By the Time We Got to Woodstock: Vatican II and the "Spirit of Woodstock"

The Remnant Online ^ | December 31, 2002 | Christopher A. Ferrara

[ninenot]

Ok, let's talk about Western Europe.

PJB is quite consistent: he is concerned about the CULTURE. Both WesEurope and the USA are "western," which really means Christian cultures. PJB is justifiably concerned that immigration of Moslems, Hindus, and Buddhists will eventually drown the Western/Christian base and move the countries to an alien culture. That would be a bad thing. It is much more significant in Germany than in the USA--at this point in time.

PJB's argument about a total moratorium on immigration for five years is, I think, flawed. However, IF the allowed immigration is from 'western' cultures, and IF the proper screening is in place, it is my thought that we MUST allow immigration. Reason: the 'birth dearth' for native-born American couples will eventually have a significant deleterious effect on tax revenues (fewer taxpayers) and on Gummint expenditures (Social Security.)

The country could have serious financial problems unless we continue to allow immigration of individuals young enough to work, to reproduce, and to pay taxes.

[B-Chan]

Well, well, well...

Friar's beatification will test Vatican's bridges to Islam

By Desmond O'Grady in Rome

January 18 2003

John Paul II is likely to offend many Muslims with his decision to beatify Father Mario D'Aviano, who defended Christian Europe against invading Turks in the 17th century.

D'Aviano, a Capuchin friar, inspired Christian forces to rout the Turks, who were besieging Vienna and threatening to overrun Europe. As a champion of Europe's Christian identity, he is not appreciated by contemporary Islamic fundamentalists: security measures will be particularly rigorous when he and five other people are beatified at St Peter's on April27.

The Pope could have deferred the beatification of D'Aviano in the interests of better relations with Islam. However, he has not avoided controversial beatifications and canonisations in the past, and more contentious cases are in the pipeline, including that of Pope Pius XII, who is accused of silence over the Holocaust. His supporters say the Pope has tried to strengthen Vatican contacts with moderate Islam. In the 1980s, in Morocco at the invitation of the king, he addressed a meeting of more than 100,000 Muslim youths. He has visited the mosque in Damascus and, after the September11 attacks in the United States, brought Muslim leaders together in Assisi to condemn terrorism and pray for peace.

Some Catholics accuse John Paul of ignoring Christians persecuted by Muslims in Sudan, Pakistan and elsewhere, but on January 13 he rejected this charge, saying he both defends Christians and wants to build bridges to Islam.

Supporters of D'Aviano's beatification portray him as a defender of Christians rather than an aggressor against Islam.

Born in the Venetian republic in 1631, he left his Jesuit college to join the republic's forces fighting Turkish invaders. On the way to the front he had to seek refuge in a Capuchin monastery, where he decided to become a Capuchin friar rather than a warrior.

He became famous as a preacher and a healer, and was appointed an adviser to the Habsburg Emperor Leopold I.

When Turkish forces that had already conquered Belgrade besieged Vienna for two months in 1683, D'Aviano, at the behest of Pope Innocent XI, joined the irresolute Leopold outside Vienna, where he strengthened the emperor's resolve, persuaded the divided and outnumbered Christian forces to choose Jan Sobinski, the Polish king, as their leader, and preached to the Catholic-Protestant-Orthodox forces on the importance of defending Christian Europe.

On the night of September 11, 1683, the Christians forced the Turks, 20,000 of whose troops had been killed, to raise the siege.

Vatican watchers interpret the decision to beatify D'Aviano as the Pope deciding that building bridges to Islam must not be at the expense of Christian identity.

[Source: The Sydney Morning Herald]

Viva il Papa!

[ultima ratio]

You've got to realize something. The Vatican is supreme in its use of public relations and is now pulling out all the stops to quiet criticism from conservatives. The natives are getting restless, so a few bones are being thrown their way. Example: after the American bishops prohibited kneeling for communion, the Vatican defended a Catholic who was refused communion for disobeying the decree. This gave the appearance of siding with Catholics who opposed the prohibition. Actually it did no such thing. It did not reverse the bishops' order, but deflected criticism by raising a minor issue. The same thing is happening here. This Pope has publicly apologized ad nauseam to Islam for the Crusades and has kissed the Koran, pandering to the Muslim faith at every turn at the expense of the Church's own reputation, and feeding-into false perceptions of the Church's history. This beatification is an indirect attempt to deflect the mounting criticism of this policy of renouncing our own past by siding with past enemies. In other words, it's p.r.

It should be noted this Pope has used beatifications and canonizations for political reasons in the past. This is simply a fact. He often canonizes natives of a country before a visit and has canonized more "saints" than any pope in history, over four hundred--more than all the popes since the Renaissance put together. The last canonization broke all rules for speed, in fact, when the Pope placed the founder of Opus Dei on a fast-track to canonization only eleven years after his death. It was a highly controversial act since Escriva was a personal favorite and was considered a most unsaintly, dishonest and vanity-prone individual. The whole process was highly irregular. Rules were bent and those who knew Escriva well and might testify to his lack of sanctity were forbidden to testify, a fact which they publicly protested. The process was further compromised by the direct involvement of Opus Dei itself. Opus Dei physicians, for instance, judged a physical cure had been "miraculous", something necessary for sainthood. The whole process was charged with favoritism and has been severely criticized.

[ultima ratio]

These are the typical reasons liberals give for doing what they do. They are obvious lies. For twenty centuries Catholics have known the Mass is a sacrifice to the Father. What is offered is the Victim, Jesus. How anyone would think otherwise due to the appearance of a crucifix is beyond me.

The liturgists always invent plausibly-sounding reasons that neatly fit into their heterodox schema. Taken individually they sound reasonable, but taken together they point to a Protestant religious perspective. For instance, the prohibition against kneeling was for traffic-control supposedly. In fact, taken with the removal of genuflections, communion in the hands, the shunting-aside of the tabernacle, and the deflection in the missal text itself of reference to the true Mysterium Fidei, they point to a disbelief in the need for adoration and a subversion of the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence. Don't you find it odd how Christ's VIRTUAL presence in the congregation is referred to over and over but his REAL Presence is not? It is like pretending the sun does not exist, but the sunshine does. All this is very Protestant--as are the disappearances of crucifixes and communion rails in churches.

Next to go will be the Stations. The modernists are itching for some excuse to do away with them to make our churches appear more Protestant. Hey, give them time. They didn't eliminate kneeling overnight. It took a few decades, but the screws were slowly turned--and voila! Catholics become Protestants without even noticing.

[ultima ratio]

"If the direction the priest is facing is really the crux of the issue, then it would seem logical that traditional Catholics would be perfectly comfortable with a Novus Ordo that is said in the vernacular (with proper translation, of course), with no other change other than the priest facing away from the congregation...Now suppose your Latin Mass group were presented with that kind of option, and ask yourself how many of them would find it acceptable. Be honest...I rest my case."

1. The way the priest faces is NOT the crux of the problem. It's only one small aspect of the problem. The problem is the New Mass itself, which is subversive of Catholic doctrines. The way the priest faces is only symptomatic of the whole--which is a worship of the congregation, not of God--but it is not the whole. The whole is much worse because it systematically destroys the faith.

2. Traditionalists are much better informed about the Catholic faith than most Catholics. They would not possibly be so easily gulled into a concession by merely turning a priest around. That you would think this shows how little you understnd of the debate whirling around theological circles. You really should read something more substantial than Envoy.

[ultima ratio]

"What most people don't understand is that the seeds for this crisis were sown long before anyone even saw any of the symptoms...I was amazed to learn that many..."

I'm not surprised you were "amazed" by anything. You are new, it seems, to everything. When you write, "What most people don't understand is that the seeds for this crisis were sown long before anyone even saw any of the symptoms," you belabor the obvious and insult other people.

Have you never heard of the Syllabus of Errors? Do you think it was made up out of thin air--or do you suppose that maybe some previous popes knew there were enemies in their midst waiting to foment a revolution? OF COURSE seeds were sown at an earlier time!

[Alberta's Child]

I agree with everything you've said, but that wasn't really the point of my PJB posts.

If immigration from "Western" culture is to be encouraged, then it would seem that PJB should be a strong advocate of Mexican immigration, since Mexicans are predominantly Catholic.

If anything, PJB's obsession with Mexican immigrants makes him come across as more of a Northeastern Protestant than a Catholic.

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

Was is St. Catherine of Siena who said she would honor a Priest first even before a vision of an Angel because of Christ's sacramental presence in him?

I know that St. Jean-Marie-Baptiste Vianney, Curé d'Ars, said it: Si je rencontrais un prêtre et un ange, je saluterais plus le prêtre que l'ange.

[TotusTuus]

Thanks!

[Alberta's Child]

Flashback to an old thread from January 15th of this year . . .

In a thorough validation of my controversial comment about traditional Catholicism being a "symptom of a mental disorder" for some people, the Fraternal Society of Saint Peter (FSSP) announced that it was withdrawing its two priests from a particular apostolate in New Jersey this past week. Childish in-fighting between two different factions of lay people in this apostolate has resulted in a situation where two different groups of people are now claiming to be members of the board of trustees.

The FSSP decided to remove the priests when, after the annual meeting and election of the board last weekend, one of the two groups filed suit in civil court to have their representatives recognized as the legitimate board of trustees.

Proving, in the end, that it isn't only incompetent bishops and depraved homosexual priests who are hell-bent on destroying the Catholic Church.

[Loyalist]

In a thorough validation of my controversial comment about traditional Catholicism being a "symptom of a mental disorder" for some people

That's a bit harsh, considering that we know little so far about what led to the lawsuit being filed.

On the other hand, I don't blame the Fraternity for not wanting to be caught in the crossfire between competing litigants, especially if it is not going to be named as a third party.

[Maximilian]

That's a bit harsh, considering that we know little so far about what led to the lawsuit being filed.

Good point. We need to be charitable. Nevertheless, it's a sad situation and very disheartening to hear about this.

Let's remember also that such disagreements are inevitable. St. Alphonsus Ligouri went through numerous situations much worse than this when he was founding the Redemptorist order. He broke with the nun who had initially inspired the project. Later every single one of the original members of the order left him except for 1 lay brother. At the end of his life, some 50 years later, far from being smoothed out, things were even worse. St. Alphonsus himself was excluded by the pope from the order which he had founded. And he died out of the order after counseling numerous priests who had doubts about their vocations that the worst thing that could happen to them would be to leave the order.

It's a fallacy to think that the work of God will go more smoothly than secular projects. If anything, the complete reverse is the case. The nuns in St. Margaret Mary's convent actually carried holy water with them so they could sprinkle it if they saw her coming since they believed she was possessed by the devil.

Regarding the accusation of "mental disorder," someone sent me a great quote recently. Two disputants on some TV talk debate show were accusing each other's groups of being "nuts." The one guy said to the other guy, "Well, I'll take my bunch of nuts over your bunch of nuts anyday."

That's the way I feel about the traditionalists I know. They may be nuts, but I'll take this bunch of nuts over any other bunch.

[ultima ratio]

Thorough validation? Hardly. Read St. Paul. He was constantly scolding the early Christians for their disputes and tendency to split into factions. What's happening with these lay people is a far cry from the systemic clerical corruption of AmChurch.