Posted on 04/07/2005 2:16:59 PM PDT by lizol
St. Peter's in Chains
By George Neumayr
Published 4/7/2005 12:09:23 AM
As secularization picked up speed in the 18th and 19th century and went into overdrive in the 20th, modern liberals militated to secularize and control everything, including the Catholic Church, which they regarded as the only cultural obstacle left to surmount. Enlightenment dilettante Denis Diderot spoke of strangling the last priest with "the guts of the last king."
The Church had smelled a rat before the French Revolution. Pope Pius VI warned that the misnamed "Enlightenment" would destroy Europe's God-centered culture, decimate its moral foundations, and turn government into a pitiless impostor god. For daring to see that the "Rights of Man" would mean eradicating real rights in the name of fake ones, and warning his clergy of the coming culture of death -- "Beware of lending your ears to the treacherous speech of the philosophy of this age which leads to death" -- Pope Pius VI was stripped of his liberty by Europe's new forces of "liberty, equality, and fraternity." He ended up dying in Valence under French arrest. The French later arrested Pope Pius VII. Napoleon, the Enlightenment's favorite strongman, seized papal territories in 1809 and had Pius VII imprisoned in Fontainebleau until 1814.
What's the point? What does any of this have to do with the death of Pope John Paul II and the liberal elite's reaction to it? A lot, actually. The Church remains the single most potent obstacle to the enlightened pretensions of modern liberalism, and the revolutionary children of Diderot still seek to control the papacy, evident in their envy masquerading as admiration and their angling disguised as advice to a "troubled Church."
Since they can't get away with imprisoning popes anymore -- though a group of Dutch liberals did try to prosecute Pope John Paul II, declaring him a criminal for having violated a "hate crimes" code (he had simply reiterated the Church's teaching that homosexual behavior is sinful) -- they are reduced to controlling popes through media propaganda and pressure, which at the moment means mau-mauing timid or heretical churchmen into naming a liberal one. On the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times and other organs of predictable anti-Catholic bias has come a blast of unsolicited advice to a leaderless Church.
Why would people who hate the Church pose as reformers who know what's best for it? Why would they care so passionately about the direction of a religion to which they don't belong? For the same reason the French philosophes and revolutionaries monitored and pressured the Church: it is a force that they must either neutralize or hijack in order to achieve their designs for the world. Look at the immense, obsessional energy that the left spends on trying to pressure the Church into green-lighting their favorite sexual sins. Why do they care so much about what the Church teaches? The reason is that they know that if they could just get the Catholic Church's imprimatur on the Sexual Revolution it would spread everywhere. A liberal Pope, as far as they are concerned, would be even better than a liberal Chief Justice on the Supreme Court.
Modern liberalism is an acid that burns through everything it touches. The Church has shriveled in proportion to its exposure to it. Now those who have long sought its death present themselves, carrying more of this acid, as its healer, and even, as Thomas Cahill wrote in the New York Times, finger Pope John Paul II, who resisted it, as the Church's enemy. "He may, in time to come, be credited with destroying his church," writes Cahill, who blames the Pope for "intellectual incompetents" and "mindless sycophants" in the episcopate. "The situation is dire. Anyone can walk into a Catholic church on a Sunday and see pews, once filled to bursting, now sparsely populated with gray heads." He then proposes a "solution," which amounts to trading the teachings of Jesus Christ for modern liberalism.
This Op-Ed is worth remembering when the liberals, both outside and inside the Church, begin their march for "reforms" on the grave of Pope John Paul II. The roses that they lay on it have many thorns.
Catholic ping!
Add me to the Catholic ping list pls..
Excellent summary of the state of the transition Church. Its fate in in God's hands, and I see perilous days ahead.
Wow! Spot-on.
Can anybody explain why the US did not have diplomatic relation with Vatican for so many years until Reagan time I guess?
So very true. We must pray for the Church to get a leader that will steer her on a true course.
Eventually. Just have to figure which words Google likes:
From 1985:
When the U.S. Senate approved the appointment of William A. Wilson as the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See at the end of 1983, most people expected the debate over diplomatic relations with the Vatican to fade away. Not so. The fight has merely moved from the executive and legislative branches of government to the judiciary.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., the National Association of Evangelicals, the National Association of [Catholic] Laity and a number of other organizations filed suit in the Federal District Court of Philadelphia alleging that diplomatic relations with the Holy See violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment and the liberty and equal protection clauses of the Fifth Amendment.
...the first representative (a consul) to the Holy See was appointed by George Washington in 1797. This consular office was upgraded to a legation by President Polk in 1848, and four different ministers, all confirmed by the Senate, served until 1867. From the time of the absorption of the Papal States by Italy until the appointment of Myron Taylor as President Roosevelt's special envoy in 1939, there was no U.S. representative to the Holy See. Mr. Taylor held office until 1950, and Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan all appointed special envoys. The Justice Department argues that there is no substantive or constitutional difference between the appointment of Mr. Wilson as ambassador and the earlier appointments.
http://americamagazine.org/reese/america/a-wilson.htm
Thanks for the ping, Pyro.
Last Sunday I had a terrible day. I went to Mass at a nearby Church (not my Parish) because I'm without a vehicle for a couple of weeks. I left that Mass so dispirited, and I was shocked even at my own visceral and agitated reaction to it. I won't go into the boring details, just suffice it to say that it was an illustrative case in point for what Mr. Neumayr is getting at here.
But, I went to Mass at my regular Parish yesterday, and my Priest began his homily with a little history lesson about Pope Alexander. You may already know this, so pardon the repetition if that is so, but he reminded the Parishoners that the Church has seen many a dark day, had many Popes who were an odd mixture of Sinner and Saint.
He told of the death of Pope Alexander in the year 1503, when the Cardinals who were carrying his casket, placed it on the ground, drew their swords and began fighting one another.
He drew the homily to a close by reminding us that it is impossible for a liberal to occupy the Chair of St. Peter, and that the Holy Spirit will guide and direct the Church and us, if we're faithful.
Yesterday's Mass more than made up for that travesty of a mass that I endured on Sunday.
Oh I'm going to have to remember that one! (although I might remove the "modern" qualifier). Mine has always been that liberalism is a virus that always kills it's host.
Wise words. He was right on.
Ping!
Good history, solid conclusions, as usual w/Neumayr.
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