Posted on 03/24/2011 8:41:19 AM PDT by verdugo
The impending beatification of Pope John Paul II on May 1, 2011 has aroused serious concern among not a few Catholics around the world, who are concerned about the condition of the Church...
The question is not personal piety or integrity as such, but rather whether there is a basis for the claim that John Paul exhibited such heroic virtue in the exercise of his exalted office as Pope that he should be placed immediately on the road to sainthood as a Pope to be emulated by all his successors.
The Church has always recognized that the matter of heroic virtue involved in a beatification is inextricably bound up with whether the candidate performed heroically the duties of his station in life.
Suppose the father of a large family were a candidate for beatification. One would hardly expect his cause to advance if it were the case that, while pious, he consistently failed to discipline and properly form his children, who habitually disobeyed him and fomented disorder in the home, even openly opposing the Faith while living under his roof.
When the candidate for beatification is a Pope—the Holy Father of the universal Church—the question is not simply his personal piety and holiness, but also his care of the vast household of the Faith that God has entrusted to him, for which purpose God grants the Pope extraordinary graces of state. This is the real question: Did John Paul II perform heroically his duties as Supreme Pontiff in the manner of the sainted predecessors we will mention here: opposing error, swiftly and courageously defending the flock from the ravening wolves who spread it, and protecting the integrity of the Church’s doctrine and sacred worship?
(Excerpt) Read more at remnantnewspaper.com ...
Orthodox Jewish anti-Zionists reject the concept of a secular Jewish state and the idea of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel prior to the arrival of Mashiach. But they all still believe in the future regathering of all Jews to Israel, the rebuilding of the Holy Temple, and the rule of King Messiah.
Right wing Catholic (and other non-Jewish) anti-Zionists believe the State of Israel is the "vatican" of the "new world order" and the power behind the worldwide leftist revolution. They also reject outright any future regathering of the Jews to Israel or a rebuilding of the Holy Temple. Many of them even consider any regathering of the Jews evil and "satanic," and believe Jewish liberals are following a "Talmudic" blueprint for "world rule."
These are two completely different anti-Zionisms. The former isn't anti-Semitic; the latter is rabidly so.
If you people are so sure you're the "new Israel," then what are you afraid of?
“Rather, they are somewhere between sedevacantist and actually Catholic. Late in the article, one will find the telltale trademark whining of their ilk against the disciplines rightfully imposed by John Paul II (and incidentally also by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Cardinal Gantin of the Congregation for Bishops,) against the ecclesiastical revolution perpetrated by the execrable rebel archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder and excommunicated schismatic and guiding light of the so-called Society of St. Pius X or SSPX. “
Ahhhhh...now I understand who they are. Thank you for this. We must pray for them. To attempt to destroy the Church, the Enemy leads weak people in one of two extremes: relativism and infiltration of the Church or the self-righteousness/legalism similar to that of the Pharisees.
For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and raise up more intercessors for the Church.
Everything that you've written since you began the “anti-semitic” discussion is your own ideas, EVERYHTING. Not once have you quoted any “tradtitonalist” articles saying what you allege.
This last one above is a total strawman. Give me a break! I read avidly all the traditionalist newspapers,. I have a LARGE library of Catholic books written prior to the 1960’s, AND never once have I ever heard anyone of them say what you blurted above that “the State of Israel is the “Vatican” of the “new world order and the power behind the worldwide leftist revolution”.
re: They also reject outright any future regathering of the Jews to Israel or a rebuilding of the Holy Temple”
This is another idea of yours, that comes from a YOPIOS false interpretation of scripture, Protestant, about the rebuilding of the temple. The constant Catholic teaching from the Church Fathers till present is unchanged. When the Jews rebuild the temple, it will mark the beginning of the end of the world as written in Revelations. The time of the Antichrist and the conversion of the Jews to the Catholic faith, and the end of the world.
Did you know what happened the last time the Jews attempted to rebuild the temple destroyed by the Romans? The Church Fathers described it in detail, and also the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius. Julian the Apostate and His attempt to defy the Gospel and rebuild the temple at Jerusalem was brought to nothing by fire and earthquake.
Is there anything in the thread article that you can contest? Engaging in the art of demonizing the messenger, character assasinations, character misassociations, is a clear sign of frustration from one who lacks the knowledge to respond. Address the subject not the messenger.
If God used an ass to prophecize to Balaam, he can use anyone of good will. If it wasn't for the secualr news media the priestly homsexual scandal would never have been addressed or know by Catholics.
I know what the Notzerim claim happened.
As to the rest of your post, if what you say is true I am glad. However, I have come across numerous right wing and traditionalist Catholic web sites which plainly state that the Jews are "the accursed race" and that every evil in the world is the fault of a "Judaeo-Masonic conspiracy." I also know that these same sources (including Sungenis, whom I originally admired) are avowedly opposed to the Jewish regathering in Israel. I am willing to acknowledge that we have had different experiences, but I know what I have seen, and I do not know what to make of your ignorance of these sites/people/organizations.
If the Church Fathers indeed taught that the Jews will return to the Holy Land at the end of time then someone should tell the Vatican (and Catholics like Pat Buchanan).
I'm not a Protestant and my beliefs are not based on anyone's private interpretations--mine or anyone else's.
If you and/or the chronic malcontents of SSPX don't like God's plans for His Church or His choices for pope, then be honest enough to admit that you all are creating a "church" of your own in line with your offended tastes and stop insulting Catholicism by claiming to be Catholic. No pope has any obligation to satisfy the poisonous SSPX rebellion and its enthusiasts. Catholics need no advice from those rightly condemned as schismatics by John Paul II.
Character assassination???? SSPX has no character to assassinate. Call it pretense assassination or infamy assassination or schism assassination. Priests who do not merely violate their priestly vows of obedience but massacre them have no claim on Catholic attention to their exotic and impudent theories. A sensible solution to the perfidy of SSPX (If St. Pius X were alive, he would vaporize SSPX which has the nerve to use his name for their rebellion against his successors) would be for the pope to establish a date certain as a deadline for Fellay, de Mallerais, Williamson and any other SSPX cult leader (local, national or international) or adherent of SSPX to surrender unconditionally to papal authority on all questions together with abject apologies to John Paul II of blessed memory or be excommunicated anew and permanently and ring the curtain down on these pipsqueaks once and for all.
I also see no more reason to address the hallucinations of the SSPX apologists than to address Luther's theses or the or the works of the Bavarian Illuminati or the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." As a Roman Catholic in communion with the Holy See, I need only the advice of the Teaching Magisterium of the Church and I don't need a bunch of schismatics in the periodic and, given their rebellious mindset, inevitable habit of being excommunicated from time to time for their crimes against the Church to interpret the Teaching Magisterium for me. We leave the interpretation to the popes whom God gives us. We do not treat SSPX as some kind of authority which it is not and never will be. SSPX's impudent blatherings deserve to be ignored, not addressed by actual Catholics. Small wonder SSPX likes the secular media, a traditional enemy of Catholicism and Catholics. After all, the secular media takes the platoon of excommunicated schismatic Marcel and spreads its errors and evils.
Precisely!
Thank you, Black Elk
Intended my “thank you” to be for this post.
First and foremost, anti-Semitism should be entirely alien to any actual Catholic since, by definition, we worship Jesus Christ who is a Jew. Catholics ought not be schizophrenics.
I have no idea where the Judaeo-Masonic conspiracy theories come from other than from fever swamp minds. I have a Jewish friend in Connecticut who is also a Mason and has held many offices at the lodge level, including Worshipful Master (? if that is the equivalent of a Grand Knight or chief local council executive in the Knights of Columbus). He has been known to conspire against liberals and against Democrats but not because he is a Mason or even because he is a Jew but rather because he is a moral and wise fellow. He would also be the first to affirm that Jews were often not welcomed into many individual lodges although that seems to have receded with the passage of time.
In the Tridentine Missal (pre-Vatican II) of the Roman Catholic Church there is a reference to "perfidious Jews" in the Good Friday service. Properly understood, this is a reference to specific Jews, led by Annas and Caiaphas, who agitated with Pontius Pilate demanding that Christ be crucified. It was their behavior that was perfidious and not their ancestry or religious affiliation. While those individual sinners were busy demanding that Jesus Christ be executed by crucifixion, there were good and pious Jews all over Jerusalem praying to G-d and preparing for their Shabbas seder. Dismas (the Good Thief) was crucified next to Jesus and was promised that he would join Jesus in paradise that very day. This was not an endorsement of thievery as a way of life. Nor did anyone establish Annas and Caiaphas to speak for all or even most Jews in their own time much less in the ensuing 20 centuries. Yet, they pretentiously said: "Let His blood be upon us and our children!" That statement does not bind their children, their descendants nor certainly does it bind G-d.
As to anti-Semitism and Protestant Fundamentalist culture, I will leave it to Protestant fundamentalists to decide whether they would claim many Ku Klux Klan members as Protestant fundamentalists. It seems safe to say that few of them were Jews or Catholics since Jews and Catholics were secondary targets of the KKK. As with Annas and Caiphas, this is not an indictment of Protestant fundamentalists and you are right to observe that a love for Israel and Jews is strong among them. I would also contend that it is strong among many conservative Catholics as well.
There is an important distinction between fundamentalist Protestants and Catholics in that fundamentalist Protestants tend to hold to the standard of sola Scriptura, that the Scriptures are the sole source of religious truth. Catholics believe in Scripture but also in the Teaching Magisterium of 20 centuries of popes and thus have two sources of religious truth. Some Catholics here on FR use the term YOPIOS (Your Own Personal Interpretation of Scripture) to describe what we view as the Protestant methodology. We see Catholicism as guiding us in understanding Scripture. We Catholics might suggest that the SSPXers are guided by YOPIOT (Your Own Personal Interpretation of Tradition) by analogy. Catholics depend on the popes for guidance as to Scripture AND Tradition.
It does not much matter what those who are not Catholic think as to whether there should be women ordained as priests. They will not become priests of the Roman Catholic religion. In case that was not already obvious, John Paul II definitively ruled that women will never be ordained as priests and that they cannot receive Holy Orders, now or ever. Catholics accept papal rulings and teachings. As to dirty movies, they evidence and result from sin and a sin, like most sins, which is not the exclusive territory of any subgroup of humanity defined by faith or ancestry.
Anti-Semites discovered within the ranks of the New Right (the modern conservative movement: YAF, YRs, CRs, National Review, etc.) were systematically discouraged from participation or purged outright. The New Right had many Catholic conservatives and there was little dissent on this question.
It is wise to distinguish the self-proclaimed "traditionalists" who make a career of disrespecting popes and resisting the papacy itself from actual conservative or traditionalist Catholics. Like SSPX but to a slightly lesser degree, the Remnant crowd are eccentrics who are passionately in love with their own opinions and will resist the actual Church to the extent possible and necessary to prove their love of themselves and of their own opinions and of their own tastes. We Catholics don't take them seriously. Neither should you take them seriously.
First and foremost, anti-Semitism should be entirely alien to any actual Catholic since, by definition, we worship Jesus Christ who is a Jew. Catholics ought not be schizophrenics.
I have no idea where the Judaeo-Masonic conspiracy theories come from other than from fever swamp minds. I have a Jewish friend in Connecticut who is also a Mason and has held many offices at the lodge level, including Worshipful Master (? if that is the equivalent of a Grand Knight or chief local council executive in the Knights of Columbus). He has been known to conspire against liberals and against Democrats but not because he is a Mason or even because he is a Jew but rather because he is a moral and wise fellow. He would also be the first to affirm that Jews were often not welcomed into many individual lodges although that seems to have receded with the passage of time.
In the Tridentine Missal (pre-Vatican II) of the Roman Catholic Church there is a reference to "perfidious Jews" in the Good Friday service. Properly understood, this is a reference to specific Jews, led by Annas and Caiaphas, who agitated with Pontius Pilate demanding that Christ be crucified. It was their behavior that was perfidious and not their ancestry or religious affiliation. While those individual sinners were busy demanding that Jesus Christ be executed by crucifixion, there were good and pious Jews all over Jerusalem praying to G-d and preparing for their Shabbas seder. Dismas (the Good Thief) was crucified next to Jesus and was promised that he would join Jesus in paradise that very day. This was not an endorsement of thievery as a way of life. Nor did anyone establish Annas and Caiaphas to speak for all or even most Jews in their own time much less in the ensuing 20 centuries. Yet, they pretentiously said: "Let His blood be upon us and our children!" That statement does not bind their children, their descendants nor certainly does it bind G-d.
As to anti-Semitism and Protestant Fundamentalist culture, I will leave it to Protestant fundamentalists to decide whether they would claim many Ku Klux Klan members as Protestant fundamentalists. It seems safe to say that few of them were Jews or Catholics since Jews and Catholics were secondary targets of the KKK. As with Annas and Caiphas, this is not an indictment of Protestant fundamentalists and you are right to observe that a love for Israel and Jews is strong among them. I would also contend that it is strong among many conservative Catholics as well.
There is an important distinction between fundamentalist Protestants and Catholics in that fundamentalist Protestants tend to hold to the standard of sola Scriptura, that the Scriptures are the sole source of religious truth. Catholics believe in Scripture but also in the Teaching Magisterium of 20 centuries of popes and thus have two sources of religious truth. Some Catholics here on FR use the term YOPIOS (Your Own Personal Interpretation of Scripture) to describe what we view as the Protestant methodology. We see Catholicism as guiding us in understanding Scripture. We Catholics might suggest that the SSPXers are guided by YOPIOT (Your Own Personal Interpretation of Tradition) by analogy. Catholics depend on the popes for guidance as to Scripture AND Tradition.
It does not much matter what those who are not Catholic think as to whether there should be women ordained as priests. They will not become priests of the Roman Catholic religion. In case that was not already obvious, John Paul II definitively ruled that women will never be ordained as priests and that they cannot receive Holy Orders, now or ever. Catholics accept papal rulings and teachings. As to dirty movies, they evidence and result from sin and a sin, like most sins, which is not the exclusive territory of any subgroup of humanity defined by faith or ancestry.
Anti-Semites discovered within the ranks of the New Right (the modern conservative movement: YAF, YRs, CRs, National Review, etc.) were systematically discouraged from participation or purged outright. The New Right had many Catholic conservatives and there was little dissent on this question.
It is wise to distinguish the self-proclaimed "traditionalists" who make a career of disrespecting popes and resisting the papacy itself from actual conservative or traditionalist Catholics. Like SSPX but to a slightly lesser degree, the Remnant crowd are eccentrics who are passionately in love with their own opinions and will resist the actual Church to the extent possible and necessary to prove their love of themselves and of their own opinions and of their own tastes. We Catholics don't take them seriously. Neither should you take them seriously.
Thank you. See also #51.
I consider myself to be a traditional Roman Catholic, though not of the fringe SPXX type ‘Catholics’. My grandfather was a secular Jew, and I grew up with Jewish friends and attended college at the heavily Jewish NYU. I say this not as some sort of justification, but only to point out that I would be highly conscious of anti-Semitism in any Catholic group.
In 1964 I was a board member of NY Youth for Goldwater, there were about 29 members, two of them Jewish, one of them a Black Protestant Democrat, and the rest of them were Roman Catholics (in NY Conservatives were heavily Catholic, partially due to Bill Buckley and National Review). So I was in a position to hear anti-semitic positions among Conservative Catholics.
As someone well situated to hear anti-Semitism, if any, among Conservative Catholics, and motivated to recognize them if they occurred, I have never heard even a hint of the attitudes and positions you mentioned. More than that, I consider your statements on this matter, blaming all Conservatives for the wacked out positions of a few, to be a personal slur, evidence of ignorance or religious bigotry, and I demand an apology.
Excellent points, BlackElk, especially the paragraph about the involvement only of specific Jewish leaders in the events of Jesus’s condemnation.
“It is wise to distinguish the self-proclaimed “traditionalists” who make a career of disrespecting popes and resisting the papacy itself from actual conservative or traditionalist Catholics. Like SSPX but to a slightly lesser degree, the Remnant crowd are eccentrics who are passionately in love with their own opinions and will resist the actual Church to the extent possible and necessary to prove their love of themselves and of their own opinions and of their own tastes. We Catholics don’t take them seriously. Neither should you take them seriously.”
Excellent conclusion! ;-)
I agree. Everything he wrote was very good. ;-)
BlackElk is notable for consistently excellent verbiage.
Can’t debate in the arena of ideas? Can you defend any of the actions detailed on JPII?
The "Saint vetting process" that we have now began in the Middle Ages. Before that, Saints were popularly acclaimed.
St. Dismas - the Good Thief - most certainly is in Heaven with Jesus, as He had promised. If I recall correctly, he was celebrated in the Martyrology yesterday, March 25.
Much thanks for the info!
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