WE ARE HAVING A TASTE OF WHAT CHANGE IN THE WRONG DIRECTION DOES TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND YES IT IS THE PROGRESSIVES WHO CAUSE IT AND POLARIZE AND DIVIDE!

I have written this before, but it is Déjà vu all over again in the Church. And it isn't a positive nostalgia at all. In three short years we have traveled back in time to the tumultuous 1970's in society and the Church, very much like the dynamic duo of the 1970's, culture and Church wars raging on and often it is difficult to teased the two phenomena apart because in fact the two are interrelated and closely wedded.

Both Pope Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedict were able to keep this sort of thing in check during their papacies. While many thought Pope Benedict would be the most divisive figure of a pope, he proved anything but that. Pope Francis has become and is what many thought Pope Benedict would be. 

The agents of change are the ones responsible for the unrest and polarization that occurs and is now occurring in the Church, although I am not sure it has filtered down to rank and file Catholics as it did in the immediate post-Vatican II period. Perhaps we have the absence of radical nuns and brothers in our schools to thank for this? They are the ones who fomented such polarization in local parishes especially in their schools. Then the children in these schools brought the polarization home. I don't think this is happening today.

On top of that the divisions and polarization Pope Francis has wrought don't have to do with Sunday liturgy. It is on a different level and having to do with personal morality and the Church blessing immorality rather than treating it which sometimes means amputation. It seems Pope Francis wants to simply place bandages on gangrenous wounds which only exacerbates the disease. Or worse yet, Pope Francis is an "enabler" of people's peccadilloes.

The polarization this time is happening on the internet and with blogs and newspapers. The two most interesting examples of this have to do with Russ Douthat of the New York Times, a conservative, orthodox Catholic who is calling things as he sees them.

Liberals and the heterodox in the Catholic Church are repressive and as I mentioned, in the 1970's they ruled with an iron fist to suppressed their opposition often times by humiliated them and marginalizing them. The worst insult they could hurl at someone was "you are so pre-Vatican II!" If you were a seminarian or a religious in formation that meant your days were numbered:

Here is an example of this kind of gestapo tactic of the leftist academics against a layman and brilliant New York Times reporter and those who signed it. Please note how they arrogantly call into question his intellectual qualifications to write on religion. This is clericalism to the hilt:

On Sunday, October 18, the Times published Ross Douthat’s piece “The Plot to Change Catholicism.” (You can read Ross's follow-up  HERE .) Aside from the fact that Mr. Douthat has no professional qualifications for writing on the subject, the problem with his article and other recent statements is his view of Catholicism as unapologetically subject to a politically partisan narrative that has very little to do with what Catholicism really is. Moreover, accusing other members of the Catholic church of heresy, sometimes subtly, sometimes openly, is serious business that can have serious consequences for those so accused. This is not what we expect of the New York Times.
October 26, 2015

John O’Malley, SJ (Georgetown University)
Massimo Faggioli (University of St. Thomas, Minnesota)
Nicholas P. Cafardi (Duquesne University)
Gerard Mannion (Georgetown University)
Stephen Schloesser, SJ (Loyola University Chicago)
Katarina Schuth OSF (University of St. Thomas, Minnesota)
Leslie Tentler (Catholic University of America, emerita)
John Slattery (University of Notre Dame)
Megan McCabe (Boston College)
Thomas M. Bolin (St. Norbert College)
Kevin Brown (Boston College)
Alan C. Mitchell (Georgetown University)
Elizabeth Antus (John Carroll University)
Kathleen Grimes (Villanova University)
Fran Rossi Szpylczyn
Christopher Bellitto (Kean University)
Katharine Mahon (University of Notre Dame)
Corey Harris (Alvernia University)
Kevin Ahern (Manhattan College)
John DeCostanza (Dominican University)
Daniel Cosacchi (Loyola University Chicago)
Amy Levad (University of St. Thomas, Minnesota)
Christine McCarthy (Fordham University)
Sonja Anderson (Yale University)
Fr. Robert A. Busch (Diocese of Amarillo)
Brandon Peterson (University of Utah)
Heather Miller Rubens (Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies)
Daniel Dion (Rivier University)
Mark Miller (University of San Francisco)
William T. Ditewig (Santa Clara University)
Stuart Squires (Brescia University)
Gerald O’Collins, SJ (Gregorian University, emeritus)
Anthony J. Godzieba (Villanova University)
Terrence W. Tilley (Fordham University)
Michael J. Hollerich (University of St. Thomas, Minnesota)
Gerald Schlabach (University of St. Thomas, Minnesota)
Luca Badini Confalonieri (Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research)
Francis Schussler Fiorenza (Harvard Divinity School)
Rebecca A. Chabot (Iliff School of Theology)
Mark Massa, SJ (Boston College School of Theology and Ministry)
James T. Bretzke, SJ (Boston College School of Theology and Ministry)
Anne Clifford (Iowa State University)
Jack Downey (La Salle University)
Sherry Jordon (University of St. Thomas, Minnesota)
Julia Lamm (Georgetown University)

Then Fr. James Martin, SJ of America Magazine tries to manipulate things with his emotionalism and crocodile tears and how hateful everyone is today. The only thing he seems to forget or not mention that it is Pope Francis that has caused this polarization in the Church and the divisions that now are devolving into hatred. This is what happened after Vatican II and the progressives caused it just as they are causing it today. You can read Fr. Martin's crocodile-tears piece in America HERE.

Bill Donohue of the Catholic League also got into it HERE.

Many commentators on the just finished synod are actually saying it is a win for the orthodox and not for the heterodox. The heterodox can only lay claim to victory by the use of the hermenuetic of a cracked door for their position but that could easily be solved and shut. This is what Fr. Z writes with links:

"So the journalists covering the synod document as a setback for the innovators (and, because he elevated them, the pontiff) are mostly correct, given their ambitions going in. But so, in a certain way, are the journalists covering it as a kind of cracked-door to innovation, because the conservatives didn’t have the votes or the power to keep every ambiguity at bay. The most straightforward reading of the synod text supports the first interpretation, for the reasons that (among others) George Weigel and Robert Royal lay out: There is no abrogation of the ancient ban on communion for the remarried, and plenty of phrasings that indicate that ban is still in force. But at the same time, as Royal also notes, the text is not as plain as the document it quotes, John Paul II’s Familiaris Consortio, and it spends so much time talking about discernment and individual cases that it seems to sometimes come “right up to the edge” of communion for the remarried, as Royal puts it, without “crossing over into it in so many words.”

My final comment: One thing is for sure. We need to pray, not participate in the hatred and remain sober.