Liberals Planning for Vatican III

"Crisis Magazine" via Catholicity.com ^ | May 13, 2002 | Deal Hudson

[Siobhan]

Liberals Planning for Vatican III?

by Deal Hudson, Editor of Crisis Magazine

I guess it was just a matter of time. As you and I both know, critics of the Church are taking advantage of the sex scandal to push forward their own agendas. We've seen it time and again in newspaper editorials, radio call-in shows, and TV interview programs.

And now, to the list, we can add The National Catholic Reporter (NCR) -- that venerable old institution of tedious (and increasingly gray-haired) dissent. CRISIS reader Danny deBruin alerted us to NCR's latest overturn-the-Church scheme.

The newest issue sports a provocative cover story: "Blueprint for Vatican III." And in case you're wondering, the article does not disappoint.

Here's how it works: The NCR's editors sent a request to "Catholics in various parts of the world." They asked each person to list three issues they believe a future general council of the Catholic Church must address, along with 12 additional items they'd like to see on the council's agenda. The results were collated, edited, and printed in NCR.

Who were these "Catholics" chosen to represent the opinions of the universal Church? We're never told. Everything was conducted anonymously. But NCR does tease us a bit, saying that the respondents included one cardinal and three bishops (the remainder consisted of nuns, priests, and laity).

I know, I know. You can't wait to get the results. Well, I won't torture you, so here they are... Shockingly enough, NCR discovered that "the people of God" want to see the next council mandate a married clergy, women priests, complete freedom on all the sexual issues (contraception, homosexuality, etc., etc.), and democratization in the leadership of the Church.

Let me give you a couple juicy examples, along with my comments in brackets...

"Respondents wanted the widest possible participation of all the church in the next council, laity -- single and married -- and women religious and priests present as a group in proportion to the number of bishops present. A cardinal in a developing country wrote that all religions should be invited 'and have the right to vote.'"

[Did you catch that last bit? So, non-Christians should be given the right to vote on Catholic doctrine? Hmm... I wonder how Muslims and Buddhists would vote on the issue of Christ's divinity?]

"I would like to see a discipleship of equals. The issue goes to the heart of the patriarchal and hierarchical structure of the church and the false holding of one person above another. It means opening all church offices to women. It means shifting the weight of power away from Rome and church pulpits to the people of God. It means getting rid of all parent-child terminology like "Father" (Holy and otherwise), and attendant behaviors."

[Get rid of "Father" terminology? Sounds like this respondent has more of a problem with Jesus than with the Church.]

"We must search for a coherent and persuasive moral stance on sexual morality: marriage and its support systems, family planning, reconciliation after divorce, homosexual activity, natural law."

[I wonder what that respondent's "persuasive moral stance" on those issues might be?]

"Now, only the hierarchy has real power. Others are merely tokens. This accounts for all the ills of the church, from pedophilia to financial abuse to theological violence."

[Ah yes, a powerful Church hierarchy caused pedophilia. Isn't it more likely that the sex-abuse scandal -- which again ISN'T pedophilia -- could have something to do with the outrageous number of active homosexuals in the priesthood? And aren't those active homosexuals there because of the liberal seminary policies urged on by the kinds of people who read NCR? A little food for thought.]

"Seminaries need to be closed and modeled after the experimental seminary training proposed by Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara and some Protestant types of training such as Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge and Berkeley Feminist D. Min courses."

[Yes, that should pack in the seminarians. After all, what young man doesn't want to be harangued by an angry feminist for his "misogyny" and "homophobia"?]

"The whole question of infallibility and the role of the magisterium needs to be looked at. Both of these issues can be like nuclear weapons in the wrong hands."

Well, you get the picture. NCR devotees, like so many other aging radicals, still live in a past where 1960s-style dissent is bright and new. But the truth is something quite different. The mainline liberal Protestant churches are fading away... some predict that the Methodist and Episcopal churches may not even exist a century from now. Which Protestant denominations are growing? The conservative, orthodox, evangelical churches.

This same phenomenon holds true in the Catholic Church. The orthodox dioceses are vibrant and bursting with vocations. Just take a trip to Denver or Northern Virginia if you doubt it. Conversely, the dioceses that likely receive NCR in their chanceries are shriveling up.

It's revealing, I think, that out of the 300 requests NCR sent out, only 60 came back. That's a pretty sad response for a group that claims to speak for the average Catholic.

The simple truth is the heady days of dissent are dead and gone. It just seems that some people refuse to leave the funeral.

[Thundergod]

And there you have it. It was rude, unchristian and uncatholic for Sinkspur to paint our seperated bretheren with such a wide and bigoted brush.

Ignore his comments, my friend. He doesn't appear to be one of us. Peace be with you.

[ejo]

I want the church to have God's guidelines

How true, we must get back to the basics. One would hope to see the Ten Commandments once again posted in our schools and public buildings. Not merely to hang as a decoration but to be firmly adhered to by one and all.

[yendu bwam]

Of course, our doctrine states that the true membership of the church is invisible and known only to God, and we expect it includes members of many denominations including many Catholics.

Most Protestants believe that the 'church' referred to by Jesus meant the body of true Christian believers worldwide. For Protestants, that includes Catholics. Protestants and Catholics have far more in common than not.

[BlackElk]

What is orthodox about the fundamentalist view of Scripture is that the genuine Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, National Organization of Episcopalians for Life, Westminster Presbyterians, Missouri Synod Lutherans, Wisconsin Synod Lutherans, Good News Methodists, majority wing of the Southern Baptist Conference, Assemblies of God, and the non-denominational Evangelical and Pentecostals to whom the term fundamentalist is generally applied are the people who are in agreement with Pascendi Domenici Gregis, the great encyclical of Pope St. Pius X, and its companion piece Lamentabili Sane, on his stated dogma that the Bible is cover-to-cover, word-for-word, the inerrant Word of God. Who would say otherwise, let him be declared anathema.

The fundamentalists are the folks who fight the good fight against secular humanism which Pope St. Pius X called modernism or the Modernist Heresy or the synthesis of all heresies. They are a substantial part of the bedrock of our American community, our brothers and sisters in Christ, our fellow Christians, who, despite some doctrinal differences arising from good faith disagreement with us over the meaning of Scripture have joined with us on about 85% of doctrine nonetheless.

Those fundamentalists are the ones, including genuine Catholics, who reject the notion that support of welfare state politics is as important, somehow, as the fight against abortion, homosexuality, wanton levels of divorce and an obsessively materialistic society. They also tend to be the ones who welcome our fellow human beings, fellow Christians and fellow children of God from south of our border. They are the ones who understand that the standard has never changed and that homosexuality is an abomination not to be engaged in by any Christians much less by those who act as priests or ministers of Jesus Christ whether with "consenting adults", teenage children or prepubescent children.

They are our sisters and brothers, despised by the world as our Savior promised us we would be. These are a few of the things that make them genuinely orthodox as opposed to trend of the week Amchurch "Catholicism" and its counterparts in the similarly decaying and dying "mainline" churches. They are the people who understand with the late great Baptist Reverend Mr. Criswell of Dallas: "A church starts to die when its throat is grasped by the palsied hand of liberalism." God bless them, each and every one.

[pro-life]

As for me and my house, we choose His Holiness, Jesus Christ!

[BlackElk]

Don't forget the soon to be retired Mad Monk of Milwaukee, Archbishop Rembert Weakland who did a lot worse to the once Catholic cathedral in Milwaukee than the the recently departed nutcases who just left the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Their messes and desecrations can be cleaned up with soap and disinfectant. Weakland has left such a wreckovated desecrated disaster that only a bulldozer followed by the original blueprints from the 19th century will do.

[sailor4321]

From a former Episcopalian now Roman Catholic, no apology required....

[Timesink]

Dream on, NCR! Pope John Paul has personally appointed the vast majority of the men currently serving on the Council of Cardinals, and he didn't exactly pick a bunch of bleeding-hearts. The next pope will be just as conservative as JPII is.

[mustapha mond]

Amen!

[stands2reason]

I was raised fundamentalist and I've never heard that characterization.

[sinkspur]

the Bible is cover-to-cover, word-for-word, the inerrant Word of God.

No disagreement there, certainly, except to add Pius XII's support for historical criticism in the study of Scripture.

Inerrancy doesn't require a literal interpretation.

[Lael]

The next pope will be just as conservative as JPII is.

Won't matter...say JPII hangs around for two, three more years. The next Pope will have to convene a Council just to deal with the financial destruction of the present Crisis.

Anyone who thinks this isn't the tip of the Iceberg is deluding themselves. Do the Cash Flow projections...Dallas alone has had to remortgage Church property just to pay the settlements and Judgements through the end of...are you ready for this...year 2000!

The you-know-what hit the fan in January of 2002. In reality, the Church sealed its fate by "doubling down" its risks...by ordaining HUGE numbers of Homosexual priests.

In the "old" days, the Heteros understood the rule that if you are gonna cop a little, you do it AWAY from where you are a priest. Vacations were routinely used for activities allowed Eastern Rite (but NOT in the US since 1927) priests.

The NAMBLA types just couldn't keep their hands off.

Lawyers I've spoken to say we are looking at Asbestos and Breast Implants COMBINED!!

It will be a Miracle if the US Catholic Church survives in its presant form...and if the Lawyers can somehow "pierce the Veil" and hook up Vatican activity in the liability, WATCH OUT!!

[maryz]

I read somewhere (back in the 70s?) that when Vatican II convened, the leftwing activists had their act together and came prepared -- that they pushed through much of their agenda while the majority of bishops were still finding their seats and getting used to the Latin.

[Petronski]

Many dioceses in America are already in open schism on many issues, why NOT try to make it official?

[Aquinasfan]

This must be what the writers of the bible cautioned about at the end of both the old and new testaments.

The New Testament wasn't canonized until 350 years after John wrote the book of Revelation. So when he states that,

"I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book."

he is speaking of the book of Revelation –the book he was writing.

The New Testament canon that you use is the canon that was determined by several Church Councils in the late 300s. The Old Testament canon that you use was supposedly determined by a group of rabbis meeting in Jamnia around the year 100 –the same group of rabbis that rejected the New Testament altogether.

[Aquinasfan]

our doctrine states that the true membership of the church is invisible and known only to God,

How do you reconcile the invisibility of Christ's Church with the following passage:

Matthew 18:17

If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

[Domestic Church]

"My personal fav was the idiot who suggested that people of all religions should vote to decide matters for Catholics in "Vatican III"."

That idiot sounds like the UN spokesperson.

[Domestic Church]

"The NCR people are not to be taken seriously,"

The danger with NCR is that folks who don't know their faith and who haven't read the CCC will take what they say as reality...the NCR is a propaganda tool of the left and they are trying to shift the "norm"in that direction. Many would read it and not recognize the slant. We need Bishops and Cardinals who will lower the boom on this bunch.

[Steve0113]

what the moral relativists want desperately is to have any act they commit affirmed by a church.

Exactly.