Posted on 05/11/2021 10:25:25 AM PDT by MurphsLaw
SIXTH WEEK OF EASTER
JOHN 16:5–11
Friends, once again in today’s Gospel, Jesus promises to send us the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the fuel of the Church, the energy and life force of the Body of Christ. And we can’t get him through heroic effort. We can only get him by asking for him. That’s why, for the past two thousand years, the Church has begged for this power from on high.
Jesus told us that the Father would never refuse someone who asked for the Holy Spirit. So ask! And ask again! Realize that every liturgy is a begging for the Holy Spirit. Fr. Hesburgh of Notre Dame once commented that the one prayer that is always appropriate—whether one is experiencing success or failure, whether one is confident or afraid, whether one is young or old—is "Come, Holy Spirit!"
He’s right, for this is the fundamental prayer of the Church. Mind you, we pray it, as the first Apostles did, in the presence of Mary and with her support. In the Hail Mary, we say, "Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death." What are we asking her to pray for but the Holy Spirit?
O, God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit,
did instruct the hearts of the faithful,
grant that by the same Holy Spirit
we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations,
Through Christ Our Lord.
Amen.
Bobby Barron sources the worst of his dissident heroes.
Notre Dame's Fr. Ted Hesburgh went to his death having been a lifelong proponent of contraception
The adulation he received in death strongly suggesting, and in some cases definitively stating, that he is in Heaven were, frankly, sickening. Even at Notre Dame, a school known for its lack of subtlety, the praise for a man who opposed the Church on every defining issue of the day was over the top.
Hesburgh overlooked the murder of tens of millions of unborn children, sat in league with organizations doing the work of the diabolical, paraded the rich and powerful before the Pope to influence his decision on contraception, partnered with pro-abortion Democrats — the list is seemingly endless.
It is precisely a case like this that is so public and so spectacular that Catholics can truly wonder about his eternal disposition. The same thoughts occurred about Sen. Ted Kennedy, also despatched to eternity with fanfare and trumpet blasts and lauds from Churchmen, in spite of a life devoted to advancing abortion.
The wonder is not about Fr. Hesburgh per se. He is an example of those who have made public careers out of demolishing the Church. The speculation about his eternal fate serves the larger point of underlining something so overlooked and obscured these days: that there is a Hell, and it is occupied by those who chose to be enemies of Christ the King.
No one knows who is damned and who is not — but the discussion of eternal damnation in large part is made more pressing by considering (not concluding) th possibility in individual cases — just as people do with Adolph Hitler. This keeps alive a discussion with regard to our own individual destinies that many in the Church today would prefer not to be had.
Father Hesburgh's opposition to the Church disguised as leadership was not praised by all. In the midst of the eulogies last year, a handful of individuals were less sanguine about his legacy.
Father Peter West of Human Life International wrote an article titled "Hold the Applause: Father Hesburgh Deserves Prayers, Not Praise," highlighting the aspects of Hesburgh's life less known and less discussed — actions that not only opposed the Catholic Church but wrought untold damage to the Faith.
"Father Hesburgh was a staunch Democrat who consistently supported a long line of liberal political leaders," West noted, "including Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and Governor Mario Cuomo of New York."
"In fact," he continued, "he chaired the fund that helped President Bill Clinton pay for legal defense fees associated with the Whitewater land deal investigation in the mid-1990s."
Dr. Christopher Manion, graduate of Notre Dame, wrote a piece titled "Tears for Old Notre Dame," where he compared the fidelity of law professor Charles Rice with the infidelity of President Theodore Hesburgh, both of whom passed away within hours of each other.
"Named president of the university in 1952," Manion wrote, "he immediately sought to give Notre Dame a makeover, in the image of the eastern elites."
Toward that end, he enlisted the help of population control advocate and billionaire John D. Rockefeller — a man with whom he'd partner for the next few decades to push contraception here and abroad.
Hesburgh had never made a secret of his promotion of contraception. "[H]e supported Notre Dame faculty members who dissented from Pope Paul VI's encyclical 'Humanae Vitae,'" West wrote — including, among others, Catholic law professor John T. Noonan, who published a book advocating Church reform on birth control, and whose seat on the papal birth control commission was due in no small part to Hesburgh's influence. Noonan opened the first session of the Commission arguing in favor of contraception.
The Rockefeller Foundation did more to push population control and eugenics than any other organization of the 20th century, giving today's equivalent of millions of dollars to Margaret Sanger's Birth Control League (now Planned Parenthood) and to the architects of Nazi Germany's eugenics program, which would go on to conduct horrific experiments on Jews, the disabled, and other "undesirables."
Both Rockefeller and Hesburgh worked together closely for decades, Hesburgh himself securing a private meeting between Rockefeller and Pope Paul VI in 1965 to sway the Pope to relax Church doctrine on contraception in order to prevent overpopulation.
That same year, Hesburgh's Notre Dame hosted a conference where 37 scholars signed a statement urging the Church to allow the use of artificial birth control.
And it was in the middle of that period — from 1963–1967 — that Hesburgh hosted a number of secret meetings on the Notre Dame campus between the Rockefeller Foundation and Planned Parenthood. Their purpose: to push the population control agenda through acceptance and promotion of contraception.
In turn, Rockefeller appointed Hesburgh to his foundation's executive board in 1966, and afterwards sat as the Foundation's chairman from 1977–1982. Even though he had agreed to abstain from any votes on contraception, sterilization or abortion, Manion notes that he "never used his gavel to end the foundation's population control programs. Had he done so, he would have been sent back to flyover country in a heartbeat."
"Fr. Ted triumphantly brought to campus a dissenting theologian, Fr. Richard McBrien," Manion went on, "who became the school's resident Pope-critic. He even gave McBrien's catechism ("Catholicism") an imprimatur (the bishop didn't)."
McBrien died only weeks before Hesburgh passed away, and as far as we know went to his deathbed unrepentant of his lifelong dissent. There is no indication that Hesburgh's passing was any different. Please pray for their souls.
Some years ago my mother asked the priest after mass why we never seem to hear about the Sacred Heart of Jesus anymore, and there are none of those sacred heart pictures available. The priest told her that devotion has been replaced by the Holy Spirit.
It's against FR forum rules to edit articles to one's own liking.
Hesburgh did not build Notre Dame into a great university. He, like Jenkins, destroyed it's orthodoxy.
Hesburgh did not reveal his evilness until VC II.
Nor did the other modernist "council fathers" who hijacked same council. They were all snakes, waiting to come out from under their rocks.
Barron now has now reason to hide. The snakes are are in control.
It's not an original pray of the heretic, Hesburgh. And, if Hesburgh ever really prayed it, he would not have supported contraception.
There was absolutely no reason for Bobby Barron to single out Hesburgh as a source of a Catholic prayer that had established in the 800's A.D.
Why source the heretic, Hesburgh, rather than the original author, Rabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mainz?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.