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MO Priest calls Pope Benedict, Bishops and the Faithful,
“Faithless and Hypocritical,” and “Whitewashed Sepulchers”
Fr. Wissman in Bolivar, MO writes in his parish bulletin some of the most outlandish comments. It is hard to believe he but it in writing. Fr. Z takes issue with the post and shares his thoughts. Of course Fr. Z comments are in red.
Dear Parishioners,
Happy Pentecost! The Easter Season comes to a final crescendo with this glorious feast! The Holy Spirit is the Person of the Holy Trinity which we seem to neglect. [Really?] But still, the age we live in since the Ascension is the AGE of the Spirit. [Hmmm….] It was under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that Vatican Council II happened. History making and world shaking, the Church came up to date under the Spirit’s guidance. [I think you are getting a sense of this fellow’s age and basic formation.] The history of the Church since those moments is the successful or unsuccessful implementation of that wonderful coming together of the Church. [Here we go…] Those who have resisted the Council have resisted the Spirit. [Is that so? Fr. Wissman knows this? We can at least affirm that Council’s are guided by the Holy Spirit when they, with the Bishop of Rome, teach concerning faith and morals. In Acts 15:28 we read, "It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us …." But when the matter does not have to do with faith and morals, does the Holy Spirit guide a Council? Also, the Second Vatican Council is considered a "pastoral", rather than "dogmatic" or "doctrinal" Council, even though it issued a "dogmatic constitution". What does that mean for the involvement of the Holy Spirit.] It is sad [Get this…] that the implementation did not take place in many places and that [!] has led to a great decline in true membership in the church and the increase of the powers of divergence from the Kingdom of God. [This is loaded with problems, as I am sure you have already seen. First, the writer wants you to accept a premise: problems have come about in the Church where the Council was not implemented. On the other hand, "Council" – especially from a liberal – could mean just about anything, including suggestions that have nothing to do with the Council’s documents. I suspect that the shift above from the use of "Holy Spirit" to just "Spirit" in relation to inspiration for the Council was telling. Next, what does "true membership" mean? Is he suggesting, for example, that there is some sort of additional litmus text, known to the writer. This smacks of gnosticism. Notice also that phrase "powers of divergence". I think that means any influence exerted by anyone who does not share the writer’s outdated and rigid understanding of the Council. And note that the writer seems also to have insight not only into "true membership" but also who belongs to the "Kingdom of God". This goes beyond pompous to dangerously judgmental.]
In the United States, however, for the most part the implementation took root and has made the U.S. Catholic Church very vital and a shining example of true Christianity. [Has the writer not reviewed lately statistics about Mass attendance, use of the sacrament of penance, marriage, and belief in doctrines of the Church? Unless, though it is hard to imagine this, the plummeting statistics are what he is talking about.] The recent efforts of faithless and hypocritical people to make the church go backward are ill conceived and will fail. [So, anyone who has what Pope John Paul II referred do as a "legitimate aspiration" is faithless and hypocritical. Benedict XVI is also "faithless and hypocritical" by the fact of the provisions of Summorum Pontificum and his statements about "continuity" and the clear explanation that what was sacred in the past is sacred also now.] What a mistake it was for the Pope (who had the best of intentions) to lift a ban on those reactionary groups who want a dead church of Latin language and a rejection of Vatican II. [Once again, the example of a liberal who invokes a Council he has never read: Latin remains the language of the liturgy, something required by the Second Vatican Council. Furthermore, the word "ban" is inaccurate. The writer is no doubt poorly imformed.] One of the Bishops of one group even publicly takes a stand saying that the Holocaust is a myth. [That would be SSPX Bp. Williamson. Now get this…] These people [He is no longer talking about just SSPX Bp. Williamson…] who may appear very pious (as the Pharisees did!) are really whitewashed sepulchers (to use the words of Jesus). [I think he just called John Paul II, Pope Benedict, every bishop who has ever granted use of the older Mass, or participated in one, every priest who uses the older forms and all the lay people who desire the opportunity to participate in the older forms… or even in the Novus Ordo in Latin… "whitewashed sepulchers". Does that set well with you? Does that set well with the Bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau? I think I recently saw His Eminence Card. Baum at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on 24 April – a former bishop of the writer’s diocese – participating at a Pontifical Mass with the older form. He must be a "whitewashed sepulcher" also.]
The Holy Spirit always leads us into the future, not into the past. [What confused claptrap. The writer pretends to know what the motions and urgings of the Holy Spirit are. This is part of the writer’s gnostic approach.] As we celebrate this faith-moment honoring God, the Holy Spirit let us be aware that trust as well as faith is needed…trust in the leadership of the Holy Spirit, trust in the Spirit’s healing powers as well as creativity under the Spirit’s egis. [sic]
It is the Spirit who guards the church from the powers of hell. [Not content with "powers of divergence", now he refers to anyone who has a vision that differs from his own as "powers of hell".] Jesus tells us: fear not, the Father will send you the Spirit… The great and powerful God the Spirit blows throughout the universe seeking souls open to the new creation, seeking hearts open to its promptings, seeking to uphold those whose knees are weak and confirming those who seek God. And it is not just the Catholic Church that is gifted with the Holy Spirit. Every good inspiration, every good act, every humble prayer has as its source the one and same Spirit. All religions ancient and new are impacted by the Spirit and are made ready for advancement toward truth, unity and peace. ["Not just the Catholic Church… all religions…"]
Blessings!
Fr Pat
Liberal Nuns Support Abortion Funding
in the Name of Social Justice
Father Z reaches out to correct disillusioned Nuns in an article he called A Magisterium of Nuns.
Fr. Z – In this matter of contingent, prudential judgments, whose judgment will in time prove to have been the more prudent?
The Catholic bishops with pro-life groups or their opposition, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) and Catholic Health Association (CHA) and National Catholic Reporter (NCR), etc?
I happen to think the bishops are right and the CHA and NCR and LCWR are wrong. I think the bishops are right this time, not because they are bishops, by the way, but because they happen to be right. Even if there really is a barrier between federal money and the procuring of abortions, a barrier which might allow a Catholic legislator in this byzantine tangle to vote for the bill, is that barrier going to stand?
Or will it – as I fear it will – open the gates to direct federal funding for abortions?
At this point I doubt many people are going to change their minds about their positions.
Therefore, I have this to say to those Catholics who support the passage of this bill.
I am speaking especially to the women of the LCWR and the CHA and the dissenters of the NCR.
No one is going to forget that you supported this bill when, in years to come, your barrier did not hold and children are being killed with tax-payer funding.
In years to come, you will be held accountable by Catholics on the street.
You will be held responsible for this and you will be made to answer for this down the line.
You will be responsible for federal funding of the most extreme form of child abuse.
You are in for a Dante-esque contrapasso in decades to come.
Dear readers, think about how these same people scream for the heads of bishops and priests who years ago harmed innocent children. Today those who support this legislation have in the past also relentlessly pursued bishops and priests who, 40 years ago, showed compassion – rightly or wrongly – in trying to rehabilitate priests who harmed children.
“If we only knew then what we know now…”, people will say in years to come, just as they do now about child abuse in years past.
“What harm we could have avoided if we, moved by compassion, had made a different prudential judgment!”
When federal funding for the extreme child abuse of abortion starts to flow, I suspect people will find you, Sister – Reverend Mother – Sister “President” – in the same kind of nursing homes in which various groups has searched out priests who abused children decades ago.
Organizations will be formed, seek you out, and extract your public mea culpas because of your “prudential” judgments today.
Sisters… what you are doing is WRONG.
Your magisterium of liberal nuns has told us that if only women had been priests or had been in power positions, then maybe there wouldn’t have been a crisis today with sexual abuse of children.
Is that so? Perhaps if there were men in power positions in the LCWR and CHA we might avoid the abuse to come.
You tell us, Sisters, that out of compassion for the poor we ought to take the risk that federal funds, in a worst case scenario, might go to pay for abortion.
I think that is the wrong prudential judgment.
The bishops are right and you are wrong.
They are right, not because they are bishops, but because they are neither naive nor governed by false compassion…nor false motives.
And I think we must, Sisters, question your motives.
This moment, Sisters, will come back to haunt you.
“Pray For More Priest!”
Fr. Z gives us a reminder that we need more priest.
We need more vocations to the PRIESTHOOD.
Let’s be careful about prayers for vocations.
At times we should pray strictly for vocations to the priesthood. PRIESTHOOD! Deacons are great, but they are not priests. Religious women are great, but they are not priests. Religious men are find, but that is its own vocation. Married people are wonderful, but with a super small number of exceptions it is morally tedious to recount, they are not priests.
Often prayers for “vocations” are all lumped together, probably so as to avoid one of the great modern mortal sins: not being inclusive.
Fine. Do that. Pray for “vocations”.
But let us pray for PRIESTS…. priestly vocations… vocations to the PRIESTHOOD.
And another thing… this is the Year for Priests. Yet I see this project and that effort for prayer for bishops, seemingly all the time. Great! Pray for bishops. Bishops are priests too. Bishops need constant prayers. I too am constantly telling people, imploring people to pray for our bishops, upon whom so much depends. I pray for a list of bishops after every Mass. But can priests have their year? Please? We pray for bishops all the time. It seems like every year is the year for bishops, right? At every Mass we pray for bishops by name, for heaven’s sake!
Okay… I must get back to work.
Thus endeth the rant.
“O My God, give us priests; My God give us holy priests; My God, give us many holy priests!”
Novus Ordo Translation Debate Is Heating Up!
Without a doubt, Liberal and Orthodox Catholics have discovered major theological differences, resulting in heated debates on changes to the Mass since Vatican II. What’s the heart of translation debate? This can almost be summed up in a debate over one word . . .
MANY!
In the current Novus Ordo during the words of consecration the Blood of Christ “will be poured out for you and for all,” the new translation will have the correct translation and substitute “all” for the word “many.” It’s really simple. “Many” is the direct quote from an accurate translation of scripture. “All” was inserted by liberals believing the word “many” makes Jesus seem “intolerant.”
What is the Root of the Issue?
Liberal Catholics don’t want to believe in hell. Orthodox Catholics want the full accurate teaching under obedience to the Magisterium of the One, True Catholic Church established by Jesus Christ.
MANY = Hell
ALL = All are saved, but murderers and rapists of course.
Orthodox Catholic = “serious theological problems” of the 1973 missal currently in use.
Liberal Catholic = “I respond that Jesus died even for those who reject his grace. He died for all,” says Bishop Robert Trautman. The new translation could be a “pastoral disaster.”
The following comes from a Fr. Z post who discovered Bishop Mark Coleridge, a courageous bishop, who says the “Vatican II’s reforms were not properly implemented and were taken too far.”
As usual with Fr. Z, with his emphases and comments.
John Quinn
By Anthony Barich
PERTH, Australia (CNS) — The newly translated Roman Missal to be issued in Australian parishes in 2011 will help address the serious theological problems of the 1973 missal currently in use, said one of Australia’s most senior liturgists. [Get that? "Serious" theological problems. Remember: the way we pray as a reciprocal relationship with what we believe.]
In the process, it will more faithfully implement the liturgical vision of the Second Vatican Council [Because the liturgical vision of Vatican II was never really tried.] and also fulfill the reforms of the much-maligned 1570 Council of Trent, Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Canberra-Goulburn told approximately 200 liturgists gathered in Perth in early February.
 Archbishop Coleridge is chairman of the Roman Missal Editorial Committee of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy; he is also chair of the Australian bishops’ Liturgy Commission.
While Archbishop Coleridge acknowledged that the missal used since 1973 has made gains in accessibility, participation, Scripture, adaptation and inculturation, he said it also has “serious problems theologically” and “consistently bleaches out metaphor, which does scant justice to the highly metaphoric discourse” of Scripture and early Christian writers. [It is important to remember the role that biblical positivists played in the liturgical wars. Blinkered by their approach to Scripture they effectively evacuated a great deal of the significance of the liturgical texts.]
This is the result of a misunderstanding of Vatican II’s reforms, he said. [Yes.]
Occasional claims of the Roman Missal revisions being a “merely political right-wing plot of the church” to turn the clock back miss the point of reform and of the purpose of the Mass, which is “a gift from God, not something to be manipulated,” he said.
“Nothing will happen unless we move beyond ideology and reducing the church to politics and the slogans that go with them, which are unhelpful,” he said. “Drinking from the wells of tradition passed on supremely in the liturgy is what this new moment of renewal is all about.” [Very well said.]
[Note this well:] Archbishop Coleridge’s speech to the liturgists came just two weeks after Benedictine Father Anscar Chupungco, a former consulter to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, said Jan. 22 that the reforms were part of an attempt to turn the clock back 50 years. [Precisely. Remember: Liberals want to control the narrative of the Council and the post-Conciliar reform. They must be set straight.]
Archbishop Coleridge said that one of the ironies of criticism of the new missal is that “we can fail to attend to history even though perhaps the most fundamental achievement of Vatican II was the restoration of historical consciousness to the life of the Catholic Church.”
“A claim that troubles me is that this initiative is somehow a retreat from all that Vatican II tried to promote and enact and a betrayal, therefore, of the (Second Vatican) Council and, by implication, the Holy Spirit,” Archbishop Coleridge said.
He said if that were true, he and thousands of others involved in the missal process “would not have shed the blood, sweat and tears of the last seven years.”
“We would’ve saved ourselves a lot of time and money if we’d just stuck with the Latin, but that’s not what the Spirit is saying to the church,” he said. [With due respect, I am not sure how that can be demonstrated. But let’s move on.]
However, Vatican II’s reforms were not properly implemented and were taken too far, he said, after the Latin texts were translated in 1973 with “breathtaking speed.” [And breathtaking incompetence.]
Since then, the liturgy has largely lost the sense of the liturgy as primarily Christ’s action, [YES!] as something received “not just what we do; a mystery into which we are drawn.” [Wow… does this sound like WDTPRS?]
“We can’t just tamper with it,” he said. “Celebrants sometimes act as if it’s their own personal property to do with what they like. You can’t.”
An overly cerebral approach to liturgy, loss of ritual, oversimplification of rites, loss of a sense of silence, beauty and an unwitting clericalism [No one is more "clerical" in the negative sense than a liberal.] have all led to the Mass lacking its full potential to catechize the faithful and renew the church, he said.
The Second Vatican Council’s “catechetical thrust” that encouraged priests to catechize in the process of celebration has led to the Mass “drowning under the weight of supposed catechetical verbosity,” he said.
The new translations will attempt to control “clerical verbosity and, dare I say, clerical idiosyncrasy,” he said.
“Let the texts stand as is and let catechesis draw out from the texts in a way that communicates to the community, rather than trying to build into the texts a catechesis that runs the risk of corrupting the texts or diluting their power,” he said. [Just Say The Black and Do The Red.]
The proposed English translation of the second Latin edition of the Roman Missal was never approved by the Vatican, and a translation of the third Latin edition promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 2002 is near completion, the Vatican said in late January.
What do you believe is the root of the problem? Tell us.
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