CATECHISING CHRIST’S LITTLE ONES

“This prostitution of Catholic education by our bishops to serve their private Modernist agendas and the awful scandal of clerical sexual abuse of minors are flip sides of the same coin, for both are rooted in the willingness to abuse clerical and episcopal power for one’s personal ends.”

By: Don McGovern

It is absolutely critical that the Catholic remnant in this country assumes a pro-active responsibility for catechising their children and there grandchildren if the faith is to survive.  If you are not prepared to equip yourself for this sacred task, then you can kiss goodbye to any chance of them growing up Catholic and a meaningful Catholic presence on British soil.

One of the fundamental errors that most Catholics make is to equate Modernism with liberal Catholicism.  This is an error equivalent to calling a Communist a liberal Conservative.   A Modernist is not a liberal Catholic, he is simply not a Catholic; he is in fact an anti-Catholic!  How else can we accurately describe someone who dissents from much, if not almost all, that constitutes one a Catholic?

A Modernist has much in common with the sixteenth century reformers, but where he differs markedly is in his methodology.  Whereas Luther nailed his dissent to the church door at Wittenberg and shouted his foul mouthed defiance from the rooftop; the Modernists prefers to conceal his dissent and work away to destroy the Church termite-like from within.  There will be no loud, coarse mouthed defiance from him; the last thing he wishes to do is draw attention to himself.  Like the wolf in the story of Little Red Riding Hood, all is disarming smiles, effusive politeness and inflated bonhomie; his handshake is always warm, if a little unpleasantly limp and moist. 

When it suits his purpose he will claim that he is recovering some long lost tradition from the early Church, when he wishes to kill-off some tradition retained from the early Church he will tell us that it is necessary to change for pastoral reasons to better address the needs of modern man.  Thus, he puts himself in a heads I win, tails you loose situation, all the while smiling you to death.

Just one example, Modernists are uncomfortable with the doctrine of transubstantiation.  His attack is multi-faceted: he will encourage us to stand and receive communion in the hand; he will find pseudo-reasons for encouraging every Tom, Dick and Harriett to distribute Holy Communion and invade the sanctuary, and the Tabernacle will be removed from its place of prominence on the high altar.  Most cunning of all, he invents numerous new “Real Presences”, on the premise that we will finish up with so many “Real Presences” that the real Real Presence won’t seem so special anymore.  Thus we have the “Real Presence” in the scripture readings, the “Real Presence” in the priest (particularly mendacious that one, because he doesn’t actually believe in priests), the “Real Presence” in the assembled people, etc. 

The scriptures record that even when Christ was on earth, many disciples deserted Jesus because they rejected the doctrine of the Real Presence (John 6, 60-72).  But whereas the Bible records that these disciples walked sadly away from Jesus, the Modernist prefer to stay and work to undermine the doctrine itself from within the Church.

Another example: the Church solemnly teaches that she does not have the power to ordain women.  The Modernist believes she does.  More accurately, he doesn’t believe that priest have sacerdotal powers (that smacks to much of magic to him - like Christ’s miracles, that are similarly rejected), he believe that anyone, including women, can be appointed by the community to preside.  So you find modernist like Bishop Malcolm Mahon taking two Anglican priestesses with him on his diocesan pilgrimage to Lourdes and encouraging the faithful to attend their invalid (and hence blasphemous) masses.  Thus he replaces our Catholic religion with his Modernist religion without uttering a single self-incriminating syllable.

The Modernist is always keen on ecumenism, but only if it involves mixed bathing with other Modernists.  Thus he will queue up to wine and dine the “Archbishop” of Canterbury, and not tire of publicly slapping himself on the back for being the fine, liberal, progressive fellow he perceives himself to be for having done so.  However, he will rent his garments at the mere suggestion that it might be nice to invite an SSPX priest round for coffee - he’d much prefer to sup with the local mullah or a liberal rabbi to that.  Even brother bishops who evidence signs of genuine Catholicism are rapidly bundled off to outer darkness: witness Bishop O'Donoghue, who discovered his Catholic backbone shortly before retiring and became an instant leper, never again to be spoken off in polite conversation.

Because Modernists are anti-Catholics, nowhere has there termite like destruction been more ghastly and evil than in our schools.  They have introduced religious text books that deliberately set out to destroy our glorious faith and enforce their agenda with a degree of ruthlessness that makes the German Nazis look positively incompetent.  These text books make no mention that the children have a soul to save, no mention of the foundational doctrine of Original Sin, or a host of other Catholic doctrines that are de fide.  A teacher can have his or her career ruined by merely seeking to teach one doctrine of the Catholic faith - and many have.  The story of the persecution of good Catholic teachers by the bishops’ Modernism enforcement tsars would fill many volumes.

This prostitution of Catholic education by our bishops to serve their private Modernist agendas and the awful scandal of clerical sexual abuse of minors are flip sides of the same coin, for both are rooted in the willingness to abuse clerical and episcopal power for one’s personal ends.

So what is a genuine Catholic to do in the presence situation?  First up, whatever you do, with a few glorious exceptions, do not entrust the faith of your child to a Catholic school.  Having been force fed Modernists garbage for ten years or more, well over ninety per cent of children who attend our schools lapse, and rightly so.  Indeed, that is not the end of this miserable storey, most of them do not merely lapse, they become actively hostile to the faith!  And don’t expect any empathy from your Modernist bishop; as far as he is concerned this is a success story, for there is nothing he wants more than that our children should share his own hostility to the faith of our forefathers.

Have you not noticed dear betrayed parents that none of our good young priests has ever been near a Catholic school, had he done so, both his faith and his vocation would have been destroyed long before he was anywhere near a seminary.  Bishop Morris, the outspoken Modernist who has recently been sacked by the Pope from an Australian see had not had a single vocation in his diocese for ten years, but that’s real success from the Modernist point of view.  They do not believe in a sacerdotal priesthood, so why on earth would anyone imagine that a dearth of vocations would worry them?

Having removed your child or grandchild from the present corrupt Catholic school system, you need to send him to a good state school and catechise him yourself, or better still home-school him, but we have to be realistic and accept that not all have the time, circumstances or the ability to homeschool well.

Two of our bishops have recently broken ranks and very publicly announced that they are going to phrase out the toxic Modernist programs of their brother bishops from their schools and use text books that are a little more Catholic.  One or two others have also done so, but with less fanfare.  These bishops will need the prayers and militant support of all genuine Catholics if they are to succeed, for they will face absolutely massive opposition, not just from other bishops but also from within their own education bureaucracies.

Regrettably, while they plan to replace the Modernist’s poison with something a little recognisably more Catholic, what they are planning to use is far from perfect.  It is undoubtedly better than Here I Am and Icons, but that is saying little; it would be near impossible to be worse. 

This could be the last chance Catholics will have for a generation to have their children and grandchildren taught the faith properly.  It is absolutely critical that we pray, fast and become militantly active in securing this by insisting on genuinely good Catholic syllabuses.

The best of those that Pro Ecclesia has evaluated is the American Faith and Life Series available from Ignatius Press.  One of the problems in teaching the faith these days is that we have two generations of teaches who are as clueless as their pupils, having themselves been through Catholic schools and been brainwashed by the Modernists.  Faith and Life could almost be described as an idiot’s guide to teaching the faith: it is so excellently and comprehensively structured that one could place it in the hands of an atheist or Muslin, and armed with it they would be able to teach the Catholic faith, and teach it very well indeed.

And Catholic parent or grandparent reading this who wants to catechise there children or grandchildren could not do better than purchase this series.  Ignatius Press can be found at: http://www.ignatius.com

"FIRE IN THE DARKNESS THAT COVERS MODERN EUROPE”

PÈLERINAGE DE PENTECÔTE
(29-30^th May to 1-2^nd June 2009)
“The Pentecost pilgrimages are the most important annual events happening anywhere in the world today.”

With acknowledgement to the Remnant

It begins on the day before Pentecost when thousands of traditional Catholics from every corner of the world join their French brothers and sisters at dawn beneath the spires of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Three days later it ends in the city of Chartres, as some fifteen thousand dust-covered traditionalists complete the challenging march and kiss the stones of the ancient Cathedral of Notre Dame de Chartres. Much of what happens in between defies description.

Yes, Europe is in the process of banishing the old Faith from her shores! She’s busy legalizing every conceivable human depravity, butchering her babies, euthanizing her elderly, destroying the Christian family and the sacrament of matrimony. And, yet, in the midst of all this putrefaction, over the hill comes a jubilant band of thousands upon thousands of Catholic pilgrims from every corner of the globe, marching six abreast, in a column that takes an hour and a half to pass any given point, announcing to the whole world that the old Faith is still alive and in rude and hearty good health.

For three days, even secular France cannot ignore this strange and wonderful pilgrim parade, flanked by countless priests in muddied cassocks and purple stoles, the all but forgotten keepers of Europe’s altars. Throngs of scouts lovingly carry statues of Our Lady on their shoulders; banners of the saints are raised high for all to see; pilgrims sing forgotten hymns, renew broken vows, and celebrate Mass in the Rite of their forefathers, saints and martyrs. The Pilgrimage to Chartres is fire in the darkness that covers modern Europe.

The total cost is £250 (£125 for children under 12). This includes Coach travel to France, two night's hotel (B&B) accommodation (one in Paris and one in Chartres), 2-nights tented accommodation, Pilgrimage Registration, pilgrimage booklet, 3-course meal with a quarter bottle of wine on Monday evening, a quartet of charming, erudite guides who will take you places you never knew you wanted to go and return by Coach Tuesday. It is the bargain of the millennium!

Plus, at no additional cost, spiritual direction and confessions on the hoof, as many rosaries as you can manage, every hymn you ever thought of singing, three magnificent traditional High Masses in breathtaking settings (the memories of which you will take to the grave), All-night Exposition, hearty French breakfast every morning, medical facilities, wake-up calls, plenty of bread and water rations, hearty evening soup, as much wine as you can carry (if you're quick), blisters, chilblains, shin splints, bruises, aching muscles, in short, an unrivalled opportunity for penance! - everything, in fact, for the right-thinking Catholic to achieve salvation. What more could one possibly ask?

Seventy miles may seem daunting, but that said, a nine year old boy and a priest in his eighties completed the march with the British contingent one year. And free transport is provided by gloating Frenchmen for Brits who fall by the way side.

For free information pack, contact: CHARTRES 2008
27 First Avenue, AMERSHAM, HP7 9BL
Tel: 01494-729-223 or Email: Chartres@duc-in-altum.co.uk

The Tablet

The Tablet, the favourite read of that malign spirit that describe itselves without any consciouse irony as "liberal" - this august publication used to be known affectionately by Catholics as "The Pill"; today, few can be bothered even to insult it. At the moment they are churning out hysterical articles suggesting that Rome is in meltdown owing to the overdue lifting of the contested excommunications on the SSPX.

If a former Muslim held the Koran in contempt and believed Mohammad was a false prophet, he would cease, if he had a scrap of personal integrity, to claim to be a Muslim. Yet former Catholics, who have long abandoned the faith of the Church in favour of the godless secular creed of the present-day North Atlantic civilisations, insist on continuing to describe themselves as Catholics, or more specifically, liberal Catholics.

It is difficult to understand the raison d’être of this seemingly bizarre humbug. Nevertheless, “Liberal Catholic” remains the label of choice of those who, too drunk on their own ignorance and pride to notice that they staggered into the wrong church, insist on continuing to live parasitic like on the Body of Christ. The Tablet serves this constituency - it should come as no surprise therefore to any informed Catholic that it is the favourite read of many of the hirelings who currently occupy English sees.

In so far as a lapsed Catholic who becomes a liberal Catholic can be said to have returned to the faith (which is self-evidently problematic), the Tablet’s current editor returned to the Catholic faith, having been through the Landings program at Ealing Abbey. Landings is a twelve step program designed in the United States for sensitive, middle-class lapsed Catholics of the sort to be found in the Ealing Abbey parish. As a "program", it's a vague and somewhat belated recognition that all is not well with the Catholic Church. Within seven years of her return, Catherine Pepinster was the Tablet's editor.

What separates Catholicism from all other “isms” is that the Church was founded by God in person when He walked the earth for the explicit purpose of carrying on His mission of sanctifying, ruling and teaching until the end of time. In order to be able to fulfil this assignment the Church has been given the charism of infallibility. Where it otherwise there could be no moral obligation to either embrace Catholicism or remain a Catholic, for the Church would have no more inherent right to claim our allegiance to her teachings than a drunk slumped on a bar stool putting the world to rights. Because the Church has been divinely commissioned, disagreeing with what she clearly and firmly teaches is not an option; indeed, it is not even an option merely to agree with what she teaches, one must simply and without reservations assent to it. J.R.R Tolkien summed it up when he wrote, "Catholicism is not a set of opinions to which one subscribes, but a reality to which one submits."

Strangely, Liberals “Catholics” never dispute such doctrines as the Trinity or the Incarnation. This is decidedly odd, for if the Church is not infallible, she is just as capable, and indeed if anything more likely, to be wrong about the Trinity and the Incarnation as she is about contraception. This oddity is explained by the fact that all liberal heresies have their epicentre about 6” below the belt buckle. This is not as bizarre as it would at first seem, because what they have done is simply swap the doctrines of the Faith for the various articles of blind faith of the present godless secular culture, a culture self-evidently preoccupied with sex.

Liberal “Catholics” appear to be aware in some obscure way of the irrationality in their creed and are consequently forced to resort to all sorts of painful mental gymnastics and self-deception to paper over the cracks. They are prone, for example, to clichés such as “moving with the times”. Quite why a Church that is the guardian of sacred truths revealed by God would want to dump those truths for the latest fashions of the godless is never of course explained. Indeed, if all Catholics have to do is embrace the latest moral fads of modern secularists, why on earth do we need a Church in the first place - especially one that judged by the liberal yardstick is promoting multiply grave errors?

Another obviously transparent trick is to pretend to perceive some sort of dichotomy between love and truth. One can only assume that when Christ said, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” He was being unloving! To tell a sodomite the truth that indulging in buggery is a short one-way ticket to hell is a loving thing to do. To leave him in ignorance to perish in his depravity is neither loving nor just; on the contrary, it is cruelly irresponsible.

“Christ was not a rigid rule follower” is yet another red herring liberal “Catholics” routinely trot out. But this is not exactly true, Christ was scrupulous in keeping the commandments and the just demands of the Jewish religious establishment, and encouraged others to be equally observant. What he objected to was the burden of the minutia of man-made rules and endless embellishments that had been laid over these just obligations by the Pharisees and others.

Yet another liberal decoy is to try and pass off their dissent from the clear and settled teachings of the Church as mere “squabbles among Catholics”. No well instructed Catholic could possibly be taken in by such patently deceitful gobbledygook, and it is doubtful to be honest that many liberals are so cerebrally challenged that they actually fully succeed in conning themselves with this line.

When public speaking at Catholic gatherings, the body language of liberal “Catholics” is very illuminating. They often appear uncomfortable with their own answers, and will give this away by involuntarily dropping their voices. They are also inclined to waffle and to lack clarity in responding to questions. This is not dishonesty; it arises from the genuine confusion and dialectic contradictions at the heart of their creed, rather than from any conscious intent to be evasive.

Catherine Pepinster has a MA in philosophy and religion from Heythrop College, London University. Nevertheless, she is clearly a lady who has only the vaguest grasp of Catholic doctrine (if she has any at all) and who holds heretical opinions on many serious issues of faith. She is a personable woman and honest according to her own confused lights and is young enough to learn, but it is not obvious where the motivation to do so will come from.

We have received legal threats and posturing from Catherine Pepinster’s solicitors concerning an earlier and shorter version of the above essay. Yet more evidence of the thin skins and illiberality of so called liberals, or perhaps one more spin-off from the insecurity inherent in embracing an irrational creed. To read the solicitor’s letter click here.

Answers on a postcard please.

Following the overdue lifting of the contested excommunications of the SSPX bishops, there is now much blather in neo-Catholic land to the effect that the SSPX bishops will have to formally accept Vatican II before they can be fully reinserted into mainstream Catholicism.

Can someone tell me what specific article of faith is rejected by the SSPX that was unambiguous defined and formally imposed on the faithful by Vatican II, that was not part of the Catholic faith prior to Vatican II?

Answers on a postcard please.

GOD BLESS OUR POPE: The contested excommunications are finally lifted

with acknowledgment to Gerald Warner

Benedict XVI grows in stature by the minute. To the achievement of the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, he has now added the sensible and overdue lifting of the always contested excommunications imposed on the four bishops of the SSPX. Although there was always widespread skepticism about the validity of those censures, their lifting removes a major roadblock to the restoration of the Church.

In the children’s animated cartoon, the Ice Age, a wooly mammoth, one of the principle characters, believes that he is the last of his species. However, half way through the story he is dlighted to find a female wooly mammoth to which he immediately takes a shine. Unfortunately, the female wooly mammoth his suffering from the delusion that she is a sloth and spends her time hanging upside down from trees, with disastrous consequences! Happily, with the aid of friends, she is persuaded over time that she is a mammoth. The final eureka moment comes when she realizes that her shadow is similar to that of the male wooly mammoth and they both live happy ever after.

What I found fascinating was watching the reaction of my grandchildren. They were fidgeting with frustration with this animal’s delusion. When the mist cleared and she accepted her “God given” nature, the collective relief was palpable.

The Church is the Ark of Salvation, the Body of Christ, the one true faith, the one true Church, founded by the God who threw the stars into their orbits and knit you and me together in our mother’s wombs; indeed, she is the very reason for the existence of the universe.

Yet for the past forty years, the Bride of Christ has been behaving as if there was no such thing as truth and error, right and falsehood, she was merely another religious tradition or one church among many. This widespread delusion and apparent insanity of our mother caused many orthodox Catholics to squirm with frustration. The lifting of the excommunications suggest that our mother is recovering from these delusions and her eureka moment may not now be far away. Then we shall all be able to breathe an enormous sigh of collective relief.

Not everyone will be dancing in the street of course: the Staff of the Tablet will probably need counseling - poor dears. Anything that moves the malign spirit of those who, without any conscious irony denominate themselves "liberals" to misery has to be great news.

Recently, a handful of Catholics, more noted for their mad optimism than solid faith, have been striving to persuade us to throw a party to "celebrate" the 50th anniversary of the calling of the Second Vatican Council. What sort of Catholic, one wonders, wants to celebrate the fact that in England and Wales in 1964, at the end of the Council, there were 137,673 Catholic baptisms; in 2003 the figure was 56,180. In 1964 there were 45,592 Catholic marriages, in 2003 there were 11,013. Mass attendance has fallen by 40 per cent. In "Holy" Ireland, only 48 per cent of so-called Catholics go to Mass. In France, there were 35,000 priests in 1980; today there are fewer than 19,000.

In the United States, in 1965, there were 1,575 priestly ordinations; in 2002 there were 450 - a 350 per cent decline. In 1965 there were 49,000 seminarians, in 2002 just 4,700. Today 15 per cent of US parishes are without priests. Only 25 per cent of America's nominal Catholics attend Mass. Worse still is the erosion of faith among those who ludicrously describe themselves as Catholics. Among US Catholics aged 18-44 (the children of Vatican II) as many as 70 per cent say they believe the Eucharist is merely a "symbolic reminder" of Christ.

To call this unparalleled implosion of the Church a "renewal" is a sign that one is as close to being a raving lunatic as one can get short of eating one’s own shirt - and to attribute it to the Holy Ghost is blasphemous.

The Catholic Church is in the same position as an alcoholic: until she admits that she has a problem, no cure is possible. The lifting of the contested excommunications is a sign that the Church is returning to mental health. Hopefully once the SSPX is back fully in the fold, they will be able to help prod our mother towards that final eureka moment when she once again fully and openly acknowledges and confesses her own God given nature.

Further down the road, another exciting prospect is that, once the final agreement is worked out, it opens the door to the canonization of Archbishop Lefebvre; that sadly I will not live to see.

In the meantime we can all look forward to sitting back and enjoying some innocent fun reading all the revisionist history being written by those who have been calumniating the SSPX for 20 years. Funniest of all will be the mental gymnastics of the post-Conciliar popeologist. These are the folk who if the Pope was to declare the sky green, would be peddling round excitedly telling everyone what a delightful shade of green the sky actually is.