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Why We
Must Not Fiddle
While Rome Burns
June 1, 2010
By
Philip D. Ropp
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On
July 15, 1979, then President of the United States Jimmy Carter
addressed the American people concerning what his administration had
identified as a "crisis of confidence" within the country's
population. This was perceived as a general uneasiness and
uncertainty brought on by a continuing energy crisis, and the ensuing
economic woes of the day. In an attempt to get a feel for the
pulse of the nation, Carter's pollsters had determined that the
assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther
King, Jr.; the Vietnam War, Watergate and the Three Mile Island nuclear
disaster had brought the nation into a state of ongoing malaise.
In fact, though the word never appears in Carter's text, this address
has been known ever after as the "malaise"
speech.
One line in this address to the nation was as
follows: "In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families,
close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend
to worship self-indulgence and consumption." More than 30 years
after this speech, in a time and context far different than the America
of the Carter years, it is interesting to note that if the word
"church" is
substituted for "nation," we have a fair statement concerning the
current state of Catholicism
in the United States. Over the past 50 years, the radical
ecclesial and liturgical changes that followed the Vatican II
Council; the tumultuous social and moral changes of the 1960's and
70's; the
strange death of Pope John Paul I, and the
near assassination of John Paul II; the clergy
sexual abuse, Banco Ambrosiano, and Marxist
political scandals have brought
the Church into a similar and
parallel state of malaise as that observed by President Carter in the
America of the late 1970's. Indeed: both evolved from the same
mid 20th century cultural ooze.
The malaise that
we face today as American
Catholics was not precipitated by the unholy changes wrought by Vatican
II, as the Traditionalists
would like us to believe. To be sure, much
of the change envisioned, including
renewal of the Church, a constructive ecumenical dialog, a deeper
understanding of the modern world, and a tighter definition of the role
of the hierarchy were all
healthy goals and long past due. If carried out within the
established Magisterium or "Teaching
Authority" of the Church, as
defined by Sacred
Scripture and as refined by nearly 2000 years of Sacred
Tradition, there was no reason to believe that the future of the
Church emerging from Vatican II would be anything but holy, boundless
and exciting. As Pope Paul VI said
in 1972, "We
believed that after the Council would come a day of sunshine in the
history of the Church."
But the "if" turned out to be bigger than
anticipated. Seizing the day of opportunity that Vatican II
represented, the
leftist faction of the Nouvelle Theologie ("New
Theology") movement, as
inspired by the previously Vatican condemned theology of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and as represented by radical
leftist theologians such as Karl
Rahner, Hans Küng, and Edward Schillebeeckx inspired an increasingly left leaning
hierarchy to impose an agenda of change that represented nothing less
than a coup d'etat against accepted
Catholic Teaching and Tradition.
This lead Pope Paul to
lament that instead of the forecast day of sunshine, "...there
has come a day of clouds and
storms, and of darkness..."
At the heart of Teilhard's new theology was a
scientifically enlightened world view that interpreted Scripture in the
unsupernatural terms of the Protestant German school of Biblical
history, as
represented most prominently by Julius Wellhausen.
From the Wellhausian perspective that the early Genesis Eden stories
are nothing more than the mythological literature of a pre-Jewish
Palestinian culture, it is easy to make the backward leap of faith that
original sin
is ahistorical and, therefore by implication, this releases humanity
from the need of salvation - and the need for a savior. Teilhard
opted for a
sweeping and somewhat fanciful view of the cosmos that called into
question Catholic theology all the way back to St. Augustine,
and this resulted in his major work, The
Phenomenon of Man, being condemned by the Church. Pope Pius XII
published his 1950 encyclical Humani Generis in refutation of Nouvelle Theologie in general, and
the theology of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in particular.
Original sin
is the foundation upon which
Catholic belief is built. According to this doctrine, man began
his existence as an eternal being, and is fallen from grace as
evidenced by the very fact that each human being born into life on
earth is also cursed to die. This is the result of the temptation
to disobedience extended by the serpent to Adam and Eve, and
because
they succumbed to this temptation, we bear their curse, and live under
what is called the "stain" of original sin. Like the other life
forms we share the planet with, we live and we die, but because this
original sin was committed within the historical context of this life
on earth, no matter how accurate or inaccurate the details of the Eden
story might be, the reality of our potential to be rescued from this
original sin, and so gain back the eternal life we have lost, is
contingent upon these historical core truths of the Genesis
account. In short, if original sin is not an historical fact, we
have no hope of salvation. From dust we have come and to dust we
shall return. Period.
Evolutionary theory
teaches just the opposite:
that humanity arose from lesser life forms through the process of
natural selection, and that man is a mortal being ascended to the
pinnacle of life on earth. Human beings exist only in the
physical realm, and while intelligent and highly conscious of the world
around them, they are, none the less, mortal, animal beings only, and a
part of the same earthly schema that all life on this planet belongs
to. Whatever man aspires to, he does so on his own, and when his
days are over, he returns to the earth from which he came, and that is
the end of the story. Progress takes place, but it is a gradual
process that occurs with no intelligent control other than that which
humanity injects through its own devices, and the goal of life is the
survival of the species in the temporal realm and this
alone. It is this world view that is at the heart Teilhard's
theology, and it is the perspective that is embraced by the leftist
proponents of Nouvelle Theolgie.
Not only is this view of reality incompatible with Catholic Teaching,
it is, moreover, the antithesis of it. And while a theology built
from
this viewpoint may seek to answer certain spiritual questions, it must
necessarily do so in a way that is anything but Catholic. The
inherent danger in this is both obvious and sobering.
At the heart of the Catholic Faith is the
ancient belief that because
humanity's fall from grace was the result of sin, it is possible to
overcome
death through the sacrifice of a perfect and sinless man. It is
the witness of the Catholic Church, as taught by the apostles, who saw
this accomplished in person, that Jesus of Nazareth
was, and is, this
perfect man: That He was perfect because He was God
Incarnate,
and that through His Precious Blood,
shed for us at the cross, we have
the potential to be rescued from death so as to live with Him in heaven
forever. And it is the further witness of the apostles that the
evidence that this is so is found in the historical fact of the Resurrection:
That after Jesus suffered, died and was buried, He
rose again from the dead and testified to the truth of this teaching,
and is alive forevermore. And because He is alive forevermore, He
will return at the culmination of
human history, so as to take
those
who belong to Him and remain on earth to be with Him in heaven.
At this time, the devil and his minions are subjugated to eternal
torment in a lake
of fire, salvation
history is complete, and original
sin ceases to exist forever.
In ancient Israel,
the Temple sacrifice,
in which an unblemished yet still imperfect
lamb was offered up for the sins of the people, only had the power to
remove the curse of personal
sin. Since man's nature is
inherently sinful, this sacrifice
had to be repeated periodically so that the accumulation of sin since
the previous rite could be expunged from the soul. Only Jesus
Christ, as the perfect sacrifice, has the power to remove the stain of
original sin, and because this original sin was a one time only event,
and because the sacrifice is perfect, the cross is a one time only
event. Therefore, the Sacrifice of the Mass
is in no way a repetition of the crucifixion, but
a mystical visitation to the original, once and for always event, so
that we may have the benefit of the unblemished and perfect Lamb of God, who
continues to reenter into our realm of time and space in this
miraculous way, so as to remove the periodic accumulation of our
personal sins.
When the concept of original
sin is removed from Christian belief, the whole of this traditional
theology
comes tumbling down like a house of cards. If there is no
original sin
to atone for, then there is no need for an atoning sacrifice. If
there is no need for an atoning sacrifice, then the holy worship of the
Mass
is no longer a
sacrifice at all, but merely a gathering to celebrate whatever it is we
perceive our relationship to God to be. And this relationship
becomes totally relative to our own self perception and identity as
each of us decides to define it. This explains the balloons,
clowns, dancing and other blasphemies that have come to characterize
the
post-conciliar Mass. Keep in mind that it was the goal of Vatican
II that the changes to the liturgy that would inspire the Novus Ordo Mass would result in
a form more accessible and understandable to the faithful: It was
not
intended to transform the Mass into a pagan circus or Feast of Fools,
and the rapidity and the depth to which this was accomplished is
testimony to the both the organizational skills of the left, and the
extent to which the hierarchy and the educational apparatus of the
Church had been influenced by this kind of counter-Catholic theology
prior to the Council itself. And it gives one a new appreciation
for the difficult life and times of Pope Pius XII.
In the world
of Teilhard and those who have
followed in these footsteps,
Jesus ceases to be God Incarnate
and becomes merely a teacher of Jewish platitudes, elevated to the
Christhood through the overly zealous actions of the apostles, and
defined in His role as Savior through the theologizing of the early fathers of the
Church. Seizing on the works of the various quests
for the historical Jesus that have come and gone over the past
three centuries; works which seek to separate the "historical real
person" of Jesus from the
contrived figure of the "Christ,"
the leftist fringe has recast Him in any number of roles suitable to
their agenda. Since the historical Jesus scholars all eventually
come to the same conclusion; that the Church has made such an
historical mess that the true human person of Jesus has been lost
forever, then the door is open to recreate Him in any way that furthers
the goals that any particular leftist faction is promoting.
Therefore, to the Marxist proponents of Liberation
Theology, he becomes a type of
martyred revolutionary hero after
the
order of Che Guevara.
To those promoting the Catholic
feminist and homosexual
agenda within the Church, He becomes the itinerant and
liberal sage of the Jesus Seminar;
an effeminate peasant preaching an all inclusive social gospel,
and someone who the gay community can enthusiastically embrace as one
of their own. And in the
leftist dominated parishes, the new
"modern" image of
Jesus is a "demythologized"
blow dry icon to self indulgence, whose resemblance to the satirical "Buddy Christ" of
the 1999 movie Dogma is too close for comfort.
In retrospect
it becomes obvious that the
revolution in the Catholic Church that we have experienced over the
past five decades was already well under way before the Vatican II
Council convened in 1962. The Nouvelle
Theologie
movement that inspired the Council envisioned a modern Church in dialog
with the world, but with the traditional core beliefs and values of the
ancient Church retained and considered unassailable. Indeed, the
original movement was not envisioned as a "new theology" at all, but as
a return to a more faithful interpretation of Scripture and the
writings of the Church Fathers. The name those within the
movement
chose for it was "Ressourcement," a French term meaning "return to
the sources." Nouvelle
Theologie itself was a
pejorative term hung on the movement by
Dominican theologian Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange
and indicating not a return to the sources, but a new and dangerous
theology that deviated and departed from the long standing theology of
the Church. The debate that emerged during the Council between
the
leftist camp (as outlined above), espousing this new and dangerous
theology, and those on the right, as represented by Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), who
attempted to hold to the stated goals of the movement, would result in
a
post-conciliar split of Nouvelle
Theologie into two different
and bitterly opposed camps - a
split that exists to this day.
The effect of
this theological debate has been
to splinter the
Church into essentially three opposing factions: Tradionalists, who
believe the Council itself moved the Church away from the legitimate
foundational beliefs and true practice of the faith, as last expressed
during the reign of Pope Pius XII; Conservatives, who hold that
the
Council opened the door to abuses by those who purposely interpreted
the documents generated in such a radical way so as to violate canon
law, denigrate Catholic belief, and deviate from traditional Church
Teaching; and Liberals, who claimed that the "Spirit of
Vatican II"
provided license to move beyond the changes as mandated by the Council
documents, and into a brave new world in which the Church was the
problem, and the solution was to radically overhaul and change Her
priorities and practices, under the guise that this was somehow a
return
to a more historically grounded expression of the faith.
It was not Vatican II that
allowed the camel of sin and apostasy to put his nose under the tent,
it was, instead, the event that allowed him to push his way fully into
our midst. The various agendas of the left came into play so
quickly and fully during the years after the Council closed in 1965,
that even from our current historical perspective, the blitzkrieg of change appears
breathtaking. Long before the Novus
Ordo Missae became the
Ordinary Mass of the Church in 1969, the
guitars and maracas of the so called "Folk
Mass" drifted forth from the
sanctuaries of churches across the
land. And when we look back from our time now, at the close of
the first decade of the 21st century, and realize that it was during
the mid 1960's that the clergy sexual abuse of Catholic youth was
reaching its peak, then it is also clear that the "homosexualization"
of the priesthood had also been
accomplished in some large measure
prior to the Council. The most disrurbing aspect of all of this
change has been a turning away from the traditional Catholic belief in
salvation through the shed Blood of Christ, to a belief that, in the
absence of original sin, the new faith of the Church must embrace not
only the sinner but also the sin. And the reason why this has
occurred was, again, stated in the most direct and frightening of terms
by
Pope Paul VI: For a "...day of sunshine for the church..." did
not dawn; a "...day of clouds and storms..." appeared instead, and the
reason why this occurred was because "...the
smoke of satan [had] entered the temple of God."
Clearly, the
malaise that grips the American
Church of the 21st century is not unwarranted. The general
uneasiness and the tension that exists within the Church are the result
of this very real conflict that goes on just below the surface of the
Catholic facade:
Exists below the surface because of a hierarchy and clergy that was, at
one point in time, so thoroughly infiltrated by the exponents of this
un-Catholic form of Catholicism that it held a majority position within
the Church, and fostered such nationwide leftist organizations as Call to Action and
the Association for the Rights of
Catholics in the Church: Organizations
like so many
others that claim to represent
this "renewal" of the Church as
inspired by Vatican II, yet do so by the preaching of "...another
Jesus ...a different spirit ...[and] a different gospel" that St. Paul
warned the Church at Corinth of in the 11th
chapter of his second letter to
them. And we would do well,
as
the Church in this postmodern
age, to heed the warning of Paul to the Corinthian Church in his day,
"For
such are false apostles, deceitful workers, who masquerade as apostles
of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan masquerades as an angel
of light. So it is not strange that his ministers also masquerade
as ministers of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their
deeds."
On the level
of the local parish, this
has translated into a horrid and misplaced formation of the faithful
that has taught that the
vast changes taking place in the Catholic Church were, and in some
cases still are, the result of the
implementation of this "spirit of renewal" as mandated by Vatican II -
a lie of vast and staggering
proportion. The infighting and dissent that this has caused
within so
many of the affected parishes has resulted in a dwindling participation
in
the life of the Church, and has finally stabilized in the form of an
uneasy
truce in which those who favor the new ways, and those who
cling to the
remnant of the more faithful traditions of the past, seek to co-exist
and somehow find unity in the
midst of this leftist induced diversity.
How did such a situation come about?
From 1973 until 1980, the man entrusted with assigning bishops in the
United States, Apostolic Delegate Archbishop
Jean Jadot,
methodically replaced retiring bishops with hand picked proponents of
this far left agenda. During his tenure, Jadot was responsible
for naming 103 new bishops and 13 archbishops. So profound was
his impact that Pope
John Paul II made the comment that
Jadot was guilty of "...destroying
the Catholic Church in the United States" when he fired him in
1980. And if Jadot was responsible for destroying the hierarchy,
then the homosexualization of the seminaries, as reported by Michael
S. Rose in his blockbuster book on the subject Good Bye! Good Men, gave us a
compromised priesthood, and this combination has resulted in the
ongoing horror of the clergy sexual abuse scandal.
The malaise
that we feel is the result of a Church that is today split between the
more traditional expression of the faith that has returned slowly but
surely during the reigns of Popes John Paul II and Benedict
XVI, and
the generation of bishops, priests and laity who remain in positions of
authority from the earlier days of the Jadot apostasy. The
present strategy for each faction is to entrench itself and wait out
the other. If the papacy continues to promote the faithful
expression of the gospel as experienced so far in the reigns of John
Paul II and Benedict XVI, then
the liberal abuses and abominations will eventually die out, and the
faith will
come back to a healthy, orthodox center point. Conversely, the
left hopes to wait out the reign of the octogenarian
Benedict, and hopefully manipulate the next conclave towards a pontiff
more sympathetic to the cause of their neo-modernism:
A pontiff who, if he follows the left's plan for this new incarnation
of the church of the future, will surrender the centralized authority
of the papacy into the radical hands of a coalition of Marxists,
feminists, homosexuals and other secularist
reformers, bent on transforming the Church of Jesus Christ into a new
and more worldly organization created in their own image.
In the middle of
this stand off, and sometimes
caught unwittingly in the crossfire, are we, the Catholic faithful who
seek to practice and live our faith and realize the goal of eternal
salvation as God would have us do. Considering the tensions and
emotions that have characterized this struggle, and which have served
in some cases to erupt into angry and ugly confrontations between these
factions, the bishops and clergy of both sides tend to seek the path of
least resistance: To steer the faithful away from confrontations
over these vast differences in theology and policy by focusing on
virtually any other issue. And so the war for the very heart and
soul of the Catholic Faith that goes on in our midst has become the
elephant that sits with us in the sanctuary that we dare not
mention. Even faithful bishops and sincere, well meaning priests
who are tired of the destructive and unsettled nature of this dissent
try to treat this situation as merely a difference of varying opinions,
and pose the same weary question asked by Rodney King, "Can
we all get along?"
It is the attitude of the Church that such issues as this are the
responsibility of the hierarchy, and that the role of the laity is to
observe the time honored admonition to merely "pray and pay," and
hopefully do this in an atmosphere of goodwill. While this may
present a tempting alternative to that of actually getting actively
involved in what the hierarchy and clergy consider the "private"
affairs of the Church, there are several reasons - and good ones - as
to why this is not the course of action (or inaction) that the Lord
would have us pursue. These are the reasons why we must speak
up:
First of all, the strident and militant
approach of those on the left seeks to enforce this un-Catholic agenda
at all costs, and in particular does so by insisting that those who
practice the orthodox
expression of the faith are somehow the ones who are morally and
spiritually defective. In this scenario, anyone who practices
such traditionally Catholic devotions as the Holy
Rosary or the Chaplet of
Divine Mercy is assumed to be so
focused on heaven that any real
concern for humanity is impossible. Given the opportunity, those
who cry the loudest about issues such as the perceived
"marginalization" of women and homosexuals by the Church, will jump at
the chance to marginalize the faithful Catholic.
Marginalization of the believing faithful leads to parishes that cater
to an agenda of heterodoxy
rather
than representing the true expression of the faith. It is
our right as Catholics to serve Jesus in a parish community that
expresses the true faith, and it is our responsibility to insist
that our bishops, priests and religious encourage this and make it
happen according to Catholic Teaching.
Secondly, as
Catholic Christians, we have a
responsibility to evangelize this true faith of Jesus Christ to the
world. For God so loved
this world that He gave His only begotten
Son that whosoever should believe in Him would not perish but be
blessed with eternal life.
If God so loves the world, how
much
must His heart ache for those in the midst of his Holy Catholic and
Apostolic Church who have, through unfaithful catechesis and unholy
leadership, suffered the death of true faith and lost the knowledge of
salvation at the cross. Like charity, evangelization begins at
home,
and
it is our duty and obligation to our lost brothers and sisters to do
what we are able to reconvert them to the true faith of Jesus Christ,
as taught by the Magisterium,
and as witnessed to by His Church since the days when the apostles
walked the earth.
The third reason why we must speak up for the true
practice of the faith is because it is our obligation to do so under
the Code of
Canon Law. Canon 212
reads as follows:
| In
accord with the knowledge,
competence and preeminence which they possess, [the Christian faithful]
have the right and even at times a duty to manifest to the sacred
pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the
Church, and they have a right to make their opinion known to the other
Christian faithful, all with due regard for the integrity of faith and
morals and reverence toward their pastors and with consideration for
the common good and the dignity of persons. |
It is,
therefore, our duty to Holy
Mother Church to be educated as to what is the right and proper
practice of the faith, to share this expression of the faith with our
brothers and sisters in the Church, and to share our opinions
pertaining to the good of the Church with the hierarchy and
clergy. And, of course, to do this with all due respect and with
the love of Christ in our hearts.
The fourth and most important reason why we must
not sit back and do nothing at this crucial time in Church history is
because the events going on around us are representative of the war in
heaven that rages between God and
the devil. If we are to
take
the words of Pope Paul VI at face value, that "...the
smoke of satan has entered the temple of God," then we must be forever mindful
that the struggle that we face in our parishes, dioceses, archdioceses
and
all the way to the Vatican itself, is not a mere human debate
concerning the
modernization of ancient doctrines and dogmas, but the primordial
spiritual battle that originated in heaven, culminated at the cross,
and
concludes with the victorious descent of the New
Jerusalem. And we should again take heed of the words of St.
Paul in Ephesians 6,
verse 12, which echo down to us from the first century of the
Church with an
eerie and prophetic accuracy, "For
we wrestle not against flesh
and blood, but against principalities,
against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world,
against
spiritual wickedness in high places."
We must remember that the Catholic Faith does
not center around
the theological debates and the differences that exist within the
Church: It is centered in Christ. While it is easy to
become angry at
those who practice abuses within the Church, and tempting to fall into
the trap that satan has set for us and choose sides and battle one
another as he intends, the futility of this approach merely fuels the
spirit of destruction that he has been able to plant in our
midst. I
have written about this in an earlier essay, Day
of the Dove Revisited: Making Peace in the Catholic Church.
To succumb to this temptation towards violence, whether it be physical,
emotional, or spiritual is to become blinded by the smoke of
satan.
The solution
is now, and will always be, what
it has always been:
salvation at the cross through Jesus Christ and by Him crucified.
And
when one reaches that saddest of all points, and no longer trusts in
this ancient revelation that the Church was founded upon and has
preserved for us, then perhaps the time has come to cease being
Catholic. This would seem more logical and certainly less
damaging to
the soul than to persist in the attempt to sway those who yet do
believe away from the the faith: "Woe to the
world because of things that cause sin! Such things must come, but woe
to the one through whom they come!" If the conclusion has been
reached that the ultimate and ongoing witness to the truth of the Real Presence of
Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist
is not so, then it would seem expedient for all that one who holds such
an un-Catholic belief would cease to be a minister of Holy
Communion.
Yet those who no longer believe, and those who no longer know Jesus in
this intimate and uniquely Catholic way, do persist in serving in the
Church, and
in doing so prove to be a source of ongoing frustration, as they
attempt
to lead astray those who do believe and do know Jesus in the breaking
of the bread. Would they not be more content in a Protestant
denomination that believes as they do?
The reasons why Catholics stay in the Church
when they no longer
believe are many and varied. Some may remain within the Church
because
they have been hurt or abused in the past and want to assist in the
destruction and rebirth of what they perceive to be a defective
institution - even if this means leaving behind all that is right and
good. Some may truly and sincerely accept this modernist theology
that
no longer believes in sin, or that Jesus has any more power to save us
than Buddha, Mohammed, or Confucius. They may believe they are
doing
right by evangelizing this to others in the form of a New
Age Christian Syncretism
that poses as Catholicism, and seeks to unite the world in human
brotherhood. Many remain because at some deep and profound
spiritual
level, they know that they are lost, and they stay involved in the
Church because they know that the ultimate truth is here, and they are
desperate to find their way home and back into the light of
Christ.
Regardless of the reason, it is the responsibility of the faithful
Catholic to hold the door of truth open, and live the faith as a
witness to those who have, for whatever reason, lost it. For what
human plight could be more tragic than this, or explain any better Jesus'
teaching on the seeking out the one lost sheep who belongs to Him?
Clearly, the
one thing that we cannot do as
believing and
practicing Catholics is to sit on our hands and merely trust in the
hierarchy to solve our problems. The ongoing horror of the clergy
sexual abuse crisis is evidence enough to the truth that this has not
worked. While
there are those that claim that a complete revision of the Church
system is in order, the reality is merely that we need a hierarchy that
operates faithfully within the structure that has served us well for
two millennia. And contrary to the claims of the left, Vatican II
in
no way authorized or even suggested that the ancient structures of the
Church should be altered or done away with. The Council was
intended
as a tune-up for the Church - not an overhaul. Most of all, we
need a
faithful and informed laity that is united in the cause of evangelizing
the true gospel of Jesus Christ, rather than in the earthly politics
and gossip
of the Church. And should we place our focus here, we shall
discover
that the most powerful person in the Church is neither bishop,
cardinal, nor pope, but the educated layman who knows his faith and
practices it as Christ would have him do.
In the end, the smoke of satan is indicative of a
Church that has
become inflamed by the passion of the world and in so doing has, in no
small measure, compromised the Passion of the
Christ. One of the
outcomes of Vatican II that has not been fully realized is that it did
give the faithful the voice and the ability to hold the feet of the
hierarchy to the fire, and insist that the Church of Jesus Christ be
faithful to the gospel as preserved in the ancient and Holy Magisterium. Contrary to the
cries of the liberal left, this
is the "Spirit of Vatican II," and it is the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete,
who
brings us home to Jesus where we belong.
Should we choose to be like
Nero and fiddle while Rome burns, we must do so knowing that the
outcome will not be the same for us; Nero got away with this. If
we choose to allow the devil
and his minions to fan the smoke of satan into such an all consuming
conflagration as that which burned the ancient city, then we
will have much more than an ongoing malaise within our Church family to
be concerned about. Should we leave it to the Master to
extinguish the flames that we ourselves have allowed to rage out of
control, then we will bear the chastisement that is rightfully
ours: For it is precisely this task that He has
entrusted to us.
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