Nov
11
St. Martin of Tours
November 11, 2009 | Leave a Comment
The ancient penitential season begins with fasting and abstinence following today’s feast. Anterior to the keeping of Advent in more recent customs, this 40 days of penance was kept in the ancient Rule of 1221, the original rule of the Third Order of St. Francis at a time when the Franciscan Third Order had standards consistent with the practice of the virtue of Penance, standards that reflected the actual manner of the Saint rather than the lax rule observed today in the name of St. Francis following the Pauline Reforms of the last century. But we can recover our sense of Catholicity and resume being of Catholic mind by doing penance and fasting for the salvation of souls.
More on this topic as the 40 days of the small Lent progress.
Nov
10
Memo to the Bishops: Catholic Campaign For Human Development
November 10, 2009 | 1 Comment
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) collects money for the Catholic Campaign For Human Development (CCHD) every year. It is time to tell our Bishops “NO!”. “No!” now and a permanent “No!” to this continued assault on the Catholic Faith in the name of “social justice”. The CCHD has been found to give large sums of money to corrupt political organizations like ACORN as well as other organizations that openly undermine Catholic teaching. This has to stop, and has stopped as in the instance of ACORN, but one wonders if it would have stopped save for the vigilance of a few laity? Must the laity act as watchdogs over our Shepherds, must we now view every act by our Bishops with suspicion and vet their opinions for fidelity to the magisterium of the Church, for example the scandalous participation of the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston at the Senator Ted Kennedy funeral?
As I have said previously, the same forces at work in Washington DC today, forces which are pushing socialist change on American society, have been at work in the Catholic Church for the past 4 decades under the rubric of “The Spirit of Vatican II” a spirit recognized for the demonic force that it is by at least one Bishop.
The evidence of the USCCB funding these same radical political forces is no more plain than what has been uncovered by the Bellarmine Veritas Ministry in its expose of the CCHD funding radical leftist pro-abortion orgainizations with Catholic donations, donations given by an apparently gullible Catholic population who have been deceived by the rhetoric of “social justice”. In response to this expose some of the more egregiously objectionable organizations have been defunded, but again this begs the question: Had it not been for the vigilance of the laity would this have happened? For this reason alone the CCHD should receive no more contributions until it is plain that the USCCB is acting in good faith, as trustworthy stewards of our hard earned donated money.
Place this in your donation envelope instead of money. More information may be viewed here:
Oct
31
Happy Halloween
October 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Today is the Vigil of All Saints, known in the Anglophone world as Halloween. Rather than go on mightily against the custom of dressing in devil’s costumes and going door to door begging for candy, there are plenty of more qualified persons who have warned of the Diabolic influence and anti-Catholic bias of that, I will entertain the possibility that Catholics of good will would do well to recite the Traditional breviary in honor of tomorrow’s feast.
The Communion of Saints which includes those who are presently living (and who have the opportunity to lose membership through committing mortal sin) and those who are with the Lord (and who have the honor of having been properly vetted and are redeemed) and those undergoing purgation, but are nevertheless saved.
Indeed, this Communion is that of the Body of Christ of Whom we partake at Holy Mass, regardless of the other distractions of bad liturgical presentation and horrible guitar music, the very Body persecuted by Paul and Who knocked him off his horse and blinded him on the way to Damascus. This Body is Real and speaks as One in union with Christ as His Bride.
This Communion of Saints must take form as a reality in the hearts of Catholics because it is ontologically active in the world today as the leaven by which pagan culture is transformed and through which souls are redeemed. There is no “personal relationship with Christ” without a personal membership in His Body. This is more than just belief, Faith indeed is remaining true to this ontological reality, one which is as present as the sun in the sky and if seen as the Truth would be more than an object of philosophical speculation and abstraction.
Let us then have a day of pious reflection and prayer and prepare to celebrate the coming Feast of All Saints. Happy Halloween.
Oct
29
Health care reform: necessities versus rights
October 29, 2009 | 1 Comment
Health care is not a “right”, it is a necessity like clean water, food, clothing and shelter. Rights include such things as the right to be paid for one’s work, yet there are those who presume to be Catholic, such as the late Senator Ted Kennedy, that believe health care should be given freely as it is a “right of the people”. It does not appear meaningful to these persons that medical care is a product of human labor and skill, not unlike agriculture and industrial manufacturing, that people must be paid, equipment bought and supplies and medications purchased. Only the most juvenile minds would presume to think that health care can be a free thing provided at no cost to all people and that the government ought to provide it. Since when does government have medicine as its area of competence?
Perhaps then it should follow that food is a right and farmers should also work for free and yield their produce at no cost so as to give everyone something to eat as a “right to low cost food”. It then follows that automobiles and transportation should be a right therefore the autoworkers and those who operate trains and airplanes should give us all free transportion in the name of these same human rights. Then it should be evident to all that since shelter is a right, as these well meaning Catholics often claim, then they should perhaps share their dwellings with those who haven’t any home, perhaps build a separate home for them on their own property, out of respect for their right to privacy, and of course give it freely since these same human persons have a “right” to such things, and so forth. There is no end to the claims persons will make to enjoy the fruits of the hard work and labor of others in the name of “human rights”. It is also evident that the use of “rights” has become a means of exploiting working people who have the capacity to pay for things that other people want but do not wish to work for yet expect as an entitlement just for being able to cast a shadow and stand on two legs – like abortion and birth control for unwed, yet sexually active and unemployed females: Heaven forbid we should deprive these women the “right” to sexual pleasure without the unwanted consequence of having babies and then having to feed and clothe them for the following 2 decades of life. But hey, there are government programs for that too – but I digress.
In fact the following New Testament verse is often used to support such claims to “health care rights” by our fellow theology of social justice Catholic types:
(James 2:14-17), “My brothers and sisters, what good is it to profess faith without practicing it? Such faith has no power to save one, has it? If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and no food for the day, and you say to them, ‘Good-bye and good luck! Keep warm and well fed,’ but do not meet their bodily needs, what good is that? So it is with the faith that does nothing in practice. It is thoroughly lifeless.”
How often we hear that scripture, but fail to hear the corollary:
2 Thessalonians 3:7-10
“For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow. For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.”
The Apostle clearly states in his passage that he has a RIGHT to such assistance however, he gives us a model for obtaining he benefits of his right – through work. Thus a human right and obligation to work and to pay for one’s needs is mandated in the scriptures, and this is the means by which the mandates of St. James are to be implemented; by providing succor as a means to sustainable effort and productivity.
Unfortunately there is the belief among novus ordo Catholics that somehow benefiting from the produce of one’s hard work is in some way sinful and that we must strive for a utopian world in which everyone has free things, given in the name of Charity and Justice: this is just a revision, an updated version of the pre-Vatican II scrupulosity that resulted in the excessive emphasis on externals like chapel veils and abstaining from meat on Fridays, rather than emphasizing the underlying virtues of practicing modesty and penance. Likewise we are brow beaten by the Post-Modern-Jansenists of the Novus Ordo, ordained and religious who, possessed by the “Spirit of Vatican II”, proclaim with bitter zeal that thrift and industriousness are mere greed and covetousness; that we ought to give everything to the various projects funded by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (which doled out parishioners charitable contributions to ACORN as you recall) and similarly diabolically disorientated and nominally Catholic “good works” or we are all indeed sinners and pharisees, guilty of keeping poor old Lazarus at the door with the dogs licking his wounds.
Indeed, social activism in the Church has become unmoored from the underlying requisite of personal holiness, “social justice” has become an end in itself, a mantra deprived of any sanctified meaning, one muttered endlessly by the lips of activists who seek to emulate the totalitarian solutions of repressive regimes in order to impose the world view of university academicians from a dominator culture on peoples of color and diversity, this is cultural imperialism at its worst. When a government “Czar” sees common cause between Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Chairman Mao and equates them in a public speech, calling them her major philosophical influences, it is self evident that the holy message of a Catholic Saint has got lost in the currently popular Bolshevik-appearing presentation of Catholic Social teaching. Evidently there are some who think that Mother Teresa and Chairman Mao were of like mind – this is the effect of the Catholic self presentation over the past decade: the loss of Catholic identity, the encroachment of “Liberation theology”, Youth Teen Masses and other brands of religious indifference, indeed the scrapping of Catholic discipline in favor of social activism in the name of peace and justice for its own sake has resulted in a widely perceived chaos, perhaps this is the “diabolical disorientation” spoken of at Fatima.. Has the Catholic Church become just another NGO? An arm of the United Nations or a subsidiary of the United Way? So now politicians think that Catholic Saints and Communist ideologues eat from a common pot? Is Christianity just an early form of communism in the eyes of these people?
It is time to re-brand Catholic Social teaching and actually make it “Catholic”, instead of appearing as Maoism with a Crucifix.
Oct
28
Quadraginta Annis: A meaningless liturgical calendar, a “novus ordo”
October 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Dom Prosper Gueranger wrote as if to somehow foreshadow the conditions of our own infelicitous age when he penned his entry for the Feast of Christ The King:
Today we sadly behold “a world undone,” largely paganized in principles and outlook, and sometimes even glorying in the name “pagan.” At the best, governments mostly ignore God; and at the worst, openly fight against Him. Even the statesmen’s well-meant efforts to find a remedy for present ills and, above all, to secure world peace, prove futile because, whereas peace is from Christ, and possible only in the Kingdom of Christ, His Name is never mentioned throughout their deliberations or their documents. Christ is kept out of the State schools and seats of higher education; and the rising generations seem to be taught anything and everything save to know, love and serve Him. Art and literature all too frequently reflect the same tendencies.
And since the spirit of evil reigns inevitably wherever the spirit of Christ has ceased to reign, in public and in private men are flouting the moral laws of God, and most, if not all, of the worst abominations of ancient paganism are becoming matters of everyday life. Moreover, be it remembered, modern paganism is worse than that of the ancient world, in that the former knows what it does as the latter did not. There is now an intense, positive hatred of Jesus Christ in the militant atheist, which differs in kind from the attitude of the fiercest Roman or Eastern persecutor: “If I had not come and spoken to them… if I had not done among them the works that no other man hath done, they would not have sin: but now they have both seen and hated both Me and My Father” (John 15: 22, 24).
Alas, even the liturgical calendar has been distorted with familiar landmarks displaced – the feast of Christ the King is no longer the last Sunday of October but now marks the end of that ill-defined period of “ordinary time”.
Ordinary Time – no reference to a period in the Life of Christ exists there, it is Christless, Godless, “Ordinary” in its title plain, without savor, a mark of iconoclasm absent the image of the Holy One of Israel or His Holy Spirit - no reference to Pentecost, no reference to Epiphany, merely ordinariness of time, as if in a lobby awaiting one’s dentist’s appointment.
No longer does Pentecost mark the liturgical season until Advent and the time after Epiphany is too likewise confused by the term “ordinary” when in fact nothing about the Liturgical Year is “ordinary”. Yet the great minds inspired by that sprite, that will ‘o the wisp, “The Spirit of Vatican II” have removed as many logical points of reference in the Liturgical Year as could be done and have replaced them with meaningless and disorienting spans which mean nothing – it is as if those evil genii who inspired the use of metrics to supplant formerly logical measures have succeeded in making the Church calendar as sterile as the centimeter and the kilogram: long for the days of Pounds and Yards, and Sundays after Pentecost and the Sundays of Epiphany – as Dom Gueranger has said; “Today we sadly behold “a world undone…””
Oct
20
Quadraginta Annis: “The Spirit of Vatican II”
October 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment
- “When there is an imminent danger for the Faith, Prelates must be questioned, even publicly, by their subjects.”
St. Thomas Aquinas, “Summa Theologica” II, II, q. 33, a. 4
In a previous post I wrote:
Being born of a happier time and catechised before the catastrophic takeover of the Church by the malign “Spirit of Vatican II”, that fissure and inlet of the Smoke of Satan, I can still recall the rote by which the principles of the Faith were inculcated into my mind and have not been lost.
Clearly, the Spirit of Vatican II is a demon which must be exorcised from the Church, one which must be chased into a herd of pigs and sent over a cliff into perdition. The Bishop of Sioux City, Walker Nickless, voiced a similar concern in his most recent pastoral letter from which I quote:
Lastly, the Holy Father, going into greater detail later in the address, explains that the “spirit of Vatican II” must be found only in the letter of the documents themselves. The so-called “spirit” of the Council has no authoritative interpretation. It is a ghost or demon that must be exorcised if we are to proceed with the Lord’s work.
This statement while largely ignored here and here is making its self heard in the circles that matter.
The voice of the Ordinary of Sioux City is quite a contrast from Spirit of Vatican II architects like Archbishop Rembert Weakland and Bishop Thomas Gumbleton who in their narcissistic navel gazing and depravity have betrayed the Church whom they had vowed to shepherd.
Indeed the wreckage done the Church by the Smoke of Satan belched forth by these minions of the “Spirit of Vatican II” would have been no greater had Judas himself been involved in this great betrayal of the Holy Church, indeed one could say that these prelates and their confreres have acted in the Spirit and Power of the same, clothed as peaceable shepherds but inwardly ravening wolves: Both of them instrumental in the implementation of the banal ceremonies and demanding the ordination of irregular persons thus abusing the Catholic Liturgy in the United States.
To quote Professor Dietrich Von Hildebrand:
“If one of the devils in C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters had been entrusted with the ruin of the liturgy, he could not have done it better.”
This certainly appears true and indeed, the very devil would be that malign entity, “The Spirit of Vatican II” the inspiration of those prelates and architects of this sham and mockery of what was once central to Catholic life.
Indeed, there is anecdotal commentary which suggests that the Smokes of Satan which entered the sanctuary were insufflated by the very author of the Novus Ordo Mass, Cardinal Bugnini and which was approved by Pope Paul VI through acts of deception and subterfuge by the same Cardinal Bugnini, IF the anecdotes and their commentators are to be believed. Again this late date leaves us only the memoirs of a few:
Father Louis Bouyer (photo): I wrote to the Holy Father, Pope Paul VI, to tender my resignation as member of the Commission charged with the Liturgical Reform. The Holy Father sent for me at once (and the following conversation ensued):
Paul VI: Father, you are an unquestionable and unquestioned authority by your deep knowledge of the Church’s liturgy and Tradition, and a specialist in this field. I do not understand why you have sent me your resignation, whilst your presence, is more than precious, it is indispensable!
Father Bouyer: Most Holy Father, if I am a specialist in this field, I tell you very simply that I resign because I do not agree with the reforms you are imposing! Why do you take no notice of the remarks we send you, and why do you do the opposite?
Paul VI: But I don’t understand: I’m not imposing anything. I have never imposed anything in this field. I have complete trust in your competence and your propositions. It is you who are sending me proposals. When Fr. Bugnini comes to see me, he says: “Here is what the experts are asking for.” And as you are an expert in this matter, I accept your judgement.
Father Bouyer: And meanwhile, when we have studied a question, and have chosen what we can propose to you, in conscience, Father Bugnini took our text, and, then said to us that, having consulted you: “The Holy Father wants you to introduce these changes into the liturgy.” And since I don’t agree with your propositions, because they break with the Tradition of the Church, then I tender my resignation.
Paul VI: But not at all, Father, believe me, Father Bugnini tells me exactly the contrary: I have never refused a single one of your proposals. Father Bugnini came to find me and said: “The experts of the Commission charged with the Liturgical Reform asked for this and that”. And since I am not a liturgical specialist, I tell you again, I have always accepted your judgement. I never said that to Monsignor Bugnini. I was deceived. Father Bugnini deceived me and deceived you.
Father Bouyer: That is, my dear friends, how the liturgical reform was done!
Another anecdote which is very telling comes as follows:
Un jour, il me raconta une anecdote (j’ai su par la suite qu’il l’avait racontée aussi à Mgr Arrighi).
Le Lundi de Pentecôte de 1970, Mgr Martin attendait l’arrivée du Pape Paul VI pour la célébration de Sa Messe quotidienne.
Arrivé dans la sacristie, le Saint-Père, voyant les ornements verts, déclare à Mgr Martin :
Paul VI : – « Mais ce sont les ornements rouges, car c’est le Lundi de Pentecôte et l’Octave de Pentecôte »
Mgr Martin, très embarrassé : – « Mmmmm, Très Saint-Père, il n’y a plus d’Octave de la Pentecôte ! »
Paul VI : – « Comment ? Il n’y a plus d’Octave de la Pentecôte ? Et depuis quand ? Et qui en a décidé ainsi ? ».
Mgr Martin, très, très embarrassé : – « Très Saint-Père, Mmmmmm, l’Octave de Pentecôte n’existe plus : c’est Vous qui avez signé sa suppression ! »
Paul VI : – « Non, Je n’ai rien signé de ce genre. Alors, j’ai été trahi. Comme le Christ. Vraiment, la fumée de Satan est entrée dans l’Eglise. Mais « portae inferi non praevalebunt ».
(Note : le Pape Paul VI reprendra cette phrase dans son homélie du 29 juin 1972, en ces termes : « La fumée de Satan est entrée dans le Peuple de Dieu »).
(à suivre)
“One day, he told me an anecdote (I knew later that he told it also to Mgr Arrighi).
Translated here:On Pentecost Monday of 1970, Mgr Martin awaited the arrival of Pope Paul VI for the celebration of his daily Mass.
When he arrived in the sacristy, the Holy Father, seeing the green vestments, said to Mgr Martin:
Paul VI : – But they are [there should be] red vestments, because it is Pentecost Monday and the Octave of Pentecost.
Mgr Martin, very embarassed: – Mmmmm, Most Holy Father, there is no longer an Octave of Pentecost!
Paul VI : – How can that be? There’s no longer an Octave of Pentecost? And since when? Who decided thus?
Mgr Martin, very, very embarassed: – Most Holy Father, Mmmmmm, the Octave of Pentecost no longer exists: it is you who signed for its abolition!
Paul VI : – No, I signed nothing of this kind. Then, I have been betrayed. Like Christ. Truly, the smoke of Satan has entered the Church. But portae inferi non praevalebunt”.
So there it is, we are in spiritual warfare with a malign demon who calls itself “The Spirit of Vatican II”, and I say “who” because this is a spiritual person as plainly as the impure spirit which possessed the Gerasene Demoniac, and we are fighting a Spirit which has possessed the Faculties of the Church, a Holy Person, faculties which must be purified and cut out MT 5:30.
Again take discipline, these can only be cast out through prayer and fasting MT 17:20.
Oct
7
Quadraginta annis: bad catechesis
October 7, 2009 | 1 Comment
I attended along with my wife a first meeting of the new “Why Catholic?” program in our parish, one which we attend by default because it is the only parish in our rural area of the USA. We were of course appalled by the content – actually lack thereof- contained in the initial book as well as the loss of 90 minutes of our life which will never be recouped: We are also out ten bucks to cover the printed material. Renew Intl. was roundly mocked in the movie “Dogma” as the refashioner of the Cross of Christ into “Buddy Jesus”.
A thin first volume focused on “feelings” and sentiment the “Why Catholic?” program appears a remedial eduction program for the lost generation of the regnum of Pope John Paul II, that period of the 80s and 90s where it would appear that Catholics were not grounded solidly in the foundations of the Faith. Being born of a happier time and catechised before the catastrophic takeover of the Church by the malign “Spirit of Vatican II”, that fissure and inlet of the Smoke of Satan, I can still recall the rote by which the principles of the Faith were inculcated into my mind and have not been lost. The current volume can be processed by any literate adult in less than an hour – how this is the first in a 4 year formation program baffles the mind, indeed it is a thinly spread sandwich of dubious nutrients.
The “Why Catholic?” program is a product of Renew International and bears the Imprimatur of the Archbishop of Newark. While intended as adult formation, it is a purely derivative work which skims the content of the contemporary Catechism of the Catholic Church – a Cliff Notes of the Catechism, a “Catechism For Dummies” series. Using facilitator methods that are familiar to those who have attended workshops and seminars for jobs and educational purposes elsewhere, it relies on the same focus on “sharing” rather than serious study of the Catechism. As I said, it is remedial Catholic education aimed at adults who were not properly taught the Faith during the bongo and guitar mass years of the prior papacy. While well intended, it is a program weak in doctrine and heavy in subjectivity. Truly if adults were interested in learning more about that Catholic Faith they would get the full volume of the CCC and study it independently of Renew International’s vain attempts to inculcate yet more sentimentalism into the minds of parishioners.
One longing for a return to the solemnity and majesty of the Catholic Magisterium is left to ask “Why?” after a taste of this bad fruit.
Oct
3
Quadraginta annis – 40 years
October 3, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Quadraginta annis taeduit me generationis illius
et dixi: Populus errantium corde sunt isti.
Et ipsi non cognoverunt vias meas;
ideo iuravi in ira mea: Non introibunt in requiem meam
The Psalmist wrote in the 94th Psalm (Vulgate) – 40 years that generation wearied me, I said these are a people who err in their hearts and I judged in my wrath they shall not enter into my rest.
This refers to the generation at Meribah, but could very well refer to the Vatican II generation and the disgusting effects of libertine infiltration in the Church. 40 years after Vatican II and we are still dealing with a lack of meaningful liturgy in most places, the guidance of the previous Pope has resulted in a complete collapse of vocations, a loss of deep spirituality and the replacement of religion with social activism with a “preferential option for the poor” as its pretext. Where does one begin to dig out of this heap of counterfeit spirituality put forth in the guise of Catholicism in an attempt to encounter the catholicism of our fathers? Why should one even bother as it seems the Barque of Peter has at last foundered and has taken on more water than she can sustain to remain afloat – the vision of St. John Bosco aside, our experience appears the complete opposite, Jesus is asleep and the boat is sinking in the storm. Certainly my musings on the collapse of doctrine, morals and discipline in The Catholic Church will not matter, after all I am nothing, only a layman, no vows, no Holy Orders.
“They [the laity] are, by [reason of] knowledge, competence or outstanding ability which they may enjoy, permitted and sometimes even obliged to express their opinion on those things which concern the good of the Church.“ (Vatican II, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, n. 37)
I wrote in a previous post that it appears to me that the same forces that are alarming the US conservative base with the recent socialist takeover of Washington have been at work in the American Catholic Church for the past 40 years, ever since the close of Vatican II. It appears that the very same revolutionary strategy now working in Washington to revise health care and take over corporations and banks to create a centrally planned economy has been at work in the Catholic Churchfor the past 40 years preparing the American Catholic mind to accept the stunning Bolshevism now at work in America’s secular institutions. Indeed the American Catholic has been prepared by the liberal Bishops and academics at Universities bearing the name “Catholic” but teaching otherwise to accept these changes. The program of transformation began with the use of horizontal rather than vertical and hierarchal language and modes of worship by transforming the Holy Mass into a ceremony of banalities, a communal meal rather than the sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ, the imposition of guitar masses and tepid church music written by religious promoting social agendas rather than the worship of God. Ideas of religious democratization and indifferentism have been promoted through the conversion of women’s religious orders into social activist organizations and the creation of leftist Bishop’s conferences such as the USCCB, episcopal organizations that have no magisterial authority organized in the name of “collegiality”. Albeit this false and deceptive democratization of the Catholic episcopacy and the ordained gives lie to the fact that the American Church is actually dominated by oligarchs every bit as powerful as the Borgias and Medicis of the era leading up to the Reformation, oligarchs who rule in Boston, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, wealthy and powerful figures who pull the strings in America’s most influential Archdiocese’.
Truly, the “preferential option for the poor” bantered about by the lips of these prelates only serves to further oppress the poor and fosters a continued dependency on the charities and organizations funded by the USCCB, organizations which are in reality tools of cultural imperialism by which an academic elite imposes its world view on the poor a narrative which relegates them to a status of perpetual victimhood and poverty from which they can never hope to escape without dependence upon the noblesse oblige these elite and their political allies.
Indeed, the recent ruckus surrounding the USCCB funding the ill-famed ACORN as well as organizations that provide abortions, support prostitution and same sex marriage with parishioner donations is but one of several infamous scandals haunting the Catholic consciousness. We need not belabor Archbishop Rembert Weakland’s narcissistic, self serving memoirs, his apologias for a profligate and sexually depraved life all while wearing the habit of a Benedictine monk, this has been done better and with greater detail elsewhere. Now the arrest of Canadian Bishop Raymond Lahey on charges of child pornography only serves to further what should be evident by now- the Catholic Episcopate is in crisis, indeed, it seems that schism and heresy are rooted deeply and firmly in the highest ranks of the Church, the Smoke of Satan has blown in through the openings that Vatican II had intended for illumination.
There is doubt, incertitude, problematic, disquiet, dissatisfaction, confrontation. There is no longer trust of the Church; they trust the first profane prophet who speaks in some journal or some social movement, and they run after him and ask him if he has the formula of true life. And we are not alert to the fact that we are already the owners and masters of the formula of true life. Doubt has entered our consciences, and it entered by windows that should have been open to the light. Pope Paul VI
I say schism because these Bishops openly defy the magisterial teachings on sexuality as it pertains to Holy Orders, Matrimony, chastity, and rightly ordered sexuality. These Bishops do not submit themselves to the disciplinary authority of the Petrine See: These are freelancers, rogue Bishops who reject what has been taught as meet and just for 2000 years. Sexual morality as understood in the plain and simple language of the 6th Commandment and its understanding through 2 millenia of Catholic teaching has been replaced by the shifting sands of psychology and sociology, pseudosciences that have epistemologically weak foundations based upon unproven and untestable theories. I say heresy because these same prelates choose to obstinately defend their perversity in the guise of psychology and the language of sociology, invoking the principles of forgiving “seventy times seven” and not casting the first stone. Indeed no first stone should be cast, these Bishops are not simple adulteresses who have gone their way and sin no more, these are not chastened Magdalenes. These depraved prelates, whited sepulcres, bringers of scandal to the “little ones” should, as Our Lord said, have a millstone tied about their neck and they themselves should be cast into the sea Mark 9:41. In Mark 9 Jesus Christ teaches about hands and feet that cause scandal and require cutting off and casting into fire that the remaining body be saved. Does this hard parable teach about the Church Corporate, the Body of the Bride of Christ rather than the hands and feet of sinful individuals? What if these organs of the Church are the ones which need to be amputated and cut off: Is Bishop Weakland a scandalizing hand? Is Bishop Lahey a scandalizing foot? Where is that millstone? Of course an editorial in the dissident Jesuit magazine America tells us that Weakland’s homosexual encounters “humanized” him: as if somehow homosexual romantic love were enough to justify the payment of nearly a half million dollars in settlement to one of his victims, not to mention the scandal and hurt to the Church.
But then perhaps we should all “grow out of it” as Weakland himself wrote, “My general reasoning was that there were probably some kids who ‘grew out of it,’ and then some who were deeply disturbed for life”: Hmm “love means never having to say you’re sorry” in Weakland’s narcissistic world and evidently among Jesuits.
Where is that millstone and where is the nearest sea Archbishop Weakland? Shall you enter into the Lord’s rest, you of errant heart?
Anyway, this is but the first on a series of Quadraginta annis: 40 years of wreckage done the Church by the “Spirit of Vatican II”, as I said the same forces that are now in power in Washington have been working mischief in the Church for the past 40 years, anyone with eyes to see can recognize the modus operandi for “change” at work in both spheres.
Was there a Merton – Weakland connection?
Sep
20
Health care reform and Catholic social teaching
September 20, 2009 | 1 Comment
Now certain prominent Bishops in the USA have weighed in on Health Care Reform, that national debate which appears to be producing more heat than light, a phenomenon that in physics this would result in thermodynamic death- but the economy of human politics is not tied to thermodynamics, is it?
What matters here is that the institutional leaders of an organization that originated many of the concepts now known as “health care”, are speaking out, that institution being the Catholic Church. The Church has a long tradition of health care and has provided it in many forms and may thus authoritatively speak to such matters. But are these institutional leaders, the Bishops, speaking effectively to the issue or are they only addressing scripted “talking points” on abortion, euthanasia and illegal immigration? Are they speaking meaningfully to these issues or do they only utter the expected position statements?
It is time for lay Catholics to put aside childish things, things like party affiliation and political liberalism and conservatism to look at what is important in health care from a Catholic perspective. This is especially important since governance and politics are the proper domain of the laity CCC 898-899. Great issue has been made about abortion provisions in the health care bill, something which the Bishops oppose and rightly so. The USCCB position, written in 1993, states:
The legalization of abortion by Roe v. Wade in 1973 does not carry with it the implicit or explicit provision that procuration of an abortion is a “right” or an “entitlement” , thus the secular society while allowing for this provision must be reformed to understand that the procuration of an abortion, while free from criminal prosecution, does not entitle a woman to public funding for this procedure, nor should health care workers be required to provide or assist in abortion nor make referrals to those who provide these services. This actually would be a good first start if only the extremists in the Pro-Life movement would allow for a process which would begin by restrictions of this sort followed by a restrictive licensing of these facilities that these services. The pro-life movement has failed to gain the changes it seeks primarily because of its wrong headed party affiliation and its association with a “war president”, as well as its obstinate refusal to abandon established methods that have failed to gain results.
Repressive credentialing and licensing would make it economically unfeasible to provide abortions or run a clinic and thus limiting this choice of profession to idealists and zealots. Indeed, repressive forms of regulation, certification and credentialing have been used to restrict pluralism in health care in the United States, why can these measures not be used to greater effect on abortion providers and clinics? In fact, elective abortion is such a fringe procedure that has no medical benefit whatsoever and abortionists should be licensed apart from the practice of medicine as quasi-medical technicians. The years of medical training that doctors undergo aren’t necessary to perform abortions- it is a waste of medical education to become an abortion doctor, indeed these are hardly doctors at all but little more than uterine evacuation technicians. Indeed the use of paraprofessionals in the abortion industry would save the skills of medical doctors for where they are truly needed in primary care where a critical shortage of physicians exists.
But I digress, the 1993 position paper by the USCCB states;
We commend to the leaders of our nation the following criteria for reform:
- Respect for Life. Whether it preserves and enhances the sanctity and dignity of human life from conception to natural death.
- Priority Concern for the Poor. Whether it gives special priority to meeting the most pressing health care needs of the poor and underserved, ensuring that they receive quality health services.
- Universal Access. Whether it provides ready universal access to comprehensive health care for every person living in the United States.
- Comprehensive Benefits. Whether it provides comprehensive benefits sufficient to maintain and promote good health; to provide preventive care; to treat disease, injury, and disability appropriately; and to care for persons who are chronically ill or dying.
- Pluralism. Whether it allows and encourages the involvement of the public and private sectors, including the voluntary, religious, and nonprofit sectors, in the delivery of care and services; and whether it ensures respect for religious and ethical values in the delivery of health care for consumers and for individual and institutional providers.
- Quality. Whether it promotes the development of processes and standards that will help to achieve quality and equity in health services, in the training of providers, and in the informed participation of consumers in decision making on health care.
- Cost Containment and Controls. Whether it creates effective cost-containment measures that reduce waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary care; measures that control rising costs of competition, commercialism, and administration; and measures that provide incentives to individuals and providers for effective and economical use of limited resources.
- Equitable Financing. Whether it assures society’s obligation to finance universal access to comprehensive health care in an equitable fashion, based on ability to pay; and whether proposed cost-sharing arrangements are designed to avoid creating barriers to effective care for the poor and vulnerable.
Respect for life; thus euthanasia and abortion should not be funded, however neither should extreme fertility measures including in vitro fertilization, sperm and ovum donation. Respect for life should also restrict public funding for contraception, tubal ligation and vasectomy, even condoms should not get public funding.
Priority concern for the poor: while essential to Catholic social teaching may be hard to legislate in a secular government because of shifting definitions of what is considered “poor”. Poverty needs to be defined and in a consumer society where a large industry has grown providing cosmetic surgery and medical aesthetics it would be a matter of time before some obese poor would clamor for liposuction and tummy tucks and file discrimination suits because they were denied such treatments. Clearly the problem of definition obtains here as well as what would constitute medical treatment. Thus, would cosmetic services need to be restricted from any health care provision and then what else…? Eventually restriction of medical resources to medical necessity would lead to what is braodly called a “rationing of health care” because one needs to have OBJECTIVE criteria upon which to base cost-benefit. Thus only demonstrably beneficial services would be funded at the exclusion of others, other services would be delayed pending a trial of conservative prior to assignment for surgery. For example the famous charge that knee replacement surgeries would be delayed ignores the fact that standard of care requires a trial of non-surgical interventions including medication and physical therapy prior to surgery. Nevertheless, the American consumerist mentality demands immediate assignment to surgical treatment and these trumped up charges that Granny would not get her knee surgery are simply based upon a hamburger stand perspective that wants its order “supersized” upon demand without regard for the lack of evidence based indications for the procedure:
The general consensus among orthopaedic surgeons on indications for an operative procedure, carried out by a postal survey, were (a) severe daily pain and (b) x ray evidence of joint space narrowing.82 There are no evidence based guidelines to support this, however. No RCTs have compared TKR with non-surgical interventions. Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases 2003;62:1145-1155; EULAR RECOMMENDATIONS 2003.
Consumerism of the type that drives the purchase of automobiles has a limited place in health care and health care decision making.
So, to revisit the argument- what constitutes being “poor” and how does one then equitably assign medical care so that the preferential option for “the poor” does not become a form of reverse discrimination?
Universal access: already the shrieks about “illegal aliens” have become a rallying point against health care reform. Nevermind these “illegals” already drain the resources of emergency rooms and trauma centers across the country because that is where they now go for their health care. A health care reform must address the issue of immigration reform, and immigration reform must address broader issues like those which afflict the countries of origin and the conditions there that these immigrants are fleeing. The argument that denying illegals access to universal health care in the United States is an essential part of health care reform mistakenly overlook the economic forces responsible for the importation and domestic retention of these “illegals”. The business of human trafficking and the economy built around housing and selling the labor of illegal immigrants in this country is one which has not been uncovered but it exists in a vast underground economy that the Bishops of the United States are uninformed of. The dynamics of this underground slavery and its existence in the United States, its perpetuation by the blind eye of law enforcement and its toll on families is one which needs to be investigated, uncovered and condemned by the Bishops – perhaps through exposing this grave injustice the American Catholic Church could recover the moral authority it has lost through the cover up of sexual molestation by so many of its priests in the recent decades. Until then the Bishops can write what they please but have lost the public respect for the scandals of Boston and elsewhere.
Comprehensive benefits: at issue is preventive care, health should be funded to provide disease preventions strategies as well as treatment which requires medication or surgery. nevertheless, it will be hard to argue against the funding of contraception since many women, including many Catholic women, believe that contraception is an essential part of preventive health care. Again, this begs the question of the extremes of health care in this country including funding for things such as aesthetics (botox and restylane injections), cosmetic surgery, gender reassignment therapy, do we exclude alternative and complementary medicine – what metrics are to be used to include specific modalities at the exclusion of others and how will this be provided in a consumerist society that wants what it wants when it wants it? The oft cited argument that Granny will be denied a hip replacement fails because the little cited fact exists that there is no evidence to support the belief that total hip arthroplasty a greater benefit than internal fixation. Why should Granny get the hip replacement when internal fixation may be just as good? There are those who argue that the physician patient relationship is sacrosanct and that the physician recommendation should be given priority, thus justifying demand for all sorts of medications, surgeries and procedures that have no merit over medications, procedures and surgeries that are less costly and may in fact pose less risk to the patient. The physician must be expected to follow accepted practice standards and evidence based guidance – yet the sources of these guidelines and standards must be diverse so that they do not become the dictates of the monopoly of special interests.
Pluralism: the argument the Bishops make for the participation of charitable, faith based and voluntary sources of health care is a good point. However the Bishops ignore the greatest barrier to full participation by all sources of health care and that is malpractice insurance. Malpractice lawyers have done the greatest harm to the practice of medicine in this country and because of he escalating cost of malpractice coverage and the restrictions that malpractice insurance providers place upon what they will cover the provision of low cost or free health care to these who would benefit is blocked because of fear of lawsuits and the infeasibility of insuring these activities. Clearly, many more health care providers would open charitable endeavors IF the fear of tort were not so omnipresent such that nobody is willing to treat pro bono for fear of suit from opportunistic grifters and their attorneys. The Bishops in their concern for social justice must address this aspect of medical reality in their ongoing clamor for treating the poor and disenfranchised.
Of concern also are the many restrictions which are encountered in the billing process, the CPT and ICD-9 codes that go into each and every bill submitted for reimbursement from private insurance, Medicare and Medicaid. the system is inefficient and is a great source of waste and mismanagement, especially in Medicaid and Medicare. For the diverse, pluralistic sources of health care which the Bishops advocate to function, clear and concise patterns of reimbursement must be detailed so as to avoid the risk of being accused of fraud when simple errors in billing occur due to the current complexity of the billing process.
Quality: The Bishops must address the monopolies which maintain a stranglehold on healthcare providers, hospitals and clinics through the restrictive process of issuing credentials by JCAHO, the ABMS and its affiliated specialty boards, the State Medical Boards and the AMA which have made an industry exacting fees for certification exams, institutional reviews and certificates in the name of “quality control” but which in reality have become little more than forms of legal racketeering restriction the number and type of medical practioners, hospitals and clinics in the US through byzantine credentialing and review processes. This alone is a major reason health care costs have skyrocketed, in part to maintain the number of FTEs dedicated to meeting the demands of these credentialing agencies. One could argue that there is a need for licensure and quality control and indeed this is not disputed, however there should be COMPETITION in the marketplace to allow for more diverse avenues of credentialing and certification. At this time an unseen oligarchy controls credentialing of healthcare in this country and it must be deposed from its monopolistic stranglehold which has been largely responsible for the restriction of pluralism in American health care.
Only with malpractice reform and the reform of healthcare certification can any sane health care reform take place.
Cost containment and controls: the issue of defensive medicine is not small and a great deal of the cost of medical care is directly the result of the organized assault on doctors and hospitals from malpractice attorneys as well as the increasing cost of obtaining malpractice insurance. Add to this the cost of maintaining credentialing and certification, plus the cost of medical training itself and then we have a real picture of why costs are as they are. Furthermore, the use of technologically sophisticated equipment in the USA is no cheap nor are may diagnostic tests that are required for diagnosis and treatment monitoring. I will also add that many of the medications on the marketplace now are verysophisticated and reflect the developments in molecular and cell biology over the past two decades. The specificity and design of many pharmacologic agents are exquisite and the cost of developing these is not cheap. So despite the complaints that Big Pharma is making itself rich at the expense of the people fails to consider the amount of sophisticated science, research and development that goes into the production of medication, yet there are those who maintain the naive belief that this should all be free because people have a “right” to it.
People have a right to health care, it is true, but people, including those who work in health care and own hospitals and clinics, also have a right to make a living, run a business and benefit from the fruit of their labors. Those who propose that health care should be provided as a universal good from charity are hopeless idealists who overlook the injustice done to the health care worker. Nobody asks a farmer to give his produce for free although everyone has a right to eat, do they? Do we hear the leftists who most loudly proclaim Catholic social justice theory advocate the field worker do his labor out of the goodness of his heart and eat only what he does not provide freely to those who do not farm? Of course not and why should health care be any different? “Brother auto worker, give me my free car because I have a right to transportation and you may have a free car as well” – let us see how THAT would go over. At the heart of such presumption is envy and covetousness disguised as a preferential concern for the poor; envy and covetousness which would destroy all economies to make everyone poor so that nobody would earn profit from their labor. This is not Catholic social justice but a mockery of it, a thinly disguised Bolshevism which would deprive everyone of their right to property, a right at the core of Catholic social justice.
2402 In the beginning God entrusted the earth and its resources to the common stewardship of mankind to take care of them, master them by labor, and enjoy their fruits.187 The goods of creation are destined for the whole human race. However, the earth is divided up among men to assure the security of their lives, endangered by poverty and threatened by violence. The appropriation of property is legitimate for guaranteeing the freedom and dignity of persons and for helping each of them to meet his basic needs and the needs of those in his charge. It should allow for a natural solidarity to develop between men.
The equitable balance between the right to health care of persons and the right to a just wage and fair profit is one which the Bishops in their zeal for justice in the health field need to address. Just as the virtue of temperance must obtain in which profit free of greed for health care providers must obtain, freedom from being oppressed by the greed of those who presume a right to the productive effort of others must be ensured. Indeed, the principle of pluralism would ensure this to a greater extent by allowing non-corporate, not-for-profit entities to economically compete.
The massive regulatory framework that pharmaceutical companies need to comply with is a major source of cost in the production of medication. The billions of dollars that must be spent on FTEs to assure regulatory compliance and to defend against legal prosecution and lawsuits must be considered in health care reform – these are costs that are not insignificant and which are passed on to the patient in the price of their medication. No doubt Big Pharma would be more open to providing medicine pro bono to the pluralistic sources of health care the Bishops advocate if they too were not restricted from doing so by the complex legislation that restricts them and fear of lawsuit.
Clearly the Bishops need to address the issue of waste in current publicly funded health care programs which care for the elderly and the poor, which restrict patients from obtaining the best health care through restricting reimbursement to providers and penalize providers with complex and punitive regulations.
Finally the issue of equitable financing is addressed and one which the Bishops have not yet tackled insighfully. The current regime of HMOs and health insurance companies needs to be deregulated and decoupled from employment. Health care coverage should be available for purchase by individuals and families in the same way that automobile and home insurance is. The expectation that the employer should provide health benefits should be eliminated, however should employers choose to provide a benefit as a competitive hiring package they should be free to to so, but only of the employees is allowed to opt out and obtain insurance independently. In order to do this the Bishops must address the stranglehold labor unions hold on health care by demanding employer paid insurance: unions like the SEIU must be reigned in and its members allowed to contract freely in the marketplace for the best cverage available. Health care has suffered through the intervention of government and labor unions and these sources of interference are primarily responsible for the escalating cost of health care in this country.
The Bishops, while meaning well in their position statements, demonstrate a lack of insight into the complexities of the health care reform issue. By myopically advocating for “the poor” without actually defining what constitutes being poor in the US, and by broadly militating a pro-life stance without actually addressing specifics of how this should be done, they do a disservice to the broad spectrum of Catholic workers whose labor will be used to fund government reformed health care.
The Bishops in their pastoral concern need to address how this reform will impact all Catholics, not just the poor and the unborn, but also those who labor and pay taxes so that they too are not added to the growing ranks of “the poor”. The Church, once the home of health care, needs to advocate a place for its health institutions in the United States, a parallel framework which could provide for the poor and dispossessed independently of the current regulatory framework which forces it to work in a corporate manner and compete for funding tainted by morally unacceptable requirements. This would remove the barriers to the true charitable mission of the Church and its natural place in health care.
Sep
19
Catholic liberalism as cultural imperialism
September 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Too often I read young Catholic authors waxing indignant about “racism” and oppression of the poor: Young intellectuals who themselves are often (not always) neither poor nor of color. These are often theology students who are not in seminary – what ever happened to learning a trade or aspiring to become a “Marine Biologist”? Anyway, too many youth of the John Paul II generation all seem to gravitate towards being theologians, as if there weren’t already too much confusion in that field as well as its over representation in the domain of academic liberalism and cultural dialog.
Nevertheless, these same also manifest a racism, albeit subtle, in their stereotyping of those of color and of the poor: Sterotypes which they have adopted to justify their world view that without their noblesse oblige the poor and people of color simply would be unable to survive in the world, let alone succeed and have prosperous lives. To wit the following:
Hmm, I recall being afraid to put a McCain-Palin bumpersticker on my pick-up truck for fear of vandalism by some crazed liberal Democrat soccer mom with her car keys, albeit I am Mexican American and by the logical calculus of the blogger I cite above, such a Liberal Democrat should rightly have defended my right to my bumper sticker for the Republican presidential ticket. Nevertheless, I forgo putting bumperstickers because I do not trust the “open minded” people of the Democrat Party. I fear violence from liberal Democrats.
In defiance of this political oppression from Liberal Democrats and their cultural imperialism, many of my fellow Spanish Surnamed Compadres supported my right to vote for the Republican presidential candidate and many voted likewise - it is from the outside, the non-Hispanic, the sensitive suburban liberal, the effete college professor, the non-Hispanic Catholic social justice advocate, that comes the contempt. The disdain arises from those whose stereotypes presume to assign my political affiliation to Democrat leftism. These open minded and sensitive liberals are easily angered when I do not agree with what their suburban liberal bourgeoisie narrative presumes: That I should, by virtue of my Mexicanity, my Brown-ness, my Hispanohablante status, vote Democrat, Leftist, Obamite.
Liberal promoters of minority stereotypes infest the Democrat Party and wield great power which they use to impose their cultural imperialism upon those of color, especially when they are successful. Take the example of Senator Barbara Boxer of California when condescending to a successful black man, CEO Harry Alford representing the Black Chamber of Commerce…watch
This type of exaggerated sense of self importance in the Democrat liberal claim to know what is best for those of color and those who are “poor” follows after the pattern of 60s radicalism, café communism and bookstore anarchism, intellectual playthings of youth who come from families that are well off by comparison with the “oppressed” whom they presume themselves “called” to defend. Really, this dialectic is as oppressive as the open racism of the early 20th Century which segregated blacks and Puerto Ricans into closed neighborhoods in the urban Northeast, albeit the North presumably was free of the historical taint of slavery, truly the racism there was more palpable than in the South and gives the lie to yet another liberal stereotype that racists all flew Confederate flags. Democrat liberalism reflects this subtle attitude of segregation because it restricts the free choice of Hispanics and Blacks in the US to select modes of political and economic activity, it imposes choices which originate from liberal ideology of Democrats who seek to foster dependency of these classes of people upon them, presuming that without there there would be no hope of progress. By way of example, the Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson have only succeeded in creating a social trap from which the poor and disenfranchised cannot hope to escape without extraordinary effort. By keeping the minorities and the poor economically segregated by way of social programs and liberal stereotypes the competition for leadership in the corporate sector is reduced and kept under the control of the usual suspects, in this way the males of the dominator culture maintain the vast wealth of the nation n the hands of a few while allowing for some of this money to be doled out to the less fortunate through social programs cloaked in a veneer of charity and social consciousness. These are golden handcuffs which keep the poor in their place and the rich segregated from the worker.
Yet this Great Society mentality appears to direct Catholic social justice thought and activity in the USA. The social justice cohort among American Catholics have prostituted themselves to the ideals of the Democrats and the 1960s radicals – witness the special way in which Senator Kennedy was treated, his social programs lauded by so many prominent Catholic voices and his advocay of abortion “rights” was all but ignored by the same. Too often those of us of color in the American Catholic world overcome not only the various economic, social and racial barriers to progress in the secular culture only to find ourselves oppressed by the artificial concern of the sensitive side of the dominator culture: We hear its stereotyped narrative of our lives speaking to us from the pulpit (aging 60s hippie priest), the convent (lesbian feminist radical social activist Sister), and now apparently from lay Catholic theology graduate students. Clearly the social justice contingent among Catholics is in bed with the Democrat Party and its extreme political liberalism, there is a need to step back to approach social justice from a Catholic perspective which is independent of the politics of the Democrat Party.
