of official Irish obsequiousness to the Vatican in a speech to parliament on the publication of the report.
The Vatican became embroiled in the latest Irish church scandal after revelations about a 1997 letter, from the then Papal Nuncio to Irish bishops, a year after reporting guidelines were enforced to enhance child protection.
The correspondence stated that the bishops policy was “merely a discussion document” and that the Vatican had serious moral and canon reservations about mandatory reporting of clerical abuse.
A number of priests have sent Kenny messages of support after he made his remarks. Since then, Kenny has said no more publicly, except that he awaits a response from the Vatican.
As one would expect, the aforementioned secularists have grasped the nettle. Mary Kenny, writing for the Telegraph, tells us that they are
recommending every anti-church measure from the dissolution of the monasteries to the expulsion of the Papal Nuncio and the severing of all links with the Holy See. (The recall of the Papal Nuncio … marks the lowest point of relations between Ireland and Rome.)
One correspondent wrote that it was his ardent hope that the Catholic Church would follow the example of the News of the World, and hold a “last Mass” before shutting down.
Furthermore, the Irish Minister for Justice and Equality, Alan Shatter, is
introducing a highly controversial Bill which will compel Irish priests to disclose the secrets of the confessional where paedophilia is mentioned: failure to do so could result in a five-year prison sentence.
Hmm. It will be interesting to see how that plays, as the priest is required by Canon law to keep what he hears in Confession a secret. Shatter is the only Jewish member of Parliament. How Catholic the other members are, I have no idea.
Once again, the question of church versus state arises. This separation already exists in the United States, France — and Ireland. The concept is the freedom to practice one’s faith — whatever it is — not, as the secularists wish in each of those countries, to keep it permanently under wraps except in the home and one’s chosen house of worship.
Mary Kenny — no relation to the Taoiseach — explains:
Contrary to supposition … state and Church in Ireland are already separate: the constitution, although it mentions God, makes no mention of the Catholic Church, specifically affirms that there may be no religious discrimination, and rules that no religion may be endowed by the state.
However, there is a difference between state and culture: the state construes laws, but the culture draws on history, memory, family, folklore. Despite constitutional separation of Church and state, there remain religious traditions, such as the broadcast of the Angelus on national radio, the prayers that open Dail sittings, and the existence – even dominance – of faith-based schools, which secularists seek to abolish.
She concludes:
Such sweeping changes could occur in what was once Catholic Ireland: the state could become as secularist as France, with all allusion to the Almighty officially excised. Yet even in France, the holy days continue, with Pentecost and Ascension and All Saints, and Lourdes attracting millions.
In the end, as she says, the Church will prevail:
offering age-old comforts, not of the Vatican, but of the faith.
In my experience, and maybe this is because most of the Irish I know are from Dublin, they left their faith behind a long time ago, probably at university. It will be interesting to watch developments as they unfold.
In 2003, Toby Westerman wrote an article for International News Analysis (INA) Today – ‘Infiltration of the Catholic Church?’ — which traced Communist activities within it.
Non-Catholics will also be edified by reading the excerpts which follow, emphases mine.
An affidavit recently obtained by INA Today attributes the Catholic Church’s present state of collapse to a calculated attack beginning decades ago, with initial successes appearing in the 1960s.
The affidavit affirms that Communist Party organizer and high Party official, Bella Dodd, made public statements during the decade of the 1960s declaring that the Catholic priesthood was infiltrated by numerous Communist agents, whose mission was “to destroy the Catholic Church from within.”
As Westerman notes, Dodd published a book called School of Darkness, now available online, which will appear in my next few posts so that you can see from the inside exactly how Communists work in American institutions, primarily state schools.
The Communists drummed Dodd out of the Party. She eventually rediscovered her Catholic faith, which she embraced for the remainder of her life. She died in 1969. This is what she testified, much like what Agent AA-1025 wrote:
“In the late 1920′s and 1930′s, directives were sent from Moscow to all Communist Party organizations. In order to destroy the Catholic Church from within, party members were to be planted in seminaries and within diocesan organizations,” Dodd stated according to the affidavit.
“I, myself, put some 1,200 men in Catholic seminaries,” Dodd publicly declared.
Dodd did not include these remarks concerning her activities directed against the Catholic Church in her book, which was first published in 1954, leading some to question whether the remarks were actually made.
However, as we saw yesterday, the Catholic philosopher Alice von Hildebrand corroborated Dodd’s testimony through this affadavit, which Paul and Johnine Leininger provided.
When contacted by INA Today, Mrs. Johnine Leininger stated that there were others who could also verify that Dodd made the statements regarding infiltration into Catholic seminaries.
Dr. von Hildebrand told INA Today that Dodd had earlier refrained from detailing Communist efforts to undermine the Catholic priesthood at the request of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, the individual responsible for bringing Dodd back into the Church.
Why Archbishop Sheen would have requested such a suppression of information is unclear. However, Vatican II talks were no doubt either underway or about to begin, therefore, he might not have wished to jeopardise his position. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if he had encouraged Dodd to make all her knowledge about the Church public earlier. The Catholic Church might never have seen Vatican II and could have been in a stronger, purer state today. Who knows?
The process of Communist infiltration into Catholic seminaries, which Dodd described in her public talks, would have been part of a larger plan called “Outstretched Hand.”
Communist Party archives in Moscow confirm the existence of operation “Outstretched Hand,” and define its goals, according to Herbert Romerstein, author of the seminal work on Soviet espionage in the United States before, during, and after WWII, “The Venona Secrets” …
One document in Moscow’s Soviet archives reveals that the Communist Party had infiltrated several influential Catholic organizations, including the Holy Name Society, the largest parish-oriented Catholic men’s group, which is devoted to increasing reverence for the name of God and to good works in the Church and in society in general. A Holy Name Society chapter exists in almost every Catholic parish in the U.S.
The “Party comrade” operated in a key parish which provided “leadership” and shaped “the policies of most of the reactionary and anti-Communist campaigns that are now developing in the Catholic world,” according to the Soviet file.
Romerstein also recounts in The Venona Secrets that the staff of the Catholic anti-Communist publication entitled Wisdom, produced by a priest of the Paulist order, was infiltrated, and unknowingly employed two Communist agents in influential positions.
The Party boasted that one of their agents was “widely known to be a conservative in Irish circles,” and was a staff correspondent for Wisdom. Romerstein identified the Party member and Soviet agent as Jeremiah F. O’Carroll, who, in 1930, was the president of the Irish Emergency Relief organization.
Although O’Carroll was identified as a spy in 1938, he remained listed as a staff correspondent for Wisdom at least until March 1939.
The second Soviet agent who worked for Wisdom remains unknown to this day.
In many ways, the struggle traditionalists have against Modernism in the Church is no different from that which conservatives have politically against leftists (e.g. Democratic Party, Socialist Party).
When it happens in one’s own ranks, however, many understandably greet news with disbelief or rationalisation: ‘He must have a reason for saying that. Maybe he’s right.’ This reaction is what subversive instigators wish to elicit. The conservative then starts to doubt what he has been brought up to believe. Alternatively, he believes the words of a sleeper agent. In either case, his beliefs become discredited and compromised.
At the end of Westerman’s article, we find out more about how sleeper agents amongst our clergy work:
Leininger described these priests as “sleepers,” a term designating individuals or groups who carry out their espionage function only at a selected time. Before becoming active, the “sleeper” will refrain from any espionage or subversive functions.
Dodd’s infiltrators — those who lost or never actually held the Catholic faith — would have been the mentors of the present generation of Catholic priests and bishops …
Tomorrow: Excerpts from Bella Dodd’s School of Darkness
Why is the Vatican so quiet on the infiltration of the Catholic Church, which has been going on for at least 80 years?
I remember the shock of reading of the death of Pope John Paul I in 1979 and the P2 involvement in the Vatican which then emerged. I was still a Catholic then and wondered, when the Church specifically forbade Catholics to become Freemasons, how a lodge could be so close to the papacy. My mother and my friends were equally stunned.
Meanwhile, my grandfather could never figure out why Paul VI had ostracised and, it seems, lied to Cardinal Mindszenty, a saintly man who had suffered greatly yet had done so much for the faith behind the Iron Curtain.
At the turn of this century, the Catholic philosopher Alice von Hildebrand had written a book about her late husband, Dietrich. When Soul of a Lion appeared, Latin Mass Magazine interviewed her and asked her more about what she and her husband, whom Pope Pius XII called (informally) ‘the 20th century Doctor of the Church’. Below you will be able to read for yourself what reaction her husband received when he tried to present his evidence to Pope Paul VI.
Sancte Pater has reproduced the interview, excerpts of which follow (emphases mine). Even non-Catholics will find what Dr von Hildebrand has to say of interest. On the general remarks she makes about the supernatural, the Cross and redemption, the orthodox Presbyterian John Gresham Machen (born around the time her husband was) would have wholeheartedly agreed. The late Lutheran pastor Richard Wurmbrand would have also agreed, particularly with her call to holiness and prayer as a faithful Christian against Satan and his earthly agents.
TLM: In terms of the present crisis, when did you first perceive something was terribly wrong?
AVH: It was in February 1965. I was taking a sabbatical year in Florence. My husband was reading a theological journal, and suddenly I heard him burst into tears. I ran to him, fearful that his heart condition had suddenly caused him pain. I asked him if he was all right. He told me that the article that he had been reading had provided him with the certain insight that the devil had entered the Church. Remember, my husband was the first prominent German to speak out publicly against Hitler and the Nazis. His insights were always prescient.
TLM: Did your husband think that the decline in a sense of the supernatural began around that time [1920s -- from an earlier question], and if so, how did he explain it?
AVH: No, he believed that after Pius X’s condemnation of the heresy of Modernism [1907], its proponents merely went underground. He would say that they then took a much more subtle and practical approach. They spread doubt simply by raising questions about the great supernatural interventions throughout salvation history, such as the Virgin Birth and Our Lady’s perpetual virginity, as well as the Resurrection, and the Holy Eucharist. They knew that once faith – the foundation – totters, the liturgy and the moral teachings of the Church would follow suit. My husband entitled one of his books The Devastated Vineyard. After Vatican II, a tornado seemed to have hit the Church …
Even the pagan Plato was open to a sense of the supernatural. He spoke of the weakness, frailty and cowardice often evidenced in human nature. He was asked by a critic to explain why he had such a low opinion of humanity. He replied that he was not denigrating man, only comparing him to God.
With the loss of a sense of the supernatural, there is a loss of the sense of a need for sacrifice today. The closer one comes to God, the greater should be one’s sense of sinfulness. The further one gets from God, as today, the more we hear the philosophy of the new age: “I’m OK, You’re OK.” This loss of the inclination to sacrifice has led to the obscuring of the Church’s redemptive mission. Where the Cross is downplayed, our need for redemption is given hardly a thought.
The aversion to sacrifice and redemption has assisted the secularization of the Church from within. We have been hearing for many years from priests and bishops about the need for the Church to adapt herself to the world. Great popes like St. Pius X said just the opposite: the world must adapt itself to the Church.
TLM: From our conversation throughout this afternoon, I must conclude that you don’t believe that the accelerating loss of the sense of the supernatural is an accident of history.
AVH: No, I do not. There have been two books published in Italy in recent years that confirm what my husband had been suspecting for some time; namely, that there has been a systematic infiltration of the Church by diabolical enemies for much of this century. My husband was a very sanguine man and optimistic by nature. During the last ten years of his life, however, I witnessed him many times in moments of great sorrow, and frequently repeating, “They have desecrated the Holy Bride of Christ.” He was referring to the “abomination of desolation” of which the prophet Daniel speaks.
TLM: This is a critical admission, Dr. von Hildebrand. Your husband had been called a twentieth-century Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XII. If he felt so strongly, didn’t he have access to the Vatican to tell Pope Paul VI of his fears?
AVH: But he did! I shall never forget the private audience we had with Paul VI just before the end of the [Second Vatican] Council. It was on June 21, 1965. As soon as my husband started pleading with him to condemn the heresies that were rampant, the Pope interrupted him with the words, “Lo scriva, lo scriva.” (“Write it down.”) A few moments later, for the second time, my husband drew the gravity of the situation to the Pope’s attention. Same answer. His Holiness received us standing. It was clear that the Pope was feeling very uncomfortable. The audience lasted only a few minutes. Paul VI immediately gave a sign to his secretary, Fr. Capovilla, to bring us rosaries and medals. We then went back to Florence where my husband wrote a long document (unpublished today) that was delivered to Paul VI just the day before the last session of the Council. It was September of 1965. After reading my husband’s document, he said to my husband’s nephew, Dieter Sattler, who had become the German ambassador to the Holy See, that he had read the document carefully, but that “it was a bit harsh.” The reason was obvious: my husband had humbly requested a clear condemnation of heretical statements.
TLM: You realize, of course, Doctor, that as soon as you mention this idea of infiltration, there will be those who roll their eyes in exasperation and remark, “Not another conspiracy theory!”
AVH: I can only tell you what I know. It is a matter of public record, for instance, that Bella Dodd, the ex-Communist who reconverted to the Church, openly spoke of the Communist Party’s deliberate infiltration of agents into the seminaries. She told my husband and me that when she was an active party member, she had dealt with no fewer than four cardinals within the Vatican “who were working for us.”
Many a time I have heard Americans say that Europeans “smell conspiracy wherever they go.” But from the beginning, the Evil One has “conspired” against the Church – and has always aimed in particular at destroying the Mass and sapping belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. That some people are tempted to blow this undeniable fact out of proportion is no reason for denying its reality. On the other hand, I, European born, am tempted to say that many Americans are naïve; living in a country that has been blessed by peace, and knowing little about history, they are more likely than Europeans (whose history is a tumultuous one) to fall prey to illusions … Judas had played his hand so artfully that no one suspected him, for a cunning conspirator knows how to cover his tracks with a show of orthodoxy.
TLM: Do the two books by the Italian priest you mentioned before the interview contain documentation that would provide evidence of this infiltration?
AVH: The two books I mentioned were published in 1998 and 2000 by an Italian priest, Don Luigi Villa of the diocese of Brescia, who at the request of Padre Pio has devoted many years of his life to the investigation of the possible infiltration of both Freemasons and Communists into the Church. My husband and I met Don Villa in the sixties. He claims that he does not make any statement that he cannot substantiate. When Paulo Sesto Beato? (1998) was published the book was sent to every single Italian bishop. None of them acknowledged receipt; none challenged any of Don Villa’s claims.
In this book, he relates something that no ecclesiastical authority has refuted or asked to be retracted – even though he names particular personalities in regard to the incident. It pertains to the rift between Pope Pius XII and the then Bishop Montini (the future Paul VI) who was his Undersecretary of State. Pius XII, conscious of the threat of Communism, which in the aftermath of World War II was dominating nearly half of Europe, had prohibited the Vatican staff from dealing with Moscow. To his dismay, he was informed one day through the Bishop of Up[p]sala (Sweden) that his strict order had been contravened. The Pope resisted giving credence to this rumor until he was given incontrovertible evidence that Montini had been corresponding with various Soviet agencies. Meanwhile, Pope Pius XII (as had Pius XI) had been sending priests clandestinely into Russia to give comfort to Catholics behind the Iron Curtain. Every one of them had been systematically arrested, tortured, and either executed or sent to the gulag. Eventually a Vatican mole was discovered: Alighiero Tondi, S.J., who was a close advisor to Montini. Tondi was an agent working for Stalin whose mission was to keep Moscow informed about initiatives such as the sending of priests into the Soviet Union.
Add to this Pope Paul’s treatment of Cardinal Mindszenty. Against his will, Mindszenty was ordered by the Vatican to leave Budapest. As most everyone knows, he had escaped the Communists and sought refuge in the American embassy compound. The Pope had given him his solemn promise that he would remain primate of Hungary as long as he lived. When the Cardinal (who had been tortured by the Communists) arrived in Rome, Paul VI embraced him warmly, but then sent him into exile in Vienna. Shortly afterwards, this holy prelate was informed that he had been demoted, and had been replaced by someone more acceptable to the Hungarian Communist government. More puzzling, and tragically sad, is the fact that when Mindszenty died, no Church representative was present at his burial.
Another of Don Villa’s illustrations of infiltration is one related to him by Cardinal Gagnon. Paul VI had asked Gagnon to head an investigation concerning the infiltration of the Church by powerful enemies. Cardinal Gagnon (at that time an Archbishop) accepted this unpleasant task, and compiled a long dossier, rich in worrisome facts. When the work was completed, he requested an audience with Pope Paul in order to deliver personally the manuscript to the Pontiff. This request for a meeting was denied. The Pope sent word that the document should be placed in the offices of the Congregation for the Clergy, specifically in a safe with a double lock. This was done, but the very next day the safe deposit box was broken and the manuscript mysteriously disappeared. The usual policy of the Vatican is to make sure that news of such incidents never sees the light of day. Nevertheless, this theft was reported even in L’Osservatore Romano (perhaps under pressure because it had been reported in the secular press). Cardinal Gagnon, of course, had a copy, and once again asked the Pope for a private audience. Once again his request was denied. He then decided to leave Rome and return to his homeland in Canada. Later, he was called back to Rome by Pope John Paul II and made a cardinal.
TLM: Why did Don Villa write these works singling out Paul VI for criticism?
AVH: Don Villa reluctantly decided to publish the books to which I have alluded. But when several bishops pushed for the beatification of Paul VI, this priest perceived it as a clarion call to print the information he had gathered through the years. In so doing, he was following the guidelines of a Roman Congregation, informing the faithful that it was their duty as members of the Church to relay to the Congregation any information that might militate against the candidate’s qualifications for beatification.
Considering the tumultuous pontificate of Paul VI, and the confusing signals he was giving, e.g.: speaking about the “smoke of Satan that had entered the Church,” yet refusing to condemn heresies officially; his promulgation of Humanae Vitae (the glory of his pontificate), yet his careful avoidance of proclaiming it ex cathedra [infallible doctrine]; delivering his Credo of the People of God in Piazza San Pietro in 1968, and once again failing to declare it binding on all Catholics; disobeying the strict orders of Pius XII to have no contact with Moscow, and appeasing the Hungarian Communist government by reneging on the solemn promise he had made to Cardinal Mindszenty; his treatment of holy Cardinal Slipyj, who had spent seventeen years in a Gulag, only to be made a virtual prisoner in the Vatican by Paul VI; and finally asking Archbishop Gagnon to investigate possible infiltration in the Vatican, only to refuse him an audience when his work was completed – all these speak strongly against the beatification of Paolo VI, dubbed in Rome, “Paolo Sesto, Mesto” (Paul VI, the sad one) …
God alone is the judge of Paul VI. But it cannot be denied that his pontificate was a very complex and tragic one. It was under him that, in the course of fifteen years, more changes were introduced in the Church than in all preceding centuries combined. What is worrisome is that when we read the testimony of ex-Communists like Bella Dodd, and study Freemasonic documents (dating from the nineteenth century, and usually penned by fallen-away priests like Paul Roca), we can see that, to a large extent, their agenda has been carried out: the exodus of priests and nuns after Vatican II, dissenting theologians not censured, feminism, the pressure put on Rome to abolish priestly celibacy, immorality in the clergy, blasphemous liturgies (see the article by David Hart in First Things, April 2001, “The Future of the Papacy”), the radical changes that have been introduced into the sacred liturgy (see Cardinal Ratzinger’s book Milestones, pp. 126 and 148, Ignatius Press), and a misleading ecumenism. Only a blind person could deny that many of the Enemy’s plans have been perfectly carried out.
One should not forget that the world was shocked at what Hitler did. People like my husband, however, actually read what he had said in Mein Kampf. The plan was there. The world simply chose not to believe it.
But grave as the situation is, no committed Catholic can forget that Christ has promised that He will remain with His Church to the very end of the world. We should meditate on the scene related in the Gospel when the apostles’ boat was battered by a fierce storm. Christ was sleeping! His terrified followers woke Him up: He said one word, and there was a great calm. “O ye of little faith!” …
TLM: So you see the only scenario for a solution to the present crisis as the renewal of a striving for sanctity?
AVH: We should not forget that we are fighting not only against flesh and blood, but against “powers and principalities.” This should elicit sufficient dread in us to make us strive more than ever for holiness, and to pray fervently that the Holy Bride of Christ, who is right now at Calvary, comes out of this fearful crisis more radiant than ever.
Tomorrow: More on Communists in the Church, Bella Dodd and the ‘Outstretched Hand’
