As the Flame of Catholic Dissent Dies Out

[FidesSpesCarita]

Hi Fides, perhaps you meant ‘hate the evil/sin people do’, as we know to hate the sin but love the sinner. Your post is indeed correct and to the point, and this is surely a mistype I’ve stumbled upon. The reason why this is important to point out is because these particular people - be it heretics or apostates - within the Church, to speak bluntly, need our prayers for their conversion most especially as they are and have likely lead many souls to perdition and continue to persecute the Church. It is quite natural - due to our fallen nature - to be repulsed by such persons however like the many Roman soldiers who crucified Christ, we pray that these people today receive that grace of truly loving Holy Mother the Church, as you most blessedly do.

My statement was that we must not hate the people who we see as being involved in the… perversion of what the Church should be. Perhaps I need to learn to be slightly more clear when I am ranting since we seem to agree 100% on this.

FSC

 

[Anthony88]

Lol, my apologies. What a complete over-sight, from a complete idiot as myself. Praise God we can be humbled by such minor things.

 

[otjm]

I read the book; you didn’t.

If you are quoting from the book, then perhaps the author needs to answer some of the questions; or if you are paraphrasing the author, perhaps you need to read more carefully.

Just because something is written doesn’t guarantee its accuracy or logic. I don’t question that the convents went upside down; I lived through that era. In fact, I was educted through grade scholl by a group of nuns nicknamed (and not to their faces) the “lady Jesuits” because both groups (in my area) ahd a reputation of taking the best and the brightest and running with them. And that was from 1952 thropugh 1960, well before the chaos in the convents began. I had the “privilege” of seeing some outstanding nuns fall off the proverbial edge of the earth; some left the convent; some wandered off to do “social work”, and the one I respected the most put her head down and soldiered on the best she could.

I stand by the questions I asked; answering that you read the book and I didn’t does not respond to the questions. I would invite an answer. I am still baffeled how women as intelligent as some of the ones I knew could get so far off track so fast.

 

[edwest2]

If you are quoting from the book, then perhaps the author needs to answer some of the questions; or if you are paraphrasing the author, perhaps you need to read more carefully.

Just because something is written doesn’t guarantee its accuracy or logic. I don’t question that the convents went upside down; I lived through that era. In fact, I was educted through grade scholl by a group of nuns nicknamed (and not to their faces) the “lady Jesuits” because both groups (in my area) ahd a reputation of taking the best and the brightest and running with them. And that was from 1952 thropugh 1960, well before the chaos in the convents began. I had the “privilege” of seeing some outstanding nuns fall off the proverbial edge of the earth; some left the convent; some wandered off to do “social work”, and the one I respected the most put her head down and soldiered on the best she could.

I stand by the questions I asked; answering that you read the book and I didn’t does not respond to the questions. I would invite an answer. I am still baffeled how women as intelligent as some of the ones I knew could get so far off track so fast.

I am still baffled how some intelligent Catholics I knew could get off the track so fast.

1. The condition of respect most Catholics had for their government, their Church and their neighbors in the early 1960s was high. We were surrounded by respect. There was no ACLU demanding Nativities be taken down or dereligified in the 1960s. Our neighbors spent a lot of time decorating their homes for Christmas. Easter and Christmas were standing room only at my Church.

The media reflected our values. The songs were about fun and love and devotion. Parents were generally strict and most of us kids listened to and respected our parents. In my teens, I thought my parents were wrong about some things but by my early 20s, I began to see I was mostly wrong.

1. The key to dealing with strangers, Catholic and non-Catholic, were established rules of engagement, politeness and civility practiced at all times. And that went double for dating. There were chaperones and rules to follow. Respect was the norm, along with modesty and guilt and shame if we tried to cross any lines.
2. When the strangers physically appeared with their ‘alternative lifestyles’ dressed in words of Peace and Love and Freedom, everyone mistook them for the Flower Children they claimed to be. A nun at my school got on the speaker system, played her guitar and said something positive about sexual love. She mysteriously disappeared a short time after. She was young and the older nuns said nothing to us kids. It would have been disrespectful for us to inquire. Or even think something negative for that matter. We trusted that whatever happened, it was handled properly by the older nuns. End of story.
3. Gossip was discouraged. Disparaging others was discouraged. I remember a group of nuns trying to break up a fist fight at my Catholic High School and they succeeded.
4. We loved our priests.

Finally, our trust and sincerity and compassion were ruthlessly exploited by those who had nothing good to offer us. Before I knew it, a Catholic friend of mine was smoking dope his older brother gave him. A Catholic classmate was introduced to marijuana and told me to try it. Where did he get it?

The Hippie pagans told us to “try our way of living, we’re freer than you and it’s better.” But all they had was fornication, and cohabitating without marriage and a list of drugs to try. And the drugs were never referred to as dangerous, oh no. “Mind expanding,” “increase your creativity,” and a “drug trip” was an experience worth having. It doesn’t take too long to get psychologically and/or physically addicted.

Read this cover story about the Catholic Exodus:

time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19700223,00.html

We have to ask ourselves: Were other religious “inspired” to imitate their peers when this happened?

Peace,
Ed

 

[sedonaman]

… I am still baffeled how women as intelligent as some of the ones I knew could get so far off track so fast.

It’s like being the victim of a scam artist. The more intelligent a person is, the more likely he is to “get so far off track so fast,” as you put it, because he believes he’s too smart to fall for a scam.

A lot can be [and has been] written about the general degradation of society since the ‘60s. Of course I do not know the women you knew and can comment only on what I concluded based on my own observations and what I have read in books like Sisters in Crisis, which to a great extent, agree with what I’ve seen.

Personally, I attribute it to human pride. Consider how much ego it takes to believe a single generation knows more than the collective knowledge of all generations since the founding of Western Civilization.

One question for which I am searching the answer, but was not addressed by the author, is why “change-oriented” individuals would choose to join an institution that is founded to a large degree on tradition, and then shovel sand against the tide, so to speak, in an effort to remake it in their own image. I have observed this not just in the religious, but in the laity also. It is as though I go into a Ford dealer and demand, demand, that he sell me a Chevrolet, all the while there is a Chevrolet dealer up the block. The ones I know in this category are demanding more power for the laity, like letting the laity elect their bishops. Well, if that’s so important, there are other religions that do that and more. Or women priests. Again, if that’s so important [and it obviously is], there are other religions that have them. I asked these people several questions:

1. If you believe truth lies elsewhere outside the Catholic Church, don’t you know you have an obligation to seek it wherever it might be?
2. Why do you think the Church is a governing institution instead of a teaching one?
   These are educated people who went to college but never demanded to elect their faculty. I have never received any answers.

I call what they are doing “preaching the gospel in reverse” since Jesus commissioned his apostles to “Go forth into the world and preach the gospel, teaching what I have taught you.” He did not say anything like, “Go forth into the world and find out what the liberal “in” thought of the day is and bring it back into my church.”

The siren song of relativism is powerful indeed.

 

[otjm]

It’s like being the victim of a scam artist. The more intelligent a person is, the more likely he is to “get so far off track so fast,” as you put it, because he believes he’s too smart to fall for a scam.

A lot can be [and has been] written about the general degradation of society since the ‘60s. Of course I do not know the women you knew and can comment only on what I concluded based on my own observations and what I have read in books like Sisters in Crisis, which to a great extent, agree with what I’ve seen.

Personally, I attribute it to human pride. Consider how much ego it takes to believe a single generation knows more than the collective knowledge of all generations since the founding of Western Civilization.

One question for which I am searching the answer, but was not addressed by the author, is why “change-oriented” individuals would choose to join an institution that is founded to a large degree on tradition, and then shovel sand against the tide, so to speak, in an effort to remake it in their own image. I have observed this not just in the religious, but in the laity also. It is as though I go into a Ford dealer and demand, demand, that he sell me a Chevrolet, all the while there is a Chevrolet dealer up the block. The ones I know in this category are demanding more power for the laity, like letting the laity elect their bishops. Well, if that’s so important, there are other religions that do that and more. Or women priests. Again, if that’s so important [and it obviously is], there are other religions that have them. I asked these people several questions:

1. If you believe truth lies elsewhere outside the Catholic Church, don’t you know you have an obligation to seek it wherever it might be?
2. Why do you think the Church is a governing institution instead of a teaching one?
   These are educated people who went to college but never demanded to elect their faculty. I have never received any answers.

I call what they are doing “preaching the gospel in reverse” since Jesus commissioned his apostles to “Go forth into the world and preach the gospel, teaching what I have taught you.” He did not say anything like, “Go forth into the world and find out what the liberal “in” thought of the day is and bring it back into my church.”

The siren song of relativism is powerful indeed.

You have some good points.

I suspect part of the siren song was the “liberation” of women. I do not suspect that the nuns I knew - all of whome were born 15 or more years before I was ( and I was born in 1946) went into the convents expecting to change things; but the lid flew off a lot of issues in the 60’s and 70’s, and it appears now, looking backwards, that the nuns were not equiped to handle the emotional and psychological pressures that were created when societ went on such a tilt. They had entered a world where obedience was paramount and seemed to be doing fine until after Vatican 2. We can obviously say that the documents relating to their review of their world were not minutely detailed; but then, the Church has little history, if any, or micro managing each and every decision that any group, let alone a whole lot of groups would go through. It was as if someone dropped something equivalent to LSD in their porridge… I have to wonder, had Vatican 2 never occured, whether we would have seen the reactions and directions they chose to take. My guess is that we would have seen it anyway. Nothing in the documents themselves indicates any trigger to be so thoroughly rejecting leadership from Rome, such open hatred in many areas of male Church leadership; the list goes on and on.

 

[sedonaman]

You have some good points.

I suspect part of the siren song was the “liberation” of women. I do not suspect that the nuns I knew - all of whom were born 15 or more years before I was ( and I was born in 1946) went into the convents expecting to change things; but the lid flew off a lot of issues in the 60’s and 70’s, and it appears now, looking backwards, that the nuns were not equipped to handle the emotional and psychological pressures that were created when society went on such a tilt. They had entered a world where obedience was paramount and seemed to be doing fine until after Vatican 2. We can obviously say that the documents relating to their review of their world were not minutely detailed; but then, the Church has little history, if any, or micro managing each and every decision that any group, let alone a whole lot of groups would go through. It was as if someone dropped something equivalent to LSD in their porridge… I have to wonder, had Vatican 2 never occurred, whether we would have seen the reactions and directions they chose to take. My guess is that we would have seen it anyway. Nothing in the documents themselves indicates any trigger to be so thoroughly rejecting leadership from Rome, such open hatred in many areas of male Church leadership; the list goes on and on.

I was in my early 20s during V2 and remember the statement that it was to “let some fresh air into a stuffy church.” This was a poor metaphor, but continuing it, we might say the Council didn’t consider the possibility of admitting a foul stench instead. “Results since the (Vatican II) Council, seem to be in cruel contrast to the expectations of all, beginning with those of John XXIII and Paul VI. … The Popes and the Council Fathers were expecting a new Catholic unity, and instead one has encountered a dissension that – to use the words of Paul VI – seems to have gone from self-criticism to self-destruction. A new enthusiasm was expected, but too often there has been boredom and discouragement instead. A new leap forward was expected, but instead we find ourselves facing a process of progressive decadence. … It must be clearly stated that a real reform of the Church presupposes an unequivocal turning away from the erroneous paths that led to indisputably negative consequences.” – Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
IOW, wherever the slightest permissiveness is allowed, those with an ulterior motive will move in to take full advantage of it, and then some.

 

[Lormar]

It wasn’t in the documents. It actually began after WWII. Too many university degrees, too much contact with the world, and too much trust in psychiatry and none in Our Lord. Too much intellectual pride and no humility.

 

[edwest2]

Let’s look at the socio-cultural atmosphere of the post-World War II era. In 1949, the Soviet Union detonates its first atomic bomb. China goes Communist the same year. 1950-1953, the Korean War, with Chinese and Russian involvement. The first part of the distorted Kinsey Report appears in 1948, the first issue of Playboy in 1952 and the second part of the Kinsey Report in 1953.

The 1950s are generally a period of growth as the so-called Baby Boomers are born. The media is generally supportive of Christian beliefs and attitudes. In the 1960s, psychology is one of the hottest majors.

The reason deception works is (A) People who do not lie, cheat or manipulate are more susceptible and more trusting of others. (B) It’s made to look true, and desirable.

Highly educated Catholics were taught respect and were more easy to manipulate because a lot of us were not manipulators ourselves. We didn’t understand how manipulation worked. We didn’t assume experts or professors would mislead us, or that they were part of another agenda.

On Catholic Radio, I heard Father Ricardo say that today’s culture has an impact on him as well. Priests are people. In the 1960s, who would have accused an expert of lying or manipulation if he said “you should do things differently” to a priest? Even if his words encouraged him to leave the Church?

I heard an expert on the New Age on Catholic Radio talk about how New Age practices have krept into big business and even programs for Catholic Religious (they don’t stay long once they are identified).

Deception works because it is not obvious, it is subtle. It pushes gently - in the wrong direction.

Peace,
Ed

 

[Lormar]

Ed West

You are very right. We were ripe for a takeover. We still are; put a traditional habit on a sister and people will swear she’s traditional no matter what nonsense she spouts.

 

[edwest2]

Ed West

You are very right. We were ripe for a takeover. We still are; put a traditional habit on a sister and people will swear she’s traditional no matter what nonsense she spouts.

Hold on! If we know the signs then we will avoid the trap.

Peace,
Ed