A number of friends have been applauding a recent article by Cardinal Francis George entitled, “A tale of two churches;” echoing the review given by Fr. Z who said, “His Eminence knocks this one over the fence.”
With all due respect, this article looks a whole lot more like a pop up to me.
Like so many other American “conservatives” in the Church today, Cardinal George is good at bemoaning symptoms, but remarkably inept at identifying the underlying disease.
His Eminence writes:
About 1,800 years into her often stormy history, this church found herself as a very small group in a new country in Eastern North America that promised to respect all religions because the State would not be confessional; it would not try to play the role of a religion … The social history was often contentious, but the State basically kept its promise to protect all religions and not become a rival to them, a fake church. Until recent years.
Here, Cardinal George is holding up an X-ray of the American experiment; playing both doctor and historian, and even with the benefit of hindsight, knowing full well that the patient is on the doorstep of death, still he does not seem to recognize the fatal affliction there present.
Those who view such things by the light of tradition, however, know very well that the State that promises to “protect all religions,” including those that oppose the reign of Christ the King, is already, even at its very inception, an avowed rival (read, enemy) of the Holy Catholic Church.
In the present case, the only unknown that ever truly existed according to the mind of the Church, properly understood, concerned the precise manner and time of her open persecution.
All of this said, Cardinal George isn’t totally blind.
There was always a quasi-religious element in the public creed of the country. It lived off the myth of human progress, which had little place for dependence on divine providence. It tended to exploit the religiosity of the ordinary people by using religious language to co-opt them into the purposes of the ruling class. Forms of anti-Catholicism were part of its social DNA.
At this, one might reasonably ask: Why is a prelate who seems to sense in his gut the irreconcilability of the American ideal and the mission of a Church that is “the kingdom of Christ on earth, destined to be spread among all men and all nations” (Pius XI – Quas Primas), still cannot bring himself to do any more than to lay blame for the present state of affairs at the feet of “some members of the American establishment?”
The answer is simple; Cardinal George suffers, as do all so-called “conservative” Catholics, from conciliar myopia. Let me explain…
The U.S. Constitutional approach to religious freedom wherein the State is obliged to treat the true religion as merely an equal to the many false religions of the world, the same proposition having been firmly condemned by Holy Church in no uncertain terms throughout the centuries, was adopted by the Second Vatican Council as enshrined in the document Dignitatis Humanae.
And what have we to show for it today?
Not only do we have an American State that plainly operates as a “fake church” all its own, we also happen to have a Roman Pontiff who, as the Generalissimo of the conciliar revolution, is pleased to take the lead in behaving as if all religions are mere equals!
As such, ours is a Church overpopulated with undernourished Catholics, both lay and ordained, who can’t quite seem to get their hands around the fact that the Second Vatican Council effectively abandoned the mission of the Church in exchange for a form of religious diplomacy that has only served to hasten her persecution.
So you see, unless and until Cardinal George is willing to rebuke both the disastrous propositions set forth on religious liberty at Vatican Council II, as well as the words and deeds of Pope Francis who embodies them in all their humanistic glory, even to the point of encouraging those who oppose the mission of the Holy Catholic Church to persist in their false religions, he will ever be relegated to just another easy out.
In other words, don’t look for any home runs from Cardinal George, or anyone else who steadfastly marches under the “conservative” Catholic banner, any time soon.
In this context, it is worth repeating these words of Pope Leo XIII written during the apparent “good old days”:
“In fact, to wish that the State would separate itself from the Church would be to wish, by a logical sequence, that the Church be reduced to the liberty of living according to the law common to all citizens…. It is true that in certain countries this state of affairs exists. It is a condition which, if it have numerous and serious inconveniences, also offers some advantages–above all when, by a fortunate inconsistency, the legislator is inspired by Christian principles–and, though these advantages cannot justify the false principle of separation nor authorize its defense, they nevertheless render worthy of toleration a situation which, practically, might be worse”.
(Au Milieu des Sollicitudes, #28; emphases added)
Ah yes. The long-forgotten heresy of Americanism.
Dear Louie,
Cardinal George has done some good things, but here are two examples of him letting down the Faithful big-time by “ecu”-bartering:
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In 2007, “Cardinal George said the Catholic Good Friday prayer for the Jews to be coverted to Christianity should be amended to ensure it did not offend Jews.
“… the intention is to be sure that our prayers are not offensive to the Jewish people who are our ancestors in the faith,” he said:
—“We can’t possibly insult them in our liturgy … not that any group has a veto on anybody’s prayers, because you can go through Jewish texts and find material that is offensive to us. But if we’re interested in keeping the dialogue strong, and we have to be, we should be very cautious about any prayer that they find insulting.”
–“But this should mean that Jews, in turn, consider amending their own religious texts, he said. “It does work both ways. Maybe this is an opening to say, ‘Would you care to look at some of the Talmudic literature’s description of Jesus as a bastard, and so on, and maybe make a few changes in some of that?’” http://infidelkafirwatch.wordpress.com/2007/10/
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“In 2012, He stood up strongly for the Church and then backed down and apologized because the LGBT was offended :
—When a new route was proposed for the 2012 annual Chicago Pride Parade that would take it past a Catholic church, George told an interviewer: “you don’t want the Gay Liberation Movement to morph into something like the Ku Klux Klan, demonstrating in the streets against Catholicism.”
— In response, LGBT advocates in Chicago called for George’s resignation, but George said: “The organizers invited an obvious comparison to other groups who have historically attempted to stifle the religious freedom of the Catholic Church”.
—Two weeks later, George apologized: “This has evidently wounded a good number of people. I have family members myself who are gay and lesbian, so it’s part of our lives. So I’m sorry for the hurt.” He said he was “speaking out of fear that I have for the church’s liberty and I was reaching for an analogy which was very inappropriate…. Sometimes fear is a bad motivation.”
—LGBT rights advocates accepted his apology.”
(These seem similar to Msgr Pope’s actions, but as C. George is the highest authority in Chicago, and the events took place in his jurisdiction, it seems unlikely he was acting under anyone’s orders.)
The diabolical error of adopting a secularised framework in which to view the Faith. This is all-pervasive and very effective in its stealthy changing of how Catholics understand the Faith and its relationship with reason and the material world. Cardinal George’s statement is good if compared to what comes from most bishops and cardinals or read through a secularised/worldly lens.
We’re so far gone that the vast majority of Churchmen don’t even understand to what extent they reject the faith, because they don’t even know it. The Social Kingship of Christ the King could serve as the canonical example of this (no pun intended).
Actually, the First Amendment only says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” But the states were allowed to do so, and many of them did in the first decades of the country. Theoretically, even today Maryland or New Mexico could “establish” the Catholic Church.
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This is not allowed because the Marbury v. Madison case in 1803 established the judicial supremacy of the Supreme Court, including over the several states. In the 1960s, the Court banned religion from almost everywhere in public life. So we still have these silly church vs. state debates. Effectively, the Court established an atheist system.
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The original Constitution allowed nullification and secession, as Jefferson and others affirmed.
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Yet the kicker is that all along the Anti-Federalists were right: The Constitution was illegally imposed by the convention in Philadelphia that only was supposed to amend the Articles of Confederation. And the Constitution, in time, would lead to a “consolidated” tyranny. Which we have today.
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All that being said, Catholics were poised to become a numerical majority in America when the Church’s post-Council collapse after 1965 destroyed Catholic morality and fecundity, leaving us at the mercy of the demonic U.S. superstate.
“unless and until [prelates] are willing to rebuke both the disastrous propositions set forth on religious liberty at Vatican Council II…” Therein lies the rub. How can one rebuke that which one lives to claim fealty to? And if traditional Apostolic sons cuddle up to that which should be rebuked, they become that which should be rebuked – or do truth and lies really make a cocktail pleasing to God?
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“The sons of the so-called Enlightenment, influenced by the multifaceted and inter-related consequences of the errors of the Renaissance and the Protestant Revolt, brought forth secular nations that contended the source of governing authority was the people. Ultimately, all references to ‘God’ were in accord with the Freemasonic notion of a ‘supreme intelligence’ without any recognition of the absolute necessity of belief in and acceptance of the Incarnation and of the Deposit of Faith as it has been given to Holy Mother Church for personal happiness and hence al social order. The founders of the United States of America did not believe that it was necessary to refer all things in civil life to Christ the King as He had revealed Himself through His true Church, believing that men would be able to pursue ‘civic virtue’ by the use of their own devices and thus maintain social order in the midst of cultural and religious pluralism. This leads, as Pope Leo XIII noted of religious indifferentism, to the triumph of the lowest common denominator, that is, atheism…As the Constitution of the United States of America admits of no authority higher than its own words, it, like the Bible for a Protestant, is utterly defenseless when the plain meanings of its words are distorted and used to advance ends that its framers would have never thought imaginable, no less approved in fact. This is but the secular version of Antinomianism…”
—–Thomas Droleskey: “Conversion in Reverse: How the Ethos of Americanism Converted Catholics and Contribute to the Rise of Conciliarism”; (lays out in great depth Church’s teaching on the Social Kingship of the Christ and the errors of ‘Americansim’. As Dr Droleskey points out, it is only God (through His Bride) who bestows ‘rights’, not men.
Kind of on topic….and one for the “objective reality?…. we don’t need no stinking objective reality.”
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Via PewSitter, this: http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/in-the-line-of-fire/45308-no-one-is-born-gay
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Money quote:
“Remarkably, when a school chaplain in Tasmania, Australia, posted Paglia’s opinion on social media, there was an outcry against him, causing him to issue a public apology: “I’ve made a mistake and learnt from it. I’m deeply sorry for any offence I’ve caused. I was very careless in posting that image for discussion. I will work with my employers to ensure there is no repeat.”
Despite this apology, he was still fired—and the organization he worked for was Christian! That is how toxic today’s climate has become, and yet this chaplain simply posted the accurate reflections of a lesbian academic. How could this be considered hateful or bigoted?”
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We are returning to the dark ages, by choice this time folks!
Off topic, but….
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Only applications for Hall of Fame saints will be accepted. 😉
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http://www.onepeterfive.com/additional-clarifications-sheen-cause-diocese-peoria/
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Money quote:
“I reached out to a close friend of mine, who is intimately involved in the cause, to see if there was more to the story. On the condition of anonymity, he shared that according to his understanding, the Archdiocese of New York got their civil lawyers involved, and they refused to even let Sheen’s tomb be opened, as required by the Canonical process at this point. They said that all this talk of relics and remains is distasteful to Americans. (I’m guessing they have not seen the crowds venerating John Paul II, Mother Teresa, or the relics of the Little Flower.)”
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Distasteful, indeed.
Also Off Topic but a few things to mention:
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Pope Francis says that he must, according to Saint Paul, boast of his sins.
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At the interreligious football match, the selected singer whom was Argentinian, sang John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’, with no objections from the Vatican.
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Also apparently there was the waving of the Rainbow coloured flag.
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http://eponymousflower.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/things-never-seen-nor-heard-from-chair.html#comment-form
…and over in jolly ole England, this from Joseph Shaw: http://www.lmschairman.org/2014/09/young-people-and-traditional-mass.html#more
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Money quote:
I’m glad to say that the Traditional Mass is beginning to creep in as an option in some of the settings where young Catholics are to be found in numbers. You will find it at meetings of the Faith Movement, at the Evangelium Conference, at the forthcoming SPUC conference, and in a growing number of University chaplaincies. It is still a bit marginal, usually, the early morning ‘quiet Mass’ option, but it is a start. Let’s not forget what Pope Benedict XVI said of it:
… it has clearly been demonstrated that young persons too have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction and found in it a form of encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist, particularly suited to them.”
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Hey, it’s a start.
I did see some fellow waving the homo flag at the stadium in a YouTube video of the event. Good grief.
One for the “you just can’t make this stuff up” bag.
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Soros/Oprah/Gates/Buffet funded “nuns on the bus” will launch a bus tour to take on the……. Koch Brothers.
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I would supply the link, but I don’t intentionally go on these type of site. So just duckduckgo, and find an acceptable site.
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At the end of the day, you got to follow the money. 😉
In her letter to Pope Gregory XI, –St. Catherine of Sienna called [still calls] for a return from Avignon, with a deep trust in God despite the enemies within and without the Church, and for setting out with boldness, convert and re-convert unbelievers:
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“Christ ..laid down his life..in spite of our ingratitude. The hounding, the wrongs, the scorn, the insults of the people He had created and so greatly blessed, did not keep him from working out our salvation.. I am begging you, I am telling you,..so that all these children may not lose the inheritance of eternal life! You hold the keys,..now is the time.. using patience and war— raising the standard of the sweet blazing cross and setting out against the unbelievers.. sleep no longer, wake up and raise that standard courageously against.”
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..”the vice and sin, the pride and filth that are rampant among the Christian people—especially among the prelates, pastors, and administrators of holy Church who have turned to eating and devouring souls, not converting them but devouring them! “And it all comes from their selfish love for themselves, from which pride is born, and greed and avarice and spiritual and bodily impurity. They see the infernal wolves carrying off their charges and it seems they don’t care. Their care has been absorbed in piling up worldly pleasures and enjoyment, approval and praise..”
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.. God’s providential help will always be with you ..even though you see..that human help is failing us, and those who should be helping most- disappoint and act against us. Don’t be afraid, but even more self-confident; don’t give up or restrain your sweet holy desire, but let it be more enkindled with each day that passes. Up, father! ..unbelievers are challenging you -coming as close as they can to take what is yours. Up, to give your life for Christ!.. a thousand times, if necessary, for God’s honor and the salvation of his creatures.. you, his vicar, ought to be carrying on his work. ”
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” ..set up camp against the unbelievers,..set out against our enemies, wearing as armor the most holy cross and carrying the sword of God’s sweet holy word. Ah, feed your hungry servants.. with tremendous blazing desire! Take courage, take courage, father! ” “Stay away from the bitterness that cripples, but take hold of the bitterness that strengthens—bitterness at seeing God’s name insulted, and strength in the trust that God will provide for your needs.”
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“I’ll say no more, for if I followed my inclination I wouldn’t stop as long as I had life in my body! Forgive my presumption. Let my love and grief for God’s honor and the advancement of holy Church be my excuse.. Have pity…in continual tears and prayers. Please don’t treat them with indifference, but act on them vigorously..I would gladly give my life if necessary for God’s honor and the salvation of souls. Gentle Jesus! Jesus! ”
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Full text : http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/20C/Catherine.html
Thank you for this. You are correct, Louie.
“11 Ways to know when you live in a country run by idiots”.
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http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2014/09/05/11-ways-to-know-when-you-live-in-a-country-run-by-idiots/
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Enjoy 😉
And this from Rome.
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http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2014/09/darkness-in-rome-liberation-theology.html#more
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The un-ideological bishop of Rome likes his ideologues.
And this….
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“A cry from the heart” over at RC:
http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-cry-from-heart-things-that-have-never.html
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The picture speaks a thousand words about his papacy. NO?
To Salvemur.
From Mundabor.
Subject: Sedevacantism Debunked.
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Link here:
http://mundabor.wordpress.com/2014/09/09/sedevacantism-debunked/
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Food for thought.
More good new, this time from the old continent.
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Mass for consecration of Corsica is offered in Traditional Rite.:
Link via EF blog here: http://eponymousflower.blogspot.com/2014/09/consecration-of-corsica-to-mary-with.html
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Can Malta be far behind?
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Brick by brick, baby. 😉