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.
As I understand qabbalah, it is a collection of Jewish mysticism and not a part of what believing Jews must believe. I believe in various Marian apparitions but such belief is simply Catholic mysticism and, as "private revelation" not required to be believed by Catholics. Maybe I am ignorant but I see no threat from qabballah and I am not about to take Sungenis's word for it or that of anyone else of his ilk.
If I called you a fanatic, I ought not to have and I apologize for any such comment which would not have been accurate. I do not personally understand your belief system although you have patiently tried to explain it to me. That makes me ignorant to some extent and does not make you a fanatic at all.
I am very much not a Protestant but on Biblical inerrancy, Genesis 1-11, Esther, Daniel and Jonah, you seem to well represent me and a lot of other Catholics. I really get worked up over the "higher smartypantsism" of the allegedly "Catholic" "New Jerusalem Bible" whose editors just could not back off telling us what Jesus Christ really MEANT to say when He said the precise opposite. Some fool probably gave it an imprimatur and another a nihil obstat but the footnotes are often exercises in advanced heresy.
God as the Creator of all that has been created can be a "magician" or just about anything else He chooses to be.
In spite of your experience, please be not angry but rather patient with Catholics who are now in our 50th year of generally rotten catechesis. Ignorance abounds among many clergy, never mind in the pews.
I am sure I am not addressing every concern but the hour grows late and I have four hours of exhausting hemo-dialysis tomorrow morning.
My final thought is that I am a product of "scholastic theology" which is the $64 name for the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas and is a great part of the grand intellectual tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. My education was Jesuit but Aquinas was a Dominican which shows that he was so intellectually powerful as to acquire the Jebbies as disciples. Jesuits were always very proud and do not lightly submit to teachers of other orders. If someone or many someones (mis)use St. Thomas Aquinas to attack rural Fundamentalist Protestants for their belief in the inerrancy of Scripture, St. Thomas Aquinas would dispatch their iniquity with a few well chosen words since he undoubtedly accepted the inerrancy of Scripture as fervently as any Fundamentalist Protestant.
If this thread keeps going, I'll be back. If not, not. God bless!