MY COMMENTS follow these two excerpts from the National Catholic Reporter above:
Fragmented allies
The bishops, however, are not the major stakeholders in this fight. Obama's compromise would mainly affect Catholic hospitals, universities and social service agencies that employ and insure the hundreds of thousands of people covered by the mandate; churches are already exempt.
From the beginning, those Catholic agencies have been far more willing to negotiate. "A welcome step," is how the Rev. John Jenkins, president of the University of Notre Dame, characterized Obama's compromise.
Other Catholic universities echoed that view, and Sister Carol Keehan, head of the Catholic Health Association that represents a sprawling network of Catholic hospitals, also hailed the accommodation.
Without the church's institutional muscle solidly behind them, the bishops are in a much weaker negotiating position.
"If the bishops reject this deal, they don't have a lot of options," Shaw wrote in Crisis Magazine, a conservative Catholic outlet. "Closing down thousands of Catholic institutions and programs isn't likely. Remedial legislation pending in Congress has little chance of becoming law with Democrats controlling the Senate and the White House. As for simply refusing to obey the ... rule, it's a last resort."
Falling flat in the pews
Perhaps most importantly, the bishops can't count on even a majority of the nation's 67 million Catholics to support their position -- whatever it turns out to be. Surveys show that U.S. Catholics -- including the most devout -- do not heed the bishops' teachings against artificial birth control, and framing the issue as a threat to religious freedom hasn't moved Catholics to mass opposition.
MY COMMENTS: First on "Fragmented Allies"
What the National Catholic Reporter leads us to deduce is that we have a significant number of Catholic leaders in our other institutions who are like Nevil Chamberlain, into appeasement of the dictator to keep the peace of their institutions. For those who don't know who Nevil Chamberlain was, he was an honorable member of the British Parliament who tried to accomplish good through the evil of appeasement of Adolph Hitler.
This is from Wikipedia: As with many in Europe who had witnessed the horrors of the First World War and its aftermath, Chamberlain was committed to peace. The theory was that dictatorships arose where peoples had grievances, and that by removing the source of these grievances, the dictatorship would become less aggressive. It was a popular belief that the Treaty of Versailles was the underlying cause of Adolf Hitler's grievances. Chamberlain, as even his political detractors admitted, was an honorable man, raised in the old school of European politics. His attempts to deal with Nazi Germany through diplomatic channels and to quell any sign of dissent from within, particularly from Churchill, were called by Chamberlain "The general policy of appeasement" (30 June 1934).
Appeasement of a dictator didn't work for Britain and it won't work for Catholic institutions.
Second on "Falling flat in the pews"
This part of the National Catholic Reporter's article leads us to deduce that what Vatican II had taught Catholic laity to do has not been adopted by them. Rather the spirit of the world has overwhelmed them and led them to embrace the culture at the expense of natural law which is a product of and reveals Divine Law.
Part of this can be excused by the horrible catechesis that has gone on in our Church since Vatican II.
But the majority of it can be traced to the "smoke of Satan" that Pope Paul VI lamented. These are the Holy Father's actual words:
THURSDAY, 29 JUNE 1972
Referring to the situation of the Church today, the Holy Father affirms that he has a sense that “from some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God.” "There is doubt, incertitude, problematic, disquiet, dissatisfaction, confrontation. There is no longer trust of the Church; they trust the first profane prophet who speaks in some journal or some social movement, and they run after him and ask him if he has the formula of true life. And we are not alert to the fact that we are already the owners and masters of the formula of true life. Doubt has entered our consciences, and it entered by windows that should have been open to the light. Science exists to give us truths that do not separate from God, but make us seek him all the more and celebrate him with greater intensity; instead, science gives us criticism and doubt. Scientists are those who more thoughtfully and more painfully exert their minds. But they end up teaching us: “I don’t know, we don’t know, we cannot know.” The school becomes the gymnasium of confusion and sometimes of absurd contradictions. Progress is celebrated, only so that it can then be demolished with revolutions that are more radical and more strange, so as to negate everything that has been achieved, and to come away as primitives after having so exalted the advances of the modern world.
This state of uncertainty even holds sway in the Church. There was the belief that after the Council there would be a day of sunshine for the history of the Church. Instead, it is the arrival of a day of clouds, of tempest, of darkness, of research, of uncertainty. We preach ecumenism but we constantly separate ourselves from others. We seek to dig abysses instead of filling them in.
MY FINAL COMMENT: Of this statement and of His Encyclical Humanae Vitae, I believe Pope Paul VI was the most prophetic pope of the 20th century and deserves canonization!
The mess the Holy Catholic Church experiences today is two fold, a policy of appeasement with a government hell bent against natural law and dissident Catholics formed by the "smoke of Satan" and not the Magisterium of the Church, who could care less about natural law, religious liberty and the Church's right to conscience.
Liberal, dissenting, progressive Catholics are in no place to be a part of the great "spiritual battle" the Church will be fighting for several generations which may well produce some actual martyrs for the faith. Satan knew what he was doing following Vatican II when his smoke entered the "fissure of the temple" of the Catholic Church and infected so many of the followers of Christ!
6 comments:
"Of this statement and of His Encyclical Humanae Vitae, I believe Pope Paul VI was the most prophetic pope of the 20th century..."
Actually, Pope St. Pius X had already predicted the underlying problems in Pascendi, but Pope Paul VI was certainly prophetic in his own right!
"...and deserves canonization!"
For what? Being the Pope that allowed the "smoke of Satan" to enter the Church and doing little to nothing to combat it? Being "prophetic" isn't enough to be canonized last I checked.
Fr. McDonald: "I believe Pope Paul VI was the most prophetic pope of the 20th century and deserves canonization!"
I heard an account of someone who was stationed in Rome in the early 1990s when it was initially announced that the cause of Paul VI had been officially opened. He said this announcement was greeted around the Vatican with the same kind of amusement that would greet an announcement that Paris Hilton is a candidate for appointment as professor of mathematics at MIT.
Within a week, he said, the congregation had received several notarized depositions from high-ranking Vatican churchmen testifying to certain aspects of his character and veracity. The matter was dropped immediately, and has never been heard about again since then.
What is really at issue here is that the smoke of Satan has enterred the Church. Has anyone made and implemented any plans to rid Her of the smoke damage, or are we just sitting back waiting for the air to clear?
The Church is being attacked on all sides by modernism, and relativism, and now by our own president; wouldn't it be more prudent to strengthen Her from within than to debate the repose of a soul long gone?
Pope Paul VI has already faced his judgement, how will we answer our Lord when He asks each of us what we did in His behalf to remedy the situation?
Father, do you have any suggestions as to what we lay people can do to help with this? Your guidance would really be appreciated.
Lay people can indeed make the difference - but it has to be fueled and sustained by two essentials: a personal prayer and sacramental life and a personal commitment to place oneself under the shepherds - one's pastor, spiritual director, bishop, Pope by reading, reflecting and personally assisting their ministry. Here in the diocese of Savannah the concept of Stewardship will be promoted in the coming years not as a subsection of fundraising but as a genuine lay vocation of which fundraising is just a small part.
Henry,
Just wondering, where did you read or hear about that? I'd be interested in reading more.
Carol H,
In my opinion, a lot rides on the spread of the traditional Roman Mass in Latin parishes.
Carol, I would agree, placing oneself under the legitimate and authoritative teachings of the Church and the shepherds commissioned by Christ, our bishops, is the way to do spiritual battle in our day. Separating ourselves from our legitimate authority figures isn't the way nor denigrating that God-given authority like those liberals from the 1970's and now neo-conservatives from our current day. How odd!
Post a Comment