At the dawn of 2011,
despite bumps in the road -
Catholic orthodoxy marches onward
by David Hartline
Monday, December 6, 2010
It seems every time a kerfuffle pops up in the Catholic Church, many engage in hand wringing, and doom-and-gloom scenarios. The latest occurred with Pope Benedict XVI’s remarks on condoms, which were wildly taken out of context in his interview-book with Peter Seewald,
Light of the World.
Following these remarks, some of us have probably been peppered with questions from family and friends as to what this means, and if the Church has changed her teachings in the arena of birth control.
Those of us who have welcomed the new orthodoxy taking place within in the Church during the last ten or twenty years, probably have wished this latest kerfuffle had never taken place. However, this in no way shape of form means the orthodoxy movement has stalled.
Oddly, I received some gleeful e-mails pointing out that my book
The Tide is Turning Toward Catholicism couldn’t possibly be correct. Hopefully, this article will point out that Catholic orthodoxy is alive, well and here to stay.
Church liberals who had long pilloried Pope Benedict XVI even before he was a cardinal, when he was just a university professor in Germany, seemed perplexed on how to treat the latest uproar. Some felt that he was moving in the right (or in their case left direction.)
However, even the more cynical among them knew that the Holy Father hadn’t changed a thing the same ones who leave posts at the National Catholic Reporter decrying the German pontiff’s lack of pastoral ministry.
Though I don’t know which saint said it, I am sure someone who was canonized uttered something along these lines; “God please save your Church from these overly pastoral pastors.”
The Holy Father was engaging in an abstract theological conversation much like a bunch of guys at a sports bar might conjecture what would happen if modern team X played historical team Y for a mythical championship. Yet, the mainstream media along with some in the Catholic media went into a frenzy.
The Holy Father was changing nothing in the Church’s teachings concerning birth control. The fault lies with those in the Vatican communications services who failed to screen editor Giovanni Vian's partial and out-of-context excerpt of the condom remarks for
L’Osservatore Romano. The continuing communications comedy of errors in the Vatican could make one’s hair fall out.
Yet, I remember the words of a priest who once spent a considerable amount of time at the Holy See. He told me that the number of jaw-dropping examples of God’s Grace that he personally witnessed behind the Vatican walls, still amazes him to this day. On the flip side, the magnitude of sinister, almost demonic, attacks on the Church also amazes him to this day. The Evil One knows where his primary target is located and he does his best to cause mayhem.
Despite the handwringing buy some of my fellow orthodox-minded Catholics, they must remember that in her 2,000 years the Church has seen so many attacks that the latest uproar is but a blip.
Following the Protestant Reformation whole towns (in Catholic areas) saw priests and bishops abandon their posts. Bishop Francis DeSales was greeted with volleys of rotten fruit and empty churches when he entered Geneva, Switzerland. By the time of his death, half of the city had returned to the One True Faith, as many had come to see the lies and empty promises of Jean Calvin.
St Francis De Sales’s ordeal is a telling example for us some 500 years later. Like that dark period, the Church in recent times has been engulfed in a horrible scandal.
The scandal that brought on the Reformation primarily revolved around money and power, while the Church’s most recent scandal revolved around lust and deviancy.
We must take the example of St. Francis De Sales's hard long road to heart, for if we try to repair any damage with a quick fix, we will find ourselves in worse shape than when we started.
In more recent times, the mainline liberal Protestant churches became very much 'of the world' in the 1960s and 1970s. Llistening to the glowing media reports surrounding these churches, one might think they would be full to bursting, instead of empty.
But if you can’t stand for the dogmatic truths of Christ and His Church, you most certainly will fall for anything. Sadly that is exactly what has happened, as there doesn’t seem to be a left-wing cause or alternative lifestyle that the liberal churches don’t support.
The Anglican Church is literally imploding before our eyes, as not only many of the rank and file worldwide Anglican Communion faithful (called Episcopalians in the US) are coming home to Rome, but so are many Anglican priests, as well as a few bishops thanks to the personal Ordinariate offered by Pope Benedict XVI.
In Britain it is estimated that more people attend Friday prayers in the mosques than those who attend Anglican Church services on Sunday morning. Recently, the leader of the Anglican Church, The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams stated that he welcomed Sharia Law being applied in Great Britain....
The liberals within the Catholic Church would have us go two ways, both of which would be a disaster. For example Kathleen Kennedy Townsend recently wrote an op-ed piece in the
Washington Post taking former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to task for exposing the less-than=Catholic public views of her late uncle, President John F Kennedy.
Governor Palin was merely reiterating a theme that has been espoused before by many orthodox-minded Catholics, including Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, aBout the nation’s only Catholic President. In her new book
America By Heart, Governor Palin reminds her readers that President Kennedy downplayed his Catholic faith and was certainly no help to Catholic schools.
It took a member of the Disciples of Christ Church, Lyndon Baines Johnson to allow Catholic school children to use the public school buses that their parent’s taxes were funding.
It wasn’t merely Governor Palin in Kennedy-Townsend’s crosshairs, but the beliefs of orthodox Catholics. A good liberal Catholic document wouldn’t be complete without references to the Grand Inquisitor and or the Inquisition, and Kenendy-Townsend does not disappoint her fellow liberals.
Still another recipe of disaster for faith in the modern world would be the Rick Steves Route.[hartline goes on for several pragraphs about
this Steves, who, it seems, is a TV host on public TV, a blogger and Lutheran who sees nothing wrong with going to Mass at St. Peter's and receiving Communion of he feels like it ("Don't ask, don't tell), but is also a social liberal who disagrees with Catholic teaching on morality and on the primacy of the Pope.]
In some ways Steve's makeshift theology goes to the heart of liberal rebellion and dare I say the Protestant Reformation? It smacks of “go ahead you know what’s best, you don’t need some stuffy churchmen to tell you what to do!” Disobedience masquerading as relativistic intellect has been the downfall of many in the Old and New Testament.
God gave Peter one set of keys, not 40,000 (the number pf denominational and non-denominational 'churches' dotting the Protestant landscape). Now the Lutheran Church, the oldest of the Protestant confessions, is splitting once again over same-sex marriage...
My intent here is not to replay the Protestant Reformation. I am well aware of the corruption that existed in the Catholic Church during the time of Luther. However, pride and envy have been man’s downfall since the Garden.
In one hammer swing to the church doors at Wittenberg, Martin Luther went from quite possibly being one of the greatest reformers that the Catholic Church had ever seen, to a megalomaniac who thought he knew better than the Church that Christ created, as to how to aid in man’s salvation...
Every time one of my articles reiterates the statistics concerning dioceses where vocations are booming due to fervent orthodoxy and traditional Catholic devotional practices, such as Eucharistic Adoration and Marian devotions, I receive e-mails (some nicer than others) from liberal Catholics and liberal Protestants upset at my assertion.
According to them, the young men and young women who embrace orthodoxy and traditional Catholic devotions simply haven’t come to grips with the modern world, while liberal young people who shun religious life altogether have. A rather odd assertion but I suppose if you believe in relativism, you end up being ruled by the Dictatorship of Relativism.
Oddly enough, from time to time, I also get positive heartfelt e-mails from Evangelical Protestants buoyed by the fact that within the Catholic Church, the tide is turning to orthodoxy.
To conclude, the Catholic Church has found herself in some rough patches. Many both inside and outside the Church have tried, with the best of intentions, to make mankind over into something that ends up being contrary to God’s and purposes and plans.
The Reformation begat the Enlightenment, which begat the French Revolution, which begat Karl Marx and on the downward spiral plunges, but there exists an institution that though full of corrupt and sinful human beings, continues to march onward some 2,000 years later.
This institution is the Catholic Church and though we have had many bumps in the road, we march and process onward to preach the Good News that Christ handed down to Peter and everyone of the 265 successive popes (Matthew 16:15-20.)
The doom and gloomers might want to ponder this fact as they watch the implosion of the pillars of the Dictatorship of Relativism. Yes, despite some bumps in the road, the tide continues to turn toward Catholic orthodoxy.