Posted on 01/25/2005 2:58:28 PM PST by csbyrnes84
Father Paul Sretenovic, a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey, who was ordained to the priesthood in 2002, has abandoned the Novus Ordo in order to embrace Catholic Tradition without compromise. Father Sretenovic (pronounced Stre-ten-o-vich) informed his ordinary, the Most Reverend John Myers, the Archbishop of Newark, of his decision in a letter mailed to his Excellency’s home address on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, Wednesday, December 28, 2004:
“Your Excellency: I am writing to inform you of my decision to leave the Archdiocese of Newark. It is a decision that is eighteen months in the making, and it has finally come to a head. This archdiocese, while retaining some very good priests, is, like every other diocese in the Catholic Church today, plagued by the heresy of modernism in many different forms. I recently attended a Monday afternoon of Reflection at Southmont with the Opus Dei priests and listened as one of them said that we are not looking to return to Christendom. To me, that said it all. It is not just about the Latin Mass. It is something much, much deeper, and it is the basis of my decision. Pope Pius XI in his encyclical, Quas Primas, said that Jesus Christ is not only the Lord of every individual, but also of every human society. The Syllabus of Errors of Blessed Pius IX, #77, in particular, exposes the error of separation of Church and State, a doctrine now upheld by the Vatican as the ideal, using both the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Liberty, which could very easily have been called the Declaration of Religious Liberty (reference to our Declaration of Independence intended), as well as individual decisions from the Vatican to accelerate such a separation in what were otherwise thoroughly Catholic countries, such as, among others, Colombia, 98% Catholic. The orientation of the Church is now very much in line with the principles of the French Revolution, namely liberty, fraternity, and equality. Hence, the mainstay catchwords from the Council—religious liberty, ecumenism, and collegiality. That is not a coincidence, and it is evil. The Liturgy is just one of the many lambs to be slaughtered along the way towards a Christian Democracy, which, to the dismay and shock of many in the Church, will lead directly to the worldwide takeover of Atheistic Communism, warned of indirectly by Our Lady of Fatima in 1917, and communicated by Sr. Lucia to the Catholic historian William Thomas Walsh in 1946. Russia has still not been consecrated, and she continues to spread her errors until one day, it will be too late. In the meantime, I choose to exercise my priesthood in the way intended by Almighty God, teaching sound doctrine and leading the flock by holiness of life, as St. Paul exhorted St. Timothy in his pastoral epistle.
“In the situation in which I am now, and basically in any Novus Ordo parish anywhere in the world, let alone this particular Archdiocese, I always have to watch my back and I always, at each and every Mass that I offer, have to compromise. Whether it is in the bad wording or bland prayers of the Sacramentary, or in the distribution of Communion in the hand, or in the virtually mandatory use of Extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, there is always something there to remind me, as the song goes, and it stops now. I pray to God and to Our Blessed Mother that you obtain the grace necessary to perceive the gravity of the present situation and to act accordingly. I include my email address below for further correspondence. I know this is a shock, but for me, even the FSSP would be a compromise. Haven’t we all done enough of that?! As people were looking East this Advent season, Our Lady was leading me to, go West. In Christ the King, Fr. Paul Branko Sretenovic.”
In an e-mail to this writer sent on January 9, 2005, Father Sretenovic explained the sequence of events after this point:
“To give you the backdrop of my correspondence with the Archbishop, he said that parts of what I wrote, without specifying, were ‘inaccurate’ and ‘unfair.’ I responded through the Vicar General for the time-being that what I wrote was not ‘inaccurate’ and ‘unfair.’ I then asked the question as to whether the Archbishop would say that Cardinal Ratzinger was either of the two, specifying the terms, when he wrote that through the Council, the Church had ‘come to terms with the principles of 1789.’ I left it at that and will write the Archbishop directly within the week.”
Father Sretenovic had determined quite clearly that he could no longer make any further compromises with a Mass that did not give God the full honor and glory that are His due and a pastoral approach to the problems of the world that was premised upon a rejection of a defined teaching of the Catholic Church, the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ, and an actual embrace of the errors of Modernity and Modernism.
Father Sretenovic did indeed head west, leaving Our Lady, Queen of Peace Church in Maywood, New Jersey, on Thursday, December 29, 2004, the Feast of Saint Thomas a Becket, to drive out to Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Garden Grove, California, joining Father Patrick J. Perez and Father Lawrence C. Smith in the offering of the Traditional Latin Mass and the totality of the Catholic Faith in all of its integrity to Catholics in one of the most liturgically revolutionary places in the whole Church, the Metropolitan Province of Los Angeles, California. Father Sretenovic distributed Holy Communion to the faithful at Our Lady Help of Christians on the Feast of the Holy Family on Sunday, January 9, 2005, saying, “I have never before felt like I did in my first Traditional giving of the Eucharist, or however you want to put it. It was awesome and I felt like a priest in a way that I haven't before. The formula is much better, not to mention the signing of the Cross, and the use of the paten for the Sacred Particles, AND the posture of the people with open mouths, heads tilted upwards like chicks eagerly welcoming their mother with the food that she is providing for them.” [He offered his first Traditional Latin Mass there on Sunday, January 16, 2005.]
Father Sretenovic, who was born on January 8, 1974, found his way to Our Lady Help of Christians within three months of meeting Father Perez at Father Nicholas Gruner’s Fatima conference in Glendale, California, at the end of September, 2004. Father Perez’s mother, Mrs. Margaret Perez, saw Father Sretenovic and told him that he had to meet her son, making sure that the two of them sat down for dinner after Father Perez’s talk at the conference. Father Sretenovic was impressed with Father Perez’s knowledge of the Faith and of the development of the Mass. Mr. John Vennari, the editor of Catholic Family News, also spoke to Father Sretenovic about the crisis in the Church and of the necessity of fleeing from the Novus Ordo structures. Seeds were being planted.
Father Sretenovic contacted this writer in early December of 2004, and a luncheon meeting was arranged in Wayne, New Jersey, following a First Friday Mass at Our Lady of Fatima Chapel in Pequannock, New Jersey, on December 3, 2004. This writer and his wife, to put it charitably, pummeled Father Sretenovic, asking him bluntly as to how long he could continue to give out Communion in the hand and continue to offer a Mass that less fully communicates the truths of the Catholic Faith and does not render God the full honor and glory that are His due. Father Sretenovic listened, particularly to Mrs. Droleskey’s heartfelt plea to give Our Lord and His flock unfettered access to the fullness of the Catholic Faith. Father Sretenovic promised to contact Fathers Perez and Smith. He also wrote fairly immediately to Father Stephen P. Zigrang, whose association with the Society of Saint Pius X prompted the soon-to-be promoted Archbishop of Galveston-Houston, the Most Reverend Joseph Fiorenza, a protégé of the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, to suspend him for an association with a “schismatic” group that, among other things, denied the “enduring validity of the Old Covenant God made with the people of Israel.”
Father Sretenovic carefully weighed his options, keeping in close contact with Father Lawrence C. Smith, who left the Diocese of Davenport, Iowa, on September 8, 2003. Father Sretenovic also had contact with priests in the Society of Saint Pius X, determining ultimately that it would be best for him to be with Fathers Perez and Smith in California. Father was most intent on placing himself in a situation where the gaps in his preparation for priestly ordination could be closed and he could concentrate on his own personal sanctification while offering Catholics the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. He arrived at his decision after a great deal of reflection and a bit of indecision, coming to the conclusion in the final analysis that he needed to make a clean break from the diocesan structure sooner rather than later, understanding that the faithful have a right in perpetuity to the Traditional Latin Mass, which can never be subject justly to any limitations or conditions by any bishop, including the Pope himself. Father Smith was most instrumental in helping Father Sretenovic to come to this decision, saying that “it was his call that put me over the edge. Within 20 minutes after my conversation with him, I was writing my letter” to Archbishop Myers.
Father Sretenovic was not heedless of the fact that his own ordinary, Archbishop Myers, though not a traditionalist himself, has been sympathetic to priests desirous of offering the Traditional Latin Mass. Father Sretenovic also understood, however, that the embrace of Tradition, while it starts with the Mass, involves quite fundamentally an embrace of the totality of the Catholic Faith without any taint of corruption by the novelties and errors of the past forty to forty-seven years. Father Sretenovic also knows that ordinaries come and go, a point demonstrated quite graphically when Bishop John Myers of Peoria, Illinois, was elevated to the archbishopric of Newark. Although Bishop Myers had granted permission to Father Michael Driscoll, the pastor of Saint Mary’s Church in Rock Island, Illinois, to offer the Traditional Latin Mass on a daily basis, that permission was revoked by Myers’s successor, Bishop Michael Jenky, who demoted Father Driscoll to the post of an assistant hospital chaplain at Saint Francis Hospital in Peoria. Father Sretenovic, understanding, as eight cardinals noted in a finding sent to Pope John Paul II in 1986, the binding nature of the Traditional Latin Mass can never be abrogated, did not want to subject himself to the vagaries of episcopal arbitrariness. He realized that he needed the stability offered by the Traditional Latin Mass for his own sanctification–and that the people have the absolute right to safe harbor found therein.
The story of Father Paul Sretenovic continues, therefore, a remarkable display of courage on the part of diocesan priests who have been willing to forsake all of their canonical safety and human respect in order to embrace Tradition without compromise. Men such as Fathers Sretenovic and Zigrang and Smith were ordained after the implementation of the liturgical revolution had begun. Father Zigrang was ordained in 1977. Father Smith was ordained in 1997. Father Sretenovic was ordained in 2002. Although there have been priests (such as Father Stephen Somerville) who were ordained in the Traditional rite and have returned thereto, the embrace of Tradition by priests who are relatively young (in the case of Father Zigrang) or very young (in the case of Fathers Smith and Sretenovic) is particularly galling to the liturgical revolutionaries, men and women who brook no opposition and who protest with great vehemence the glories of the “liturgical renewal.” How can it be, they ask themselves, that men who have been immersed in their handiwork all of their lives can become counter-revolutionaries and reject all of their “enlightened” schemes and programs?
The revolutionaries can protest all they want. The plain fact of the matter is that there are a number of priests across the nation who may be following the examples of Fathers Zigrang, Smith and Sretenovic. More than a handful of priests are on the fence as this is being written. Some are waiting for Rome to come to their “rescue” by means of an Apostolic Administration. Some are afraid of what will happen to their sheep should they simply leave their diocesan assignments. Others are simply afraid to pray for the graces to muster up the courage to stop participating in sacrileges such as the distribution of Communion in the hand. From the vantage point of one who travels great distances across the nation to get his family to the daily offering of the Traditional Latin Mass, it is time for our shepherds to give us our due, the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, understanding that Our Lady will take care of their temporal needs and that the rectitude of their actions will be understood fully only on the Last Day at the General Judgment of the Living and the Dead.
Indeed, the witness given by Fathers Zigrang, Smith and Sretenovic, as well as the witness given by the bishops and the priests of the Society of Saint Pius X, to the necessity of proclaiming the fullness of the Catholic Faith without compromise and without any dilution serves as an inspiration to the sheep who are seeking safety and security in the midst of doctrinal and liturgical instability and turmoil within the diocesan structures. They are willing to be calumniated, even by fellow traditionalists who have anointed themselves to be in the august and pristine "mainstream," in order to bear a witness to the authentic Tradition of the Church without any compromise at all. No loss of human respect and no amount of name-calling or sloganeering will ever deter them from giving their sheep the fullness of the Catholic Faith.
At least some of the sheep will respond when their shepherds put themselves on the line to give them what is their due, namely, the Traditional Latin Mass. Hundreds upon hundreds of people, for example, have found their way to Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Garden Grove, California. Most of these people have never heard of The Remnant, Catholic Family News, or Christ or Chaos. They've never heard of Christ the King College and most of them probably think that GIRM Warfare has something to do with bacteriology. They're just Catholics who understand that the first law of the Church is the salvation of souls and that they do not have to sit idly by and be subjected to the rot of conciliar novelties in the context of what pretends to pass for the Church's liturgy and catechesis. These good souls are fed up with what is going on in their local dioceses and parishes and they simply want the fullness of the Catholic Faith to be made manifest to them during Holy Mass and in the life of their parish. The same is true of the fifteen families who have found their way from Saint Andrew's Church in Channelview, Texas, to Queen of Angels Church in Dickinson, Texas (and Saint Michael the Archangel Chapel in Spring, Texas), following after their inimitable pastor, Father Zigrang. The sheep want Christ and His truth to be made manifest to them without novelty or dilution. This is nothing other than one of their baptismal birthrights as Catholics.
Father Paul Sretenovic finds himself some 3,000 miles away from his parents, who are residents of New Jersey. He has gone this distance to serve sheep without compromise. He is in need of our prayers. More of his brother priests need to follow his example of humility and fidelity, to say nothing of his courage. As a son of Our Lady, Father Sretenovic has entrusted himself entirely to her Immaculate Heart. He knows that she will take good care of him as he acts in the person of her Divine Son as a sacerdos. Father Sretenovic delivered his first sermon at Our Lady Help of Christians on Sunday, January 16, 2004, stating that he had come to realize that the devil has essentially used the hierarchy of the Church to communicate the belief that one can eat from all of the trees in the "garden" today (Judaism, Islam, the New Age Movement, Wicca, Modernism) except the tree of Tradition, from which it is forbidden to eat. He said that the Novus Ordo Missae breeds lukewarmness, crediting Father Paul Kramer’s The Devil’s Final Battle and this writer’s G.I.R.M. Warfare with helping him to see how he was stuck in this lukewarmness himself. His sermon resonated with the 700 parishioners in attendance at the three Masses offered at Our Lady Help of Christians.
Our Lady Help of Christians, pray for Father Sretenovic. Pray for all traditionally-minded priests to follow his example of pure love for Tradition without fear of the canonical and/or temporal consequences. Pray for us sheep, that we might make the sacrifices necessary to help our shepherds feed us with the pure milk of Tradition.
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Thank you very much for posting the link to that piece written by Solange Hertz. It is a hard thing for many Catholic Americans to read........but read it they should, with an open mind.
Perhaps some might ingest some genuinely Catholic thought - and learn something.
An Adoreman who tells everyone who'll listen, they're conservative. And in many ways, they are orthodox Catholics. But in important ways, they will embrace 'reform' whatever the damage to souls. They attempt a middle ground, and fall under the dark lord's spell, if you remember Tolkein.
Well, it was a Protestant epithet against the 'Romanists', the Papistry, etc. You may have read. But there's some truth to it. Again, Bede stands out for the LACK of other historical records over a period of a few centuries. It was not 'dark' everywhere. But a lot of Europe was under assault.
SSPX is a genuine schism
Maybe, maybe not. But most certainly the term applies to the Greek Orthodox. Again, the irony is that you consider schism a BAD THING until JP II starts talking about outreach to the Greek, even to the point of suggesting there are no more eastern Catholics. So you hold two contrary views vehemently in mind at once. The supposed SSPX 'schism' - baaad - to paraphrase the first Bush Pres. And the Greek schism good or beneficial or of no account at all.
anti-papal rebels
But that describes the Greek, and maybe not a few 'catholic' bishops, like the former Quinn who went around saying - the Pope has too much power. But that basically is the Greek complaint, as well. You want to have it both ways, and every way. And a Catholic just can't do that.
I haven't heard that business cliche in fifteen years. Is it just getting around to your neck of the woods?
The talking heads on CNN oppose the war in Iraq. They think, like you, that we can talk our way past terrorism.
George W. Bush understands one thing well: terrorists have to be eliminated, wherever they are.
AS I said............get a box cutter!
"Slavonic ... is also used in the Roman Rite along the eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea in Dalmatia and in the lower part of Croatia among the 100,000 Catholics there"
You are right. Rosary should have said 99.9+ % of the Roman Rite.
Evidently,many people just don't get it.But when the truth of that statement starts to glimmer through the fog,then so much that has been hidden and consequently disparaged,becomes crystal clear and remarkable in its truth.
The Church espouses freedom so that man can choose God. As Christ said: "The Truth will set you free". But how could one find the truth if they weren't free to pursue it? Put in that context Opus Dei could say or do nothing other than what they do say and do.
His activities during the meetings of the Council in Rome,his classes at the Greg were as modernist and "progressive" as the most slavish of the minions of the left and he was delighted with Paul VI.
Knowing this I still gave my sons,sister and brother copies of "The Keys " as well as "Windswept House" because much of what he talked about reflected what was going on. But his about face without ever explaining that he had undergone a total about face was always very troubling to me. I always told those to whom I gave copies of his books to take them with a grain of salt. I offer the same caution to you three.
I should add that you are certifiably paranoid. Is that one of your "certifications?"
To: thor76; sempertrad; gerard
"Malachi Martin was instrumental in developing and pushing through Nostra Aetate."
Fr. Martin explains very clearly that what he worked on regarding ecumenism was not what came out in the documents or their implementation as early as 1965 he was predicting a disaster.
In "Three Popes.." written in 1972, he explains very succinctly that Bea followed John XXIII's lead and tried to fulfill his duties to the best of his abilities. Bea was also hesitant about the direction that John was going but as a Jesuit, he would put his trust in him. He said Bea died very disillusioned after Council and used by the liberals that exerted so much influence. He describes the modernist rot that was developing during the time of Pius XII which lead to the disaster of the Council (which he knew was a disaster before then) No one denies this, even Archibishop LeFebvre knew that the Church organization was "out of gas" in many ways so to speak.
You have to be extremely careful when saying that Fr. Martin's early writings or positions were modernist. They were not. I had a conversation with Gerry Matatics, who said he asked Fr. Martin about when he did an about face and turned his back on liberalism. Matatics said that Fr. Martin replied,"I was never a liberal."
This is borne out when you read his earliest writings. His Jesuit intellectualism comes through and his use of language is the same as those of Rahner or Ratzinger etc. but his conclusions are always orthodox. He never supported anything like evolution or liberation theology or the diminution o f papal primacy and consistently pointed out its logical fallacies. You have to remember the audience that he was writing to. His early writings were pointed towards correcting the erroneous thinking of liberal academics.
As far as his personal opinions of John XXIII and Paul VI go, he can still like or even love them on a personal level and disagree with them. To hear him late in life speak of John XXIII, you can still hear the lament in his voice on his taped interviews, "John was a liberal...and his piety was not sufficient to give him perception." Of Paul VI the last paragraph of "Three Popes..." is all about the disaster that he had to preside over and his depression and deathwish for himself. He would often talk about PaulVI's personality, his sense of humor, his intellect and his malfeasance in high office.
Martin was consistent in his message. His style of delivery changed over the years because he found himself having to appeal to Popes, clergy and laity at differing times.
As much as Hoffman, Kaiser and EWTN want to deny Martin his place, the evidence of Martin's own words prove his orthodoxy.
I have information,given to me directly,by a former seminarian,who took classes from Martin in Rome that argues against his orthodoxy. He thought Martin brilliant and fascinating but recognized the ideas or theology Martin espoused,at that time,was far from Catholic. He left before ordination.
Another friend,who was a Jesuit for at least five years before leaving in disgust and dismay,said that at the time Martin left the Jesuits,he was a known womanizer.
Again,I find much of what Martin says of value but always know there can be "Angle's Unaware" as well as "Devil's in Disguise".
I graduated a Jesuit Prep School of uncommon conservatism in all respects so long ago that the Jebbies were still Catholic. I don't think I need to be told where the term "Dark Ages" originated. Back in their Catholic and Counterreformationist days, the Jebbies were very clear on that and most other things.
The Jesuits of that school told us at the outset that Sister Cunnigundus bck at our grammar schools may well have believed or said something differing from what our Jesuits taught. If so, dear Sister Cunnigundus undoubtedly meant well but she was certainly wrong. In our day, that would go triple for the schismatic Marcellian self-appointed anti-Catholic defiance carnival which schism would be much more wrong than the innocent errors of saintly old Sister Cunnigundus. We had to deal with the false fantasies of Leonard Feeney, S.J., reviled by his fellow Jesuits as well as by our very conservative pastors. Like Marcel, Feeney imagined that he knew better than the Church. Like Marcel, he was wrong (axiomatic really!). Like Marcel, he was disciplined, however much his current sycophants may deny it. Unlike Marcel, Feeney repented and was restored.
SSPX is a genuine schism so long as the pope says it is. He makes those calls not the poisonous vipers of that schism. A difference between SSPX and Eastern Orthodoxy requiring different treatment is that the ancient claims of of Eastern Orthodoxy as to denial of papal authority over them are advanced respectfully and in civilized tones. The SSPX is engaged in a non-stop vitriolic attack upon the person and office of John Paul II (because he alne excommunicated their heroes and declared their movement a schism), beginning with the defiant, revolutionary and absolutely illicit consecration of their excommunicated bishops by excommunicated Marcel as the patron whatever of offended id.
SSPX justifies itself by utter dishonesty. The Eastern Orthodox have earned a respectful relationship with Catholics. SSPX has earned the contempt of any actual Catholic, loyal to the papacy and to the Vatican and to the genuine traditions of the Church. SSPX (and Droleskey, et al.) need to remember that the SSPX permanent ongoing rancid revolution against legitimate Roman ecclesiastical authority is no exercise in either Catholic dogma or in Catholic tradition or in Catholic practice.
Your post contains so much factual error as to astound. Worse yet, you probably believe that your facts are sound. The Eastern Rites of the Roman Catholic Church remain as ever in force and certainly there are many Eastern Rite Catholics. Ask Nyer. Ask Sandyeggo.
If you are offended by the Eastern Orthodox schism, you ought to, on your standards, be just as offended by the SSPX schism (not the "supposed" schism). Are you prepared to state that you do NOT adhere to SSPX or are you too schismatic in that group? In case you might ask, I do NOT adhere to that vile Marcellian schism, just in case anyone wondered.
As to Quinn, Belgian busybody Geoffrey Cardinal Daneels, the late and unlamented Bernardin, the spaghetti-spined Cardinal McCarrick, Lavender Rembert, Fiorenza, Mahoney, Flynn, and most of the Jadot bishops and their ilk, there is nothing wrong with them that could not have been promptly cured by Tomas de Torquemada, O.P., and his holy and diligent colleagues.
We are seeing a return to Catholicism at long last in many recent appointments of the American bishops (chosen by the Pope and not by impudent disobedient bishops rebelling against the Church) in many dioceses lately, particularly recent appointments in the upper Midwest down to St. Louis, in Texas, Arizona, the Northeast and even in California.
Wilton Gregory has quite unfortunately been promoted to Atlanta but that means Belleville in Illinois may get a Catholic bishop. Imesch of Joliet (Illinois's worst excuse for a bishop since Bernardin went to his just desserts) has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. Wisconsin is no longer characterized by the likes of Lavender Rembert and may need only one more Catholic bishop to be appointed (Green Bay?). Missouri, having had Justin Cardinal Rigali and now Raymond Burke as St. Louis archbishops, is shaping up. In Texas, Fort Worth's Delaney will soon be gone (prostate cancer and old age); Galveston-Houston has been raised to an archdiocese in anticipation of the accession of the Catholic DiNardo (from Sioux City, Iowa) to replace his anti-Catholic predecessor and San Antonio is already held by an actual Catholic. In the East, Rigali has Philadelphia (in recent times an archdiocese under Krol and Bevilacqua which has been exceptionally Catholic and will continue to be under Rigali), Myers has Newark, most New Jersey diocese have sound bishops and far sounder than their predecessors. Brooklyn has a sound bishop instead of former Boston coverup artist Daily or his raving liberal predecessor Francis Mugavero. Egan is not O'Connor but he has not that many years left. Anyone other than a Fellay would have a shot at improving on Bernard Law and Sean O'Malley certainly promises to be a big improvement. Denver has Chaput. There are actual Catholic bishops in Sacramento and in Oakland. Whoever is the present bishop of Palm Beach (?) in Florida has not had to resign for disreputable reasons like two of the raving lavender queen leftist bishops who preceded Sean O'Malley there. There is the South dakota Bishop, a Capuchin, who told Daschle to stop calling himself a Catholic if he was going to facilitate abortion as he had done. There is the newly minted Colorado Springs Bishop Sheridan who told Kerry not to try to receive communion in Colorado Springs. Nebraska: Fabian Bruskewitz and Eldon Curtiss cannot be bested as the only ordinaries in that state.
The new Phoenix, Arizona bishop, Thomas Olmsted, is deserving of a separate paragraph of his own. He has to clean a diocesan stable fouled for decades by his scandalous predecessor O'Brien who, having plea-bargained away his own criminal liability for covering the homosexual pederasty of some of his flaming leftist priests by trading diocesan personnel files and confidentiality to save his own skin only to fall to another sort of scandal in which he apparently killed a homeless man while driving a motor vehicle and then fled the scene (wonder why???) to avoid prosecution. The Tridentine Mass has finally been granted again in Phoenix and pro-life activity is taken seriously and is actively promoted by Bishop Olmsted.
Does the pipsqueak schism of dead Marcel celebrate the foregoing progress???? Hell, no! They behave as ever like Ted the Swimmer attacking the United States. The RCC can do no right just like the US and the enemies of the US can do no wrong just like Osama bin BoomBoom.
I am not trying to have it both ways (that is just the $64 version of the old liberal standby of calling conservatives hypocrites as a reflex action). I am having it the Catholic way. As Legionaries of Christ proclaim: Not one bit more nor one bit less Catholic than the pope. Any Catholic can do that and this Catholic and every other actual Catholic does. That leaves out Marcel's schizzies and Fellay's/Williamson's pathetic platoons.
Arguments rooted in a non-existent moral equivalency (You can't punish me when you did not punish Johnny!!!) are not Catholic arguments. See the parable of the workers and the vineyard.
If we ever do have monarchy here, we could do a lot worse than to have B-Chan wear the crown. Magnificent!
So you are saying that the words out of the mouth and in the writings of the man you are accusing are not sufficient to prove his orthodoxy but the rumors from an unnamed former seminarian of unknown orthodoxy who would've taken a class in Rome in the late 1950's are enough to dispel that?
What class was it that Martin was teaching that your friend attended? Semitic Languages? Oriental Philosophy?
Nonsense.
I would put more faith in the idea that your friend didn't understand what he was hearing and didn't bother to find out. Fr. Martin often presented an erroneus case very convincingly before he would dismantle it. This showed that he understood where Rahner, DeChardin and Kung stood and that he could find the fatal flaw in their thinking. That was his teaching style. He shows that same characteristic whether discussing Chesterton, JPII, Kung, Ratzinger, Rahner, Tyrell, Chenu, Darwin, Jung, Confucious, Mohammed, Paul VI, Pius XII and also the average person on the street to the world's biggest players in politics and economics.
You're other former Jesuit friend doesn't seem to have anything but rumor to support him either.
You know, John Paul II has been accused of fathering a child in Poland when he was a priest. Without any evidence, names, testimony or proof of any kind. I'll assume that the orthodoxy and or heterodoxy of both men is best presented by their own words and known actions.
I also don't believe that Fr. Martin was an Israeli agent, Soviet spy or any of the other trial balloon calumnies thrown against him. You read a book like Kaiser's "clerical error" and after his silly descriptions that are clownish in their characterization of Fr.Martin you find Kaiser's support of the married priesthood and contraception and the whole litany of issues that Fr. Martin protested against publicly.
Yours is not an example of "thinking outside the box" but rather an example of emoting in defiance of reality. A flexible imagination is one thing but it must remain rooted in reality. Intellectual flexibility without a firm root is intellectual anarchy and true chaos.
The US is a very poor example of an empire. Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Midway, and temporary control of the Phillipines followed by total sovereignty and brief occupation of Cuba followed by all too total sovereignty do NOT an empire make. If you ask the economic conservatives and libertarians on FR, I think they will assure you that the US may be many things but doctrinaire capitalist is not one of them. As Churchill said: Democracy is the second worst form of government. It is second to all the other kinds. (Not perfectly true but why spoil a good story?).
I sometimes agree with you and often disagree with you and find you generally worth reading in any event whether I agree or not. I refrain from public disagreement with you generally rather than distract you from your many worthwhile efforts.
However, to equate Marxism-Leninism-Socialism-Gramscianism (that you know about Gramsci marks you as worthy of attention since it is his legacy which is our chief enemy in matters politic) with Americanism-Capitalism-Imperialism is not worthy of your general quality of thought and argument. You really ought not to pursue arguments of such a sort.
There is nothing wrong with waving the American flag. It has earned the right to be waved. I have used my little box cutter as frequently as necessary.
Stephen Decatur: My country: In her intercourse with other nations may she always be right, but my country, right or wrong!
We are not "citizens of the world." We leave that despicable status to others who sipped cappucino or brandy on the West Bank or at Berserkely, cuddling themselves in their falsely imagined "moral superiority," (as B-Chan so eloquently put it: with their moral hymens intact) while far better men and women died at the hands of civilization's enemies.
Great to hear such an inherently sensible opinion. I'm small-r republican--and yet I agree with you about this troubling equation between democracy and freedom. Iraq might have done better with a king instead of a democracy, but too many Americans have a visceral reaction to monarchy. I understand that reaction--shared it at one time--but I think it is a very (dare I say) jingoistic attitude to think that our form of government is the best for everyone else. The Reductions in Paraguay and the early Christians even found a way to make some aspects of socialism work.
Any way you slice it, government is still sinful men leading sinful men. :)
the term "Dark Ages" originated
With Protestants. It was intended as an insult - fy upon thee, etc. But there's some truth to it. Again, yet again, I repeat myself, and remind you that I pointed out that Bede stands alone, in that era, because Bede's writings survive, uniquely, from that era and that place. But in other places, at that time, things weren't so 'dark'. Nevertheless, in many places, Christendom was under attack for centuries from various armed adversaries.
Feeney repented and was restored.
And I thought the complaint with present-day Feeneyites was that they had not apologised for their views.
vitriolic attack upon the person and office of John Paul II
That comes from the fathers and Doctors, the councils and Saints, the Apostles and Our Lord, Himself. Either their words in defending and spreading Our Lord's Catholic orthodoxy were right, or contrary sentiments since the mid-60s must prevail. Consider it a war between two churches, one Catholic, one neo-Protestant and 'reformist'. Surely you've heard others describe the present issue in just this way. It doesn't demand some sort of personal attack, at you assume, on the person of JP II. In fact, those critical of His Holiness are likely the very first to pray for him and desire his holy correction. Any Catholic would regret the loss of even one soul, yours, mine, and particularly that of the Pontiff, himself. But also remember that not every Pope is automatically a Saint.
If you are offended by the Eastern Orthodox schism
It was an attack on the papacy, essentially the same complaint as the former bishop Quinn - the Pope has too much power. All Catholics, all subsequent councils, all Popes without mincing words, were offended by the Great Schism and the pride of the Greek. What I suggest to you, on the other hand, was that you in fact do seem to consider schism - baaaad - to paraphrase the elder Pres. Bush. But then you vehemently hold two contrary views in mind, simultaneously, because this Pope seems to have no problem with the Greek, or with their schism, even to the point that some see his institutional church refusing to even acknowledge the existence of the eastern Catholic, those who at least historically turned their back on schism, and chose the right path.
I am not trying to have it both ways
You are simply because you would defend the opinion of JP II, who is at similar odds with himself over this. So if he has this problem, then you assume the same problem in defending him just so.
You SSPX people engage in unending assaults upon the Roman Catholic Church and upon the person and office of Pope John Paul II and then whiiiiiiine about people disagreeing with you by way of defending Church and pope. The papal stole and style of authority does not rest easily on the shoulders of Marcellian rebels and you do not get to define yourselves without response by those who know better.
BTW, I, at least, have NEVER, even in a single instance asked that ANYONE be banned on this forum. I suspect that is true of ninenot as well but he can speak for himself. I also have never asked that any thread be taken off Breaking News or any other forum herein to the Smoky Backroom or anywhere else. I have occasionally and quite publicly suggested that, this being a CONSERVATIVE forum, abused with regularity by the SSPXers to advertise their schism against Catholicism to actual Catholics inadequately catechized to resist schism, these threads do not contribute to the unity of the CONSERVATIVE movement and that the moderators consider putting an end to what has proven a divisive experiment in religion wars infecting the consciousness of very religious people of varying religious belief who ought to be cooperating politically. That suggestion has not borne fruit. So be it.
That the schismatic advertising campaign in the form of pope-bashing and Church bashing continues unabated does not mean that such behavior by those pushing the schism deserves respect. It deserves refutation and opposition and it will have it. If anyone goes running to mommy it will be you or your colleagues.
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