II. This time the crack in the space-time continuum re-opened in the sky over the municipality of Sainte-Adèle in southern Québec. Population 12000+, a pristine locale within sight of the Laurentian Mountains. The goings on eventuated at the splendidly accommodated Hotel Mont-Gabriel. Tasty dishes, too! Yum. Although the hotel properly accommodated for the bishops, the bishops did not accommodate for all the media. LifeSite News, the most prominent pro-life news and information agency in North America and points beyond, was banned for a second year in a row.[1] Thus, the Development and Peace scandal remains a hypersensitive matter with the CCCB after 3+ years. More on D+P later. Here, it cannot be emphasized enough that the proscription of pro-life journalists by so-called Catholic bishops was utterly nefarious, outrageous, evocative of North Korea's stringent control over its media. At the same time, however, this contemptible act was an inadvertent sign betraying the CCCB's ho-hum attitude with regard to culturally-critical life issues, even of a pervasive anti-natalist mindset. There surely is hard evidence for this aspect of the apostasy. The reader should be advised that the CCCB's health insurance plan for staff members includes coverage for contraceptives and morning-after pills, i.e. abortifacients.[2] Yup, you read that correctly.
III. CCCB VP Abp. Paul-André Durocher of Gatineau Archdiocese led the press briefings. A sunny fellow, he's got an interesting background. With family roots in the Hawkesbury area, he was born in Windsor, Ontario. Obtained a degree in music from the University of Western Ontario and is a opera/choral singer. His theological training was at St. Paul University (Ottawa) under the Oblates. Ordained a priest in 1982, he did some teaching at schools in Timmins. Appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Sault Sainte Marie in 1997, ordained Bishop of Ausuaga that same year. Then appointed Bishop of Alexandria-Cornwall in 2002, recently taking the helm at Gatineau in 2011, an archdiocese at the relatively young age of 57. Conducting a search at the data-abounding VIS blog, I count at least 5 audiences/meetings with the Holy Father(s) since 1999. So, +Durocher is definitely a player. Look for him to be The Star Chamber's next prez.
IV. During the press briefings +Durocher was noticeably guarded in phraseology when responding to questions from reporters. It seemed to me a spray-on smile was maintained throughout process, working only to divulge what was probably echoing in his mind: "Get me the hell outta here". Much more relaxed he was when interviewed by Salt+Light's Fr. Thomas Rosica, soonafter the 2011 plenary. Two buds on the inside yukking it up and doing a dandy job at candy-coating the catastrophic state of Catholicism in Québec. The best part was when +Durocher segued into World Youth Day at Toronto. FTR was visibly relishing that because WYD 2002 is his baby. Imperative it is for Catholic Canucks to understand that his role as WYD National Director was the greatest event in human history since Moses parted the Red Sea. This is why FTR doesn't stop talking about it, for ten bloody years - and counting. In 2002 +Durocher was present at a high school in Sturgeon Falls, Ontario, watching as the WYD Cross "floated by the body of the students in the gym... surfing the Cross... I'm getting goose bumps right now thinking about that"... Jesus, the surfer dude, in a mosh pit... Holy crap, do I need a smoke... As he always does in every interview with luminaries of the Church, S+L's CEO made sure to mention to viewers that he and +Durocher have been "friends" for a long time, since 1997 - that very same year when +Durocher was first appointed a bishop. Get to know the right people, right away, ASAP, for future prospects for me. These ladder climbers, their funny. And, of course, exclusive video coverage of the 2012 plenary was again provided by Salt+Light TV...
V. SIGN NO. 1 / THE BLISS OF OBLIVIOUSNESS: The tone of the plenary was set on Day 1 in the opening address by CCCB president Abp. Richard Smith, Edmonton Archdiocese. After presenting a retrospective report on the preceding year (yawn), issues of "significant pastoral concern" were outlined. These included: immigration, "care for persons and communities harmed by abuse", "the impact of the economic downturn", "celebrating with our Ukrainian Brothers in the Episcopate", and "ecumenical collaboration". Excepting the sexual abuse matter, the remainder are Catholic-lite pet topics, so much obsessed over by the Modernists. One reason these issues feature prominently is because they're easy. No tension, no debate, no digging, no real distinctions, no absolute truths involved - a consensus already exists. I mean, like, the economy has to get betterrrrrrrr. Who woulda thunk? And one wonders if even a degreed economist is to be consulted. If so, you can bet he won't be a fan of Friedrich Hayek. It is especially disquieting that +Smith deems these of "significant pastoral concern" when already there exists overarching issues demanding immediate attention. Like, for example, how the State/judiciary are ferociously attacking the family unit and vulnerable persons (e.g. abortion, euthanasia). Or that Catholicism in Canada continues on its nose-dive into obscurity, aided by happy clappy catechesis, liturgical ruination from coast to coast, proliferation of heresy from the parish RCIA program to the university classroom, an entrenched power-wielding network of religious/lay homosexualists inside Catholic institutions across the board, implied universalism and indifferentism, "practical atheism". These are excluded from the roster of "significant" concerns? Ah, but that's the thing. +Smith doesn't want to hear about it, so in his ears do the index fingers go. Shangri-La la la la la la la la la la la...
In the daily exercise of our pastoral office, we sometimes have to listen, much to our regret, to voices of persons who, though burning with zeal, are not endowed with too much sense of discretion or measure. In these modern times they can see nothing but prevarication and ruin. They say that our era, in comparison with past eras, is getting worse, and they behave as though they had learned nothing from history, which is, none the less, the teacher of life. They behave as though at the time of former Councils everything was a full triumph for the Christian idea and life and for proper religious liberty. We feel we must disagree with those prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand. In the present order of things, Divine Providence is leading us to a new order of human relations which, by men's own efforts and even beyond their very expectations, are directed toward the fulfilment of God's superior and inscrutable designs. And everything, even human differences, leads to the greater good of the Church.
Welcome to Fantasy Island. Notice the first thing: the poor guy is regretful that he has to put up with indiscrete people sounding alarms, as if they're completely unfounded, as if these people are extremists, insinuated as sort of crazy. That's just fantastic. By condescension, then, he disqualifies legitimate remonstration yet makes no reference to facts nor provides logical argumentation justifying the reason for scoring off these "voices of persons". Omission, mark them as nothing.
VI. Then a comparison is made between the pre- and post-Conciliar eras. These "voices" without "measure" are alleged to think that the pre-Vatican II period was in a state of "full triumph". Obviously, no reasonable Catholic ever has claimed a utopian-like Christian condition prior to V2. Anyway, Christianity in the West has been in freefall for centuries since when that obnoxious Augustinian monk shacked up with a nun. Here, a diversionary ploy is being employed to camouflage the implosion of Catholicism after the Council. In actuality, with +Smith and his neo-Modernist ilk there has been a wholesale negation of the pre-Conciliar era. It has not been the anti-Modernists exalting this period into some idyllic state of blissfulness. The inverse has eventuated. Or, as editor Glen Argan of the Western Catholic Reporter recently remarked, after Vatican II "the ossified Catholicism of the pre-conciliar Church had been rejected".[3] A "hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture" is what B16 calls such characterizations. WCR is based out of Edmonton, +Smith's home turf, and like all diocesan-based newspapers, gets it's talking points from the reigning prelate. WCR and the chancery office of Archidioecesis Edmontonensis are located at the same address: 8421 101 Avenue NW, Edmonton, Alberta, T6A 0L1. To a high probability, when Glen pops over to +Richie's office for a friendly chat, words such as "vibrant", "aggiornamento", "New Pentecost", "We Are Church" and "Gather Us In" will be episodically enunciated during the course of conversation. Have to sustain the narrative, you know.
VII. Since were already there, let's take a quick statistical excursion through +Smith's archdiocese. Shall we? Okay. As Super Mario says, letsa go...
What you see in the graph above is a 46% reduction in the number of nuns for the 40-year period running from 1966 to 2006. For the same phase the number of diocesan priests decreased by 33%, meaning a drastic change in the ratio of the number Catholics per Priest. It was 544:1 in 1966, 2020:1 in 2006 (source). Data collected here are available only up to 2006. +Smith was appointed Archbishop of Edmonton in March 2007 and, to get an idea of a likely future scenario based on more recent data of religious, I would be very interested to know AE's statistical trends since he assumed control. Judging by the present status of the Sisters of Providence in Edmonton...
...things ain't looking too good.
VIII. The Archdiocese of Edmonton is just one of 70 dioceses in Canada. Each of the 18 ecclesiastical provinces in Canada exhibit similar trends of declination in religious after 1965. What about laymen? Canadian Catholics hardly attend Mass and the diminishing trend over the decades is irrefutable: 38% attendance circa 1990, 32% for 1995-2000, and 29% for 2005-2008 (source: CARA). Recent polls show attendance at less than 20%. Of those, most are older people. Go to Mass today and you will be mesmerized by an sprawling conglomeration of greyish-blue bouffants billowing above the pews. In a recent survey for Christian churches in general - released only a few weeks prior to the plenary's commencement on September 24, the data show young people abandoning their churches in multitudes.[4] And of those younger Catholics who do attend Mass, how many of these have been properly catechized? How many go to Confession? How many believe in Transubstantiation? Indeed, how many care? In addition to low vocation numbers, we have several parishes closing down, we have a Catholic school system subverted by the homosexualists, plus the pandemic of liturgical abuse. "A weakening of faith in God, a rise in selfishness and a drop in the number of people going to Mass in many parts of the world can be traced to Masses that are not reverent and don't follow church rules",[5] said CNS, reporting on statements made by Raymond Cardinal Burke, Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura. If these exigencies (plus others) don't constitute a crisis in the Church, then what does?
IX. But, you see, persons drawing attention to these vital facts are, according +Smith, "prophets of gloom". To be sure, based on +Smith's criteria for gauging the contemporary "fitness" of the Church (so to speak), the Holy Father, too, belongs to these "prophets of gloom". Less than two weeks after the 2012 CCCB Plenary closed on September 28, in his homily during the opening Mass of the "Year of Faith", Pope Benedict stated:
VI. Then a comparison is made between the pre- and post-Conciliar eras. These "voices" without "measure" are alleged to think that the pre-Vatican II period was in a state of "full triumph". Obviously, no reasonable Catholic ever has claimed a utopian-like Christian condition prior to V2. Anyway, Christianity in the West has been in freefall for centuries since when that obnoxious Augustinian monk shacked up with a nun. Here, a diversionary ploy is being employed to camouflage the implosion of Catholicism after the Council. In actuality, with +Smith and his neo-Modernist ilk there has been a wholesale negation of the pre-Conciliar era. It has not been the anti-Modernists exalting this period into some idyllic state of blissfulness. The inverse has eventuated. Or, as editor Glen Argan of the Western Catholic Reporter recently remarked, after Vatican II "the ossified Catholicism of the pre-conciliar Church had been rejected".[3] A "hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture" is what B16 calls such characterizations. WCR is based out of Edmonton, +Smith's home turf, and like all diocesan-based newspapers, gets it's talking points from the reigning prelate. WCR and the chancery office of Archidioecesis Edmontonensis are located at the same address: 8421 101 Avenue NW, Edmonton, Alberta, T6A 0L1. To a high probability, when Glen pops over to +Richie's office for a friendly chat, words such as "vibrant", "aggiornamento", "New Pentecost", "We Are Church" and "Gather Us In" will be episodically enunciated during the course of conversation. Have to sustain the narrative, you know.
VII. Since were already there, let's take a quick statistical excursion through +Smith's archdiocese. Shall we? Okay. As Super Mario says, letsa go...
VIII. The Archdiocese of Edmonton is just one of 70 dioceses in Canada. Each of the 18 ecclesiastical provinces in Canada exhibit similar trends of declination in religious after 1965. What about laymen? Canadian Catholics hardly attend Mass and the diminishing trend over the decades is irrefutable: 38% attendance circa 1990, 32% for 1995-2000, and 29% for 2005-2008 (source: CARA). Recent polls show attendance at less than 20%. Of those, most are older people. Go to Mass today and you will be mesmerized by an sprawling conglomeration of greyish-blue bouffants billowing above the pews. In a recent survey for Christian churches in general - released only a few weeks prior to the plenary's commencement on September 24, the data show young people abandoning their churches in multitudes.[4] And of those younger Catholics who do attend Mass, how many of these have been properly catechized? How many go to Confession? How many believe in Transubstantiation? Indeed, how many care? In addition to low vocation numbers, we have several parishes closing down, we have a Catholic school system subverted by the homosexualists, plus the pandemic of liturgical abuse. "A weakening of faith in God, a rise in selfishness and a drop in the number of people going to Mass in many parts of the world can be traced to Masses that are not reverent and don't follow church rules",[5] said CNS, reporting on statements made by Raymond Cardinal Burke, Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura. If these exigencies (plus others) don't constitute a crisis in the Church, then what does?
IX. But, you see, persons drawing attention to these vital facts are, according +Smith, "prophets of gloom". To be sure, based on +Smith's criteria for gauging the contemporary "fitness" of the Church (so to speak), the Holy Father, too, belongs to these "prophets of gloom". Less than two weeks after the 2012 CCCB Plenary closed on September 28, in his homily during the opening Mass of the "Year of Faith", Pope Benedict stated:
Recent decades have seen the advance of a spiritual "desertification". In the Council's time it was already possible from a few tragic pages of history to know what a life or a world without God looked like, but now we see it every day around us. This void has spread.[6]
+Smith again: "In these modern times they can see nothing but prevarication and ruin". Not so sympatico with the HF, methinks. Let's now reiterate his statement on these so-called "prophets of gloom":
We feel we must disagree with those prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand.
Read it again. Look closely. Do you see it? +Smith is winking to his audience as he playfully plagiarizes Pope John XXIII, who spoke the following in his address at the opening of the Second Vatican Council:
We must disagree with these prophets of doom, who are always forecasting worse disasters, as though the end of the world were at hand.[7]
Now the reason +Smith is invoking John XXIII is because many deem this pope as the paramount symbol of Vatican II. He is emblematical of it, he called for it to be convened. For today's prevailing Modernists, V2 is the "source and summit" of Church affairs to which most, if not all, citation must be made. Interesting it is that +Smith made no reference to the next pope who lived to see the Council end. That is, Pope Paul VI, who, witnessing what the Council had wrought, famously spoke in 1972: "From some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered into the temple of God".[8] Or his other assessment: the Church is in "auto-destruct" mode. In his (now) disproven optimism regarding the Vatican II Council, John XXII never lived to see its outcome, although he reportedly mourned "this is no longer my Council" upon seeing the trend after the first session and, when on his deathbed in early June 1963, "Stop the Council! Stop the Council!". Apart from his prophetic Humanae vitae, the data evidence that Paul VI, although aware of demonic infiltration, never applied sufficient corrective measures to combat rampant heresy, for reasons which probably won't be fully understood until after years of historical research. It also appears that Bl. John Paul II's "new springtime" for the Church was, too, an overly optimistic assessment, unless its orientation be to the distant future (nota bene: the "new springtime" mentioned in JP2's 1990 encyclical Redemptoris missio was made in the context of the "Third Millennium", i.e. one-thousand years, a very long time). However, Pope Benedict XVI - who realistically denotes the present Church faithful as a "creative minority", has seen the after-effect, he knows it, is familiar with it, he was there. Indeed, so attuned to the post-Conciliar collapse in everything from levity in liturgy to heresy in Catholic academia, that as far back as 1982 a certain Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, CDF Prefect at the time, was putting the world on notice of a "postconciliar crisis in the Catholic Church"...
When an institution deeply rooted in souls as is the Catholic Church is shaken to its very roots, the earthquake extends to all mankind... a radical interpretation of the fundamental call for conversion and love of neighbor led not only to uncertainty about the Church's own identity... but especially to a deep rift in her relationship to her own history... In consequence, a radically new beginning was considered a pressing obligation... It was precisely the break in historical consciousness, the self-tormenting rejection of the past, that produced the concept of a zero hour, in which everything would begin again... The dream of liberation, the dream of something totally different, which, a little while later, had an increasingly potent impact on the student revolts, was, in a certain sense, also attributable to the Council; it was the Council that first urged man on and then disappointed him... The kind of self-accusation at which the Council arrived with respect to the Church's own history... expressed itself in ways that can only be called neurotic.[9]
So, then, in May 2012, when the editor of the Western Catholic Reporter wrote that "the ossified Catholicism of the pre-conciliar Church had been rejected", was that an expression of neurosis? Hey, don't look at me that way. God's representative on Earth formed that conclusion. I'm just a lowly compiler.
X. Not going to discuss whatever meritorious intentions of the Council, nor of the overriding calamities it spawned, into arguments of pros and cons, neither of criticisms some Traditionalists have with Pope Benedict's (overall) favourable perspective on it, save to underscore the existential confusion caused by Gaudium et spes, Dignitatis humanae and Lumen gentium - V2 documents with statements therein evidently inconsistent with what pre-Conciliar popes and Doctors of the Church taught. The quiet, underground advancement of Modernism in the decades leading up to the Council also needs factoring into this equation. It is only within the realm of qualified experts from which solutions to these thorny issues will stem, to the exclusion of the Neo-Modernists and Neo-Catholic$. The former are plain enemies of the Church. The latter are unwilling to unload their Protestant baggage. Whatever comes, comes. Pope Benedict XVI is our pope, given to us by the Holy Spirit, he is Peter the Rock, he belongs to us. Nearly every day we read about someone betraying him, or of some group vilifying him. The lies, the insults, the incessant battering, much of it coming from those inside the Church. Did you read those vicious comeback tweets after the Holy Father started his Twitter account? We have not the faintest sense of the suffering our pope undergoes. Really, the whole world weighs down upon him. Nevertheless, His Holiness is hopeful for the future despite the wolves. Because the Cross is victorious, the greatest joy which must be instilled in every human heart, and we have the Lord of History's unalterable decree made to St. Peter at Pan's Sanctuary. So, then, the problem is not one of presentimentality, of doom and gloom, as the CCCB president presumes. The matter, rather, relates to acknowledging a currently existent, full-fledged crisis in the Catholic Church, and of a necessity to deal with it in the appropriate fashion. Said Ven. Bishop Fulton Sheen in 1974:
X. Not going to discuss whatever meritorious intentions of the Council, nor of the overriding calamities it spawned, into arguments of pros and cons, neither of criticisms some Traditionalists have with Pope Benedict's (overall) favourable perspective on it, save to underscore the existential confusion caused by Gaudium et spes, Dignitatis humanae and Lumen gentium - V2 documents with statements therein evidently inconsistent with what pre-Conciliar popes and Doctors of the Church taught. The quiet, underground advancement of Modernism in the decades leading up to the Council also needs factoring into this equation. It is only within the realm of qualified experts from which solutions to these thorny issues will stem, to the exclusion of the Neo-Modernists and Neo-Catholic$. The former are plain enemies of the Church. The latter are unwilling to unload their Protestant baggage. Whatever comes, comes. Pope Benedict XVI is our pope, given to us by the Holy Spirit, he is Peter the Rock, he belongs to us. Nearly every day we read about someone betraying him, or of some group vilifying him. The lies, the insults, the incessant battering, much of it coming from those inside the Church. Did you read those vicious comeback tweets after the Holy Father started his Twitter account? We have not the faintest sense of the suffering our pope undergoes. Really, the whole world weighs down upon him. Nevertheless, His Holiness is hopeful for the future despite the wolves. Because the Cross is victorious, the greatest joy which must be instilled in every human heart, and we have the Lord of History's unalterable decree made to St. Peter at Pan's Sanctuary. So, then, the problem is not one of presentimentality, of doom and gloom, as the CCCB president presumes. The matter, rather, relates to acknowledging a currently existent, full-fledged crisis in the Catholic Church, and of a necessity to deal with it in the appropriate fashion. Said Ven. Bishop Fulton Sheen in 1974:
We are living at the end of Christendom - not the end of Christianity. By Christendom is meant the political, economic and social order pervaded by the Gospel ethic. We no longer live in a Christian civilization. Christendom only refers to the world and its institutions. Christianity refers to Christ and His Mystical Body in its evident outreach to the world. The era of Faith was succeeded by the era of Reason, which, in turn, has given way to our Sensate age. Christianity is considered off the reservation.[10]
Canadian Catholics must, unlike some Canadian prelates, recognize and affirm cold, harsh, uncomfortable, actual, objective REALITY. "Facts" are manifestations of reality. All of this meaning, of course, we must look to, and be anchored in, Tradition, i.e. the past, which the stalwart advocates of the "spirit" of Vatican II have effectively "rejected" because of its purported ossification.
XI. Not Pope Benedict. Since he took the helm in 2005 there has been a clear and crisp signal of a course correction to a Ship gone adrift, of a trending return to Catholic orthodoxy. His Holiness gave us Summorum Pontificum, declaring that the Usus antiquior was never abrogated. This motu proprio also showcases a built-in by-pass switch which, upon activation, doesn't require priests to obtain permission to celebrate the TLM from antagonistic bishops, who are legion. There are the ongoing SSPX negotiations, something dear to the HF, a resolution and regularization to which this blogger hopes arrives quickly (n.b. SSPX founder Abp. Lefebvre, though renouncing the Council afterward, did "sign every document of Vatican II... with his own hand" and, prior to the 1988 excommunication, was insistent that a resolution to the doctrinal dilemma would derive from the Holy See[11]). Papa Ratzinger also netted disaffected traditionalist Anglicans by launching a Personal Ordinariate, which shot across the world right "out of the blue". Classic German efficiency, it was an ingenious manoeuvre to circumvent the vulgar, verbose, "dialogue"-loving, non-committal, backslapping, unproductive, inutile, conversion-inhibiting ecumenaucracy - which some deem to be a "significant pastoral concern". The reader can be confident that the CCCB and its collaborators are, shall we say, forlorn with the abovementioned occurrences only cursorily described. They secretly loathe them. Why? Because these place into scrutiny a Council they have canonized, a pastoral Council concocted into a universal benchmark set at T=0, whose promulgations have been transmogrified into a "superdogma". But the reality of the post-Conciliar situation was aptly analogized by Alice Thomas Ellis in her 1977 novel The Sin Eater:
XI. Not Pope Benedict. Since he took the helm in 2005 there has been a clear and crisp signal of a course correction to a Ship gone adrift, of a trending return to Catholic orthodoxy. His Holiness gave us Summorum Pontificum, declaring that the Usus antiquior was never abrogated. This motu proprio also showcases a built-in by-pass switch which, upon activation, doesn't require priests to obtain permission to celebrate the TLM from antagonistic bishops, who are legion. There are the ongoing SSPX negotiations, something dear to the HF, a resolution and regularization to which this blogger hopes arrives quickly (n.b. SSPX founder Abp. Lefebvre, though renouncing the Council afterward, did "sign every document of Vatican II... with his own hand" and, prior to the 1988 excommunication, was insistent that a resolution to the doctrinal dilemma would derive from the Holy See[11]). Papa Ratzinger also netted disaffected traditionalist Anglicans by launching a Personal Ordinariate, which shot across the world right "out of the blue". Classic German efficiency, it was an ingenious manoeuvre to circumvent the vulgar, verbose, "dialogue"-loving, non-committal, backslapping, unproductive, inutile, conversion-inhibiting ecumenaucracy - which some deem to be a "significant pastoral concern". The reader can be confident that the CCCB and its collaborators are, shall we say, forlorn with the abovementioned occurrences only cursorily described. They secretly loathe them. Why? Because these place into scrutiny a Council they have canonized, a pastoral Council concocted into a universal benchmark set at T=0, whose promulgations have been transmogrified into a "superdogma". But the reality of the post-Conciliar situation was aptly analogized by Alice Thomas Ellis in her 1977 novel The Sin Eater:
It is as though... one's revered, dignified and darling old mother had slapped on a mini-skirt and fishnet tights and started ogling strangers. A kind of menopausal madness, a sudden yearning to be attractive to all. It is tragic and hilarious and awfully embarrassing. And of course, those who knew her before feel a great sense of betrayal and can't bring themselves to go and see her any more.
XII. By implication, then, the Pollyannaish view of the post-Vatican II period maintained by the establishment church - which disregards or refutes the emergency, is at last being formally exposed for its irreality and shallowness. By his own words, +Smith is not facing up to crisis in the Church. This is not just disturbing, it's infantile. Instead, he bespeaks of "a new order of human relations... by men's own efforts", words reminiscent of some politburo apparatchik singing the praises of Marx for effacing God's providence in human affairs. Correlatively, then, the CCCB's "significant pastoral concerns" are "this world"-fixated, like the "economic downturn". Perhaps Our Lord was relaying His displeasure with the Canadian bishops by ordaining that an address at the plenary be given by the Major Archbishop of Kyiv-Galicia, Sviatoslav Shevchuk of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. As an onlooker from the East, a viewer from afar, His Beatitude remarked almost accusatorily:
The current economic crisis is merely the symptom of a much deeper spiritual and cultural crisis. As Western society rejects old moral structures and values, it finds that its moral GPS has no fixed and stationary points of reference.
The irony. Wonder how many of the boys flinched upon hearing that statement. Oh, yes, our prelates adhere vague Christian ethical descriptors to economics and immigration in an attempt to give these subjects a transcendent glow. But that is as far as they will go. +Smith when interviewed at the plenary: "Engage the faith not just at the cognitive level, but at the heart, open your heart anew to an encounter with Jesus Christ" - and that's the very problem. Emotions overtaking rationality. Schleiermacher pulled that stunt two centuries ago. Does the reader ever wonder why those "Statements" and "Reports" and "Pastoral Letters" released by the CCCB are so boring and anodyne and uninteresting? Well, now you know.
XIII. SIGN NO. 2 / CRC IN "SOLIDARITY" WITH HABITLESS HUSSY HERESY: The Canadian Religious Conference (CRC) is in some ways akin to a Bishop's Conference, except its membership consists of priests, brothers and sisters (the formation of National Religious Conferences was prompted by Pope Pius XII in 1950). We will briefly explore the CRC's guiding principles and pursuits in a moment, which aren't, euphemistically speaking, consistent with Catholicism. In the meantime, let's cover a short talk given to the bishops by the newly elected CRC president, Fr. Michel Proulx, O. Praem. His topic was the League of Catholic Women Religious (LCWR) in the U.S., of the CRC's cordial relations with the LCWR nuns and the so-called "renewal" to which the latter is supposedly undergoing at present. If you've been following Catholic controversies in the news over the last three years, then you'll be aware that LCWR members have been naughty girls as of late, more than usual. For a long time they've been unashamedly pushing all manner of dissent: women's ordination, homosexuality, contraception, feminism, New Age esoterica, pagan-based transcendentalisms, pseudo-scientific "biomedical" techniques, Gestalt psychology, process theology, pantheism and nature worship à la Gaia, "Nuns on the Bus", cheering on the Obama regime, support for anti-natalist heathcare policies, let alone their thunderous silence on abortion... sort of - don't forget this LCWR nun...
Caught on film as an abortion "clinic escort" (left, in blue) and a "Nuns for Choice" activist.[12] You won't learn about such particularities from the CRC.
XIV. By 2009 Rome was evidently fed up with these American muffins, thus it commenced an Apostolic Visitation, overseen by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). See my takes on the situation in various sections of posts here, here and here. So saddened with the affair, even the notorious Mr. Scampers was motivated to produce a poignant short film on the LCWR, which the reader may view here. Final judgement was pronounced in April 2012. Some extractions: "scant regard for the role of the Magisterium... a rejection of faith... serious source of scandal... certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith... serious doctrinal problems".[13] Pretty serious stuff. But, really, it's been an open secret that the LCWR has been heavily invested in the heresy market for decades. The gals had it coming and sentencing was inevitable. Still, in my opinion, the notion of a post hoc LCWR "renewal" is a barrel of laughs. The sistas remain defiant and they're digging in with their pumps purchased at The Gap. Proof positive: the Blueberry Muffin, that is, former LCWR president Sr. Joan Chittister, has now called on her compatriots to "disband canonically and regroup as an unofficial interest group".[14] Anyway, the average age of an LCWR nun is 70+ years, the number of new recruits proximates the zero-level, and the "biological solution" is effectuating its disinterested handiwork.[15] So, oblivion awaits. Other reports tell of the growing impatience of this fella...
He's on deck and ready to swing. It is, therefore, in this context which Fr. Proulx's address to the CCCB should be considered.
XV. Below is Fr. Proulx's talk on the LCWR transcribed by this blogger when watched on video at the CCCB website. Accordingly, it's fisking time [TH2 analysis in bolded square brackets / bolded blue emphasis]:
XIII. SIGN NO. 2 / CRC IN "SOLIDARITY" WITH HABITLESS HUSSY HERESY: The Canadian Religious Conference (CRC) is in some ways akin to a Bishop's Conference, except its membership consists of priests, brothers and sisters (the formation of National Religious Conferences was prompted by Pope Pius XII in 1950). We will briefly explore the CRC's guiding principles and pursuits in a moment, which aren't, euphemistically speaking, consistent with Catholicism. In the meantime, let's cover a short talk given to the bishops by the newly elected CRC president, Fr. Michel Proulx, O. Praem. His topic was the League of Catholic Women Religious (LCWR) in the U.S., of the CRC's cordial relations with the LCWR nuns and the so-called "renewal" to which the latter is supposedly undergoing at present. If you've been following Catholic controversies in the news over the last three years, then you'll be aware that LCWR members have been naughty girls as of late, more than usual. For a long time they've been unashamedly pushing all manner of dissent: women's ordination, homosexuality, contraception, feminism, New Age esoterica, pagan-based transcendentalisms, pseudo-scientific "biomedical" techniques, Gestalt psychology, process theology, pantheism and nature worship à la Gaia, "Nuns on the Bus", cheering on the Obama regime, support for anti-natalist heathcare policies, let alone their thunderous silence on abortion... sort of - don't forget this LCWR nun...
XIV. By 2009 Rome was evidently fed up with these American muffins, thus it commenced an Apostolic Visitation, overseen by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). See my takes on the situation in various sections of posts here, here and here. So saddened with the affair, even the notorious Mr. Scampers was motivated to produce a poignant short film on the LCWR, which the reader may view here. Final judgement was pronounced in April 2012. Some extractions: "scant regard for the role of the Magisterium... a rejection of faith... serious source of scandal... certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith... serious doctrinal problems".[13] Pretty serious stuff. But, really, it's been an open secret that the LCWR has been heavily invested in the heresy market for decades. The gals had it coming and sentencing was inevitable. Still, in my opinion, the notion of a post hoc LCWR "renewal" is a barrel of laughs. The sistas remain defiant and they're digging in with their pumps purchased at The Gap. Proof positive: the Blueberry Muffin, that is, former LCWR president Sr. Joan Chittister, has now called on her compatriots to "disband canonically and regroup as an unofficial interest group".[14] Anyway, the average age of an LCWR nun is 70+ years, the number of new recruits proximates the zero-level, and the "biological solution" is effectuating its disinterested handiwork.[15] So, oblivion awaits. Other reports tell of the growing impatience of this fella...
XV. Below is Fr. Proulx's talk on the LCWR transcribed by this blogger when watched on video at the CCCB website. Accordingly, it's fisking time [TH2 analysis in bolded square brackets / bolded blue emphasis]:
We have always remained in contact with the members of their Executive Committee and members of our council were present at their August assembly in the States.[translation: in alliance, consensus in views] And yet through this whole process of these last months, according to the wish of the LCWR themselves, we have not made any public declaration [why?] during the last council meeting. At the beginning of this month, we again raised the question of what kind of solidarity [politically-charged word improperly applied to a purely religious matter] or position we can have as the CRC in this issue of the LCWR and, in a very severe way, we choose to give dialogue all the chances possible, a dialogue that's occurring now, [read: endless chatter with no intent of resolution] between the LCWR and Bishop Peter Sartain, [CDF delegate assigned by Vatican to oversee LCWR "renewal"], who is responsible by the Vatican to accompany the doctrinal review of the LCWR.
And it is a deep desire to promote a church of communion here on this side of the border, we also choose to remain discreet on this topic. [...because we secretly agree with the LCWR's dissenting views] We certainly do not have the intention of adopting any kind of opposition of conflict to bring about a debate in the public area. [yes, brush error and heresy under the carpet, keep it hidden] We believe that this kind of stance would not help any kind of deep dialogue within our Canadian church. ["dialogue" third time mentioned]
Now, this being said, I have to say that some of our members would like us to make a more aggressive stance at this time in respect to the different levels of church authority, [Disobedience, defiance, pride. CRC members don't like to be told what to do by legitimate Church authorities] and you will probably also know that many religious sisters, both French as well as Anglophone, feel at this time deeply hurt by the way in which the Roman authorities intervened in this question of the LCWR.[Tough cookies, it's not about feelings, emotionalism. It's about Catholic truth and stemming the heretical onslaught] There is a certain ill ease and I would even say hostility in some areas of the religious life on the woman's side.[Old story. Habitless nuns have stirred up trouble for 4+ decades, only now being called out for their rebellion/dissent]
It's very humbly and very delicately that I would want to encourage you as bishops, in your respective dioceses... I would certainly invite you to establish times or moments of dialogue ["dialogue" fourth time mentioned, i.e. a means in and of itself leading nowhere save to a perpetual state of suspended animation. Not and never directed to a final, purposeful end] with religious superiors on this question, and also on other issues that are related to the field of pastoral collaboration.[Our bishops have for years remained inert on dissenting female orders in Canada, why would they act now?]
The Order or Premonstrates that I'm Prior of here in Québec, define their charism as a charism of communion. And to be a Preremonstrate is called to be in the service of communion within the church, [Should be "communion" with, not so much within, the Church. There are plenty of dissenters within Church structures in key positions already united in revolt against the Holy See] and that's what St. Norbert in the twelfth century did. [Doubt that St. Norbert, himself an assailer of heresy, would desire "communion" with unapologetic, insubordinate heretic nuns. But that's another post.] He was our founder, and it's in that perspective that I'm trying to place my service now as president of the CRC.
Then came the applause. Fr. Proulx was outfitted in a clerical collar at the talk in the video. A formal event, yes, although additional optical evidence indicates he normally sports the "regular guy" look...
As seemingly do most of the religious on the CRC Executive/Administrative Council...
Including an Abbot/Editor of a certain Catholic newspaper based in Saskatchewan.
XVI. Embedding those photographs certainly isn't done to mock clothing style. Neither is it an attempt to spur laughter. My unease here relates to reasons why these religious dress like laymen. Unless, that is, when participating in some explicitly formal Catholic event with other religious, where they merge into a crowd of uniformity, hence without the apprehension of a challenge or the requirement for boldness. Canon 284 does stipulate that "clerics are to wear suitable ecclesiastical garb according to the norms issued by the conference of bishops and according to legitimate local customs". Does the CCCB oblige religious to follow such norms? Does it even have any? Are polyester pantsuits and Polo shirts designed by Ralph Lauren part of the dress code enforced by the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner of Canada? The nonchalant absence of clerics/habits is always an ominous sign. A general rule is, within reasonable limits and excepting anomalous situations (e.g. covert activity to help others during wartime, persecution), to be suspicious of those religious disinclined to "constantly" dress like religious, as this is a telltale indicator of some underlying shame or fear of being a conspicuous sign of Jesus Christ to the world, which is necessitous for the consecrated soul. My experience is that nine times out of ten you will find some aspect of heresy involved with such religious, a lackadaisical devotional life, laziness or aversion to following proper rubrics, a preoccupation with "this world", an excessive desire to be "one of the guys" (functioning to blur the priest/layman distinction), an over-enforced assertion of the immanent, petty lip service to things numinous, often expressed awkwardly or kitschy - Modernism at work - whether they know it or not, whatever be their endeavours, modest or grandiose. And, indeed, a perusal of documentation at the CRC website demonstrates this to be the case.
XVII. That a working alliance exists between CRC and LCWR is hinted at what the CRC posted about the May 2012 meeting in Washington between LCWR and CDF representatives. The LCWR "raised concerns about both the content of the doctrinal assessment and the process by which it was prepared", which is an understatement. Especially so if the rebellious scowling of Sr. Sandra Schneiders is considered:
XVI. Embedding those photographs certainly isn't done to mock clothing style. Neither is it an attempt to spur laughter. My unease here relates to reasons why these religious dress like laymen. Unless, that is, when participating in some explicitly formal Catholic event with other religious, where they merge into a crowd of uniformity, hence without the apprehension of a challenge or the requirement for boldness. Canon 284 does stipulate that "clerics are to wear suitable ecclesiastical garb according to the norms issued by the conference of bishops and according to legitimate local customs". Does the CCCB oblige religious to follow such norms? Does it even have any? Are polyester pantsuits and Polo shirts designed by Ralph Lauren part of the dress code enforced by the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner of Canada? The nonchalant absence of clerics/habits is always an ominous sign. A general rule is, within reasonable limits and excepting anomalous situations (e.g. covert activity to help others during wartime, persecution), to be suspicious of those religious disinclined to "constantly" dress like religious, as this is a telltale indicator of some underlying shame or fear of being a conspicuous sign of Jesus Christ to the world, which is necessitous for the consecrated soul. My experience is that nine times out of ten you will find some aspect of heresy involved with such religious, a lackadaisical devotional life, laziness or aversion to following proper rubrics, a preoccupation with "this world", an excessive desire to be "one of the guys" (functioning to blur the priest/layman distinction), an over-enforced assertion of the immanent, petty lip service to things numinous, often expressed awkwardly or kitschy - Modernism at work - whether they know it or not, whatever be their endeavours, modest or grandiose. And, indeed, a perusal of documentation at the CRC website demonstrates this to be the case.
XVII. That a working alliance exists between CRC and LCWR is hinted at what the CRC posted about the May 2012 meeting in Washington between LCWR and CDF representatives. The LCWR "raised concerns about both the content of the doctrinal assessment and the process by which it was prepared", which is an understatement. Especially so if the rebellious scowling of Sr. Sandra Schneiders is considered:
...uninvited guests who should be received in the parlor, not given the run of the house... hostile move... disturbed by the Apostolic Visitation... It is the ecclesiastical analogue of a grand jury indictment... features... are problematic or repugnant to intelligent, educated, adult women in western society... an unwarranted surprise attack... not only does the fact of the investigation feel threatening if not sinister but its mode is upsetting... a return to pre-conciliar lifestyles akin to those in his [Franc Cardinal Rodé's] eastern European homeland under Communism.[16]
Revealingly, LCWR complaints listed in the CRC posting were not balanced with any allusion to CDF concerns or findings. We also have some correspondence in June 2010 from CRC past president Mary Finlayson to LCWR president, Sr. Marlene Weisenbeck: "the women and men religious of Canada stand with you in solidarity and support". This, I guess, is the nice Canadian way of telling Rome to get lost. Hence, in his talk (above), Fr. Proulx was merely pretending neutrality: "We certainly do not have the intention of adopting any kind of opposition". Ya, right. One-sidedness, then, and it's safe to believe CRC membership has no affection for the CDF. However, in addition to the LCWR, CRC is quite affable with the following organizations of religious: International Union of Superiors General (UISG), Union of Superiors General (USG), Conference of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM), and the Latin American Confederación Latinoamericana de Religiosos y Religiosas (CLAR). Links to them are provided at the CRC site in its sidebar menu. A salient omission from this listing is a link to the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious (CMSWR). Let it be known: CMSWR, orthodox/loyal to the Magisterium, was incepted in 1992 because pious nuns from various orders in the U.S. were troubled, scandalized by paganism and politicization replete within the LCWR ranks. Glances at the home pages for their respective websites constitutes a fascinating story of contrast. CMSWR: Emergent, younger, vivacious nuns in habits with an unshakeable devotion to Jesus, Mary and Joseph - and look at those smiling faces! The happiness is infectious - versus - LCWR: Decaying, grumpy Gloria Steinem wannabes outfitted in dungarees with a hankering for Gaia, granola and groovy times. To whom does authenticity reside?
Come on people, it's a no brainer.
XVIII. The Montreal-based Canadian Religious Conference was established in 1953. According to its Mission Statement, it is "both a voice for and a service to leaders of religious institutes and societies of apostolic life. The mission of the CRC is to encourage its members to live fully their vocation in following Christ". Yet, like most Canadian Catholic institutions/organizations, Vatican II and the conterminous 1960s Counterculture Revolution were used as excuses to abandon Tradition and justify dissent. Even at its earliest stages, we can detect an ever-so-subtle percolation of feminist ideas into the CRC, including a presaging of the womynpriest movement. The CRC website describes its own history:
XVIII. The Montreal-based Canadian Religious Conference was established in 1953. According to its Mission Statement, it is "both a voice for and a service to leaders of religious institutes and societies of apostolic life. The mission of the CRC is to encourage its members to live fully their vocation in following Christ". Yet, like most Canadian Catholic institutions/organizations, Vatican II and the conterminous 1960s Counterculture Revolution were used as excuses to abandon Tradition and justify dissent. Even at its earliest stages, we can detect an ever-so-subtle percolation of feminist ideas into the CRC, including a presaging of the womynpriest movement. The CRC website describes its own history:
Religious communities, particularly women's communities, felt that religious life was not adequately addressed. In October 1964, leaders of women's communities received an invitation to express their opinions to three women religious auditors... Commenting on the auditors' recommendations, Sister Irene Farmer, then superior general of the Sisters of Charity of Halifax, wrote: "Instead of merely protecting our wonderful heritage, let us express our willingness to examine the essence of our religious life and to review the traditions, canons, and institutions that contribute to the shaping of religious women.
Readers can check out Muffins Galore! for a detailed analysis of feminism in Catholic Canada. Though, it is intriguing that CRC cites Sr. Irene Farmer (d. 2003), a known feminist-inspired reformer: "the essence of feminism, the struggle to achieve equal rights with men, has always been part of the very fabric of my life... I continue strongly to support women's rights both in the Church and in the world".[17] That Farmer's biographer, also of the Sisters of Charity, entitled her book, Rebel, Reformer, Religious Extraordinaire, is telling itself. More telling is what has happened to the Halifax Sisters of Charity in recent times, of which Farmer was Mother Superior. Below, for your viewing and auditory pleasure, see one of Sr. Farmer's spiritual progeny doing the Docetist liturgical dance thing during a "Bicentennial Mass"...
Fly, muffin, fly.
XIX. Given the abovementioned, it should be no surprise that CRC is in the business of heresy. All you have to do is read entries in the CRC Bulletin, which has a definite New Agey feel to it. A selection of article headings: "The Prophetic Call to Paradigm Change", "An Ecological Spirituality: The Earth and its Sacredness", "Living the Vows in the Context of Universal Solidarity and New Cosmology" and, my favourite, "International Solidarity... A New Future!", which sounds like a clarion call for the Workers of the World to unite. Admittedly, dubious titles themselves don't allow for final verdicts. Moreover, like all Canadian Catholic media products under the auspices of the Magic Circle, the CRC Bulletin performs the neat little trick of intermingling genuine Catholic content (sparsely) with dissenting views in the hope that nobody will notice the ruse (e.g. Catholic Register, Novalis Publishers). Unfortunately, this blogger is a stickler for details, which is where the Devil dwells. So, if looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's a schmuck. Thusly, time to pull out the trusty shotgun and blow a few of them away. For verification purposes, then, let's follow the money and hunt for any astounding things that might be lurking in the luxuriant Sacred Forests of Hippyland. Oh my, lookee what we have here...
According to the website, it symbolizes CRC's "commitment.. to build the kingdom of justice and peace", "our link with the cosmos", "our connectedness to the Earth", "to embrace new ways of being". Thanks, Oprah. In the final analysis, a common theme in CRC's philosophy is the superelevation of Vatican II, designating it as a total break from the past, i.e. "hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture". A sample attitude of one member: "the evolution of our institutes was marked by the transformative evolution of Vatican II...Congregations with a traditional two-category membership saw the Council abolish this antiquated segregation".[22] Abolish, as in coming to an end. Well, then, speaking of endings, CRC membership decreased from 50,000 in 1960 to 20,000 today, with the average congregant age being 80+ years.[23] Conclusion: CRC is rapidly on the wane yet still capable of doing damage whilst in its death throes. Beware for the next ten years or so.
XX. SIGN NO. 3 / MIXED MESSAGES ON D+P AFFAIR: Getting back to Development and Peace, briefly. There are some outward indications The Star Chamber is putting pressure on D+P personnel. I'm getting mixed signals, however. Prelate action or is necessity in operation or a combination? A fair number of employees recently left the organization, signalling a flushing out of "social justice" deifiers. Yet simple business sense says this was principally due to massive CIDA funding cuts early in 2012, i.e. forced retirement. There was the cancellation/delay of the politicized fall education campaign. Yet this was done behind the backs of D+P Standing Committee members.[24] We keep getting assurances from CCCB prez +Smith that matters are improving. Yet instincts tell me these are just bones thrown to quell criticism for the interim. You know, the delay-diversion-denial strategy. When asked about progress of the D+P investigation during the Day 2 press briefing, +Durocher did The Safety Dance, speaking of the "complexity of the issue", "receiving documents soon". Then, soonafter the plenary closed (two months later), Squeaker at SoCon busted another anti-natalist "partner" of D+P, número 57. The Canadian bishops created this monster called Development and Peace and it appears they're having difficulty over these last three years taming the Marxist beast. Is this what Msgr. Powers meant by "something quite wonderful"? Then there is the issue of banning LSN again. Then we learn that Fr. Rosica is to write up the "Partnership Policy Framework" to ensure D+P chooses agencies with agendas commensurate with Catholic principles, which is kind of like asking Hans Küng to revise the Oath Against Modernism. Why assign a controversial public figure who has his finger in every pie? Is FTR to wave his clericalist wand and instantaneously make the boo boo better? Thankfully, superseding all this intrigue, Pope Benedict released another motu proprio, On the Service of Charity, right after the plenary closed, stating that Catholic charitable bodies are "required to follow Catholic principles in their activity and they may not accept commitments which could in any way affect the observance of those principles". Reportedly, +Smith has "welcomed"[25] the apostolic letter, which could mean anything. The saga continues...
XXI. SIGN NO. 4 / DAPPER GILLES DAZZLES DA BOYZ: Mostly unknown outside Québec is Laval University theology professor Fr. Gilles Routhier or - minus his title - Gilles Routhier, when presenting himself in the public square. Unbecoming of a consecrated soul but, hey, priests are footloose and fancy free since the Second Vatican Council promulgated its decrees. And the purpose of his life has been to hail Vatican II as the theological pinnacle in human affairs since the Crucifixion. Apparently rebuffing the diminution in everything Catholic over the last 4+ decades, Routhier had the temerity to entitle one of his books: 40 Years after Vatican II, Hope! That's hilarious. Guess who published it? That's right, Catholic peoples: Novalis. And another book title with an exclamation mark - in the same vein as those other vomitous classics by Novalis, like Alive in the Spirit! and Celebrate! Hee hee hee hee... Holy crap, do I need a smoke. Strike a pose Zoolander...
Yet another liberal priest without collar and clerics. This one with a penchant for impeccably-tailored Armani suits - who, as such, immediately incites suspicion according to my rule delimited above. Since he prefers priestly informality to a disproportionate degree, for the remainder let's just refer to him as Gilles. Makes sense? Fair? Yes?
XXII. That smarmy prelude might make the reader think I'm jumping the gun, so let's hightail it over to Comedy Central and quote Gilles as he puts romanticizing words into John XXIII's mouth. Behold, the Gates of the Netherworld doth open:
XIX. Given the abovementioned, it should be no surprise that CRC is in the business of heresy. All you have to do is read entries in the CRC Bulletin, which has a definite New Agey feel to it. A selection of article headings: "The Prophetic Call to Paradigm Change", "An Ecological Spirituality: The Earth and its Sacredness", "Living the Vows in the Context of Universal Solidarity and New Cosmology" and, my favourite, "International Solidarity... A New Future!", which sounds like a clarion call for the Workers of the World to unite. Admittedly, dubious titles themselves don't allow for final verdicts. Moreover, like all Canadian Catholic media products under the auspices of the Magic Circle, the CRC Bulletin performs the neat little trick of intermingling genuine Catholic content (sparsely) with dissenting views in the hope that nobody will notice the ruse (e.g. Catholic Register, Novalis Publishers). Unfortunately, this blogger is a stickler for details, which is where the Devil dwells. So, if looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's a schmuck. Thusly, time to pull out the trusty shotgun and blow a few of them away. For verification purposes, then, let's follow the money and hunt for any astounding things that might be lurking in the luxuriant Sacred Forests of Hippyland. Oh my, lookee what we have here...
- Jean Bellefeuille approvingly refers to an infamous pro-abort radical feminist: "According to Rosemary Radford Ruether, innovations will be necessary in the religious field, as 'there is no ready-made ecological spirituality or ethics in our traditions'".[18]
- Jean Bellefeuille (again) disseminating Process Theology: "The new story of evolution, this new cosmology is not only a scientific history, it is also the story of a Creator God".[19]
- Richard Renshaw eliminates the real distinction between man and the natural world, personalizing/elevating the "cosmos" above God as the source of our being: "Key to transformation of our attitudes is a growing recognition that we are, in fundamental ways, a bodily expression of the Earth, who has nutured us into being".[20]
- Ulysse Paré delivers a favourable review of a book, Why Go To Church?, by pro-buggery priest Timothy Radcliffe: "a charming, witty, insightful and spiritually rich book". Radcliffe elsewhere: "love of people of the same sex... should be cherished and supported, which is why church leaders are slowly coming to support same sex civil unions. The God of love can be present in every true love". Of course, this "logic" that glorifies sodomy can be (and is) used to justify pedophilia, bestiality and other masturbatory depravities. Rome also considers Radcliffe an unfriendly in that it cancelled his talk at the 2011 Caritas Conference.[21]
XX. SIGN NO. 3 / MIXED MESSAGES ON D+P AFFAIR: Getting back to Development and Peace, briefly. There are some outward indications The Star Chamber is putting pressure on D+P personnel. I'm getting mixed signals, however. Prelate action or is necessity in operation or a combination? A fair number of employees recently left the organization, signalling a flushing out of "social justice" deifiers. Yet simple business sense says this was principally due to massive CIDA funding cuts early in 2012, i.e. forced retirement. There was the cancellation/delay of the politicized fall education campaign. Yet this was done behind the backs of D+P Standing Committee members.[24] We keep getting assurances from CCCB prez +Smith that matters are improving. Yet instincts tell me these are just bones thrown to quell criticism for the interim. You know, the delay-diversion-denial strategy. When asked about progress of the D+P investigation during the Day 2 press briefing, +Durocher did The Safety Dance, speaking of the "complexity of the issue", "receiving documents soon". Then, soonafter the plenary closed (two months later), Squeaker at SoCon busted another anti-natalist "partner" of D+P, número 57. The Canadian bishops created this monster called Development and Peace and it appears they're having difficulty over these last three years taming the Marxist beast. Is this what Msgr. Powers meant by "something quite wonderful"? Then there is the issue of banning LSN again. Then we learn that Fr. Rosica is to write up the "Partnership Policy Framework" to ensure D+P chooses agencies with agendas commensurate with Catholic principles, which is kind of like asking Hans Küng to revise the Oath Against Modernism. Why assign a controversial public figure who has his finger in every pie? Is FTR to wave his clericalist wand and instantaneously make the boo boo better? Thankfully, superseding all this intrigue, Pope Benedict released another motu proprio, On the Service of Charity, right after the plenary closed, stating that Catholic charitable bodies are "required to follow Catholic principles in their activity and they may not accept commitments which could in any way affect the observance of those principles". Reportedly, +Smith has "welcomed"[25] the apostolic letter, which could mean anything. The saga continues...
XXI. SIGN NO. 4 / DAPPER GILLES DAZZLES DA BOYZ: Mostly unknown outside Québec is Laval University theology professor Fr. Gilles Routhier or - minus his title - Gilles Routhier, when presenting himself in the public square. Unbecoming of a consecrated soul but, hey, priests are footloose and fancy free since the Second Vatican Council promulgated its decrees. And the purpose of his life has been to hail Vatican II as the theological pinnacle in human affairs since the Crucifixion. Apparently rebuffing the diminution in everything Catholic over the last 4+ decades, Routhier had the temerity to entitle one of his books: 40 Years after Vatican II, Hope! That's hilarious. Guess who published it? That's right, Catholic peoples: Novalis. And another book title with an exclamation mark - in the same vein as those other vomitous classics by Novalis, like Alive in the Spirit! and Celebrate! Hee hee hee hee... Holy crap, do I need a smoke. Strike a pose Zoolander...
XXII. That smarmy prelude might make the reader think I'm jumping the gun, so let's hightail it over to Comedy Central and quote Gilles as he puts romanticizing words into John XXIII's mouth. Behold, the Gates of the Netherworld doth open:
There is... at the origin of the Council, the experience of a world undergoing profound change. He who, like a seismograph, felt the movements of the tectonic plates and stood on the fault lines of our world... we live in a changing world or at the dawn of a new era... we were on the threshold of something new.[26]
Here, we have a perfect example of Cardinal Ratzinger's above-quoted "zero hour" concept as the now pope said was conjured up by the Modernist revolutionaries. Routhier's words were taken from his keynote address given at the CRC's 2012 General Assembly, in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Vatican II - but, of course, Gilles is a Magic Circle dweller with the right contacts. He's a media darling of both the Francophone and Anglophone secular press, even appearing on Sel+Lumière, Fr. Rosica's French Connection Channel of Hope. And speaking of people being spellbound, during the Day 3 press briefing +Durocher got all bubbly when summarizing the talk Gilles gave to the bishops:
He... spoke about the collaboration with the Canadian theologians throughout the whole Council. The role, the beautiful role of the theologians and of the bishops as they worked together... And he also showed us that, when they came back, they really worked, not only at the implementation, but education around the Council. He gave us some very concrete examples of dioceses in Canada, of what was done in terms of retreats, conferences, writing.
Hmmm... Did any of those "concrete examples" include peritus Fr. Gregory Baum, who worked behind the scenes like a "whirling dervish" (Msgr. V. Foy) to get the contraception-enabling Winnipeg Statement issued? Or of Baum's canvassing of free love in mainstream newspapers and periodicals during the years immediately following the Council? Were the Enneagram and pro-women's ordination activities of Council Father Remi De Roo outlined? Did Gilles mention the tearing out of Communion rails and the construction of churches resembling prehistoric pagan monuments, if not futuristic superstructures right out of Star Trek: Deep Space 9? Did he speak of those hotshots comprising the "Gang of Five" - Pocock, Plourde, Flahiff and the Carter boys - who remained silent while Trudeau loosened up laws on divorce, buggery and abortion? Was that the "New Pentecost"?
XXIII. What is the real ominous sign here is not so much Gilles' flamboyant, nearly theatrical stance on Vatican II - these are a dime a dozen. Rather, it was the role this individual played in facilitating the judiciary to subvert the rights of parents from disallowing their children to partake in school programs at odds with their Catholic beliefs. In February 2012 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Québec kids are not exempt from taking a secularized module in Ethics and Religious Culture (ERC), a course implemented by the Québec Ministry of Education in 2008, supposedly holding a "neutral" position on all religions (read indifferentism, relativism).[27] The "Drummondville parents'" case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court of Canada after an Appeal to the Québec Superior Court was rejected. QSC ruled in favour of imposing the ERC program in 2009. When at the lower QSC level, it was Routhier who acted as an expert witness for the government, opining in favour of a mandatory ERC program. That is correct - it was a Catholic priest, namely Father Gilles Routhier, who assisted the courts to undermine parental rights of Catholics in Canada. But that's just one bizarre twist in this story. When interviewed in September 2009, "Routhier said his testimony relied heavily on the Second Vatican Council's Decree on Religious Freedom. He told the court the course did not violate religious freedom because it does not pressure students to accept beliefs they do not share".[28] The second bizarre twist is that this spécialiste de Vatican II used Dignitatis humanae (Declaration on Religious Liberty) to bolster his opinion of State preponderance over the family unit. The appertaining text from DH is in Paragraph No. 5:
XXIII. What is the real ominous sign here is not so much Gilles' flamboyant, nearly theatrical stance on Vatican II - these are a dime a dozen. Rather, it was the role this individual played in facilitating the judiciary to subvert the rights of parents from disallowing their children to partake in school programs at odds with their Catholic beliefs. In February 2012 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Québec kids are not exempt from taking a secularized module in Ethics and Religious Culture (ERC), a course implemented by the Québec Ministry of Education in 2008, supposedly holding a "neutral" position on all religions (read indifferentism, relativism).[27] The "Drummondville parents'" case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court of Canada after an Appeal to the Québec Superior Court was rejected. QSC ruled in favour of imposing the ERC program in 2009. When at the lower QSC level, it was Routhier who acted as an expert witness for the government, opining in favour of a mandatory ERC program. That is correct - it was a Catholic priest, namely Father Gilles Routhier, who assisted the courts to undermine parental rights of Catholics in Canada. But that's just one bizarre twist in this story. When interviewed in September 2009, "Routhier said his testimony relied heavily on the Second Vatican Council's Decree on Religious Freedom. He told the court the course did not violate religious freedom because it does not pressure students to accept beliefs they do not share".[28] The second bizarre twist is that this spécialiste de Vatican II used Dignitatis humanae (Declaration on Religious Liberty) to bolster his opinion of State preponderance over the family unit. The appertaining text from DH is in Paragraph No. 5:
Every family, in that it is a society with its own basic rights, has the right freely to organize its own religious life in the home under the control of the parents. These have the right to decide in accordance with their own religious beliefs the form of religious upbringing which is given to their children. The civil authority must therefore recognize the right of parents to choose with genuine freedom schools or other means of education. Parents should not be subjected directly or indirectly to unjust burdens because of this freedom of choice. Furthermore, the rights of parents are violated if their children are compelled to attend classes which are not in agreement with the religious beliefs of the parents or if there is but a single compulsory system of education from which all religious instruction is included.[29] (TH2 emphasis; cf. Quanta Cura quoted in footnote)
Look closely: Routhier is reported to have said that the ERC program "does not pressure students to accept...". But DH decrees specifically: "civil authority must therefore recognize the right of parents... the rights of parents are violated if their children...". That is, Routhier apparently substitutes student rights and disregarded parental rights, impressionable children set primary with mature/experienced parents set secondary, effectively making the wishes of parents a non sequitur. Civil authority sidestepping parents, going directly to students. Does a 10-year old Catholic elementary school kid, likely poorly catechized already, have the acuity to detect ideas inimical to the Faith, however "neutral" they be taught? Highly improbable. Rather, this kid would unknowingly be swayed by them, to whatever extent. The crucial point not to be overlooked at this juncture is that a Catholic priest, Fr. Gilles Routhier, used a document from Vatican II, cited in a civil/constitutional legal procedure, assisting judicial activists, finally leading to a Supreme Court decision trumping parental rights, a ruling having dire repercussions for Canadian society. It's appalling. And just last week a court decision is making a private Catholic high school in Montreal to stop teaching its Catholic course on religion and morality, instead forcing it to indoctrinate with the ERC course.[30] So, browbeating by the State has already commenced, just less than one year after the Supreme Court ruled the ERC mandate does not violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
XXIV. It must be emphasized that Routhier's court-adopted opinion opposed positions by both the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education (CE) and his former superior, Marc Cardinal Ouellet, now in Rome as Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops. Don't forget, too, Pope Benedict has spoken of "the protection of the right of parents to educate their children"[31], i.e. parental primacy not up for debate. In May 2009 a Circular Letter by the CE, On Religious Education In Schools, was entered into evidence when the case was at QSC: "if religious education is limited to a presentation of the different religions, in a comparative and 'neutral' way, it creates confusion or generates religious relativism or indifferentism". The Church "never stops denouncing the injustice that takes place when Catholic pupils and their families are deprived of their educational rights and their educational freedom is affected".[32] Obviously, Gilles wasn't listening and, considering we heard not a peep from him (so far as I am aware), neither was then CCCB president Pierre Morissette, Bishop of Saint-Jérôme - the CE circular was addressed "To the Presidents of Bishops' Conferences". And it is here where things start to get interesting because, if you dig a little deeper into the politicking, the division line between ++Ouellet/Rome and the Routhier/Québec bishops/CCCB Axis becomes strikingly visible.
XXV. If we head back to May 2005, when the provincial government was drafting legislation for the ERC program, +Morissette spoke of his "double reaction" in a telephone interview:
XXV. If we head back to May 2005, when the provincial government was drafting legislation for the ERC program, +Morissette spoke of his "double reaction" in a telephone interview:
It's clearly a disappointment. The bill is not in line with the position of the bishops, and the suggestions that we made to the minister in the fall were not followed... Religion will still be taught, though from a cultural perspective, but if it is well done, it could bear some fruit... a chance for our Christian communities to renew themselves by transmitting the faith to younger generations. This is a new and big challenge for the Church in Québec. We have relied on schools to do this for us for a long time. But now this has ended.[33]
An admixture defeatism with false hope, even naiveté, that, still, something beneficial or at least satisfactorily acceptable would result upon ERC's eventual implementation. Also consider the letter on the ERC program sent to Michelle Courchesne, Minister of Education, Recreation and Sports. It was written in September 2009 by now retired Bishop Martin Veillette (Trois Rivières Diocese), then president of the Assembly of Québec Catholic Bishops. An excerpt: "We are concerned. A growing number of indicators point to the need for significant corrections, without which the program can neither meet its objectives nor fulfill its potential".[34] Again, implicit acceptance of the ERC program, yet ostensibly attempting to ensure Catholic values be not obscured in the secularized syncretistic swirl.
XXVI. After reading those statements by +Morissette and +Veillette, an impression is received that the Québec bishops, prior to the 2012 Supreme Court ruling, resolutely tried over the years to mitigate, if not halt, the secularizing tide. But was it really the circumstance of Caesar versus the Québec bishops, the civil power and religious authority duelling it out over the place of Catholicism in Canadian society? Let's now backtrack further, heading to Ottawa at Parliament Hill, Room 237-C Centre Block, on Tuesday October 21, 1997 at 9:05 am. On that date a Special Joint Committee met in regard to an amendment of Section 93 of the Constitution Act (1867), concerning the Quebec school system. Then Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Stéphane Dion, was given the floor, and his presentation makes for some enlightening reading. Here are the pertinent abstractions [TH2 analysis in bolded square brackets / bolded blue emphasis]:
XXVI. After reading those statements by +Morissette and +Veillette, an impression is received that the Québec bishops, prior to the 2012 Supreme Court ruling, resolutely tried over the years to mitigate, if not halt, the secularizing tide. But was it really the circumstance of Caesar versus the Québec bishops, the civil power and religious authority duelling it out over the place of Catholicism in Canadian society? Let's now backtrack further, heading to Ottawa at Parliament Hill, Room 237-C Centre Block, on Tuesday October 21, 1997 at 9:05 am. On that date a Special Joint Committee met in regard to an amendment of Section 93 of the Constitution Act (1867), concerning the Quebec school system. Then Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Stéphane Dion, was given the floor, and his presentation makes for some enlightening reading. Here are the pertinent abstractions [TH2 analysis in bolded square brackets / bolded blue emphasis]:
...it must always be borne in mind that section 93... guarantees confessional rights only... the rights guaranteed under section 93 are not of the same kind as the basic freedoms, such as the freedom of religion and conscience, entrenched in section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. ["confessional rights" of schools excluded from the realm of "freedom of religion and conscience"]
The organization of school structures along denominational lines no longer corresponds to the reality of Quebec in 1997. Quebec's francophone and anglophone populations no longer form homogeneous Catholic and Protestant societies, as was the case in 1867...[Trudeau's multiculturalist policies of the 1970's should be factored in here]
It is thus not surprising that successive Quebec governments have sought for a number of years now to reform school structures along linguistic lines.[circumlocution for acceleration of secularization in Quebec, specifically since the Quiet Revolution]
In 1982, the National Assembly passed Bill 3, which sought to replace denominational school boards with linguistic school boards...[to which the Quebec bishops assented, as we shall soon see]
The constitutional amendment that the government of Quebec and the National Assembly are asking us to authorize will not have the effect of stripping Quebec parents and children of any right to religious instruction. Section 41 of Quebec's Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, a document deemed to be quasi-constitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada, guarantees parents a right to require that their children receive a religious or moral education in conformity with their convictions. [statements now proven wrong, after February 2012 decision by the Supreme Court of Canada]
...Quebec's Education Act contains a number of provisions in this respect. Under section 5, for example, parents and students of any school have the right to choose between either religious instruction, catholic or protestant, or moral instruction.[again, the "Drummondville parents'" ruling now makes this claim vacuous]
[And so here we go...] The Catholic bishops have long agreed that establishing linguistic school boards is appropriate, and they have maintained that the choice of means is the responsibility of the political authorities. From that perspective, the Catholic bishops do not oppose amending section 93. As far back as 1982, the Assembly of Quebec Bishops expressed its approval of the establishment of linguistic school boards and even accepted the idea of doing away with denominational school boards if necessary. [i.e. bishops deferring to the State] The bishops reiterated that position in 1995 in their submission to the commission of the états généraux of education, and you will find the appropriate quote in the written speech.
More recently, the head of the Assembly of Quebec Bishops, Mgr [André] Gaumond, specified that:
"The bishops reiterate that they do not oppose the establishment of such linguistic school boards that could keep parents' rights to denominational school intact".[credulity]
On September 11 of this year, Mgr Jean-Pierre Blais, head of the Episcopal Committee on Education, appeared before the Quebec National Assembly's commission on education. At that time, he stated that the Act to amend the Education Act, that is bill 109, contained "real guarantees" and was in line with what the Assembly of Bishops had always called for. [more credulity]
[And now the star of the show...] Finally, to be sure that there is no ambiguity, I have written to Monsignor Morissette, and in response to my letter asking him to confirm the bishops position, the new head of the Assembly of Quebec Bishops, Monsignor Pierre Morissette, reiterated that the bishops are not opposed to the establishment of linguistic school boards and are satisfied with the guarantees [credulity confirmed] under the education act that I alluded to earlier.
His comments, in a letter that I am submitting and that you will be able to read, were as follows:
"We know that means other than involving section 93 could have been used to effect the desired change. Nevertheless, our Assembly did not oppose the choice to amend section 93. It has always been our conviction that the choice of means is the responsibility of the political authority."[i.e. bowing and relinquishment to the State, ignorantly assuming provincial governments, already latently anti-Catholic since the 1960s, would not become increasingly meddlesome over time, enforcing its dictates onto Catholic families. Let the government handle it. Were the Quebec bishops really that gullible to believe in the "benevolent" intentions of the State? Or, at base, was it just indifference or weakness in faith which would have otherwise inspired a real challenge and fight?]
I can table these letters when you would like, Mr. Chairman.[Merci, Monsieur Dion, votre présentation était très utile.]
So, then, the evidence shows a long process of blind submissiveness to, even trust in, Caesar by the Québec bishops since at least 1982, and it would not be outside the ambit of reasonableness to posit that, despite intermittent squeaks of protest, the 2012 ERC ruling was the culmination of this drawn-out process. Another example of what happens when you play with a rabid dog.
XXVII. ++Ouellet, unlike his fellow prelates, spoke sharply against the ERC program. In January 2009, about one year prior to being dispatched to Rome by the HF, he called the ERC mandate "radical... [that] no European country has ever adopted". After the 2012 Supreme Court ruling: "the dictatorship of relativism applied beginning in elementary school".[35] Although, considering he was first appointed a bishop in 2001, then installed as Primate of Canada in 2003, one speculates if he could have done more to immobilize the assault on parental rights by the State. Or was 2001 too late to stop a runaway train that departed the station in 1982? Nonetheless, if we bring Routhier, the Québec Bishops and CCCB back into the mix, another battlefront comes into view. In November 2007, ++Ouellet issued an open letter apologizing for "errors... committed" by the Catholic Church and its officials in Québec before 1960, against Indians, women, homosexuals, including sexual abuse occurrences. Gilles, the go-to-guy for the Québecois media, averred ++Ouellet's letter to be "strange... he is talking about things that were not committed under his leadership and that don't implicate him".[36] With that jab you can clearly see Routhier's enmity for ++Ouellet who, unlike our Armani-outfitted priest with a taste for the finer things in life, has a reputation for straightforwardly proclaiming orthodox Catholicism. So much of an opportunist is Routhier that, when ++Ouellet was appointed Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, he was all over the press commentating on a news item of especial interest to Québecers, even on television current events shows.
XXVIII. But the enmity does not cease with Routhier. Reacting to the public letter, the Assembly of Québec Bishops plus the CCCB - whose president at the time was our old friend Abp. James Weisgerber - made sure say ++Ouellet "spoke only on his behalf". What in the world did that mean? Why the disassociation? By excluding the post-1960 period from the mea culpa, was ++Ouellet intimating that abuses have been (correctly) most frequent, mostly unaddressed and ignored in the Modernist-dominated post-Vatican II period, of which the CCCB, AQB and Routhier are representatives to a T? Or were the AQB and CCCB minimizing abuses committed? Were certain movers and shakers insulted? Good. Extrapolating to 2012, then, when president +Smith states that one of the CCCB's issues of "significant pastoral concern" is the "care for persons and communities harmed by abuse", you do have to wonder if it is hollow lip service after the fact - just like the CCCB's latest pastoral letter on Freedom of Conscience and Religion (a forced rejoinder to the 2012 Supreme Court ruling), which was also a topic at the plenary. +Smith: "we will have an opportunity to reflect on specific Canadian aspects of this issue". +Durocher: "reflection on religious freedom, freedom of conscious here in Canada". Reflection?! Read: we're going to discuss it in a meeting to save face but won't bring up the subject again pending another comparable social crisis that will compel us to compose another post hoc pastoral response letter of which nobody north of the 49th Parallel will take notice. We'll leave it to everyone else to actually fight the war for Catholicism in Canada, but we will encourage them with uplifting prose, like, to be "courageous", to "participate", to "renew" and "reaffirm"[37] religious freedoms. In the meantime, we will be in a mystical state of "reflection"... until our vacation ends here at Hotel Mont-Gabriel in beautiful Sainte-Adèle. What is particularly infuriating is that, while the CCCB was being high-minded and dissimulating seriousness with regard to the threat to "religious freedom" in Canada after the Supreme Court ruling, with glee it invited Fr. Gilles Routhier to speak at the 2012 plenary - a person who played a significant role in helping the courts deny Catholic parents their freedom and right to educate their children in a manner congruent with Catholic Church teaching. The audacity, the hypocrisy, the criminality!
XXIX. THE "BISHOP'S CONFERENCE" AS A PROBLEM: Now all this scheming, politicking, machination and dissent by persons/groups described above is largely facilitated by this thing called a "bishop's conference". It has an overarching influence, acting like an umbrella organization, providing cover and protection for its affiliates of like mindedness. It has been over the last 4+ decades in which the "bishop's conference" has metastasized into a powerhouse of influence in the Catholic affairs of a nation. The CCCB is our national bishop's conference, with its intrusive tentacles spread throughout every province and territory in Canada (we also have four regional assemblies of bishops operating similarly, but at a smaller scale). Thing is, the CCCB is a body only apparently possessing "authority" over Canadian Catholics. In actuality, it has none. Its so-called "authority" is a phantasm and anyone who asserts otherwise is either misinformed or deceiving you for whatever ulterior purpose. Canon Law is very specific: "the bishops who are in communion with the head and members of the college, whether individually or joined together in conferences of bishops or in particular councils, do not possess infallibility in teaching" (no. 753). Meaning that, in no way are Canadian Catholics obligated to comply with whatever paper-shuffling-careerist-derived monstrosity spewing forth from Collective HQ at 2500 Don Reid Drive. Pastoral Letters, Communiqués, Reports, Statements, Media Releases, Commission and Standing Committee findings, charities endorsed, anti-bottled water campaigns, book and DVD sales, television station promotions - you can discount them all and still be a faithful Catholic. Moreover, there is no need to worry if you detect heresy or apostatic-tending ambiguities in whatever "Catholic" product the CCCB is disseminating or marketing; no need to wonder why its documents are so nebulously worded; no need to be perplexed at the CCCB's focus on inessential topics and tantamount silence on those moral and thus confrontational - these, perhaps, making you deduce (incorrectly) that the Church as such has lapsed into falsehood. Why? Simply because not an iota of any of these products belong to the deposit of the Faith.
XXX. Unfortunately, the problem exists in the real, undue, overextended influence of the "bishop's conference" and of numerous Catholics mistakenly believing it to be authoritative/trustworthy in whatever pronouncement it formulates, thus attributing to it an unwarranted legitimacy. That the CCCB runs a rather lucrative business generating big money also goes to the level of influence. "Finances are good", answered +Durocher during the Day 4 press briefing. Indubitably, the CCCB isn't suffering from the "economic downturn". And this collectivist-money-making-machine aspect of the "bishop's conference" is cosseted in the haven of a massive bureaucracy. In 1985 Cardinal Ratzinger stated the following in an interview:
XXVII. ++Ouellet, unlike his fellow prelates, spoke sharply against the ERC program. In January 2009, about one year prior to being dispatched to Rome by the HF, he called the ERC mandate "radical... [that] no European country has ever adopted". After the 2012 Supreme Court ruling: "the dictatorship of relativism applied beginning in elementary school".[35] Although, considering he was first appointed a bishop in 2001, then installed as Primate of Canada in 2003, one speculates if he could have done more to immobilize the assault on parental rights by the State. Or was 2001 too late to stop a runaway train that departed the station in 1982? Nonetheless, if we bring Routhier, the Québec Bishops and CCCB back into the mix, another battlefront comes into view. In November 2007, ++Ouellet issued an open letter apologizing for "errors... committed" by the Catholic Church and its officials in Québec before 1960, against Indians, women, homosexuals, including sexual abuse occurrences. Gilles, the go-to-guy for the Québecois media, averred ++Ouellet's letter to be "strange... he is talking about things that were not committed under his leadership and that don't implicate him".[36] With that jab you can clearly see Routhier's enmity for ++Ouellet who, unlike our Armani-outfitted priest with a taste for the finer things in life, has a reputation for straightforwardly proclaiming orthodox Catholicism. So much of an opportunist is Routhier that, when ++Ouellet was appointed Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, he was all over the press commentating on a news item of especial interest to Québecers, even on television current events shows.
XXVIII. But the enmity does not cease with Routhier. Reacting to the public letter, the Assembly of Québec Bishops plus the CCCB - whose president at the time was our old friend Abp. James Weisgerber - made sure say ++Ouellet "spoke only on his behalf". What in the world did that mean? Why the disassociation? By excluding the post-1960 period from the mea culpa, was ++Ouellet intimating that abuses have been (correctly) most frequent, mostly unaddressed and ignored in the Modernist-dominated post-Vatican II period, of which the CCCB, AQB and Routhier are representatives to a T? Or were the AQB and CCCB minimizing abuses committed? Were certain movers and shakers insulted? Good. Extrapolating to 2012, then, when president +Smith states that one of the CCCB's issues of "significant pastoral concern" is the "care for persons and communities harmed by abuse", you do have to wonder if it is hollow lip service after the fact - just like the CCCB's latest pastoral letter on Freedom of Conscience and Religion (a forced rejoinder to the 2012 Supreme Court ruling), which was also a topic at the plenary. +Smith: "we will have an opportunity to reflect on specific Canadian aspects of this issue". +Durocher: "reflection on religious freedom, freedom of conscious here in Canada". Reflection?! Read: we're going to discuss it in a meeting to save face but won't bring up the subject again pending another comparable social crisis that will compel us to compose another post hoc pastoral response letter of which nobody north of the 49th Parallel will take notice. We'll leave it to everyone else to actually fight the war for Catholicism in Canada, but we will encourage them with uplifting prose, like, to be "courageous", to "participate", to "renew" and "reaffirm"[37] religious freedoms. In the meantime, we will be in a mystical state of "reflection"... until our vacation ends here at Hotel Mont-Gabriel in beautiful Sainte-Adèle. What is particularly infuriating is that, while the CCCB was being high-minded and dissimulating seriousness with regard to the threat to "religious freedom" in Canada after the Supreme Court ruling, with glee it invited Fr. Gilles Routhier to speak at the 2012 plenary - a person who played a significant role in helping the courts deny Catholic parents their freedom and right to educate their children in a manner congruent with Catholic Church teaching. The audacity, the hypocrisy, the criminality!
XXIX. THE "BISHOP'S CONFERENCE" AS A PROBLEM: Now all this scheming, politicking, machination and dissent by persons/groups described above is largely facilitated by this thing called a "bishop's conference". It has an overarching influence, acting like an umbrella organization, providing cover and protection for its affiliates of like mindedness. It has been over the last 4+ decades in which the "bishop's conference" has metastasized into a powerhouse of influence in the Catholic affairs of a nation. The CCCB is our national bishop's conference, with its intrusive tentacles spread throughout every province and territory in Canada (we also have four regional assemblies of bishops operating similarly, but at a smaller scale). Thing is, the CCCB is a body only apparently possessing "authority" over Canadian Catholics. In actuality, it has none. Its so-called "authority" is a phantasm and anyone who asserts otherwise is either misinformed or deceiving you for whatever ulterior purpose. Canon Law is very specific: "the bishops who are in communion with the head and members of the college, whether individually or joined together in conferences of bishops or in particular councils, do not possess infallibility in teaching" (no. 753). Meaning that, in no way are Canadian Catholics obligated to comply with whatever paper-shuffling-careerist-derived monstrosity spewing forth from Collective HQ at 2500 Don Reid Drive. Pastoral Letters, Communiqués, Reports, Statements, Media Releases, Commission and Standing Committee findings, charities endorsed, anti-bottled water campaigns, book and DVD sales, television station promotions - you can discount them all and still be a faithful Catholic. Moreover, there is no need to worry if you detect heresy or apostatic-tending ambiguities in whatever "Catholic" product the CCCB is disseminating or marketing; no need to wonder why its documents are so nebulously worded; no need to be perplexed at the CCCB's focus on inessential topics and tantamount silence on those moral and thus confrontational - these, perhaps, making you deduce (incorrectly) that the Church as such has lapsed into falsehood. Why? Simply because not an iota of any of these products belong to the deposit of the Faith.
The decisive new emphasis on the role of the bishops is in reality restrained or actually risks being smothered by the insertion of bishops into episcopal conferences that are ever more organized, often with burdensome bureaucratic structures. We must not forget that the episcopal conferences have no theological basis, they do not belong to the structure of the Church, as willed by Christ, that cannot be eliminated.[38]
These "bureaucratic structures" are indeed "burdensome" - as rightly determined and seen by outsiders, that is. For those inside or associated with the episcopal conference, however, these "bureaucratic structures" are, like, totally awesome because they act as a safeguard against personal responsibility. Both actions and inaction are performed in the guise of a shape-shifting, indefinable collective. Meaning no individual bishop really takes responsibility for whatever decision for the very reason that the decision (or silence, as is more often the case) is accomplished as a collective. This also explains why you come across such generalized terms as "the mind" of the bishops. Two implications. First, this shields timid or dissent-prone bishops from taking unequivocal positions on difficult but Catholic-critical matters, thus sparing them from the otherwise inevitable retaliation by the "spirit of the world", however it materializes. Second, it squelches out the voice of any bishop who actually happens to be loyal to the Magisterium to such a degree he doesn't care about what others think of him, be they his confidants, politicians, the media, the intelligentsia, the glitterati and whomever remaining snobberati.
XXXI. The collectivist-bureaucratic make-up of the "bishops' conference", with its umbrella providing widespread cover, with its tentacles wrapped around every crook and penetrating every crevasse - right down to parish level, therefore, functions like an enclosed, self-determining system, so to speak. This, then, sets the entire edifice of the "bishop's conference" to be a quasi-autonomous entity, conducive to the formation, protection and reinforcement therein of coalitions between those persons/groups electing to transit along the road of dissent, dense with traffic these days. Consequently, there develops a hushed, unspoken hostility by the "bishops' conference" for the Holy See. Not just the CCCB, but other national bishops' conferences worldwide have over the years rifted from Rome, notably the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales. Hence, any imposition originating from the Roman dicasteries - a reminder, a rule, a complaint, a warning, a judgement - are thus deemed by the "bishops' conference" as infringements on its domain, which are either ignored or disobeyed or, if at all considered, delayed indefinitely via the always handy "dialogue" dodge. When matters reach a threshold or if whatever soap opera continues on endlessly, the Holy Father himself has to intervene and reboot the entire system.
XXXII. This explains why the CCCB's "significant pastoral concerns", like immigration and the "economic downturn", are propositions so bizarre, so disconnected and irrelevant when contrasted with the pressing crises in liturgy, catechesis, morality and of relativism, as declared repeatedly and afield by the Vatican. This explains why the CRC steadfastly defends the LCWR while being tight-lipped about the severe yet deserved diktat made upon the LCWR by Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith after the Apostolic Visitation. This explains why the CCCB shelters and coddles Development and Peace while banning LifeSite News from the plenary, prompting the HF to overtake such infernal messes with the issuance of a moto propio. This explains why Fr. Routhier's opinion on the ERC program was at variance with the Circular Letter prepared by the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education, further explaining why Routhier was welcomed to speak at the plenary regardless of his despicable collusion with the courts to deny parents their right to provide a proper Catholic education for their children. This explains why the CCCB's health insurance package includes coverage for contraceptives and abortifacients while its personnel condescendingly chuckle when they hear any allusion to Humanae vitae. At core, all these demonstrate that enemies of Christ operate inside the CCCB. Opinion columnists for the diocesan newspapers, well connected with the establishment church and cognizant of the apostatic phenomena just described, don't write about this stuff because their jobs and reputations are on the line, be they liberal or conservative, heteorodox or orthodox, Modernist or even Trad-inclined. Off limits. Sir Walter Scott was absolutely correct: it's "a tangled web we weave".
XXXIII. It is not as if there isn't a historical precedent for this abysmal circumstance. As I have mentioned previously, a fitting analogy was the Conciliar Movement around the time of the "Avignon Popes" (ca. 1378-1417) during the "Great Western Schism". Its aim was to usurp the pope's plenitudo potestatis. Origins can be traced to two individuals. The first was heretic William of Ockham (ca. 1288-1348): "the papal principate does not regularly include the power to abolish or disturb the rights and liberties of others, especially those of emperors, kings, princes and other laymen".[39] The other was John of Paris (d. 1306). From his De potestate regia et papali: "two powers not only distinct in themselves but also by the subject in which they are found... should not be held by one and the same person as the primary authority".[40] Basically, the Conciliar Movement endeavoured to shift authority away from the papacy through to ecclesiastics, councils, theological experts, laity, i.e. democratization of the Church. The movement endorsed three ideas, later to explode at the Reformation: the equalization of papal and clerical power, a universal church of the people, and an allowance to depose/militate against the pope in times of necessity. Similarities with the modern, post-Conciliar era are manifest.
XXXIV. So, then, obedience goes, not to the "bishop's conference", but to the local Ordinary, who belongs to the Magisterium. His teaching must be in conformity with the pope and all past bishops since the Apostles as he is a successor to them. If not, he is in disunion, holds zero authority over Catholics, because he teaches not with Christ's authority. To handle the latter situation if encountered, the only option for resolution is to petition Rome directly, but then there is the obstacle of the Vatican bureaucracy, inefficient, short-staffed departments in the Curia, archaic telecommunication technologies, and so forth. Even in the former situation, there is the superadded problem of the Ordinary being surrounded by subversives at the chancery office, calculating advisors, an army of careerist laity with their own agendas, noncompliant clergy, an indifferent/inadequately catechized Catholic populace, an underground of homosexual religious, pervasive institutional heresy. Related to all these looms the danger of getting sucked into a bureaucratic maelstrom. The HF in an address to bishops just three days before the 2012 CCCB plenary opened:
XXXI. The collectivist-bureaucratic make-up of the "bishops' conference", with its umbrella providing widespread cover, with its tentacles wrapped around every crook and penetrating every crevasse - right down to parish level, therefore, functions like an enclosed, self-determining system, so to speak. This, then, sets the entire edifice of the "bishop's conference" to be a quasi-autonomous entity, conducive to the formation, protection and reinforcement therein of coalitions between those persons/groups electing to transit along the road of dissent, dense with traffic these days. Consequently, there develops a hushed, unspoken hostility by the "bishops' conference" for the Holy See. Not just the CCCB, but other national bishops' conferences worldwide have over the years rifted from Rome, notably the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales. Hence, any imposition originating from the Roman dicasteries - a reminder, a rule, a complaint, a warning, a judgement - are thus deemed by the "bishops' conference" as infringements on its domain, which are either ignored or disobeyed or, if at all considered, delayed indefinitely via the always handy "dialogue" dodge. When matters reach a threshold or if whatever soap opera continues on endlessly, the Holy Father himself has to intervene and reboot the entire system.
XXXII. This explains why the CCCB's "significant pastoral concerns", like immigration and the "economic downturn", are propositions so bizarre, so disconnected and irrelevant when contrasted with the pressing crises in liturgy, catechesis, morality and of relativism, as declared repeatedly and afield by the Vatican. This explains why the CRC steadfastly defends the LCWR while being tight-lipped about the severe yet deserved diktat made upon the LCWR by Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith after the Apostolic Visitation. This explains why the CCCB shelters and coddles Development and Peace while banning LifeSite News from the plenary, prompting the HF to overtake such infernal messes with the issuance of a moto propio. This explains why Fr. Routhier's opinion on the ERC program was at variance with the Circular Letter prepared by the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education, further explaining why Routhier was welcomed to speak at the plenary regardless of his despicable collusion with the courts to deny parents their right to provide a proper Catholic education for their children. This explains why the CCCB's health insurance package includes coverage for contraceptives and abortifacients while its personnel condescendingly chuckle when they hear any allusion to Humanae vitae. At core, all these demonstrate that enemies of Christ operate inside the CCCB. Opinion columnists for the diocesan newspapers, well connected with the establishment church and cognizant of the apostatic phenomena just described, don't write about this stuff because their jobs and reputations are on the line, be they liberal or conservative, heteorodox or orthodox, Modernist or even Trad-inclined. Off limits. Sir Walter Scott was absolutely correct: it's "a tangled web we weave".
XXXIII. It is not as if there isn't a historical precedent for this abysmal circumstance. As I have mentioned previously, a fitting analogy was the Conciliar Movement around the time of the "Avignon Popes" (ca. 1378-1417) during the "Great Western Schism". Its aim was to usurp the pope's plenitudo potestatis. Origins can be traced to two individuals. The first was heretic William of Ockham (ca. 1288-1348): "the papal principate does not regularly include the power to abolish or disturb the rights and liberties of others, especially those of emperors, kings, princes and other laymen".[39] The other was John of Paris (d. 1306). From his De potestate regia et papali: "two powers not only distinct in themselves but also by the subject in which they are found... should not be held by one and the same person as the primary authority".[40] Basically, the Conciliar Movement endeavoured to shift authority away from the papacy through to ecclesiastics, councils, theological experts, laity, i.e. democratization of the Church. The movement endorsed three ideas, later to explode at the Reformation: the equalization of papal and clerical power, a universal church of the people, and an allowance to depose/militate against the pope in times of necessity. Similarities with the modern, post-Conciliar era are manifest.
XXXIV. So, then, obedience goes, not to the "bishop's conference", but to the local Ordinary, who belongs to the Magisterium. His teaching must be in conformity with the pope and all past bishops since the Apostles as he is a successor to them. If not, he is in disunion, holds zero authority over Catholics, because he teaches not with Christ's authority. To handle the latter situation if encountered, the only option for resolution is to petition Rome directly, but then there is the obstacle of the Vatican bureaucracy, inefficient, short-staffed departments in the Curia, archaic telecommunication technologies, and so forth. Even in the former situation, there is the superadded problem of the Ordinary being surrounded by subversives at the chancery office, calculating advisors, an army of careerist laity with their own agendas, noncompliant clergy, an indifferent/inadequately catechized Catholic populace, an underground of homosexual religious, pervasive institutional heresy. Related to all these looms the danger of getting sucked into a bureaucratic maelstrom. The HF in an address to bishops just three days before the 2012 CCCB plenary opened:
Solving the pastoral problems that present themselves in your dioceses must never limit itself to organizational questions... This risks placing an emphasis on seeking efficiency through a sort of 'bureaucratization of pastoral care', focused on structures, organizations and programs, ones which can become self-referential, at the exclusive use of the members of those structures. These would have scarce impact on the life of Christians who are distanced from regular practice.[41]
That would be the Bavarian way of describing the Magic Circle, of which in Canada the CCCB is the nexus. Deliberating on the never-ending heresy-disposed, "social justice"-consumed, "this world"-clenched materiali propagated by the CCCB for all these years, there eventually comes a point when the faithful are so scandalized to such a degree that, if its "elimination" is not yet seen by Rome as viable, then real counteraction to subdue the monster into compliance becomes a necessity, at minimum. I submit to the reader we have reached this critical point.
NOTES / REFERENCES
1. S. Jalsevac, "LifeSiteNews again barred from 'public' sessions of Canadian bishops' meeting", LifeSite News, September 17, 2012.
2. M. Perreault, "Toronto plus conservateur sur la pilule", La Presse, February 11, 2012. There has been scant coverage of this matter after initial revelations, only by Campagne Québec-Vie and SoCon or Bust.
3. G. Argan, "Scrutiny of U.S. nuns opens door to future renewal", Western Catholic Reporter, May 7, 2012.
4. See D. Sulz, "Hemorrhaging Faith", Lethbridge Herald, September 8, 2012.
5. C. Wooden, "Vatican officials say bad Masses lead to weak faith", Catholic News Service, March 3, 2011.
6. "The Holy Father Inaugurates the Year of Faith", Vatican Information Service, October 11, 2012.
7. Quoted in The Teachings of Modern Roman Catholicism on Law, Politics and Human Nature, eds. J. Witte, Jr. and F.S. Alexander (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 272.
8. From his Homily on the Feast of SS. Peter and Paul at St. Peter's Basilica (June 29, 1972).
9. J. Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), pp. 371-373. German edition first published in 1982, entitled: Theologische Prinzipienlehre.
10. F.J. Sheen, Those Mysterious Priests (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), p. 138.
11. Signatures: "Archbishop Lefebvre signed every one of Vatican II's documents", Catholic News Agency, January 13, 2009. See also B. Harrison, "Marcel Lefebvre: Signatory to Dignitatis Humanae", Fidelity Magazine, March 1994, pp. 28-33. Protocol between the Holy See and SSPX (May 5, 1988): R. Moynihan, "The Curia's Dilemma", The Latin Mass, November/December, 1993, pp. 4, 42.
12. See K. Gilbert, "Nun Volunteering as Abortion Clinic Escort in Illinois", LifeSite News, October 23, 2009; T. Drake, "When Reverend Mothers Cease Being Motherly", National Catholic Register, May 13, 2012.
13. Quoted in M. Bauman, "Vatican announces reform of US women's religious conference", Catholic News Agency, April 18, 2012. See also "Vatican Diary / The Holy Office puts the American sisters in the corner", Chiesa, April 30, 2012.
14. Quoted in J.J. McElwee, "Vatican orders LCWR to revise, appoints archbishop to oversee group", National Catholic Reporter, April 18, 2012.
15. The whole story of the decline in female religious after Vatican II is found in A. Carey, Sisters in Crisis: The Tragic Unraveling of Women's Religious Communities (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor Publication Division, 1997).
16. Quoted in H. White, "U.S. Feminist Nun Urges Liberal Religious Orders to Resist 'Hostile' Vatican Visitation", LifeSite News, March 6, 2009; S.M. Schneiders, "Why they stay(ed)", National Catholic Reporter, August 17, 2009.
17. Quoted in G. Anthony, Rebel, Reformer, Religious Extraordinaire: The Life of Sister Irene Farmer (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1997), pp. xv, xvi. For a short feminist take on Sr. Farmer, see C. Sharp, "Determined Builders, Powerful Voices: Women and Catholicism in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Quebec and Canada", In: The Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America, eds. R. Skinner Keller, R. Radford Ruether and M. Cantlon (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), vol. 1, pp. 215-216.
18. J. Bellefeuille, "Renewing the Christian Cosmology", CRC Bulletin, Spring/Summer 2008, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 8-9.
19. J. Bellefeuille, "Living the Vows in the Context of Universal Solidarity and New Cosmology", CRC Bulletin, Fall 2011, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 7-8.
20. R. Renshaw, "A Prophetic Call to Paradigm Change", CRC Bulletin, Fall 2011, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 9-10.
21. U. Paré, "Why Go To Church? A Book Review", CRC Bulletin, Spring/Summer 2010, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 16-17. Quotation from T. Radcliffe, "The Catholic Church and gay marriage", The Tablet, March 2, 2012. For the Vatican's barring of Radcliffe see J.H. Westen, "Report: Vatican cancels left-leaning prelate from Caritas Conference", LifeSite News, May 20, 2011.
22. A. Durand, "Evolution of Religious Life Towards a Universal Fraternity and Internationality", CRC Bulletin, Spring/Summer 2012, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 11-13
23. Y. Pomerleau, "A Word from the Executive Director on the Challenges Facing CRC", CRC Bulletin, Fall 2011, vol. 8, no. 3, p. 4.
24. P.B. Craine, "Unprecedented: Cdn Bishops block D&P's fall campaign as dioceses refuse to distribute materials", LifeSite News, September 19, 2012.
25. Quoted in D. Gyapong, "Papal norms clarify charity rules", Catholic Register, December 15, 2012.
26. G. Routhier, "The Second Vatican Council: A New Pentecost for the Church", CRC Bulletin, Fall 2012, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 4-7. Excerpts from Routhier's keynote address given at the CRC's 2012 General Assembly.
27. Cf. R. Leishman, "Supreme Court undermines parental rights", The Interim, April 23, 2012.
28. From D. Gyapong, "Quebec parents lose religious freedom case", Western Catholic Reporter, September 7, 2009.
29. "Decree on Religious Liberty", ch. I, para. 5, In: (gen. ed. A. Flannery) Vatican Council II, The Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents (Boston: St. Paul & Books Media, 1992 revised edition), p. 803. Originally promulgated on December 7, 1965. The discussion in the main text, for the purpose of this analysis, overlooks how the notion of religious freedom in Dignitatis humanae conflicts with past papal teaching. For example, in his encyclical Quanta Cura, Pope Pius IX quoted Gregory XVI: it is "insanity" that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society"(sec. 3).
30. See D. Gyapong, "Quebec bishops raise questions in wake of Loyola decision", BC Catholic, January 9, 2012.
31. Pope Benedict's Address to the Members of the European People's Party on the Occasion of the Study Days on Europe, March 30, 2006.
32. On Religious Education In Schools, Congregation for Catholic Education, To the Presidents of Bishops' Conferences, May 2009, paras. 12, 20.
33. Quoted in "Quebec bishops 'disappointed' about end of religious instruction in schools, but hopeful", Catholic News Agency, May 6, 2005.
34. Letter to the Minister of Education on the Ethics and Religious Culture Program. Dated September 15, 2009.
35. Quoted in "Québec: Boycott du cours obligatoire d’éthique et de culture religieuse", ZENIT, January 23, 2009; P.B. Craine, "Supreme Court says Quebec ethics course is 'neutral' on religion, but Vatican disagrees", LifeSite News, February 20, 2012.
36. Quoted in "Ouellet speaks only for himself: bishops", Montreal Gazette, November 22, 2007.
37. Permanent Council of the CCCB, Pastoral Letter on Freedom of Conscience and Religion, April 2012, passim.
38. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger with Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report, An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), p. 59.
39. "De imperatorum et pontificum potestate", In: Medieval Political Ideas, trans. E. Lewis (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1954) vol. 2, pp. 608-609.
40. On Royal and Papal Power, trans. J.A. Watt (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1971), ch. x, p. 118. Also noteworthy was the Defensor pacis (1324) by the Averroist Marsilius of Padua (ca. 1275-1342), conferring authority to the "human legislator". Konrad of Gelnhausen (ca. 1320-1390) wrote Epistola concordiae (1381), copying almost verbatim sentences from Ockham’s political work Dialogus. Heinrich von Langenstein (d. 1397) wrote Concilium pacis (1381), a tip-off to Marsilio's Defensor pacis.
41. Ad Limina Address to the Bishops of Western France at Castel Gandolfo (September 21, 2012).
NOTES / REFERENCES
1. S. Jalsevac, "LifeSiteNews again barred from 'public' sessions of Canadian bishops' meeting", LifeSite News, September 17, 2012.
2. M. Perreault, "Toronto plus conservateur sur la pilule", La Presse, February 11, 2012. There has been scant coverage of this matter after initial revelations, only by Campagne Québec-Vie and SoCon or Bust.
3. G. Argan, "Scrutiny of U.S. nuns opens door to future renewal", Western Catholic Reporter, May 7, 2012.
4. See D. Sulz, "Hemorrhaging Faith", Lethbridge Herald, September 8, 2012.
5. C. Wooden, "Vatican officials say bad Masses lead to weak faith", Catholic News Service, March 3, 2011.
6. "The Holy Father Inaugurates the Year of Faith", Vatican Information Service, October 11, 2012.
7. Quoted in The Teachings of Modern Roman Catholicism on Law, Politics and Human Nature, eds. J. Witte, Jr. and F.S. Alexander (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 272.
8. From his Homily on the Feast of SS. Peter and Paul at St. Peter's Basilica (June 29, 1972).
9. J. Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), pp. 371-373. German edition first published in 1982, entitled: Theologische Prinzipienlehre.
10. F.J. Sheen, Those Mysterious Priests (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), p. 138.
11. Signatures: "Archbishop Lefebvre signed every one of Vatican II's documents", Catholic News Agency, January 13, 2009. See also B. Harrison, "Marcel Lefebvre: Signatory to Dignitatis Humanae", Fidelity Magazine, March 1994, pp. 28-33. Protocol between the Holy See and SSPX (May 5, 1988): R. Moynihan, "The Curia's Dilemma", The Latin Mass, November/December, 1993, pp. 4, 42.
12. See K. Gilbert, "Nun Volunteering as Abortion Clinic Escort in Illinois", LifeSite News, October 23, 2009; T. Drake, "When Reverend Mothers Cease Being Motherly", National Catholic Register, May 13, 2012.
13. Quoted in M. Bauman, "Vatican announces reform of US women's religious conference", Catholic News Agency, April 18, 2012. See also "Vatican Diary / The Holy Office puts the American sisters in the corner", Chiesa, April 30, 2012.
14. Quoted in J.J. McElwee, "Vatican orders LCWR to revise, appoints archbishop to oversee group", National Catholic Reporter, April 18, 2012.
15. The whole story of the decline in female religious after Vatican II is found in A. Carey, Sisters in Crisis: The Tragic Unraveling of Women's Religious Communities (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor Publication Division, 1997).
16. Quoted in H. White, "U.S. Feminist Nun Urges Liberal Religious Orders to Resist 'Hostile' Vatican Visitation", LifeSite News, March 6, 2009; S.M. Schneiders, "Why they stay(ed)", National Catholic Reporter, August 17, 2009.
17. Quoted in G. Anthony, Rebel, Reformer, Religious Extraordinaire: The Life of Sister Irene Farmer (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1997), pp. xv, xvi. For a short feminist take on Sr. Farmer, see C. Sharp, "Determined Builders, Powerful Voices: Women and Catholicism in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Quebec and Canada", In: The Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America, eds. R. Skinner Keller, R. Radford Ruether and M. Cantlon (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), vol. 1, pp. 215-216.
18. J. Bellefeuille, "Renewing the Christian Cosmology", CRC Bulletin, Spring/Summer 2008, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 8-9.
19. J. Bellefeuille, "Living the Vows in the Context of Universal Solidarity and New Cosmology", CRC Bulletin, Fall 2011, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 7-8.
20. R. Renshaw, "A Prophetic Call to Paradigm Change", CRC Bulletin, Fall 2011, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 9-10.
21. U. Paré, "Why Go To Church? A Book Review", CRC Bulletin, Spring/Summer 2010, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 16-17. Quotation from T. Radcliffe, "The Catholic Church and gay marriage", The Tablet, March 2, 2012. For the Vatican's barring of Radcliffe see J.H. Westen, "Report: Vatican cancels left-leaning prelate from Caritas Conference", LifeSite News, May 20, 2011.
22. A. Durand, "Evolution of Religious Life Towards a Universal Fraternity and Internationality", CRC Bulletin, Spring/Summer 2012, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 11-13
23. Y. Pomerleau, "A Word from the Executive Director on the Challenges Facing CRC", CRC Bulletin, Fall 2011, vol. 8, no. 3, p. 4.
24. P.B. Craine, "Unprecedented: Cdn Bishops block D&P's fall campaign as dioceses refuse to distribute materials", LifeSite News, September 19, 2012.
25. Quoted in D. Gyapong, "Papal norms clarify charity rules", Catholic Register, December 15, 2012.
26. G. Routhier, "The Second Vatican Council: A New Pentecost for the Church", CRC Bulletin, Fall 2012, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 4-7. Excerpts from Routhier's keynote address given at the CRC's 2012 General Assembly.
27. Cf. R. Leishman, "Supreme Court undermines parental rights", The Interim, April 23, 2012.
28. From D. Gyapong, "Quebec parents lose religious freedom case", Western Catholic Reporter, September 7, 2009.
29. "Decree on Religious Liberty", ch. I, para. 5, In: (gen. ed. A. Flannery) Vatican Council II, The Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents (Boston: St. Paul & Books Media, 1992 revised edition), p. 803. Originally promulgated on December 7, 1965. The discussion in the main text, for the purpose of this analysis, overlooks how the notion of religious freedom in Dignitatis humanae conflicts with past papal teaching. For example, in his encyclical Quanta Cura, Pope Pius IX quoted Gregory XVI: it is "insanity" that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society"(sec. 3).
30. See D. Gyapong, "Quebec bishops raise questions in wake of Loyola decision", BC Catholic, January 9, 2012.
31. Pope Benedict's Address to the Members of the European People's Party on the Occasion of the Study Days on Europe, March 30, 2006.
32. On Religious Education In Schools, Congregation for Catholic Education, To the Presidents of Bishops' Conferences, May 2009, paras. 12, 20.
33. Quoted in "Quebec bishops 'disappointed' about end of religious instruction in schools, but hopeful", Catholic News Agency, May 6, 2005.
34. Letter to the Minister of Education on the Ethics and Religious Culture Program. Dated September 15, 2009.
35. Quoted in "Québec: Boycott du cours obligatoire d’éthique et de culture religieuse", ZENIT, January 23, 2009; P.B. Craine, "Supreme Court says Quebec ethics course is 'neutral' on religion, but Vatican disagrees", LifeSite News, February 20, 2012.
36. Quoted in "Ouellet speaks only for himself: bishops", Montreal Gazette, November 22, 2007.
37. Permanent Council of the CCCB, Pastoral Letter on Freedom of Conscience and Religion, April 2012, passim.
38. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger with Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report, An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), p. 59.
39. "De imperatorum et pontificum potestate", In: Medieval Political Ideas, trans. E. Lewis (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1954) vol. 2, pp. 608-609.
40. On Royal and Papal Power, trans. J.A. Watt (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1971), ch. x, p. 118. Also noteworthy was the Defensor pacis (1324) by the Averroist Marsilius of Padua (ca. 1275-1342), conferring authority to the "human legislator". Konrad of Gelnhausen (ca. 1320-1390) wrote Epistola concordiae (1381), copying almost verbatim sentences from Ockham’s political work Dialogus. Heinrich von Langenstein (d. 1397) wrote Concilium pacis (1381), a tip-off to Marsilio's Defensor pacis.
41. Ad Limina Address to the Bishops of Western France at Castel Gandolfo (September 21, 2012).
24 comments:
An excellent piece TH2. It is disheartening but not surprising to see how deeply liberalism and modernism, and the heresies that spill forth from this dual diabolical font, infect the Catholic Church in Canada (and certainly within the Edmonton archdiocese where this pilgrim remains a prisoner.) Unfortunately too many souls are already by normal standards too far gone (the average Westurd Communist Distorter reader, its editor and staff, and probably 99% of the staff of the Archdiocese.) Grant the Grim Reaper will be cleansing the Church of all the muffins, fairy cakes, croissants, assorted flaky pastry and dough-NUTS! at an accelerated pace.
Hell continues to do brisk business. The road to Tartarus is paved with the skulls of bishops (I am sure ungodly priests and religious are used as the material used to paint the dividing lines between lanes and the shoulder.)How many of the CCCB (which is materially closer to the ole CCCP-If I had a hammer and a sickle, I'd hammer every liberal, and thresh every heretic all over this land) bishops have a section of that infernal path reserved for them? (Cue song "Highway to Hell")
Post Scriptum 1: There is/was a Canadian band called Martha and the Muffins. I am sure you could work that in somehow TH2. :)
Sancte Pie Decime, ora pro nobis.
"Introibo ad altare Dei........"
Oh, yes, I remember Martha and the Muffins - they were part of the Toronto New Wave scene circa early 80s - Echo Beach, Danseparc...
Thank you, Heresy Hunter, for helping us to understand the distinction between irrelevant bishops' conferences and the awesome authority exercised by an individual bishop who acts in union with the Holy Father. As the current massive apostasy escalates, this distinction is likely to become even more important. You have no idea how grateful some of us are to be relieved of our previous confusion on this matter.
Thanks, marylise. If you are interested in the role of "bishop's conference" in Catholic affairs and wish to get a far superior perspective on things than is found here, I highly recommend Fr. Ray Blake's blog (LINK). On U.K. matters mainly, but Father will occasionally post on the politics of the situation. Highly recommended.
I confess to not having read all your lengthy blogpost. I'm sure it was excellent like those parts I did read. I just want to express my astonishment at learning that Gilles Routhier is a priest. You have to understand, I grew up in Quebec City and am a graduate of Laval University and his name was regularly cited in academic texts dealing with religious matters. It was never even implied that he was a priest. I'm blown away. How do you keep this secret for so long?
That's part of the trick, I deduce. To blend in, as if a layman, minimizing the priesthood as he does so. Thus, he is more acceptable to "the world", not being "a sign of contradiction".
I was reminded at lunch yesterday by the priest conducting a mission, that "God did not send his only-begotten Son to form a Committee."
Take away the CCCB committees, and what do we have left? Faithfulness/loyalty to the Church? Methinks not much.
The Age of Aquarius illustration is truly a work of art.
My former priest seemed to think that the USCCB documents were transmitted via Burning Bush. I wonder if the documents they've released have done more harm than good, perhaps in every single instance.
The plot was done in Excel, which is quite a versatile program. Excellent - not just for graphs, but for number crunching of whatever sort - univariate statistics, non-linear regression analysis, data sorting and filtering, make your own polynomials and, if I recall correctly, there is even a function that makes you breakfast. Neato!
Great post! "Prophets of Doom" would be a great name for a Catholic rock band. Anyone who isn't a pessimist about the state of Christianity isn't paying attention. We can only hope that Christendom might emerge again from the ashes after modernism destroys civilization.
Another good name for a Catholic rock band would be "Torquemada and the Inquisitors". Although, the idea of a Catholic rock band makes me uneasy. The last 50 years of Haugen-Haas kitsch provides auditory evidence for my uneasiness. I'll stick to secularized rock - minus the philosophy behind the lyrics. These days, however, I mainly listen to Evergreen Bollywood songs.
Hank hill on Christian rock:
Ha ha!
Fantastic post. I am just wondering why religious liberty applies to the CCCB and its friends, but not Lifesitenews?
That IS funny.
And some of us might argue that it just makes Christianity worse, and then not really give a fat rat if they ever hear rock music again. So-called "Christian" rock or otherwise. Especially not in the Holy Sanctuary, and most especially not as part of the selections to be sung at the Mass.
Our Canadian masses are BurgerKing-Catholic enough as it is..... "on with the shoow this is iiiiit". The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour.
I wish the cumbaya crowd and all the other folksters and rocksters would just keep their little music festivals to park-like settings, etc., and keep their guitars and drums and tambourines and howling and whining far away from the Holy Catholic Church. Yes, a la Martha and the Muffins, if only they could be, truly, far away in time, far away in time.
Okay, just pulled out another few hairs. :) I'll be bald as Yule Brenner soon enough, you remember, the King and I.
I still trying to understand why the CCCB ban of LSN for two years straight has not created more discussion in the Catholic blogosphere/websites, beyond the Canadian border. You would think wildfire scenario.
My apologies, plc53, for your follicle extraction issue. Don't mean induce such reactions. As a consolation, perhaps this product will be of assistance to you in ameliorating your situation.
Oh no, not another baldophobe. Where's the Human Rights Commission when you need them!?!
Seriously, though, I think I've noticed some of that stuff sprayed on a muffin or two in one of our local bakeshops. Now those are, as you well know, TH2, extraordinarily deeelicious!
"The babes are back!" :-]
This post like all others, is a grat act of charity to the faithful in Canada. Though it is always an experience in literary excellence to read your posts, it is also a sobering exercise that should bring all of us to deeper prayer and a greater effort to virtue. The Church in Canada is in need of much help. What I found most disturbing in this post is the all too evident fact that our bishops are in collusion with the heretics who continue to undermine the Catholic Faith. If someone can draw a better conclusion, please elighten us all. That individuals who serve and foster the cause of relativism and secularism should address the plenary assembly of the Canadian bishops without a wimper of opposition from those whose task is to guard the flock from error, is treacherous and reprehensible. We must pray and make reparation and especially pray for the souls of our young people who are being led astray. Vigilate et orate!
Yes, the "young people" - they are the key out of this mess. I won't make any predictions as to which path will be taken.
Dear Heresy Hunter: Thank you for the additional resource about bishops' conferences. Would it be accurate to say the piece of filth known as the Winnipeg Statement was the product of a bishops' conference? Or was it the off-scouring of a mere meeting rather than an actual conference? It was obviously treachery either way, but for the record it would be good to have the facts straight as to its origins.
Hello, again, marylise. The Winnipeg Statement derived from a plenary assembly. Yes, from the bishops' conference. The best analysis on the whole affair comes from Monsignor Vincent Foy. A good article of his to start with is Tragedy at Winnipeg. You can find it here.
Thank you, Heresy Hunter, for the link to Monsignor Foy's sterling documentation of the true facts behind the Winnipeg Statement. It is fantastic to have this resource at hand for future ammunition. Monsignor Foy seems to call the Winnipeg event a "meeting" at which 75 bishops were "assembled." This is not meant to quibble about terms ("meeting" versus "conference"). However, as you know, arguments with heretics require exact vocabulary so as to nullify in advance their endless red herrings. By the way, can anything be more devilish than Paragraph 26 of the Winnipeg Statement in which the bishops recommend mortal sin as a method of salvation? They actually recommend two mortal sins: #1 defiance of Church teaching and #2 contraception. Thank you again for your intellectual labour and generosity in sharing.
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