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To: BlackElk
You are sowing dissension and conflict which is otherwise non-existent. I am a "right wing Catholic" as I think you well know. I blame nothing on qabbalah or any (non-existent) Judaeo-Masonic conspiracy. I realize that you are saying "those right wing Catholics who blame everything on...." and that technically you are not blaming people like me. Nonetheless, that subtlety will be lost on knee-jerk anti-Catholics.

I am sorry you feel that way. I most certainly was not referring to you. I was referring to such people/web sites as Robert Sungenis, Gerry Matatics, Tradition in Action, the St. Benedict Center, etc. I visit those sites occasionally to keep up with how conservative Catholics react to modernism, and unfortunately most of them are virulently anti-Jewish and really do believe that "the Jews" are behind every evil thing in existence.

I must remark that while I appreciate your concerns, you seem very inconsistent about "sowing dissension." Even though I know from our past interactions that you are a creationist, you allow--without objection--your co-religionists to promote evolutionism and higher criticism on this forum as Catholic distinctives, even attacking other chrstians who disagree with them. I have seen Catholic FReepers post articles attacking the facticity of Genesis 1-11 as an inherently "Protestant" position that somehow is based on sola scriptura (it's not).

If you aren't going to protest against these episodes of "sowing dissension," then your singling out of my own failures seems terribly arbitrary.

58 posted on 04/08/2016 7:47:48 AM PDT by Zionist Conspirator (The "end of history" will be worldwide Judaic Theocracy.)
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To: Zionist Conspirator
I view those who are determined to imagine that they are descended from apes as being unworthy of response on that subject. I recognize that God could have chosen to create mankind in such a fashion but I take Genesis (His Word) for it that He did not. I have enough on my plate normally without attempting to be the Catholic doctrine general police force. I don't claim to be a theologian. I don't claim to be a religious scholar. I do claim to be able to distinguish right from wrong.

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!

110 posted on 04/08/2016 10:27:17 AM PDT by BlackElk (Dean of Discipline Tomas de Torquemada Gentlemen's Society: Rack 'em Danno!)
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