Has dumbed down, sin enabling Catholicism, in the name of pastoral sensitivity, brought about its logical conclusion, the culture of death?
Vigilantly social justice has been around in the Church since about 1968. Think of priests and nuns breaking into military installations to dint military weapons in pursuit to a pacifistic Catholicism and world order.
Civil disobedience, breaking, entering and damaging defensive and offensive weaponry happened quite frequently in my Diocese of Savannah by priests, religious and laity, especially in Columbus, GA and and nuclear submarine base at King's Bay on our coast.
But worse yet, is the glorification of abortion by the Democrat Party with unbridled promotion of abortion, the murder of innocent unborn children in their mother's womb and calling it women's healthcare!
Both President Joe Biden, a pious, liturgical Catholic, and his airhead Vice President, Kamala Harris, glory in abortion and promote the most vicious form of the culture of death that there is. They deserved the landslide loss in the last election which I think is retribution from God almighty!
Promoting death as a solution to a problem, be it a unwanted or problematic pregnancy or a CEO that one decides is responsible for the state of health care in our country and denying people in need the care they need are closely linked.
24 comments:
Pelosi’s Dad who erected a statue to honor Confederate generals Lee and Jackson was a “devout” Catholic like his daughter. Sounds like their Catholicism was and is shallow!
"Has dumbed down, sin enabling Catholicism, in the name of pastoral sensitivity, brought about its logical conclusion, the culture of death?"
No. How many Catholics from the pre-"dumbed down, sin enabling" times in Catholicism were notorious criminals? Many. Remember the powerful pre-reform Baptism/assassination scene from "The Godfather?" They were all "good Catholics" long before any of the dumbing-down you erroneously blame.
Juan Severino Mallari (September 22, 1785 – 1840) was a Filipino Catholic priest and serial killer. Again, all before the "sin-enabling" days to which you refer.
Etc...
No, it is convenient for you and others to blame Vatican Two and everything siunce for the ills of the Church and society. But it is a baseless accusation.
And as you girly-giggle over the "landslide" election results, consider this: "A key legal adviser to Robert Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick for health secretary, is at the center of efforts to push federal drug regulators to revoke approval for the polio and hepatitis B vaccines and block distribution of 13 other critical vaccines.
Aaron Siri, a lawyer who has been helping Kennedy select top health administrators as part of the Trump transition process, is deeply embedded in longstanding efforts to force the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to withdraw a raft of vaccines that have saved the lives and health of millions of Americans.
Siri has been sitting alongside Kennedy in interviews in which they have asked candidates for top health jobs where they stand on vaccines, the New York Times reported on Friday." - The Guardian, Fri 13 Dec 2024 08.34 EST
A priest who supports the party of Intrinsic Evil is hardly someone to listen to on matters of faith and morals.
Fr. MJK,
In the "before times," how many national politicians protected abortion rights as "sacred" and "part of their Catholic faith" and fobbed off their ordinaries in the process?
How many campaigns were there to "shout your abortion"?
How many people were hormonally or surgically mutilated and sterilized so they could live as they truly are? How many Catholic politicians advocated for such barbarous treatments?
Why do you ignore Vatican II's teaching that Catholics are to "see that the divine law is inscribed in the life of the earthly city"?
It was stated in those heady days that, before the Council, the Church was "the city set on a hill, the stable bulwark against the revolutionary change," but no longer thereafter. Gee, I wonder if that might've had any effect on how our culture has unraveled since then. I wonder if the Church suddenly deciding to undergo Her own revolutionary changes rather than being steady in a time of societal upheaval might've had some effect on wider society's revolutions. Ah well, mustn't think about that. We're much better off now, after all!
Plus, people sinned before, so that means how the Church has mismanaged things for over a half a century couldn't possibly have anything to do with the growing nuttery going on today. Obviously!
And it's very obvious you haven't gotten over November 5th--I certainly hope you reach acceptance soon. At least that would mean you'd stop throwing the toys out of the pram and at our gracious host.
Nick
TJM - As usual you evade the matter at hand. You do so because you cannot speak to it in any meaningful way. Everything with you is "ad hominem."
Ol' Nick - First, "our gracious host" is, I believe, wrong. You think that stating this is somehow equivalent to throwing toys out of my pram. It's not.
You, too, evade my point - intentionally. Long before Vat II there were members of the Catholic Church who carried out great evil. These evils did not begin after the publication of Sacrosanctum Concilium or any other of the Council's documents. Nor did they begin with any subsequent changes made by the Church.
AND.... as always, you and TJM ignore the fact - the FACT - that the evils and problems that beset our Church are also found in other churches and faith traditions and civic organizations. Were the problems of Presbyterianism, the messes of Methodism, the dilemmas of the Disciples of Christ, the jams of the Jaycees, the struggles of Sertomans caused by Vat Two? OF course not. I have asked, rhetorically since no answer will be given, how the Second Vatican Council had such an impact outside the bounds of the Catholic Church.
Was the Church a city set on a hill when Catholics joined the Nazi party in exterminating Jews, intellectuals, Gays and Lesbians? Was it when Catholics sacked Constantinople? Was it when Catholics profited mightily from the slave trade? If you think it was, you have a very ill-formed understanding of history.
As for November 5th, unlike Trump and many of his allies after the 2020 count, I accept that he won the election. No massive fraud, no votes snuck into polling places after dark, no collusion with the long-deceased Hugo Chavez, a la the convicted felon Sydney Powell.
If you want to identify throwers of toys from prams, start with Powell, Giuliani, Burt Jones and Earl Carter of Georgia, to name a few.
Fr K - Lol. You routinely refer to Republicans, including President Trimp, when it is your Party promoting intrinsic evils. You are a true disciple of Alinsky. It is your Party that is a true danger to the Republic through “lawfare.” Of course you know more than Jonathon Turley. You also ignore the perverts in your Party, like the Kennedys, Clinton, Biden and his cocaine addled son. You are an embarrassment to our Church. You have the personality of Hillary Clinton!
Nick,
Epic take down of the Saul Alinsky priest, who engages in projection, accusing others of what his intrinsically evil Party is up to. He has the intellectual prowess of Joe Biden and the charm of Hillary Clinton.
Merry Christmas!
Father McDonald, a sad story on the Washington DC Archdiocese. It shows dumb and evil is no way to go through life:
https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2024/12/two-years-after-restricting-traditional.html#more
Perhaps a little expanding of moral imagination might be in order. If all you have is a hammer (our moral degradation is caused by Vatican II and abortion), then everything looks like a nail (Mangione committed murder because of Vatican II and abortion). I don’t discount they MIGHT have been one factor, but there should be more in our reasoning toolbox than just this, as Father Kavanaugh rightly suggests.
As for Trump, what TJM calls lawfare, others call legal accountability and bringing to justice. But, of course, Trump escapes accountability yet again—for the umpteenth time in his sullied career. While I am not at all happy about Biden’s pardoning of Hunter, I understand it—if Trump can escape accountability so readily, then why not?
Still, at the end of the day, the rule of law and a truly independent judiciary is all we have to protect us from the authoritarians of all stripes. Let’s hope we are up to the task in the n=months and years ahead.
Mark J.
Fr. MJK,
As always, you ignore every single question whose answer could pose a problem for the narrative you’ve chosen to live by.
You—as always—ignore the FACT, the FACT, that the Church isn’t just some damn social club. As if She was just every other group and institution. You also offer no explanation why some religious groups thrive in places where Catholicism stagnates, declines, or outright collapses. If nothing else, your litany of failing churches demonstrates the folly of “listening to the world,” as some say Vatican II tells us to, rather than leading the world. Let alone the insistence that the Rotaries have declining membership, too! demonstrates how little we’ve been taught to think of God’s promises to the Church.
As always, when the principles and the facts turn against you, you pound the table. Maybe you’ve learned from Rudy Giuliani than you think. Would that the clergy regulated themselves as much as lawyers do!
As always, you elide institution and individual, as if they were equivalent. Sinners will always sin; I suppose by your chosen narrative, there is nothing the Church could have done, can do, or ever will be able to do about that. After all, the Church’s current woes certainly have no effect on the world’s. Lord, I’m glad I don’t think that! I would’ve abandoned the Faith long ago.
Nick
In any event, I’ve discussed statistics and sociological studies on this topic here before. I have negative interest in re-hashing that topic, so I’ll wish everyone a happy Gaudete and say sayonara.
Nick
Mark,
LOL. Hunter Biden escaped accountability. Do you have the same legal skills as Jonathan Turley? Don' think so.
I doubt you read this, because it goes against "The Narrative"
President Trump wins again.
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2024/12/14/new-abc-news-apolgizes-to-trump-pays-massive-settlement-in-defamation-suit-n2183225
Mark,
Instead of reading the New York Times, you should look to other sources for real news instead of lefty talking points:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/12/dockworkers-union-vp-meets-president-trump-its-rare/
This is for the Lefties who post here:
It's interesting that we continue to see the mental breakdown of the radical American left on a daily basis on our
@X
timelines and nobody in the establishment media has done a report on a need to do something about the surge in left-wing "hate speech."
Despite the uptick in violent language and radical activists committing acts of political violence — including two assassination attempts on a former president and the execution of a healthcare CEO, complete with a "manifesto" about why he did it — neither the FBI nor the DHS have issued warnings about the rise of "far-left extremism" in the United States.
The SPLC has not remarked on any of these clear "hate speech" incidents or the acts of political violence. The establishment media is silent. The FBI and the DHS have nothing to say about it.
No wonder media trust is at an all-time low and millions of Americans believe the U.S. government has been "weaponized."
Ol' Nick - First, I will correct you. I do not think and have never said or suggested the Church is equivalent to some “damn” social club, or any kind of social club. The Church exists ONLY because of God’s Divine will and grace, a grace that does not the underpin and sustain the Jaycees, the Elks, or any other secular institution. The ONLY reason you, TJM, Fr. ALLAN McDonald, and I remain members of the Church is the grace of God. And that grace is the ONLY reason that the Church will endure until the Parousia.
That grace, which is offered through the Church, is the cure for sin.
That being said, the members of the Church are – at the same time - influenced by the cultural, societal, political, and economic forces that influence all humans. To say or suggest that these cultural influences have zero impact on the religious practice of people is utter nonsense. It is also a denial of the Incarnational Principle – that in the person of Jesus Christ God took on human flesh and experienced everything other humans experience except sin.
To blame the departure of Catholics from the Church and the rise of the “nones” on the changes, predominantly in the liturgies, that followed Vatican Two is also nonsense. “Majorities of former Catholics who are now unaffiliated also cite having stopped believing in Catholicism’s teachings overall (65%) or dissatisfaction with Catholic teachings about abortion and homosexuality (56%), and almost half (48%) cite dissatisfaction with church teachings about birth control, as reasons for leaving Catholicism.” (Pew Research, Report, April 27, 2009 Faith in Flux Leaving Catholicism Revised February 2011)
Continuing...
Yet I hear over and over that what has driven and is driving people out of the Church is the improper placement of candles on the altar, the installation of unnecessary altars, the lack of painted curlicues on the wood beams of the ceiling, and church building built in an “in the round” or “fan-shaped” style. “They don’t look like Catholic churches” is the phrase.
The proposed solution is to put everything back the way it was pre-1962. If we make the mass look, sound, and smell like it did in the 40s – that can be the 1940s, the 1840s, the 1740s, or the 1640s – then all the problems of people leaving and not believing will disappear. This ignores the impact of the cultural, societal, political, and economic forces that, because the members of the Church also humans. It is an easy answer, a lazy, cheap grace answer, to a much harder question.
You ask why some religious groups thrive in places where Catholicism stagnates, declines, or outright collapses. The answer is, I think, relatively simple. These religions tickle peoples’ ears. They tell them what they want to hear. They don’t want to hear they are sinners (deep down they do, but not facing sin is the easier way out), they want to have entertainment. They don’t want to hear about the social justice responsibilities imposed on Christians by the Gospels, they want to hear a Joel Osteen “Prosperity Gospel.” They want to hear a John Shelby Spong sermon on why Biblical miracles can be discounted. They want the emotionalism offered by many Pentecostal congregations. The reasons are many and varied.
TJM:
What do you think would have happened in the federal documents and January 6 cases brought by Jack Smith if Trump had lost the 2024 election?
Your suggested comparison with Jonathan Turley is too vague to be meaningful. What do you mean by “legal skills”? Those of us involved in legal education talk about theoretical or substantive knowledge (which in law is vast, as you well know), cognitive and practical skills (which are multiple), and values or virtues (again multiple). (Such an approach focusing on knowledge, skills, and values/virtues is, I submit, applicable to all professions and arguably all occupational practices.)
As for the man himself, feast on this little gem from The Hill, written on January 11, 2021, addressing the events of January 6:
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/533693-the-case-for-censuring-trump/
I would make two observations. First, although Turley appears to have become an unabashed Trump apologist in the intervening years, apparently he was not so then. Although not favoring impeachment, he did favor censure.
Second, regarding Turley’s reasoning skills, he emphasizes that “[Trump] called on his supporters to go ‘peacefully’ to Capitol Hill to show support for senators backing an electoral-vote challenge and opposition to those who opposed it. Such protests are common in capitals, from statehouses to Congress, during legislative sessions.” Yet later, in the very same article, he also says that “Trump — as well as his son, Donald Jr., and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani — whipped the Jan. 6 crowd into a frenzy before the rioting in the Capitol. While Trump’s speech would not constitute criminal incitement, it was inciteful and unpresidential. Before that, on Twitter, he called thousands to the city for a ‘wild time,’ and then worked some into a frothing mob. . . .”
Calling on one’s supporters to go “peacefully” is a little inconsistent with “whipp[ing] the . . . crowd into a frenzy” and “working some into a frothing mob,” wouldn’t you agree? Indeed, Turley acknowledges it was “inciteful” (but why not criminally inciteful? See next pargraph) as well as “unpresidential.”
But let us grant Turley’s powers of reasoning. What these apparently inconsistent statements evidence--and what Turley (like so many others who have also emphasized Trump’s clever, or should I say cunning, plausible deniability reference to going “peacefully”) ignore, and always fail to mention, is that the “peacefully” reference comes toward the beginning of Trump’s lengthy speech and the “fight like hell” references come toward the end, by which time, of course, the “mob” had been worked up so much that they either had forgotten the “peacefully” reference toward the beginning or got the message that Trump was insincere when he said it.
I may not possess Turley’s constitutional or criminal law expertise, but I do know a little something about the four “Rs”—reading, writing, reasoning, and rhetoric.
Mark J.
And yes, TJM, I am familiar with the defamation settlement involving ABC. But, of course, what your linked source fails to mention is that Trump’s suit turned on a technicality:
See, e.g., https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgrw57q4y9do
“Judge Lewis Kaplan said the jury's conclusion was that Ms Carroll had failed to prove that Trump raped her ‘within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law’.
“Judge Kaplan noted that the definition of rape was ‘far narrower’ than how rape is defined in common modern parlance, in some dictionaries and in criminal statutes elsewhere.”
I will not address the unseemly factual basis for Ms. Carroll’s rape allegation here. Interested readers can readily find reliable sources on the internet explaining why what she alleged Trump did to her would be considered rape “in common modern parlance, in some dictionaries, and in criminal statutes elsewhere.”
Now, I wonder why your own source failed to mention anything at all about this point. Perhaps it goes against “The Narrative.”
Mark J.
The lady's "rape" case came straight from a television show appearing on Law and Order in 2012 - even the same NW Department Store. You know this case will end in another President Trump victory unless you are an unhinged, leftwing loon.
Not sure, Jonathan Turley would agree with you. Here's his take why ABC settled:
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/jonathan-turley-what-abcs-apology-trump-reveals-about-media-landscape
I bet you and faculty buddies defended disbarred lawyer, Bill Clinton to the end even though there was plenty of evidence that he raped Democratic women whom his corrupt wife and minions tried to destroy.
KK,
Yet the TLM was the finest Evangelization tool EVAH. Novus Ordo chases millions away that is why the Roche is trying to crush it Thousands would not be marching to Chartres for the Novus Ordo. Most French Catholics won't walk across the street for it.
Mark, of course you see no pattern here!
Presidents, and the number of individuals that they have of pardoned, commuted, or rescinded:
- John F Kennedy: 575
- Lyndon B Johnson: 1,187
- Richard Nixon: 926
- Gerald Ford: 409
- Jimmy Carter: 566 people + 200K Vietnam War draft evaders
- Ronald Reagan: 406
- George H. W. Bush: 77
- Bill Clinton: 459
- George W Bush: 200
- Barack Obama: 1,927
- Donald Trump: 237
- Joe Biden: 8,062
……and he still has 36 days left!
TJM:
Jonathan Turley used to be more objective and even-handed. But now he seems to have drunk the Trump Kool-Aid, prompting many to ask: “Whatever happened to Jonathan Turley?” Whatever indeed!
I would have much greater respect for Turley if he returned to being objective and even-handed, also calling out the ridiculous and dangerous excesses and antics of MAGA Republicans and Fox News instead of focusing, almost exclusively as now appears to be the case, on those of Democrats and the “liberal” media.
An example of Turley's lack of objectivity appears in the article you link. Turley says that “In the meantime, Trump has been running the table on lawfare with the dismissal of the two federal cases and a victory on presidential immunity in the Supreme Court.” Well, yes and no. The two federal cases were only dismissed, at Jack Smith’s request, because Trump won the election, and it is Justice Department policy not to prosecute a sitting president. The dismissal had nothing to do with the merits of the cases, as Turley's language might easily be read to imply, and everything to do with the election result. Indeed, many have suggested this was Trump’s real motivation for running again—to escape legal jeopardy in these cases. Why does Turley not mention any of that?
As for Bill Clinton, I cannot speak for my faculty colleagues, but I did not vote for him in the first general election in which I was eligible to vote as a recently naturalized U.S. citizen—the election of 1996. Nor have I ever defended his sexual misconduct. I did vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 but held my nose when doing so and only because the alternative was so unpalatable.
So, sorry, no cigar! You cannot label or pigeonhole me. I try hard to be an independent, critical thinker beholden to no political cult.
By the way: If you want an unbiased news source recommendation, or at least as unbiased as one can realistically expect, I suggest Tangle News, which my wife discovered recently and to which we both now subscribe:
https://www.readtangle.com/about/
Mark J.
TJM:
I know nothing about the 2012 “Law and Order” episode you reference. But given Trump’s connections to the world of TV entertainment and his penchant to brag openly about grabbing certain female body parts, perhaps he gave the scriptwriters the idea for that scene based on his own alleged conduct in 1996. It seems to me this explanation is just as plausible as the one you suggest.
Mark J.
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