Father Longedecker apparently has his supporters as he defends the VII Church. And Satan, I am also quite confident, is having a field day as he watches well-intentioned Catholics argue amongst themselves as to just what the changes of the Council actually mean for the Church. So be it.
But defend to your hearts content all those who can rationalize away what has happened to our once holy Church, SOLEY, because of the Council’ s actions. Many souls will be lost exclusively because of the modernist approach advanced by the Council.
It is not simply the TLM vs the Novus Ordo Mass, it is the the teaching of the true Catholic faith and what we must do to attain salvation, vs. the warmed-over Protestantism that passes today as Catholicism.
But sadly enough, inasmuch as the secular media, the fallen-away Catholics (as well as the Protestants the atheists and the rest of the crowd) are all on the side of our modernist pope and our modernist bishops supporting this tragedy of neo-Catholicism, I have no doubt they will eventually drive the true Catholic Church to an underground. But it will continue there, and in the end, there will be an accounting to Jesus Christ for all that transpired since 1960.
Great comments.
It's like communion in the hand. Bishops decided to ignore Rome and have done so.
The Catholic Church in America has become Protestantized because that's what the Bishops have wanted and either actively encouraged or not resisted and therefore permitted to happen in spite of their knowing better.
Hey, I've only been Catholic a few years and am still studying all I can find but it's not difficult to see that this isn't a new problem. In fact,
“The floor of hell is paved with the skulls of bishops.”
St. Athanasius, Council of Nicaea, AD 325
it's part of the same battle that's ebbed and flowed ever since Christ founded His Church on Peter. For some reason a lot of Americans seem to have been of the opinion that, "it can't happen here" when it came to the Church having this sort of revolt just like they thought "it can't happen here" when it came to having the sort of society we now all wallow in like pigs (reluctant or not).
The talk about how Catholics lived together in a "Catholic ghetto" kind of sums it up IMO. When Catholics were a tight knit community they apparently longed to be accepted as part of the larger predominantly Protestant community and when they were accepted, they joined the Protestant party across the board including the cafeteria approach to what they believe. Those who remain faithful Catholics and ignore the Cafeteria approach find that whether or not they're "accepted" as Catholics outside the "ghetto" depends entirely on how little they behave like Catholics.
Whether its' crossing them self or wearing a crucifix rather than a cross they find that any display of being Catholic rather than "one of the boys" is still sufficient to trigger the same old "whore of Babylon" and "Papist" trash that's been a part of American culture ever since the country was founded. It's just like Malamud's "The Fixer", the trick to being accepted outside the ghetto is to never behave like "those folks down there".
Now a significant percentage of Catholics knowingly or not long for the good old days in "the ghetto" when they could be openly Catholic without having to defend every little thing but how many of them would even consider doing what it takes to predominantly Catholic neighborhoods? Folks who want enjoy the "Lifestyle Cafeteria" are always going to end up dining at the "Pop-Culture Faith Cafeteria" as well, hence Cafeteria Catholics predominate.
So, maybe I still have a lot more to study (hey, it's only several thousand years of material and I'm just now working through the post-Nicean Fathers). The way I see it, the Church in the US was heading for problems a long, long, time before VII or there would have never been a Papal Encyclical about the heresy of Americanism.
. JMHO
Amen.
“Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the true Church of Jesus Christ.” - Saint Athanasius
Don't forget most of the VII Catholics right here on FR.