I was acquainted personally with Gerry Matatics when he was still Catholic and before he was seduced by the old Feeneyite schism of Leonard Feeney, SJ, who reconciled with the Church and confessed that he had been in error before his death. St. Benedict Center is a surviving tumor of the Feeneyite schism with many eccentric views. Matatics was a very fine young man with an impressively large family who found his way to Catholicism through Scriptural study as a Presbyterian minister. IIRC, it was sacramental theology that particularly convinced him.
He had a very bad experience with a group called Catholic Answers, which, according to Gerry, induced him to abandon employment in Pennsylvania, sell his home and move to California only to have the promised job (for which he was magnificently qualified) fall through. It was not long before Jerry found himself in the hands of "St. Benedict Center."
The surname Sungenis seems familiar and I think is associated with Michael Voorhis or the Remnant or some other near schismatic website. Any or all of these people may exhibit some degree of anti-semitism as I do not. Some people who claim to be Catholic may rape or rob or murder but that does not make rape or robbery or murder Catholic any more han anti-semitism does.
The definitive conservative Catholic response to the heresy of modernism is the combination of two documents published in 1907 by Pope St. Pius X (not to be confused with the schism that takes his name in vain). Those documents are a syllabus of errors called Lamentabile Sane and an accompanying encyclical published one month later called Pascendi Domenici Gregis (on the heresies of the modernists).
IIRC, nothing in those documents attempts to blame Jews for modernism or anything else. The blame was laid on two priests: George Tyrrell, an English Jesuit, whom Pius excommunicated and Alfred Loisy, a French priest likewise.
Pope St. Pius X's immediate predecessor Pope Leo XIII of blessed memory, wrote an encyclical against the Freemasons but again this was not antisemitic. AND, in the USA, at least, Jews were segregated out of membership in regular Masonic lodges until relatively recent times (perhaps fifty years ago although I am not sure). Jews admitted to that order were confined to "Metropolitan" lodges only as blacks were confined to "Prince Hall" lodges only.
As explained by Catholicculture.org , Tradition in Action makes the schism of SSPX seem like a walk in the park.
Many of the sites you reference are not very Catholic whatever THEY may imagine and may well be refuges of anti-semites. That someone CLAIMS to be Catholic does not make it so. Simultaneously, there is evidence of some (not at all inevitable) anti-semitism on the "Catholic" left. See responses to US-Israeli relations on National "Catholic" (Fishwrapper) Reporter.
That publication was ordered nearly fifty years ago by the Archbishop of Kansas City, Kansas, to cease and desist using the name "Catholic" as part of its name and, persistent dissenters that they are, they just keep on calling themselves "Catholic" while publishing the likes of the late Richard McBrien, the notorious Archbishop Rembert Weakland whose successors have him under virtual house arrest for his behavior towards seminarians, Jamie Manson (Yale Divinity School educated practicing lesbian "Catholic" columnist), and a raft of other masters of dissent, many of whom are fruits, nuts and vegetables.
Belief in the inerrancy of Scripture is contained in those documents of Pope St. Pius X. While I recognize that many Protestants are impressively dedicated to the study and reading of Scripture, I am hardly going to grant them a monopoly on either.
Sola Scriptura is another matter entirely. Since the Reformation cut Reformed Christians off from any submission to papal authority, it makes sense that the Reformed would come to depend on Scripture alone as their source of authority. It is, after all, the inerrant word of God.
That does not mean that there will not be disagreements as to the meaning of specific passages of Scripture among Catholics, among the Reformed or between Catholics and many who are Reformed. That's where the papacy sometimes comes in handy, when acting as an umpire consistent with the Deposit of the Faith or the Teaching Magisterium. During some papacies like Bergoglio's, we are made to feel like orphans but that is temporary.
As to evolution, if someone wants to believe (as they imagine all "educated" people believe) that he or she is descended from apes, perhaps that is proof that such a person may be. You and I are not because we know better. On such matters, I feel little compunction to correct others. The world need not have as its population only people who agree on everything with me. That would be a rather boring world.
Too many accusations of anti-semitism have been made against the Roman Catholic Church for Catholics to sit silently in response. My response to you is not personal but is against all such accusations. I do not always understand you or your beliefs but I do pay attention. I believe that you have arrived at your beliefs by a scholarly route demonstrating personal intellectual integrity although I may disagree with some of your conclusions.
Finally, the notion of "higher criticism" (whatever they might actually mean, always strikes me as translatable as "higher smartypantsism" seen practiced by the partisans of Comrade Grandma and Comrade Grandpa respectively. I also do not concede to such poseurs the status of having a right to preach at me. I read the Bible. I do not presume to "criticize" it: high or low so long as it is an obviously competent translation (Douay-Rheims, original King James, etc.
May God bless you and yours!
Very good post. Thank you.
It is almost impossible to find any traditionalist (or even remotely traditionalist) Catholic web site that doesn't blame "qabbalah" or a "Judaeo-Masonic conspiracy" for everything under the sun (I am not discounting a Masonic conspiracy, but the idea that it is run by Jews). I have just recently seen the current bathroom issue blamed on "Freudian-Jewish" concepts and on "qabbalah," on the theory that in "apostate" Judaism everything is about sex.
I used to admire Sungenis because he was a creationist (and a geocentrist). Unfortunately, he chose to become an anti-Jewish loon. He is absolutely unhinged on the Jews and reflexively accuses all his critics of having Jewish ancestors.
Let me explain somewhat of why I am such a "fanatic" on this issue.
As you probably know, I actually joined the Catholic Church a little over thirty years ago. However much I, as a Fundamentalist Protestant, had been prejudiced against Catholicism, I respected it and regarded it as an important and perhaps the most respectable voice left on this earth for belief in the supernatural. To say that I was bitterly disappointed would be an understatement. Not only had the Catholic Church abandoned the field entirely (so far as Biblical inerrancy and Genesis 1-11, Esther, Daniel, and Jonah were concerned), but it actually used its respectability and intellectual tradition to ridicule people such as myself who still believed these things--and let me reiterate to you that in my case I was representative of an entire culture that believes these things.
I was tolerated much as an unfortunate with a mental disability would be tolerated, but every Catholic publication, book (including Catholic bibles with imprimata), and tract (not to mention every priest) I came into contact with identified both evolution and higher Biblical criticism as important Catholic distinctives, just as Mary and the Papacy are Catholic distinctives. This is the same today online where non-traditionalist Catholic web sites (very much including the OSV and Catholic Answers families) continue to propagate this same attitude. You may even go to Catholic discussion forums where any questioning of evolution is met by shrieks that "we aren't Protestants!"
As far as I am concerned, the Catholic Church did not want me and did not (and does not) want anyone from my culture (I've even read that G-d allowed the Protestant churches to develop specifically for people who weren't "smart" enough to handle the "truth"). The Catholic Church could have been a powerful force for good in the modern world. It has not been for decades, perhaps not for over a century. It chooses to use all its cachet to attack the Bible and people who believe the Bible is entirely true, even to the point of the current Pope whose apologia for evolution is that "G-d is not a magician." Yet these same hypocrites have not the slightest problem with the magic tricks recorded in the "new testament" or medieval legends. They cannot, therefore, logically reject Genesis 1-11 because of science, because otherwise they would have to reject all miracles. They reject Genesis 1-11 specifically because they don't like the people who believe that portion of the Bible and want to put just as much daylight between themselves and people like me as possible.
Even here on this forum I have observed in the almost seventeen years I've been here your co-religionists posting article after article after article attacking the total veracity of the Bible and doing so because to this is to be guilty of sola scriptura (which both you and I know to be garbage, since total inerrancy is a completely different issue from sola scriptura). They loudly identify this irreverence as a Catholic distinctive and pour ridicule on the "Protestants" who don't share it, touting the Catholic intellectual tradition as evidence.
Please forgive me if my anger turns seething hot at such behavior.
I have on numerous occasions begged the more conservative Catholics on this forum to get involved in this issue and to publicly rebuke their fellows who insist that evolution and an errant Bible are Catholic dogmas. For the most part I have been totally unsuccessful. I have even read claims that these Catholics have never read any post by any Catholic here taking these positions, which I find very hard to believe. Yet despite the fact that these alleged creationist Catholics must disagree profoundly on these issues I have seen nothing but solidarity among all Catholics on all sides of these issues. Please forgive me, but I do not understand this. I don't know how anyone who believes in a totally inerrant Bible or who upholds all Biblical narratives of supernatural events consistently can still proudly identify with the Catholic Church or with evolutionist/higher critical Catholics. I'm sorry, but this is just not a "minor" issue to me, nor is it to anyone else of my culture and background.
I appreciate your own position and support, but I could never again identify with the Catholic Church even if I wanted to (which I will never do again). There was no need to turn on the poorest and most ridiculed segment of chrstendom in order to win brownie points with atheists who don't believe in the virgin birth or transubstantiation either, but who for some reason find those concepts less objectionable than the idea that the coming into existence of everything from nothing was not a purely natural phenomenon. Aquinas and the entire Catholic intellectual and philosophical tradition have been used to bludgeon the people of rural America instead of defending doctrines once held and now abandoned (even the church fathers are no longer considered authoritative on this issue because they were "men of their time"--though I notice they remain authoritative on every issue which Fundamentalist Protestants have trouble understanding).
I am sorry that I am not always a gentleman, but any time I read a Catholic/Orthodox apologia or evolution/higher criticism or attack on simple belief in the inerrancy of an allegedly common bible, I am going to continue to lose my temper for the foreseeable future.
Thank you again for your kind words.