Anecdote

A funny thing happened the other day. There's a well-known and well-liked lady in our town who has for ages run a restaurant. She recently changed locations (again) and I wanted to get a look at the new spot, so we stopped in for a bite.

Now this is the type of woman who has at least one prominently placed crucifix in her place and gushes over your "babies" (kids). She's the Catholic grandmotherly type, gregarious, enthusiastic, easy to talk to, a great cook. True to form, my younger son, who happens to be austistic and who also happens to have a great sense of direction, starts crying out, "St. Martin's!" which sounds similar to, "St. Mark's," neither of which were very far from us.

Hearing this, the woman says, "Yes, sweetie, St. Mark's. That's my church. It's right up the street." Confused and rarely one to keep my mouth shut when I'm curious, I say, "I thought you belonged to St. Martin's."

"Oh yes, I used to go there. But I sang at a wedding at St. Mark's and just fell in love with it. They're just like Catholic, you know, they even use our same books. They just don't believe in the pope." And on and on about how great a place it is, how wonderful the pastor and his minister wife are, and how she donates food for their dinners and things.

In case you haven't guessed, St. Mark's is an Episcopal church. To be honest, although I don't know her well, this is one of the last people I expected to suddenly leave the Church. But she doesn't see it that way. In fact, I would doubt she has refrained from considering herself to be Catholic, since by her own standards, her beliefs and manner of worship have not changed at all.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Listening to her talk about her new community, though, my husband and I realized that what was likely going on was not necessarily conversion to a different Christian denomination in the sense of a change in belief or theology, but conversion to a community. Having been to St. Martin's many times, I can honestly say that there just isn't much going on there. It's a fairly large, impersonal church. The priest turnover has been incredible, not to mention the ongoing uncertainty of the status of any of our town's (and diocese's) churches. Let's face it, when people go to church, that's the one thing they want to be sure ain't goin anywhere! The church is central to their religion, it's the House of God, and in the midst of life's day-to-day craziness, it's reassuring just to walk or drive by. Stability: it's Who God Is and what the Church is supposed to be.

Now if you were to see St. Mark's, you'd notice its small size. I'm unfamiliar with its typical attendance, but physically it's about the size of St. Mary's. And it's not so hard to feel at home and quite a bit easier to get to know people in a small church. Our assessment is that that's what she was looking for. Something clicked for her. She felt welcomed, noticed, valued, at home.

But is it all the Same?

In the midst of this transition, though, probably unbeknownst to her, she has in fact migrated to a group whose beliefs and history are, in fact, different from the Catholic Church. The Anglican/Episcopal church(es) were begun by King Henry VIII in the 16th century and spurred, along with Martin Luther on the European continent, the Protestant rebellion/reformation. Henry wanted to divorce (and murder) his wife/wives and did not want to be beholden to the pope, so he made himself head of his own church. Many Englishmen and women died for their Faith rather than leave the One, True Church. Over the course of time, belief and practice has diverged from Catholic belief, and today the Episcopaleans/Anglicans disagree with one another over many things, not the least of which are the role of women and homosexuals in the priesthood/bishopric. So we are seeing schism among those who orginally schismed from Rome. But that's a subject for a different day.

The Perfect Storm?

My point is this. Right now, in our diocese and elsewhere throughout the country, we have the perfect storm. Perhaps I'm being too dramatic, but I don't think so. Think of it as a simple equation. We have:


We're starting to see it already. Church attendance is down most places. But it will be masked significantly with church merger since when a church is closed, those who still elect to go to Mass will appear to be taking up valuable parking places and pew space in the "new" church. Those who leave won't be noticed, particularly in churches where there's already a sense of anonymity.

In Closing

I use one woman's story only as an example. I don't mean to imply that massive amounts of Catholics are going to turn Episcopalean or Lutheran or Calvary Chapel or anything else, for that matter. On the contrary, I think what we're more likely to see is large numbers of formerly practicing Catholics lose what faith they have and stop going to any church, anywhere. It's just a matter of whether or not we're willing to pay attention to what's going on. Can American Catholics hang on through all this or will we lose our religion, too?

Today is the feast day of a little known saint and his many companions. In the late 1800s in Uganda, St. Charles Lwanga and about 100 of his fellow Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, were murdered in various monstrous ways by their king. A wonderful account of their background and martyrdom can be found here (scroll down for longer account).

In short, we may easily relate to their circumstance since their society was debauched, as is our own. They were killed for standing against great sins. In brief,

King Mwanga of Uganda launched persecutions of Christians in response to their opposition to his homosexual and corrupt court. St. Charles, the master of his pages, was martyred with fourteen other pages on June 3, 1886; other companions were killed later.

Many of those killed were young. At least one of the courageous martyrs was a thirteen-year-old boy, and another was the king's "page boy," only 14. Through their blood sacrifice in the name of Jesus Christ, they were saved from being victims of pedophilia.

The lesson taught by these and other heroic saints and martyrs is that we, as Christians, must be willing to imitate their great courage by standing in opposition to all wrong perpetrated by those in positions of authority, whether inside or outside the Church. For the sake of charity, we must point out where Holy Mother Church teaches Truth and be willing to spread the holy faith, not suppress it or attempt to alter it to suit our personal desires or sense of convenience. The Truth must be made clear in order for people to know what it is and follow it.

St. Charles Lwanga & his many companions, pray for the Diocese of Camden!

 

A HOUSE BUILT ON SAND

 

Bishop Galante has ordered me to report to St. Nicholas of Tolentine in Atlantic City.  No one will be surprised to discover that God does not want me to go there.  My vocation is in the Diocese of Camden.  When a priest is called to a life of prayer there is no turning back.  I have witnessed the attempt by Galante to lead the diocese on a course of eternal destruction.  He is a bitter man not fit to lead any organization in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.  He accepts blatant heresy from the pulpit, allowing priests to say there is no Hell, no Purgatory.  This in itself is cause enough to prove Galante's apostasy.  Those with a materialistic life are promoted while someone like me who is wholesome and athletic* is sneered at by Galante's group of apostates.  Galante wants to have power.  He is still pouting over his put down by the Church when he was named coadjutor in Dallas, which means he was to be successor to the ordinary on his retirement or death.  Neither happened soon enough for Joey, so he stamped his foot and held his breath until we got him, Providentially.  Why Providentially?  We've had to bear the cross and we have done so and will continue to do so.  Please have no fear.  The Blessed Mother of God has continued to bring us the graces we need to emerge victorious through, with, in and for Her; through, with, in, and for Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior.  The Church of South Jersey is built on sand.  The Diocese of Camden will rise from the ashes.  Have no fear. Galante: Here I Am.

 

Praised be Jesus Christ,

Now and Forever

 

Father Jerome C. Romanowski

Pastor

 

*Editor's Note:  For those who may not be familiar with Fr. Romanowski or his writing style, we understand this term "wholesome and athletic" as meant to be in direct contrast to those priests who are practicing homosexuals, extremely effeminate, and/or materialistic.

On the wonderful blog romancatholicblog.com is an entry that is about a year and a half old that truly speaks to our current situation here in the Diocese of Camden. All due credit to the author, whose name isn't given but whose email is "Maximus." We just stumbled upon this entry today.

Click here to read the piece on his blog.

Is It A Sin To Rebuke A Priest?

A reader has suggested that it is sinful to speak ill of a priest or a bishop and that rather than speak out against corruption within the clergy, Catholics should pray and remain silent.

I couldn't disagree more.

Although I would caution Catholics against the sin of rash judgment, and remind people to be mindful of the requirements of the Eighth Commandment, I firmly maintain that Catholics have a duty to rebuke the clergy when they have gone astray and to warn others against such clerics so they will not be confused by the errors wayward priests and/or bishops are observed to be spreading.

There are provisions for rebuking clergy described in Sacred Scripture:

"Do not entertain an accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses. Those who sin are to be rebuked publicly, so that the others may take warning." (1 Timothy 5:19-20)

"If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector." (Matthew 18:15-17)

There are also examples:

"And when Kephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he clearly was wrong.   For, until some people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he began to draw back and separated himself, because he was afraid of the circumcised.   And the rest of the Jews (also) acted hypocritically along with him, with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy.  But when I saw that they were not on the right road in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Kephas in front of all,  'If you, though a Jew, are living like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews ?'" (Galatians 2:11-14)

During the Arian heresy, approximately one third of the bishops in the Church became Arian, along with countless priests and entire dioceses. Yet if we are to believe, as apparently some Catholics do, that priests and bishops may never be corrected, never challenged, and/or never exposed, it was wrong to say that Arian priests and bishops were teaching error.

The same would follow for countless other heretical sects that had their origins in heretical Catholic clergy.

Martin Luther was a Catholic priest. Can he not be criticized?

Saints were often critical of priests and religious:

St. Catherine of Siena made a pilgrimage to Avignon in Southern France to persuade the Pontiff Pope Gregory XI to return from exile to Rome where he belonged. After the death of Gregory XI on March 26, 1378, the Great Schism began when Pope Urban VI was selected as his successor. Several of the dissident French cardinals objected and elected their own at Fondi Robert of Geneva who became the antipope Clement VII and set up his headquarters in Avignon. St. Catherine knew Urban was the true Pope and did all in her power to secure support for him and end the schism. While she was a staunch supporter of his Primacy, she did not hesitate to rebuke him when she saw weakness or knew he was wrong.

St. Catherine was also critical of priests in her Dialogue (the work which was the primary reason she was made a Doctor of the Church):

"Your miseries are not hid from you now, for the worm of conscience sleeps no longer, but is gnawing you, the devils shout and render to you the reward which they are accustomed to give their servants, that is to say, confusion and condemnation; they wish to bring you to despair, so that at the moment of death you may not escape from their hands, and therefore they try to confuse you, so that afterwards when you are with them they may render to you of the part which is theirs. Oh, wretch! the dignity in which I placed you, you now see shining as it really is, and you know to your shame that you have held and used in such guilty darkness the substance of the holy Church, that you see yourself to be a thief, a debtor, who ought to pay his debt to the poor and the holy Church. Then your conscience represents to you that you have spent the money on public harlots, and have brought up your children and enriched your relations, and have thrown it away on gluttony and on many silver vessels and other adornments for your house. Whereas you should have lived in voluntary poverty."

"Your conscience represents to you the divine office which you neglected, by which you fell into the guilt of mortal sin, and how even when you recited it with your mouth your heart was far from Me. Conscience also shows you your subjects, that is to say, the love and hunger which you should have felt towards nourishing them in virtue, giving them the example of your life and striking them with the hand of mercy and the rod of justice, and because you did the contrary your conscience and the horrible likeness of the Devil reproves you."

"And if as a prelate you have given prelacies or any charge of souls unjustly to one of your subjects, that is, that you have not considered to whom and how you were giving it, the Devil puts this also before your conscience, because you ought to have given it, not on account of pleasant words, nor in order to please creatures, nor for the sake of gifts, but solely with regard to virtue, My honor and the salvation of souls. And since you have not done so you are reproved, and for your greater pain and confusion you have before your conscience and the light of your intellect that which you have done and ought not to have done, and that which you ought to have done and have not done."

The reforms of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross were due to the laxity in their religious order. Both were openly critical of such laxity and met with opposition because of their reforms.

The Norbertine Order was started because of the widespread laxity, and even debauchery among priests in St. Norbert's day. St. Norbert exhorted and even rebuked his fellow priests, and they responded by attempting to assassinate him.

It is ludicrous to think that clerics are beyond correction, as if infallible by virtue of their office. It is disturbing that such a simplistic outlook exists after the egregious wrongdoing (and that is putting things mildly) of so many priests and even bishops was exposed because of the sex abuse scandal that rocked the Church in recent years.

The 1983 Code of Canon Law makes provisions for the laity to address their concerns about priests:

Canon 212:

§1. Conscious of their own responsibility, the Christian faithful are bound to follow with Christian obedience those things which the sacred pastors, inasmuch as they represent Christ, declare as teachers of the faith or establish as rulers of the Church.

§2. The Christian faithful are free to make known to the pastors of the Church their needs, especially spiritual ones, and their desires.

§3. According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they possess, they have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons.

I also include the following for consideration:

"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

"It is better that scandals arise than the truth be suppressed." ~ Pope St. Gregory the Great

"When circumstances make it necessary, it is not prelates alone who have to watch over the integrity of the faith." ~ Pope Leo XIII

"The road to hell is paved with the skulls of erring priests, with bishops as their signposts." ~ St. John Chrysostom (347-407), Doctor of the Church, generally considered the most prominent doctor of the Greek Church and the greatest preacher ever heard in a Christian pulpit.

"The floor of hell is paved with the skulls of bishops." ~ St. Athanasius

"The road to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops." ~ Saint John Eudes

"But how, I ask, does it happen that the saints, who live only for God, resist their ordination through a sense of their unworthiness, and that some run blindly to the priesthood, and rest not until they attain it by lawful or unlawful means? Ah. Unhappy men! Says St. Bernard, to be registered among the priests of God shall be for them the same as to be enrolled on the catalogue of the damned. And why? Because such persons are generally called to the priesthood, not by God, but by relatives, by interest, or ambition. Thus they enter the house of God, not through the motive a priest should have, but through worldly motives. Behold why the faithful are abandoned, the Church dishonored, so many souls perish, and with them such priests are also damned." ~ St. Alphonsus de Liguori (1696-1787), Doctor of the Church (Moral Theology), Founder of the Redemptorist congregation

Saints were even critical of homosexual priests and/or religious:

"Any cleric or monk who seduces young men or boys, or who is apprehended in kissing or in any shameful situation, shall be publicly flogged and shall lose his clerical tonsure. Thus shorn, he shall be disgraced by spitting into his face, bound in iron chains, wasted by six months of close confinement, and for three days each week put on barley bread given him toward evening. Following this period, he shall spend a further six months living in a small segregated courtyard in the custody of a spiritual elder, kept busy with manual labor and prayer, subjected to vigils and prayers, forced to walk at all times in the company of two spiritual brothers, never again allowed to associate with young men for purposes of improper conversation or advice." ~ St. Basil the Great (329-379), Bishop of Caesarea, Father of the Church, and one of the most distinguished Doctors of the Church.

"The befouling cancer of sodomy is, in fact, spreading so through the clergy or rather, like a savage beast, is raging with such shameless abandon through the flock of Christ, that for many of them it would be more salutary to be burdened with service in the world than, under the pretext of religion, to be enslaved so easily under the iron rule of satanic tyranny. It would be better for them to perish alone as laymen that, after having changed their attire but not their disposition, to drag others with them to destruction, as Truth itself testifies when It says, "But if anyone is a cause of stumbling to one of these little ones, it would be better for him to be drowned in the depths of the sea with a great millstone round his neck." Unless immediate effort be exerted by the Apostolic See, there is little that, even if one wished to curb this unbridled evil, he could not check the momentum of its progress."

"Unquestionable, this vice, since it surpasses the enormity of all others, is impossible to compare with any other vice. Without fail it brings death of the body and destruction to the soul. It pollutes the flesh, extinguishes the light of the mind, expels the Holy Spirit from the temple of the human heart and gives entrance to the devil, the stimulator of lust. It leads to error, totally removes truth from the deluded mind, prepares a trap for the traveller and secures the pit and makes it impossible for the victim to escape. It opens up Hell and closes the gates Paradise, changes a citizen of the Heavenly Jerusalem into an heir of infernal Babylon, and turns a Heavenly star into chaff for eternal fire; it cuts off a member of the Church and hurls him into the depths of the devouring flames of Hell." ~ St. Peter Damian (1007 -1072), Doctor of the Church, Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia

It seems to me that the clericalist attitude that priests and bishops are beyond reproach is actually quite dangerous. The idea has a pietistic veneer, and those who hold it may be sincere, but do they realize that attitudes like that contributed to the mentality that allowed the priestly abuse scandals to stay under the radar for so long?

Do they realize that Catholics have an obligation to lead others to the truth and away from error?

Our pastor sure doesn't mince words. In this latest piece from Father, he calls it as he sees it! At St. Mary's we don't pussy-foot around when it comes to things eternal and risk posed to our immortal souls.

Pray for peace--for those affected by the hurricane, fire, and all disasters.

Pius X refuted Modernism. Modernism is an attempt within the Catholic Church to defy the teaching of the Church by presenting the false teachings as if they are the teachings of the Church, e.g. insisting on obedience to the bishop (any bishop) when he is propagating a false movement like "feminism." This inside movement attacks the holy Priesthood by claiming that everyone is the same and that priests do not have any special powers except to confect the Sacraments. Modern feminists say that the priests should marry. They should wear secular clothes. They don't have to pray the holy Office or pray too much. Socializing is more important than praying. If this sounds like politics, you are correct. We can call them by their first names, feminists say about priests. Feminists in the Church will also defend homosexuality, which is politically correct today in the decadent society. Feminists defy that True Objectivity is wrong and so is the truth in what feminists state or imply. They will say that homosexuality should not be practiced, but human nature is so strong that we cannot call the use a sin. Therefore, most homosexuals will interpret that to suit themselves.

Modernists also like to issue general statements that can be interpreted in ways that always favor their materialistic comfort zone. If a priest defies this ambiguity, he is labeled as too rigid and off he goes, which has happened too many times in the Diocese of Camden. Priest shortage? Only if you carry out the obvious attack on Our Lord. The Marian Movement of Priests is a traditionalist movement that destroys every tenet of the Modernists. It holds to the key principles of spiritual growth:

1. Recognition of the Sacrifice of the Mass holding the primary place in any Catholic's life,
2. Eucharistic Adoration augmenting the Sacrifice so that only God is adored, and
   
3. Marian devotion

Unless a Catholic lives these devotions, he cannot find the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Who is Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Modernists in the Church, in our Diocese of Camden, refuse to seek this position--a sacrificial, persevering life of the Spirit. They follow the safe, satanic way of pleasure, power, and politics.

Praised be Jesus Christ,
Now and Forever!
Fr. Jerome Charles Romanowski, Pastor

We've received so many tips lately on savestmarys. Thank you to one and all, there is so much to do and we are continually heartened by the broad level of input and participation on the part of those in and out of the diocese. This most recent article was forwarded to us since it is so very valid in this and other diocese and truly epitomizes the crisis in the Church at this time. It is very interesting and disturbing.

These Forty Years of Loyalty and Dissent: Humanae Vitae on the 40th Anniversary

I regret to have been surprised with the fortieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae just two days after my return from World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney Australia. I regret it, because it is a huge piece of what is happening in the Church and the world today, and I did not have time to prepare some commentary.

I cannot praise enough, nor recommend enough, Cardinal Stafford's laudable narration of his experiences and insights (cf. Humanae Vitae: The Year of the Peirasmòs -- 1968, By Cardinal James Francis Stafford). If only the whole Church were full of such pastors: wise insight into their pastoral experiences, cultured in their literary background, faithful to the Magisterium, and charitable in their assessments.

After my mind was blown away by the frankness and depth of his article, one aspect has struck me, even though it is an accidental point his article made. And it is this impression upon which I want to compound. It has to do with the unity, charity and brotherhood of the diocesan priesthood. Or better said, the complete lack thereof in our day. I think Cardinal Stafford does well to expose the causes.

My experience with clergy at every level of government of the Church is full of very unpleasant memories, and requires on my part a continual effort for forgiveness. And I forgive, as I need God to forgive me. Where I should have expected kindness, support, brotherhood, acceptance, advice and even fraternal correction, I have experienced every form of anger, lies and gossip, attack of my good name, varying degrees of hatred, exclusion, rejection and uncharitable criticism.

Did I merit such conduct, I must ask myself with all honesty? I think the answer is no, I did not. The hostility has come from heretics and liturgical abusers, and from a group of men who have done all to cherish one another, and defend each others' conduct which includes everything from impurity to abuse of alcohol to an absolute absence of a life of prayer to abuse of money to... well, we've all seen it in public and in private. But to this one could say, "That is an attack ad hominem, and proves nothing." OK, I agree.

Yet the reasons for this hostile conduct have been because: I refused to abuse the liturgy, I stood in the way of the Precious Body and Blood being washed down the drain, I preferred gold to glass for the species at Mass, I wanted to hear confessions every day before Mass, I adhered to a religious orders' Constitutions to the point of earning the contempt of my superiors, and I refused to say mass on a dirty coffee table in a living room. I earned ridicule because I pray the breviary every day (an obligation for priests under pain of mortal sin), because I employ Latin whenever possible in the liturgy, because I get up very early and because I don't watch TV. And after four years of the priesthood, I'm in my ninth parish, when each removal was a completely unilateral decision on the part of pastors, to whom I showed charity in exchange for their abuse. I could go on and on, but I think that's enough to make the point: If I were punished for evil deeds, I would deserve it. But the abuse comes from loyalty to the Catholic Church, in teaching and in practice.

A good priest friend of mine made an excellent observation a couple months ago: the first of all religious orders is the diocesan priesthood. It is truly a community, a brotherhood, or at least should be. Yet ever since the 1700's (I think of the rise of Illuminism, Freemasonry, St. Clement Mary Hofbauer, etc.), there has been an increasing decline in the unity among the clergy, and it is not rare to find in recent and late history true persecution of faithful clergy by unfaithful clergy.

Allow me to be clear: The problem is dissent. And dissent is a fruit of sin.

Cardinal Stafford mentions how the annihilation of fraternity among today's clergy returns especially to those priests, older now, who have rejected Humanae Vitae. He says, "The Archdiocesan priesthood lost something of the fraternal whole which Baltimore priests had known for generations."

The persistence of this dissent has not fizzled away, as he says, "Contempt for the truth, whether aggressive or passive, has become common in Church life. Dissenting priests, theologians and laypeople have continued their coercive techniques." The coercion takes the form of  the mentality of "dissent with us or we'll treat you worse than the trash," accompanied by group enterprises in which dissenters would rope in faithful priests against their will, and then give them no voice. This is why the Cardinal says, "No dialogue was possible in 1968; it remained impossible in 1978. There was no common ground." And there still is none. "Diocesan presbyterates have not recovered from the July/August nights in 1968."

I regularly avoid priest meetings in my local area. I have sat in on many, and have found that they are places where bad priests gossip and slander good priests, where the spirit of dissent is cultivated by discussions about how to get rid of the all-male clergy, the celibate clergy and how to justify homosexual conduct. When schools close by the handful, I have seen the clergy wrangling over "who gets the money" while no one even attempts to discuss "how are we going to educate our community's children in the Catholic faith?". I have sat in on meetings of ministry and apostolate where the discussion was all about numbers and money, and apostles lower on the power ladder would position themselves again and again to climb that very ladder. There is not rarely excessive drinking, criticism of Rome and of the Pope, a total hatred of Catholic forms of piety and devotion, contempt for rubrics.  Childish fighting, childish conduct, childish discussion and immature faith.

If I had the Catholic faith in common with my brother priests, I'd probably be criticized by my parishioners for neglecting them and spending so much time among such exemplary men. But we do not have the Catholic faith in common. I have little in common, in fact, with heretics, dissenters and haters of Rome , or with those who are apostles of sin.

I have no experience of a true fraternity of priests in a presbyterate or religious order; at least Cardinal Stafford new the day when he was a younger priest. Somehow in the back of my head, I can imagine what that might be like. Sure, there would be the occasional challenge of getting along with someone because of personality conflicts or minor defects; that's to be expected even in families. No, I'm not crying about my situation, just explaining why I don't go to all these gatherings of priests, and expressing a hope for reform in the Church.

Fortunately in my parish, there are two other diocesan priests, Fr. Bustamante and Fr. Perrone, and an occasionally varying collection of exemplary priests from the Canons Regular of the Holy Cross. We do form a sort of community, we discuss spiritual matters and encourage one another to be faithful. We share discoveries about the ancient liturgy, the Pope's latest teachings, the good example of the saints. And all that with lots of humor besides. We even do sports together and share meals.

Many faithful priests in the world are isolated by the type of coercion which the Cardinal mentioned. I meet them everywhere, including priests from around the world at World Youth Day, and many tell the same stories: abuse in exchange for fidelity. Yes, there are good priests out there; one Australian article stresses that there are many in fact. But dissenters in powerful positions put these faithful priests in very difficult positions and places, and places far from other faithful priests. It is not good for man to be alone, and every priest needs a presbyterate of brothers with whom to encourage, commiserate, bless, advise, laugh and pursue holiness.

May it please the Lord to send a great reformer to the Church. And may Catholic priests one day discover that they do, indeed, have Catholicism in common.

Fr. Paul Ward

We have been meaning to share some quotes with you from the wonderful and well-researched book, Goodbye, Good Men by Michael S. Rose. The book focuses largely on the true reasons for the supposed "priest shortage." Admittedly, the book is shocking even to those familiar with the darker sides of church politics, but it is very convincing and well-documented. Intermittently we will share quotes with you from this book since it is so relevant to the situation at hand in so many diocese around the country including, presumably, our own.

The fact is that many qualified candidates for the priesthood have been turned away for political reasons over the past three decades. Systematic, ideological discrimination has been practiced against seminarians who uphold Catholic teaching on sexuality and other issues; dissenters from Catholic teaching--including teaching on homosexuality--have been rewarded.

Goodbye, Good Men exposes this corruption: the deliberate infiltration of Catholic seminaries by what Andrew Greeley has dubbed the "Lavender Mafia," a clique of homosexual dilettantes with an underground of liberal faculty members determined to change the doctrines, disciplines, and mission of the Catholic Church from within. Through the seminaries, liberals have brought a moral meltdown into the Catholic priesthood. If the sex scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church are to end, the individuals responsible for this moral meltdown must be rooted out. (page xi)

To use the words of a friend's father with regard to the last sentence above, "If there's a rat in the corn crib, you get rid of the rat, you don't quit farming." He lamented the fact that instead of rooting out the rats, corrupt bishops elected instead to keep child abusing priests around to destroy the Church and the souls entrusted to Her. As a result of all the financial settlements, some church leaders have decided to deal with the likes of con-man Rafaello Follieri to sell off diocesan properties as quickly as possible and access cash for the settlements. So with the closure of churches and schools, they've effectively decided to "quit farming," so to speak: to get out of the business of saving souls and into the business of saving skin.

To drastically understate the case, some seriously poor decisions were made, but instead of repenting of these and making a serious attempt to turn things around and restore the trust of the laity and the Bride of Christ generally, another series of poor decisions was made--to close our churches and schools. Perhaps worst of all, the rationale for doing so has been covered with misinformation and false rationales (there's a priest shortage, there are demographic shifts, etc.) because the truth is simply too horrible to admit to. And now look where we are?! We, the faithful in the pews, are paying the price for one bad decision after the next. And now we must pay for these sins by sacrificing our very houses of God, our schools, and even our Faith? We must expose and reject the pretenses for closing our churches, which we know to be untrue. One such pretense is the availability of priests (or lack thereof). While particulars vary from diocese to diocese, on a broader national scale the decline has been traced to far-reaching and disturbing trends.

According to Michael Rose, the priest shortage, where it does in fact exist, is "artificial and contrived." He quotes Archbishop of Omaha Nebraska, Elden F. Curtiss, who says

It seems to me that the vocation "crisis" is precipitated by people who want to change the Church's agenda, by people who do not support orthodox candidates loyal to the magisterial teaching of the pope and bishops, and by people who actually discourage viable candidates from seeking priesthood and vowed religious life as the Church defines these ministries. I personally am aware of certain vocations directors, vocations teams and evaluation boards who turn away candidates who defend the Church's teaching about artificial birth control, or who exhibit a strong piety toward certain devotions, such as the rosary.

Rose goes on to mention unapologetically orthodox bishops whose diocese have experienced dramatic increases in vocations to the priesthood. Of course, most of us are familiar with religious orders that are experiencing vocations booms as well. After all, if one is going to sacrifice his or her life for the cause of Christ, whether one's vocation be lay or religious in nature, it must be worth it!

We will explore more of Goodbye, Good Men in the future. More to come...

Notice so many spearheading the movement to save our Faith from immanent destruction are under 50, even under 40. Here's an article that explains why.

Here's a snippet (for more read the entire article below). Catholic leaders are saying that:

"Young people are leaving the Church in droves because of its refusal to conform to the times!" As a young person, I tell you this is rubbish.  It is a smokescreen.  I do not dispute that there are many young, "enlightened" Catholics who have left the Church with these reasons on their lips.  But they are using these reasons as excuses to mask the real problem:  They have either lost their faith or they never really had it.  The need in this case is not for accommodation, but for conversion.  These young Catholics have never been taught that Christianity is not about self-fulfillment, it's about self-denial; it's not about worldly power, it's about humility; it's not about control, it's about obedience; and it's not about some misguided, gender feminist idea of equality, it's about Truth.


I Was Robbed!
by Leila Miller     

I was robbed.

I am a "Generation X" Catholic, raised and catechized in the tumultuous aftermath of Vatican II.  I was a victim of "renewal" and experimentation gone awry, and so were my peers.  With great regret and without exaggeration, I contend that the results have been catastrophic for my generation.  It is my firm belief that the overwhelming majority of young Catholics don't have even an elemental understanding of their Faith.  As a direct result of that ignorance, young Catholics are leaving the Church in a steady stream (or, dare I say, tidal wave?).

It's not entirely accurate to say that I left the Catholic Church (though I considered it), but it's clear to me now that for most of my young adulthood, I was not in the Catholic Church.  Let me give you an overview of my upbringing, which will sound familiar to countless young Catholics.  I was born in the late 1960s into a believing and practicing Catholic family, and my sister and I were taught by our parents to love our Faith.  Barring illness, we attended Sunday Mass and holy days of obligation without exception.  We attended public schools, but we were enrolled in weekly CCD classes at our parish every year.

By the time I began religious education, memorizing the Baltimore Catechism was out, and feeling the "experience of Christ" was in.  My parish priest, I believe, could not have known how the new, more "enlightened" philosophy of catechism would affect the moral development of those in his charge; at the time, he was simply caught up in the so-called "spirit of Vatican II," and was being obedient to what were considered Vatican II "mandates."  Meanwhile, my parents, like the other parents, trusted that religious education classes would teach us the Faith.  Sadly, that never happened.

In general, the volunteer CCD teachers were good-hearted parishioners who probably tried their best with the vacuous material they were given.  Looking back, I can see that a couple of them must have been alarmed at the "new and improved" methods, and wanted to teach us the fundamentals of our Faith; for example, one year a teacher made us memorize the Ten Commandments; another year (9th or 10th grade, I believe) I heard the word transubstantiation for the first and last time.  Aside from these rare moments, I assure you that precious little substantive information was imparted to us youngsters; the countless hours I spent in religious education were missed opportunities.

I can tell you in three phrases the content of a decade of catechesis:  God is good, Jesus loves you, and love your neighbor.  (All very good and true, don't get me wrong, but if you read your Bible you'll see that that's only half the Gospel.  And sometimes half of the truth is more treacherous than an outright lie.)  We were shown a lot of cartoon slide shows depicting Jesus and his parables, and I have nice images of multiplying loaves, the Good Samaritan, and Jesus' empty tomb.  I don't remember anything particularly Catholic about the presentations, aside from a foray into the sacraments when it was time for First Communion or Confirmation.  (But if you'd have asked me to explain what a sacrament was, I couldn't have told you.)

We weren't taught any Catholic prayers, although we all knew the Our Father from Mass attendance, and in my case from nightly prayers.  I learned the Hail Mary along the way, but for many years I knew only the first half.  We never discussed the lives of the saints, or even mentioned their names for that matter.  (Sitting at Mass, I could never figure out who this "Paul" fellow was who wrote so many letters!)

I am thankful at least that I was born before the last vestiges of Catholic tradition could be stamped out, and in the 1970s some of the more pious and beautiful hymns were still often included in the Mass.  Songs like The Church's One Foundation, Immaculate Mary, and At That First Eucharist were powerful to a child, and they have stuck with me to this day.  The dramatic, colorful Bible story books I read at home also presented an unshakable image of a just and mighty God and his glorious and majestic Son.  These haunting melodies and images, combined with my parents' faith and the common themes of my religious education did instill some important truths in my heart:  I never wavered in my belief in God Almighty and in the Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of His Son.  Just who or what the Holy Spirit was or did was anybody's guess, although I did recognize that the Holy Spirit was one of the Persons of the Trinity -- whatever that meant.  (I believe this particular bit of knowledge came from the repetition of another traditional hymn, which spoke of "God in three Persons, Blessed Trinity."  Since traditional hymns are no longer sung on a regular basis, I can only surmise that young Catholics today are learning less than I did!)

I went through my school years believing I was a strong Catholic -- in fact, as I got older I would often identify myself as "devout" -- and after my high school graduation I chose to attend a Jesuit university, in part to increase my chances of meeting and marrying a nice Catholic man and raising children in a strong Catholic home.  I made many Catholic friends during my years at Boston College, many of whom were products of Catholic elementary and high schools and most of whom were, like me, practicing Catholics. Just touching on this subject brings up many difficult emotions in me, but it is hard to overstate the tragedy occurring at most Catholic universities across the country -- namely, the betrayal of  parents entrusting a child to a college that identifies itself as "Catholic" while it allows and even encourages fiercely anti-Catholic beliefs and practices to permeate the campus and poison impressionable minds.  I do not know one Catholic who grew in his or her Faith at B.C.  Indeed, many who entered Boston College as practicing Catholics graduated indifferent or hostile to Catholicism.  I assure you that Satan is having a good time at B.C. and universities like it.  Though modern sensibilities may scoff at this notion, I don't mean it metaphorically.

Anyway, to give you an idea what all of those years of religious training and formation amounted to, allow me to throw out a short list of terms that, for my first 28 years, had no meaning to me:

Sacred Tradition	Mass Cards	Scapular
Sanctifying Grace	Benediction	Pentecost
Magisterium	Act of Contrition	Four Marks of the Church
Sacramentals	The "Glory Be"	Joyful/Sorrowful/Glorious Mysteries
Corporal Works of Mercy	Apostolic Succession	Four Last Things
Indulgences	Perpetual Adoration	Spiritual Works of Mercy

In my experience, most Catholics of my generation are unable to explain or even recognize the above.  And to follow are some terms that may sound familiar to my post-Vatican II peers, but that they don't understand correctly and/or believe for a second:

Purgatory	Communion of Saints	Papal Infallibility
Transubstantiation	Mortal and Venial Sin	Immaculate Conception

The attitudes of my Catholic peers are no mystery.  Confession?  Sure, great sacrament -- I'll get there one of these years (wink, wink).  No pre-marital sex?  No artificial contraception?  Yeah right, get real!  Evangelize?  Are you kidding?  Why?  After all, Buddhism, Islam, New Age, Christianity -- they're all equal paths to God.  Who are Catholics to say they have the truth?  A mature spirituality requires the understanding that everyone can be right!

In general, Generation X Catholics don't feel any obligation to live as the Church teaches, and I promise you that they do not fear the fires of Hell, nor do they believe in Purgatory.  (But really, how could they?  They've gone to Mass faithfully for decades and never heard such topics discussed, much less defended!)

The culture we live in is merciless when it comes into contact with a poorly catechized Catholic.  American society today is designed to destroy one's faith, as objective truth and moral absolutes are rejected concepts.  When modern, "enlightened"
catechesis echoes the messages of the culture, and when those charged with informing the Catholic conscience and transmitting the Faith take an "experiential" rather than informative approach, what can you expect?  You can expect exactly what was taught.You can expect young Catholics who believe "conscience" means "opinion" and you can expect subjective feelings and personal experience to supplant objective truth.  In fact, the prevailing philosophy of my peers is that there is no one "truth" -- truth is whatever we want it to be.  You have your truth, I have mine.  (Kind of puts the lie to Christ's definitive statement, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life" doesn't it?  It also doesn't sound like anything worth dying for -- those silly martyrs!)

We reap what we sow, and when pop-psychology all but replaces sound catechesis the results should not surprise anyone.  The practices and beliefs of my circle of Catholic friends tell a sad story.  Pre-marital sex?  Yes, with a series of different partners.  Contraception?  Of course -- it's a virtue.  Living together, a.k.a. living in sin?  It's a non-issue.  (One Catholic friend did go so far as to find a "compassionate" priest who consented to give her absolution before she moved in with a man!)  Active homosexuality?  A lifestyle choice.  Abortion?  Sad, and we don't like it, but it's a woman's private decision -- too bad her partner didn't use a condom.

Most of my Catholic friends attend Mass sporadically or not at all.  Some get their spiritual guidance from gender feminism (which is a fiercely anti-Catholic movement) and/or New Age philosophies. Overall, the Catholic call to holiness is an unfamiliar concept to them, and I do not for a moment attempt to exempt myself from this scrutiny.  Confession is a sacrament that was never emphasized (I made my first Confession at nine years of age while sitting on a priest's lap), and after my first couple of confessions during grade school, I never went back; I shudder when I think of how often I received Holy Communion unworthily.

So how is it that a Catholic who went to Mass every Sunday and went through all the proper catechism programs at her church could continue on unconcerned while carrying several serious sins on her soul?  I do not offer this as an excuse for doing wrong, but you must understand my actions in the context of what I was taught.  My generation of Catholics grew up with a keen understanding of God's infinite love for us.  We knew that His mercy could not be exhausted, no matter how badly we behaved.  But at the same time, we heard almost nothing about God's justice.  That while God is perfectly merciful, He is also perfectly just.  Somehow, that part was lost, or suppressed.  I guess no one wanted to hurt our feelings with Church teaching; for example, that by persisting in serious, unrepented sins, we could damn ourselves to an eternity in Hell.

Jesus said, "Enter through the narrow gate.  The gate that leads to damnation is wide, the road is clear, and many choose to travel it.  But how narrow is the gate that leads to life, how rough the road, and how few there are who find it!" (Matt 7:13-14)  Jesus mentions Hell over a dozen times in the Gospels, but our teachers and priests only presented us with the Jesus of the Beatitudes, or the Jesus who continuously forgave sinners.  We were never reminded that Jesus forgave repentant sinners, those with contrite hearts and the intention to sin no more.

The God presented to American Catholics today is the Rodney Dangerfield of gods:  He gets no respect.  Today, God hardly needs to be worshipped, since He's our buddy, our pal, our equal.  No need to fear Him or stand in awe, no difficult obligations on our part -- we need only feel the warm fuzzies He showers upon us, until we die and He takes us instantly to Heaven.

Such was the image that my generation got of God our Father.  But what would we say of any other father who asks no obedience, forgives every sin unconditionally and automatically, with no requirement for an apology or recompense?  We would call him a wimp, a pushover, a sap, a fool.  Good and loving parents don't reward bad behavior and disobedience.  They set down boundaries that a child, for his own good, must not cross.  Should that child choose to persist in disobedience and wrong-doing, good parents don't expand the boundaries to encompass his bad behavior, they hold firm and hope for his repentance precisely because they desire his happiness and success.  They do not cease to love him, even as they let him experience the consequences of his poor choices.  Such it is with God and sinful man.  He loves us infinitely, but He cannot force us to love and obey Him against our free will.  None of this was explained to post-Vatican II Catholics.

Although many of my peers will leave the Church and Christianity altogether, many will do as I did.  That is, I never once considered forsaking Christianity, nor did I question Christ's divinity (I felt strongly that to deny Christ would be blasphemous and a sacrilege).  But I was guilty of presumption.  I thought that because of my "deep faith" I could continue in one or another mortal sin and God would forgive me, or make an exception on my behalf.  I just knew he would respect my "conscience!"

I never did disagree with the Church's stand on controversial issues such as abortion or homosexuality.  I had even heard, almost by accident, some of the Church's arguments against artificial contraception, and they made sense to me.  I thought the Church was probably right on this issue (how magnanimous of me!), but of course I could never be expected to actually go along with this teaching!  I did plan to learn Natural Family Planning one day, sure, but certainly not now, in my young married years.  After all, God understands.

Though I presumed on God's mercy, I still believed in moral absolutes, and I never went the way of moral relativism; in fact, another young mother and I spent a year and a half writing an editorial column for our state's largest newspaper in which we rejected moral relativism and defended the concept of objective truth.  This friend, Kim, had spent six years as a gender feminist and New Ager, but motherhood combined with writing our column eventually led her back to Christianity and into a local Bible church.              (Read Kim's story here)

Kim had been a lapsed Episcopalian and I was a waning Catholic, so we had never really had religious discussions until then; but because of my strong belief in an objective right and wrong, I was attracted to what she was telling me about the Bible church.  These evangelicals stood firm on moral issues and were not afraid of offending anyone with Christian moral truths.  I couldn't say as much for the Catholic parish I was sporadically attending, where moral courage was sadly lacking and politically correct sermons and liturgies were the norm.  A Church that sought to blend in with the culture was not the kind of religious community I wanted.  I was raising children in a scary society, and I needed support from others who believed as I did and who would be a refuge from the "pagan world."  In my disgust with what American Catholicism had become, I flirted with the idea of leaving it for the Bible church.

Let me back up here and fill in some details.  Shortly after I graduated college, I became engaged to Dean Miller, a nice agnostic Jewish boy (so much for my attempts to find a Catholic husband!).  My identity as a Catholic was strong enough that I had come to this relationship with certain non-negotiables:  I would never get married outside the Church, and any children of mine would be baptized and raised Catholic.  Dean (who, ironically, attended a Catholic high school) respectfully and unselfishly agreed to my conditions, and we were married a year later in a Catholic church by my childhood priest.

Over the next four years, I gave birth to three beautiful babies.  As you might imagine, this provided me with any number of excuses for not going to Mass on Sundays, and almost never on holy days.  Of course, when one does not understand what takes place during the Mass, it is easy to become lax about attending.  During those years, I lived in two major cities and had done a bit of "church-hopping," trying to find a parish I liked.  I became disillusioned by the seemingly endless (and lame) attempts to make the Mass "hip" and entertaining.  All of the hand-holding, applauding, trite songs and political correctness was a monumental turn-off for me.  I felt no reverence, no awe; there was nothing in these Masses to snap me to attention, to take me out of myself and focus my mind and heart up to God in His Heaven.  I wasn't "getting anything out of it."  (Like so many others, I did not fully comprehend that one doesn't go to Mass to "get something out of it" -- one goes to worship God.)  When I did get myself to church, I felt as if I were "putting in my time," mechanically fulfilling an obligation.  I often ducked out right after Communion.

Because I was raised to never miss Mass, I felt guilty for skipping it so often (as well I should have, considering the gravity of the sin!).  I half-teasingly blamed Dean for my not getting to church, but he wouldn't let me get away with such scapegoating.  He and I knew I had no one but myself to blame.  Though my actions were inexcusable, allow me once again to explain my state of mind during these years.  I had grown up in a culture that had, with amazing rapidity and nonchalance, thrown all of the old value systems out the window.  Nothing was sure and eternal anymore, and it had gradually become unacceptable to believe in a right and wrong.  The idea of sin was deemed positively medieval, and  "morality" became a dirty word.  "Getting one's needs met" was the focus of each individual's personal growth, with the question being,  "What's best for me, and what makes me comfortable?"

Of course, Christ's message to the world is exactly the opposite.  We Christians must die to self, take up our crosses in suffering and sacrifice, and do the will of our Heavenly Father.  The Catholic Church in America seemed to me to have forgotten this message, and was all too eager to fit right in with the culture.  Instead of the Church going forth in courage to influence and change the world, the world was influencing the Church.  Worshipping and glorifying God seemed to take a back seat to worshipping and glorifying ourselves.  I knew enough about Christ's message to recognize that a serious gulf existed between what the Pope and the Bible were saying and what American Catholics were hearing.  At some point, the American Church and the world became almost indistinguishable in my eyes.

Case in point:  The only moral challenges given to the faithful from the pulpit were (and are) calls to help the poor, or admonitions against racism and sexism.  But it was obvious to me that every good atheist, pagan or non-believer out there was saying the same thing.  So why bother being a Christian?  Why get out of bed on Sunday morning and go to Mass when I could turn on any news program or TV series and get the same message?  Young Americans generally are sensitive to social justice issues, since we've been immersed in a culture that never ceases to speak out on such things.  To this day, when I hear yet another social justice homily, I want to yell out:  "We get it!  We get it!  But what we never hear about is the need for personal morality!  For repentance!  For conversion!  For holiness!  What we don't understand is our Faith!  Teach us!  Challenge us!  Help us get to Heaven!"  Have too many leaders of the Catholic Church in America forgotten that their mission is to save souls?

The abuses and trials one must endure at Mass today are legendary among the faithful, and it was just such instances which helped fuel my estrangement from the Church.  For example, I have been at Masses where I have been driven to distraction as I read the words of Sacred Scripture in a missalette while the lector read a distorted "inclusive language" version of the same text.  My intelligence has been insulted as I've witnessed the disappearance of words like "brothers" and "men" from both liturgy and song -- apparently the political correctness police have decided that I as a woman am either too stupid or too fragile to understand that such words include me, too.  I have sat through an Easter Mass where the priest donned a bunny suit for a homily/skit, and balloons were tied to the pews.  And I have sat with my mouth hanging open as I heard one priest use that morning's gospel reading to condone homosexuality.  After a while, it didn't seem worth it anymore; I could no longer see the point to attending Mass.  Looking back, it is clear that I had lost respect for the Catholic Church.

Which brings me back to my flirting with the idea of leaving for a Bible church.  I had listened to my friend Kim tell me about the powerful and courageous sermons she heard week after week at her non-denominational church.  The pastor spoke out against the immorality that surrounded Christians today.  He spoke of right and wrong, and he used Sacred Scripture to show his flock the proper way a Christian should conduct himself.  The evangelicals at this church did not pretend to blend into the culture, they were fighting against it, in a loving, Christ-centered way.  They kept their eyes on God.  And the faithful were actually instructed in Christianity!  Kim was attending Sunday services, weekly Bible study, a doctrine class and a Christian parenting class.  She loved it because her soul was being fed, and for the first time she understood what it meant to be a Christian!  What a contrast to what I was experiencing in my Catholic parish.  No wonder a good portion of her church's congregation consisted of ex-Catholics -- young ex-Catholics like me, who were raising families.

Maybe this is a good place to debunk a myth that desperately needs debunking.  One of the classic lines from liberal, dissenting Catholics is this:  "The Church needs to change its outdated teachings and must ordain women, replace the patriarchal language in the liturgy, allow divorce and remarriage, sanction birth control, masturbation, homosexuality, abortion [and so on, ad nauseum].  Young people are leaving the Church in droves because of its refusal to conform to the times!"

As a young person, I tell you this is rubbish.  It is a smokescreen.  I do not dispute that there are many young, "enlightened" Catholics who have left the Church with these reasons on their lips.  But they are using these reasons as excuses to mask the real problem:  They have either lost their faith or they never really had it.  The need in this case is not for accommodation, but for conversion.  These young Catholics have never been taught that Christianity is not about self-fulfillment, it's about self-denial; it's not about worldly power, it's about humility; it's not about control, it's about obedience; and it's not about some misguided, gender feminist idea of equality, it's about Truth.

But for all of the young Catholics who leave the Church because it is not politically correct enough for them, there are equal numbers (mainly those who have begun families) who are leaving for opposite reasons; namely, they feel the Church has become too liberal, too morally lax, too reflective of the secular culture.  These Catholics are filling the pews of fundamentalist and evangelical churches, whose leaders hold fast to Christian morality, and where the Ten Commandments are still understood to be commands, not suggestions.  These young adults are searching for an anchor in a world gone mad.  They are searching for Christ and a high standard of Christian morality, and they don't believe they can find either in the Catholic Church.  (Ironically, by leaving the Catholic Church, they are actually walking away from the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and leaving the faith that holds the highest and most difficult moral code of them all!)

I leaned toward a Bible church because of the moral courage I knew I would find there, because of the pride in Christ Jesus that so permeated the place, and because I would receive instruction in my faith, not an apology for it.  Yet if you ask a liberal, dissenting Catholic why Catholics are leaving the Church, they'll tell you it's because we haven't gone far enough in liberalizing the Faith!  It's as if they're saying, "Let's neutralize Christianity completely, ignore our heritage and traditions, throw out the sacraments, deny the existence of Original Sin, disclaim the divinity of Christ, drain the Faith of any truth or meaning, and then the churches will be bursting at the seams!"  It makes you wonder if the people so hell-bent on liberalizing the Catholic Church are acting out of love for the Faith or acting out of a desire to destroy it.

Nevertheless, by February of 1995, I just wanted out.  I was ready to send out a trial balloon to my mom, to see how she would react to my inclination to leave the Church.  I specifically did not approach my dad first, as I knew he would be heartbroken at the thought; but because my mother was raised a Protestant (she came into the Catholic Church when I was three), I thought she would be easier to talk to.  Mom is a very rational and stoic person, and she is known for giving sound advice.  After I popped the question:  "How would you feel if I left the Church for a Bible church?" she gave me the answer that would change not only my life, but the lives of many others as well.  She said, "Before you leave, you should find out what it is that you're leaving."

She then proceeded to give me some of the reasons she had left Protestantism.  For instance, she said it never made sense to her that Protestants place all their belief in the Bible alone.  The question for her became, which Bible?  There were so many different translations, and everyone had a different view on which version was authoritative.  She was also wary of non-denominational churches in general, and she talked about "the cult of the personality," or the tendency in such churches for the congregation to rally around a well-liked, dynamic pastor who usually had a new and "brilliant" interpretation of Scripture.  He would be the reason that they came, and if that particular pastor left, the congregation would leave with him.

Everything she said made sense to me, and that evening my thoughts of leaving Catholicism were at least neutralized.  The big blow came a couple of weeks later when my mom, in her matter-of-fact way, presented me with a book.  It was the kind of book I had never seen before.  The kind of book I never knew existed.  It was a book of Catholic apologetics.  It was Karl Keating's Catholicism and Fundamentalism .

Some people may roll their eyes in disbelief when I say that I never knew such a book existed.  I don't blame them -- even I cannot believe that it never occurred to me that someone out there might find it necessary, useful, even noble to defend the Faith!  It seems so silly to me now.  How could I have been ready to jump ship to a Bible church without even investigating the doctrinal issues involved?  Why did it never even cross my mind that a Church of 2,000 years might be able to present an argument on her behalf?  Maybe it's because in my lifetime as a Catholic, I had never heard anyone defend the Faith.  No one had ever given me any reasons why Catholics were right, why we had the fullest truth.  The only thing approaching an apologetics argument was my parents' statements that ours was the oldest Christian church.  That we Catholics were here first!  During my childhood and adolescence, I remember being quite proud of that fact.  Too bad no one ever elaborated on that point.

But once that glorious book was placed in my hands, it was all over.  I was excited, amazed, impressed that someone had taken the time to spell out the differences between Protestants and Catholics, not mechanically and neutrally, but passionately and full of love for the Catholic Faith!  And Mr. Keating used the Bible itself to illustrate the truth of Catholic doctrine!  It only took reading a few pages of this wonderful book to not only keep me Catholic, but to set me on a path of knowledge that has led my soul to burn for the Faith.  Sound dramatic?  It is!  Thanks to two years of study and the grace of God, I have found treasures that I never dreamed possible in this world, and yet I have come to understand that I have only dipped my little toe into the vast and glorious ocean that is Catholicism.

Over the next several months, my friend Kim and I engaged in a series of friendly, but extremely intense, theological debates. We went back and forth about issues such as Papal authority, the Real Presence, Mary, sanctification of the soul, and the implications of the Inquisition.  We gave special attention to the two doctrines that separate Protestants and Catholics:  sola scriptura (the Reformers' belief that the Bible is a Christian's only authority) and sola fide (the Reformers' belief that we are saved by our faith alone).  At times it was like the blind leading the blind, but I used the best arguments for Catholicism I knew at the time, and Kim got a hold of the best apologetics that Protestantism had to offer.

The phone calls were intense, and they would leave us physically and emotionally drained.  A couple of our conversations lasted seven hours!  After about six months of this mini replay of the Reformation, we hit what we call "the brick wall" and we agreed it was time to stop talking about theology for awhile, as we were frustrated and getting nowhere.

Meanwhile, my husband Dean was being sucked into all this "God talk" whether he wanted to or not (I was so excited about what I was learning that I discussed it with him when he let me).  Together, Kim and I had "discovered" the Old Testament prophesies which so clearly vindicate Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah, and I excitedly pointed out these passages to my dear Jewish husband.  I'll never forget the almost panicked look in Dean's eyes when he reluctantly admitted one night that it appeared Jesus might actually be the Son of God.

In their own journeys to faith, both Dean and Kim had one overriding principle:  They were searching for objective truth.  They didn't make their faith decisions based on their own opinions or what "felt right."  They weren't looking for what was comfortable, they were looking for what was true.  And of course that's what God asks of each of us.  Just as the Savior took up His Cross, we are each expected to take up our own, following in the footsteps of Truth Himself, even if it costs us our comfort, our security, even our very lives.

In Kim's quest for Truth at all costs, she kept praying and studying, even after we hit our "brick wall."  She gave the Catholics one last chance to prove themselves by reading Patrick Madrid's now legendary book, Surprised By Truth , in which eleven converts -- many of them Protestant ministers -- give their reasons for becoming Catholic.  In three nights (she calls them the darkest nights of her life), she was shown the Biblical and historical truth of Catholicism.  Six months later, at great personal cost but with great joy, Kim did what was previously inconceivable to her:  She received the Sacraments of the Church, and is now a devout Catholic.  Within a year, and after an initial reluctance, her husband announced his own intention to convert.  And with great rejoicing and all gratitude to God, I can report my husband Dean's profound conversion as well.  (Yep, I got a Catholic husband after all, and a devout one at that!)

Some other fruits of my "conversion"?  I have returned to confession after more than fifteen years, and I now reap the graces of that wonderful, previously unknown sacrament.  Mass, which I once avoided, is now an other-worldly experience for me.  Contraception?  Gone, with great benefit to my marriage.  I continue to uncover the treasures of Christ's Church, and Kim and I now teach the Faith to others.  I guess you could say that in Catholicism I've found the secret of the universe, and nothing can compare to its majesty.

Which brings me back to a sadness.  How easily I could have lost it all!  How easily my friends and contemporaries have lost or could lose a Faith they never really understood.  Feel-good, inoffensive, nebulous psycho-babble catechesis doesn't provide an even minimal foundation of faith, and a faith built on such a weak and erroneous foundation could not withstand even the smallest challenge.  For proof of this, note that fundamentalist Christians have successfully pulled millions of Catholics out of the Church just by quoting a few Bible verses out of their proper context.  And at the other end of the spectrum, feminists and New Agers lure Generation Xers out of Catholicism simply by loudly and repeatedly applying snide labels to the Church, such as "patriarchal," "oppressive," "reactionary," "judgmental," "irrelevant," etc.  A poorly catechized Catholic is virtually helpless against these tactics.

So, just what did I learn on my own that I never learned in religious ed.?  Almost everything, but here are some of the biggies that shocked me:  I learned that after Christ's ascension into Heaven, He did not leave us floating out here alone on Earth with just a book to try to interpret individually until He comes again (and since the vast majority of humanity was and is illiterate, why would He?).  I learned that the Catholic Church is the one Church explicitly founded by Jesus Christ on the rock of Peter, the first pope, and that the Bible is a product of the Catholic Church (and thus subject to her interpretation).  I learned that as Christ promised, the Holy Spirit has been protecting and guiding the successors to Peter and the Apostles for all these 20 centuries.  I learned that, because of this promised guidance, the teaching authority of the Church cannot err when speaking on issues of faith and morals; the Church does not, has not and will not change such teachings because she cannot!  The deposit of faith has remained pure and intact since public revelation ended with the death of St. John, the last Apostle.  I learned that the Church has always rightly claimed to be the protector of Christ's Truth, with the authority to proclaim, explain and apply that revealed Truth to the world.  I learned that submission to Church teaching is submission to Christ.

I learned that the crown jewel of Christianity, the Eucharist, is clearly evident in the New Testament, and that it was brilliantly prefigured in the Old Testament by many different writers, thousands of years prior to Christ's institution of that sacrament.  It's no wonder, then, that the earliest Christians and all of the Church Fathers were staunch believers in the Real Presence, and were thoroughly Catholic in the rest of their doctrine.  The writings of the Fathers would stun any Protestant, and most Catholics as well!  I learned that the seven sacraments of the Church were explicitly instituted by Christ and are the direct channels of God's grace into our souls, the surest links between Heaven and Earth.  I learned that God did not make it difficult for man to find the Truth, provided that man seek the Truth.

The thing that shocked me most of all?  Everything I mentioned above can be proven biblically, historically, and through an exercise of reason.  Catholicism is not a religion of blind faith.  Kim and I have played devil's advocate for every controversial claim or issue regarding the Church, and the Church has won every time -- in fact, the Church's case gets stronger and more exquisitely beautiful every time it's tested!  Yet young Catholics were never told any of this.

As I said at the beginning:  I was robbed and my peers were robbed.  The loss is incalculable, as how do you count the cost of even a single lost soul?  As for blame, well, there's enough blame to go around, and I am fully aware of my own culpability in all of this.  I could have asked more questions, and I could have sought to do God's will as best I understood it, but in many cases I did not.  I have had long discussions with my parents, and they have willingly accepted their share of the blame as well.  But if I were giving a prize for biggest subverters of the Faith, it would have to go to liberal, dissenting Catholics, especially those in positions of power within the Church, be they theologians, bishops or catechetical directors.  They have witnessed an entire generation raised up in complete ignorance of the Faith as a result of catechetical failure, they see wide-scale rebellion and disdain for Church teaching and authority, and yet they still push to further liberalize the Church, pushing more and more people out of the Light and into darkness.

When I hear of dissident movements such as Call To Action and We Are Church, and when certain bishops, priests and sisters support and even lead these causes, I am indignant.  While these so-called "progressive" Catholics work to undermine the Faith and  fall all over themselves apologizing for the teachings of Holy Mother Church, I just wonder when any of them is going to apologize to me?  Or to my contemporaries?  When will they apologize for putting a  generation of souls in jeopardy?

Maybe they should be reminded of the Second Epistle of St. John, verses 9-11:  "Anyone who is so 'progressive' that he does not remain rooted in the teaching of Christ does not possess God, while anyone who remains rooted in the teaching possesses both the Father and the Son.  If anyone comes to you who does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house; do not even greet him, for whoever greets him shares in the evil he does."

Or how about St. Paul writing to the Galatians (1:8-9):  "For even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel not in accord with the one we delivered to you, let a curse be upon him!  I repeat what I have just said:  If anyone preaches a gospel to you other than the one you received, let a curse be upon him!"

Here are Jesus' words on the subject:  "Whosoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea" (Matt. 18:6)

Catholics -- be they priests, bishops, religious, theologians or laymen -- who do not profess loyalty to the Holy Father and the Magisterium should have the integrity to identify themselves as Protestants, for that is what they are, i.e. they exist in a state of protest against the Roman Catholic Church.  And those influential Catholics who have so obviously lost their faith have no business teaching or influencing the next generation.

I am not so naive or despairing to believe that even wide-scale apostasy among American Catholics at every level will destroy the Church.  We know from Christ Himself  that the gates of Hell shall never prevail against His Bride.  So even though we needn't be concerned with the Church's survival, we should all concern ourselves with the Church's primary mission on earth: the salvation of souls.  Too many souls have been allowed to slip out of the Church due to catechetical neglect, and it's time to stem the tide.

Perhaps the first step in reversing this trend is to throw ourselves at the mercy of God, begging forgiveness for the mess we've made in His Church and His world.  Second, we must pray for the conversion of those within our Church who seek to undermine the very Faith they claim to profess.  Third, each Catholic must take it upon himself to learn the Faith, and then commit himself to a life of proclaiming the Truth to others -- this is the "new evangelization" by the laity advocated by His Holiness Pope John Paul II.

Finally, I humbly propose a Catholics' Bill of Rights, to be handed out to every new Christian along with his baptismal candle.  Maybe it could go something like this:

You have a right to your Catholic heritage.  You have the right to hear the Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth.  You have the right to have the Faith of the Apostles transmitted to you unfiltered and undefiled.  You have the right to be catechized by an instructor who must first be required to profess his loyalty and obedience to Rome, and who humbly submits to all the teachings of Christ through His Church.  Anything less is not only nonsensical but scandalous, and might lead you away from the truth of the Church.  You have the right to expect Catholic orthodoxy in all Catholic classrooms and institutions, and you have the most blessed and merciful right never to hear radical feminism or pantheism taught as if it had anything remotely to do with Catholicism.  You have the right to remain Catholic.  If you give up that right, it will be your free will choice and not the result of poor or scandalous catechesis.  (In other words, you have the right to know what you're leaving before you leave it.)  And finally, you have the right to be indignant if you look back 28 years from now and realize that most of these rights have been denied you.

Praise God, my joy at having found the Faith is greater than my righteous anger at those who had a hand in keeping it from me for so long.  I know that I cherish my faith so dearly precisely because I almost lost it.  I know that God's ways are not man's ways, and I am forever grateful that He chose this way to lead me back home.  I only pray that He might somehow lead my contemporaries back home as well.


Leila and her husband have five beautiful children.
You may send her email at this address.
Leila@lisaslighthouse.org

For link click here (transcripts to the show)

Here's a snippet for ya, from Alan Keyes show on June 13, 2002:

We have with us tonight the author of a book, "Goodbye, Good Men: How Liberals Brought Corruption into the Catholic Church." Michael Rose is somebody who hasn't shrunk from looking at this aspect of the issue head-on, going into whether there is in fact a factual basis for this concern about tolerance for homosexuality within the priesthood and it's effects.

Michael Rose, welcome to MAKING SENSE.

MICHAEL ROSE, AUTHOR: Thank you so much, Alan. Thanks for having me on.

KEYES: Now, obviously you have thought about this very question, in terms of the contribution made by homosexuality to this crisis and the role that it played. What would you say is, in fact, the role of homosexuality? Is it a root cause here? Is it a symptom, in terms of the kind of problems that have emerged over the course of the last months and years?

ROSE: Well, I think the problem really is the gay subculture that has flourished in the seminaries over the last 35 years. And in my research, one of the obstacles to young men becoming priests in the Catholic Church has been the presence of that active gay subculture.

Often a young man will enter a Catholic seminary expecting to find wise, strong men, like Bing Crosby or Spencer Tracy. And what he finds instead sometimes are the Village People. At St. Mary's in Baltimore, for example, there were many students who recounted to me seeing fellow students and also faculty members actually gathering together to go cruise the gay bars on the weekend.

And if that wasn't bad enough, when the students complained about the gay subculture, oftentimes they were persecuted. They were sent to psychological counseling for being homophobic. They were labeled sexually disordered, and eventually expunged from the system.

(CROSSTALK)

KEYES: Go ahead. I didn't mean to interrupt.

ROSE: Well, I was just going to add that what I found in my research, interviewing over 150 men who were in the seminaries, is that there's been sort of a reverse discrimination. There's been a systematic rooting out of the man who accepts the teachings of the Catholic Church, and especially the teachings on sexual morality. And I'm talking over the last three decades, or so.

More on Galante's shielding active homosexual priests in TX.

Quote:

Rod Dreher here. I'd really like to know what the Dallas diocese knew about Father Mallinson's participation with St. Sebastian's Angels.* A source claims that Bishop Galante, the previous auxiliary, was fully briefed at the time, but I haven't confirmed that. It's entirely possible that the new administration didn't check its Mallison file, or assumed that what Father Mallinson told them was true. Or maybe nothing was placed in the file. I don't know. But as Jeff points out, the diocese either needs to back up what Mallinson claims, or correct itself.

* St. Sebastian's Angels was a gay priest sex website. An archive of it still exists, but I don't recommend you'd look at it. It's disgusting.

Click here to read article in its entirety. It's pretty short.

for article click here

The article was written by Rod Dreher, of CruncyCon, which covers "conservative politics and religion." The piece is excellent. For the remainder of the piece, go directly to Mr. Dreher's website.

Naples, Florida: Golf Capital of the World and Home of Bill and Mary Anne Galante's Ultra-Liberal St. John the Evangelist Church

"More holes per capita than any other community." (From Wikipedia entry on Napes, FL)

I'm referring here to golf links, of course. Naples, Florida is everything you think, and more. Half of the American Fortune 500 CEOs live in Napes, FL. Yes, little ol' Malaga, NJ: You, too, can be as authentic, spiritual, and non-materialistic as Naples, FL. Yay! Guess who lives part of the year in Napes, FL? Bishop Galante's brother and sister-in-law.

Quoting from the Philadelphia Inquirer article, which is quoting Bishop Galante:

And all he [Bishop Galante's brother] talks about is how vibrant the local parish is: the people going to Mass, the wonderful preaching, concerts with sacred music and popular music.

The vitality and community his brother has found in Florida are what he hopes South Jersey Catholics will one day encounter in the 66 parishes that will remain.

The local church his brother and sister-in-law attend, which is the model for what Bishop Galante hopes South Jersey churches will become, looks like this:

Charming, personal, quaint, and inviting, huh? And the pastor, Fr. Glackin (who in is photo doesn't even bother to wear a collar), for Mother's Day/Pentecost Sunday, quoted Erma Bombeck. Cute. Here's a link to that:
Fr. Glackin's Mother's Day Inspiration

You May Laugh, But It's A Little Scary
There are a couple of sort of humorous things on the church's site. On the RCIA website, they claim that confession is "not for the guilty." Of course, it's pretty ridiculous. It of course begs the question, if you're not guilty, then why confess? But I digress. Onto stranger things. You'll notice below (image taken from their website) that they have an image of a skinny, topless, somewhat androgynous-looking woman about to be touched by an outstretched hand. I presume this to be the primordial symbol of conversion. Kinda reminds me of an alien abduction or something, it's sort of unnerving.

 

Compared with the hefty material I will take on below, mentioning anything so minor as the music at St. John the Evangelist seems petty. Nevertheless, since the bishop wants some "vital music" injected into the South Jersey Catholic liturgical scene (read: begone traditional Catholic hymnody). I thought it would be good to include a photo of the music director of St. John the Evangelist parish. Check out his website, if you'd like to listen to some of the "vibrant music" Bishop Galante would have us integrate into our "liturgies." Paul Todd's site Mr. Todd has opened for the Pointer Sisters, Joan Rivers, the Gatlin Brothers, and others. All that and he works on a TeleTubbies-like cartoon for kids.

 

Puts us to shame over at St. May's, what with the teeny little choir loft and simple a cappella singing. The bigger the better, after all.

Pastor Promotes Group that Undermines Church Teaching
On a much more serious note, Father Glackin, pastor of St. John's, is a ringleader of the radical group, "Voice of the Faithful," Link here, which Catholic Culture assigns a "danger warning" for fidelity. Archbishop John Myers of Newark, NJ says that

VOTF...has used the current crisis in the Church as a springboard for presenting an agenda that is anti-Church and, ultimately, anti-Catholic.

(See Naples Daily News, September 19, 2003. Link here.) Glackin keeps trying to bring in speakers from Voice of the Faithful to St. John the Evangelist parish and the bishop of the Diocese of Venice keeps denying him. Instead VOTF brings speakers like the notorious Fr. Curran to a local Greek Orthodox Church. See article here. Voice of the Faithful's real goal, among many, is fairly obvious: it wants to change the character and structure of the church by "promot[ing] turning the Church into a democracy." Furthermore their conferences "feature prominent speakers who are known to support homosexuality, abortion, contraception, female priests and other dissident principles." The gist of their philosophy is to build up the laity and create an atmosphere of equality and interchangeability among the roles of the sexes and even the clergy and laity. (catholicculture.org)

Voice of the Faithful "is tied to dissident, radical, anti-Vatican groups, such as Call to Action and We Are Church, which strongly reject Catholic moral principles," according to the well regarded and orthodox catholicculture.org. Fr. Glackin, pastor of St. John the Evangelist Church in Naples, is lauded by VOTF on its website: Accollades from VOTF for Fr. Glackin. VOTF holds their monthly meetings at the Parish Life Center, so the pastor's connection with this dissident group is hardly hidden. (The meeting location is listed on the VOTF southewest Florida website.)

Parish Promotes Irreverence & Misunderstanding of the Real Presence
St.John the Evangelist Parish, which the bishop holds up as the model for Catholic churches, is a bastion of anti-Catholic and non-Catholic (well, essentially Protestant) thought. On the church website, to put it charitably, there is a very definite mixed message relayed with regard to the Real Presence, among other things. For example, kneeling during the consecration is roundly condemned as something born of fear. They claim that the early Church stood during the consecration, but provide no evidence for this assumption. From the church's RCIA program Q&A about the Eucharist (for entire article click here):

Why do people at St. Johns stand for the consecration, where at some other Catholic churches, people kneel? In the early church, people stood for the consecration as a sign of respect and joyful celebration. As the centuries progressed, people began to kneel, as a sign of sorrow and repentance, and focused so much on the Divinity of Christ that his humanity was almost forgotten. Kneeling was a sign of fear before a king. This practice still continues in some catholic churches today. But with Vatican II, the church recovered the early church's focus on joyful celebration. So, at St. John's we stand in joy rather than kneel in fear.

A little further down, the question is posed, "Who can take communion?" Here is a piece of the answer St. John the Evangelist RCIA provides potential converts:

(The church teaches that it needs to be baptized Catholics...but Christ doesn't check our ID's) Sometimes at weddings and funerals, non-Catholics may be invited to receive communion.

In other words, they come right out and say that the Church teaches one thing, but they teach another. This church actively and unabashedly flouts the teachings of the Catholic faith not only through direct affiliation with groups that undermine the faith, but also by egregiously offending Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist by allowing non-Catholic Christians to partake. They belittle those who would revere His holy presence by kneeling in adoration. It would make sense to cease kneeling if the Real Presence is not understood properly...

Most alarming of all, it is clear by reading the entry on the Eucharist that at St. John's there is a complete misunderstanding of transubstantiation. They say, "The wine is still wine, and the bread is still bread, but somehow it is also more than just bread and wine." Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that was essentially heresy. I quote the Catholic Encyclopedia here (and I'd really encourage you to read the entire entry on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist here):

That the consequence of Transubstantiation, as a conversion of the total substance, is the transition of the entire substance of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, is the express doctrine of the Church (Council of Trent, Sess. XIII, can. ii). Thus were condemned as contrary to faith the antiquated view of Durandus, that only the substantial form (forma substantialis) of the bread underwent conversion, while the primary matter (materia prima) remained, and, especially, Luther's doctrine of Consubstantiation, i.e. the coexistence of the substance of the bread with the true Body of Christ.

As I understand it, the Body and Blood of Our Lord maintain only the appearance of bread and wine. Again from the Catholic Encyclopedia (from this piece on consecration):

It is called transubstantiation, for in the Sacrament of the Eucharist the substance of breadand wine do not remain, but the entire substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ, and the entire substance of wine is changed into His blood, the species or outward semblance of bread and wine alone remaining.

I could go on, since there is an abundance of erronious information so readily available, but I won't. Truly frightening is the prospect that lays before us: that Bishop Galante seeks to model his new-and-improved Catholic McMegachurches after St. John the Evangelist parish, a church that so clearly propogates irreverence and error. Is this what we want the South Jersey Catholic churches to be? I don't. I want to worship God as He is, not as I wish Him to be.

A Model Church for Us Unsophisticated South Jersey Hicks
So anyhow, yes folks, this church of St. John the Evangelist is the model for what Bishop Galante sees as a "vibrant" church. I don't pretend to know what you might think of pastors who promote organizations that undermine the Faith, pop-culture references mixed into your religiosity, Yanni-esque music directors, large and impersonal McChurches, too-cool-for-you RCIA programs, hip self-improvement "confession," and "communities" that boast some of the richest people in the world. And "more holes per capita than any other community" to boot! But I for one prefer that old time religion, the faith of our fathers, "the least of these," and all that stuff. I don't want a big, fancy, modern church with larger than life "contemporary" music. I want a church that reminds me of who I am in the grand scheme of things, not a church that puts me in the center. I want a church that's real, on a human scale, leads me to God, and doesn't remind me of a country club.

The majority of the churches the bishop wants to close are authentic houses of worship with the Real Presence front and center, kneelers, and histories that predate Vatican II. They are traditional. They are characteristically Catholic, replete with the sacramentals that empower us to fight the Enemy. They are the powerhouses of prayer. And yet, according to the Inquirer article, "the scope of the closing appears to be the largest ever for any of the nation's 195 Roman Catholic dioceses." And many of the churches that stand to be closed are ones very much like St. Mary's. Should we make way for a bigger, better sort of church? A one-stop-shop like the evangelical protestants have? Will we accept compromised theology and liturgy? Or are we finally going to acknowledge that what people really want is Truth...simple and straightforward Truth, and that it's Jesus in the Holy Eucharist who offers it?

By the way, in case you want to read it, click for the Inquirer Article here