I liked poor old St. Pope Paul VI! I felt bad for him. Mike Lewis, incredibly unschooled in what life was like in the Church during the reign of the poor, depressed pope, wrote today at his infamous and somewhat heterodox blog “Where Peter Is” the following:
Disliked by progressives for his encyclical Humanae Vitae — which reaffirmed the Church’s teaching against contraception — and reviled by traditionalists for his liturgical reforms, Paul VI was nevertheless raised to the altars in 2018, when Pope Francis canonized him a saint.
I must inform Mike Lewis that it was just the opposite. Progressives by 1968 reviled Pope Paul! And by 1976, they were praying for his death, not conservative Catholics who respected the papacy and Pope Paul VI even if they were concerned, as he was, about progressives destroying the Mass by their liturgical abuses and how they promoted dissent in the Church from Pope Paul, especially his upholding of sexual morality, celibacy, and the ordination of men only to Holy Orders.
Conservative Catholics then, did not revile Pope Paul VI. They, unlike the progressives, were faithful Catholics! They were concerned, though, that through his major depression over the death of his best friend, murdered by Italian terrorists and his lamentations about all the bad things progressives were doing through their dissent, that he wasn’t strong enough to do anything to that dastardly group of heterodox Catholics on the left. There were no threats of excommunication or excommunication for people like Hans Kung and Charles Curran and a host of other famous heterodox progressive theologians of that time.
Pope Paul VI died on August 6, 1978 while I was in my first parish placement for the summer at Saint Joseph Church in Macon. I had completed my second year of theology and I had a great summer at St. Joseph Church in Macon. I would become the pastor there, succeeding the pastor who was my supervisor that summer, in 2004! He was pastor there for 35 years!
As you know, I was in a very progressive to heterodox left seminary in Baltimore.
By 1976 when I entered St. Mary’s the progressives despised Pope Paul VI, not just for Humanae Vitae, which disappointed them to the core as they had praised Paul VI for continuing Vatican II and they hoped that he would create a different Church. But they soon realized he wasn’t as progressive as they thought he was.
He wanted the proper interpretation of Vatican II in continuity with the pre-Vatican II Church. He wanted the new Mass, which he approved, celebrated properly and with dignity and reverence. He wanted traditional Catholic sexual morality and held the line on the proper celebration of all the Sacraments.
He was horrified by what the heterodox left was doing to Vatican II, the Mass and to the Church, horrified. But he couldn’t stop them. He was depressed on so many levels.
I can’t remember if it was my first year in the seminary or my second year, but around 1977 or 78 Pope Paul VI reiterated that only men could be ordained priests as Christ only chose men to be His apostles.
I mean to tell you that faculty and seminarians at my seminary went ballistic! They protested Pope Paul VI and prayed for his death and a new pope that would fulfill all their hopes that their deformed spirit of Vatican II gave them.
Did I say they hated Pope Paul VI and prayed for his death, the progressive left?
On my drive back to Baltimore in late August of 1978, as I was on the interstate, white smoke spewed forth from the Sistine Chapel. Pope John Paul I was elected pope.
My seminary was overjoyed. Their prayers had been answered, the death of Paul VI and the election of a new pope!
A month later Pope John Paul I died suddenly.
By October of 1978, St. Pope John Paul II was elected. The progressives didn’t give him much time before they turned on him and hated him more than St. Paul VI. They prayed for his death too! But he lived until 2005 thanks be to God. The Most Holy Trinity does have a sense of humor you know!
No comments:
Post a Comment