How the 60s affected the Catholic Church

[adrift]

I stand by everything I said.

This is sad

Again, I say, this is off topic and I don’t wish to discuss it anymore here with respect to the OP. If you want, start a new thread, but lets not interrupt this discussion anymore.

Fine but like you I will have a last comment

The support you used was a protestant preacher. Did you read the Catechism?

We all sin, as you had said. But its DIFFERENT when the sin is constant and there is no sign repentance.

It was strange that you said that it didn’t matter if he went to confession.
Well it does matter. You can’t possible know what the state of his soul was but here you are condemning him and acting as if you do know even adding that he was a fornicator. Something I never heard before so there you have more gossip.

Idle talk, especially about others. The morality of gossip is determined by the degree to which time is wasted in useless conversation, by the failure in justice or charity committed against others, and by the damage done to people’s reputation by those who gossip.

Hitler did things publically. Kennedy whatever sins he might have committed was not public until someone revealed them. You are repeating those things that were made public by first detraction does it make it less of detraction because the gossip is widely spread.

11

But I now write to you not to associate with anyone named a brother, if he is immoral, greedy, an idolater, a slanderer, a drunkard, or a robber, not even to eat with such a person.

Detraction. Essentially slander is verbal defamation of a person’s character, although it may be either spoken or written. It also implies suffering or positive harm done to the victim of slander. In popular language calumny is a form of slander. (Etym. Latin scandalum, stumbling block, offense.)

I hope you don’t associate with any of these people either.

 

[Irishpol]

TO KOZLOSAP POST #76

Am I an “adherent to SSPX teachings”? What in the world is that supposed to mean? And that if I were I should be “up front” about it? Up front about what? That I believe in the teachings of the Catholic Church? Is that what you mean? Seriously, your assault on my beliefs is embarrassing from my perspective. And even if I were an “adherent to SSPX teachings”, I certainly wouldn’t have to be “up front” about it to you or anyone on this neo-Catholic site.

Whether this is simply a USCCB sponsored site shilling as an open Catholic forum, that I do not know and, in truth, could actually care less. But I can assure you of this, kozlosap; I’m every bit as Catholic as you are. Apparently neither you nor any of the other commenters that have engaged me in what I have had to say has the ability to legitimately debate what I have said; they just throw ad homonyms, such as you have done, by accusing me of something that apparently is evil in your mind.

But to put your worried mind to rest, no I am certainly not an intentional “adherent” to the SSPX teachings, unless believing that the traditional Catholic Church that I grew up in and lived under probably long before you were ever born is considered an “adherent”. I frankly don’t follow them so I’m not too sure just what they stand for other than the traditional Catholic Church. But reading your comment I’d be willing to guess that you don’t follow them either but are merely programed into believing that they are just “bad Catholics”––like “traditionalists”––so they should be shunned. I also presume that wherever you get your “teaching” that they have also told you to shun traditional Catholic publications like the Remnant and the Catholic Family News as well. You should really muster up the courage some day to read what traditional Catholicism is all about. It may come as surprise to you, but it is the only Catholic teaching that went on for almost 2000 years.

But since I’m sure you mean well, I shouldn’t be so critical of your comments. So let me cut it short and simply say this. You read some earlier comments of mine that created this fear in your heart that I was an “adherent” to the SSPX (whatever that may mean). So what specific doctrine or theology of mine are you questioning? Where do you believe I’ve gone wrong? You can name 10 things if you wish, but just throw them at me one at a time and be specific. I’ll defend my position with Catholic teaching on every issue I advance. Try me. And while I’m writing to just you with this note, the others on this site that have criticized what I have said in general terms, like you, are welcome to do the same. I have the sense that the regulars on this site are incapable of defending their beliefs and are only good for throwing verbal brick bats at anyone who does not completely buy into all of the teachings of the Council. But maybe I’m wrong. I’d like to hope so and would be willing to listen and respond.

 

[adrift]

TO KOZLOSAP POST #76

Am I an “adherent to SSPX teachings”? What in the world is that supposed to mean? And that if I were I should be “up front” about it? Up front about what? That I believe in the teachings of the Catholic Church? Is that what you mean? Seriously, your assault on my beliefs is embarrassing from my perspective. And even if I were an “adherent to SSPX teachings”, I certainly wouldn’t have to be “up front” about it to you or anyone on this neo-Catholic site.

.

You have been very insulting. You should know that in traditional teaching the Pope is not capable of leading the faithful astray as you have claimed. There is not one instance in history of this happening. Your slam at calling people “neo” is against rules. There were those who left the Church after the first Vatican council do to pride. It wasn’t new as there have been those throughout history that have done the same thing. So it isn’t surprising that there are those who disparage the Church over Vatican II. I do wonder if you have even bothered to read the documents of Vatican II.

 

[fnr]

Oy vey, to borrow a phrase from my Ashkenazi friends…

To blame the culture of the 60s for today is like blaming a teenage driver whose parents only ever taught her to drive in a bumper car for a crash that she caused when she got into a Lamborghini for the first time.

It’s not the 60s that explains the secular trends in the world today, including among Catholics in America, nor is it the Second Vatican Council. For the most part, it’s the Industrial Revolution, with the underlying capitalist economy, that explains how our culture got how it is today.

It’s not abortion or the Pill that explains the movement away from traditional families. It’s factories. If you look up “demographic transition” on any web site (preferably a scholarly one, but here it is from Wikipedia), it’s easy to see that birth rates started to decline in the early 19th century in the nations that we now consider as the Western industrialized world.

In the U.S., the example is the “Mill Girls” of Lowell, Massachusetts. Lowell was a “company town” built around textile mills that recruited young women to work in the factories. To quote the Wikipedia entry on them, “While their wages were only half of what men were paid, many were able to attain economic independence for the first time, free from the controlling influence of fathers and husbands.” That’s how the major changes in Western culture really began: women becoming economically independent. For the first time, the factory jobs gave a large number of women incentive and ability to postpone marriage and childbearing.

Growing industrialization accelerated the trend, along with the urbanization that resulted from the economic transition away from agriculture.

Another of the the major roots of modern culture date to this era as well. In 1839, Charles Goodyear discovered a new way to process natural rubber, and vulcanization followed in 1844. The first rubber condom was manufactured in 1855, but for decades, condoms were considered uncomfortable and prone to failure. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that new manufacturing techniques and the invention of Latex rubber that condom sales really took off. And in response to the epidemic of sexually-transmitted infections in U.S. soldiers returning from overseas deployments in the Spanish American War, the U.S. military made condoms standard-issue equipment for servicemen in World War I. The first fully automated condom manufacturing line was built in 1930.

In 1930, the Anglican Church’s Lambeth Conference said that the use of condoms was morally acceptable, a statement echoed by U.S. Protestants a year later. In reply, the Catholic Church issued the encyclical Casti Connubii in 1930, opposing contraception, abortion, and eugenics.

In World War 2, the U.S. military distributed and heavily promoted the use of condoms by servicemen going overseas. To me, that is the most likely way that Catholic families started thinking that contraception is OK in large numbers.

 

[ProVobis]

Its not gossip. Its not gossip to say Hitler ordered the death and torture of many people. Its not gossip to say a known fact. As I said, its DOCUMENTED- about Kennedy. How am I spreading 'the fault of others" when its fact? Is it detraction to say that Hitler was not a Christian because he killed many innocent people after the fact, when its proven? No. By the way, Hitler was supposedly Catholic, or at least raised as one. And as one person put it when asked if Hitler was Catholic, they stated, "No…practicing Catholics don’t commit murder. " Same here in this case. Practicing Catholics don’t commit adultery daily. Doesn’t matter if he goes to confession. God still knows a heart. We are talking MORTAL sin here. Not ‘imperfections’ of soul.

Why do you lessen what Kennedy has done- but I’d assume you’d think it was ok to say Hitler was ‘bad’.? Both are MORTAL sins. Maybe you think one sin is worse than the other?

Hmmm. Seems like making a case for necessary introduction of “facts” is one thing. But it seems you’re also making a judgement call here. God’s already done that. Just saying.

 

[CrossofChrist]

Which doctrines do you imagine to have been changed? And where is your authority to challenge Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and St John Paul II in praising Vatican II?

As I had noted earlier, there is little if any chance of convincing you or any other neo-Catholic that the traditional Catholic Church has been subverted by the Modernists. You, and others who blindly follow those Church leaders who are leading so many souls to damnation, will merrily continue along with your belief that whatever the pope and the bishops say is true, is by definition true. That is wrong and a very serious error.

The history of the Church is replete with examples of saintly men leaders who have, not only cautioned, but declared it to be the duty of faithful catholic to resist a pope that is in error. ST Thomas Aquinas has said that we have a “duty” to “publicly” challenge a bishop who is in error. read your catholic history and learn what is required of you. *

One saintly leader we’ve recently had is Pope John Paul II, who had a substantial impact on some documents at Vatican II.

Dignitatis Humanae tells us that all of these other formerly false religions are no longer heretical, but are no more than “separated brethren”…In the past the Church taught that Protestants might be saved “in spite” of their false religion; now they teach that they might be saved “because of their false religion.

 

[Irishpol]

TO ADRIFT RESPONSE TO POST # 83

Okay, let’s start over. Insulting you was not my intention. If you took my response to your suggesting I was an “adherent” to the SSPX as an insult, I apologize. I also assume that you were not intending to be insulting by suggesting that I hadn’t the 16 Vatican II documents. As for the prefix “neo”, is that really insulting? Is it not the “New” Mass? Is it not the “New” Theology (Nouvelle Théologie Quite frankly, I thought it was a fair means of distinguishing “adherents” to Vatican II from the traditionalists. Nevertheless, if you take it as insulting I won’t use it.

But more to the issue at hand, yes I have read the documents and would be prepared to discuss each and every one of them if you wish. But you must understand that the problem that is going on within the Church with regard to the Vatican II teachings is not some supposed “misinterpretation” of what the Council taught; it is a fundamental disagreement with the teaching of the Council itself.

Pick any issue you wish from the Council and let’s talk about it. But it is not the traditionalists that are implementing the teachings of the Council; it is the bishops. The traditionalists are simply saying that the teaching is a rupture from what has been taught by the Church over the centuries. Argue that it was changed by the Council for some good reason, but don’t say that nothing changed. You can, of course, but if you do, I will show you where it has changed. That is the problem as I see it in a nutshell.

But rather than put you on the spot for a topic, let me suggest that I believe the teachings in Nostra Aetate are simply false. There is not other way to say it. Now if you believe they are orthodox teaching, and the propositions set forth in that document are not in error, defend it. Tell me what you believe Nostra Aetate teaches and why that teaching is not a breach from traditional Catholic teaching. Now if that topic gives you trouble, pick another one. Who knows, I might even agree with you on what is being taught. I’m now against Vatican II; I’m against false teaching.

 

[edwest2]

It is because they were protected in innocence and weren’t ready for the on-slaught of the drugs, free living, the pill, and a fresh new war.

Ricky Nelson was a shock to me when he turned to rock music. They were headed into wild times and didn’t know it and totally unprepared. I know it sounds too simple, but its true, kids were really good kids and were just hit on their blindside by all of this different behaviour. They wanted to be up to date and just like other kids and so were sucked into it. And being young once myself, it is tough to know what the truth is and what to do since youth has no previous experience to help.

I remember the Beetles hitting our country by Blizkreeg that just took over. And the parents weren’t ready for them either. Then one of the Beetles said something to the effect that they were greater then Jesus Christ. They later tried to explain that one away but it came late and didn’t have the effect they wanted.

Of course Elvis came in the fifties and parents were shocked at his behaviour, tho the teens ate it up. I understand he was a christian man at heart and was kind to those around him. But when he moved on stage, it left little doubt in your mind where he was at. This dosen’t take into consideration his womanizing and materialism that surrounded him. This put major cracks in the doors of acceptable music not to mention behaviour.

Anything that is from God is usually peaceful and calm. The music now had lots of noise. The old nice songs with decent lyics were out, and the new songs with drugs, violence, unrest, were now becoming the thing. However there was a brief period of folk songs which were catchy and enjoyable.

I believe when the Vietnam issue began, it began slowly with the USA sending over some observers and advisors. But then it grew and we could see on the evening TV news actual films of our boys fighting and dying right there in front of us. This went on and on from year to year. It does do something to our innocence to see all that death and destruction. Kids weren’t ready for this. And along with it came the draft which some felt was unjust since the controversy of an unjust war was waging along side of the real war. And the kids in the real war weren’t ready for that either, especially the drugs that were available to them overseas. How could they be prepared when the parents were as innocent as they?

There are other things too that were going on but enough for now to understand how prayer is needed not to just prepare us for the future, but is needed also at the time of conflict. Kids as a rule don’t pray much, and when away from home, most of us know what chance prayer has. So yes, they fell for what society was dishing out.

May God bless and keep you. May God’s face shine on you. May God be kind to you and give you peace.

When the strangers came into our neighborhoods, we welcomed them but they abused our trust. They openly shamed their parents by their behavior and their neighbors by making a point of being different, looking different. I was there. We didn’t know why they wanted to look, act and talk differently. Most of us went on with our lives. We thought this type of thing would pass soon. Unless you knew someone in Vietnam at the time, the war was just another war. Most of our parents were vets or others had relatives who were vets of previous wars. You did your duty, your served God and country. During the late 1960s, kids prayed every day as a rule.

The strangers told us to distrust and ignore all authority and in return, we would get a fake freedom. They insisted our lives would be better if we just lived with our girlfriends and used illegal drugs. But that wasn’t the end of it. They produced underground newspapers that told us to distrust our government, hate corporations and live immoral lives. They also produced underground comix that depicted deviant sexual behavior, other immorality and inappropriate behaviors. The media shut down the war with stories of a massacre and other things. During the entire war, from 1965 to its end in the early 1970s, we had dropped more bombs than had been dropped on targets in Europe during World War II. The veterans who returned were not praised, they were treated disrespectfully.

In the 1970s, bookstores selling porn appeared everywhere. Who paid for that? Why was it legal when just a few years prior was the much less graphic Playboy and a handful of “girlie” magazines that had none of the graphic sex? Who hired the prostitutes, cameramen and printers and truckers? Who? And who owned the strip clubs and topless bars?

So, first some, and as time passed, more too trusting people would give their alternative lifestyle a try and end up abandoning what the Church had given them in exchange for pleasing the flesh. The planned addictions occurred. Drugs, sex, porn - the new opiates of the masses. Then the mainstream media began to embrace it. Sad. Very sad.

We were lied to. I felt emotional pain and spiritual pain as this unfolded. “It’s wrong. Who is behind this? Why is this legal?” Then in 1973, the Supreme Court, not the people, legalizes abortion. My country had betrayed an ideal - the right for life, and later, I found out that lies were told and spread.

But it’s much easier to sell those lies to a generation that had reason to respect authority and our government. It just got gradually worse as the decades passed.

God bless,
Ed

 

[adrift]

TO ADRIFT RESPONSE TO POST # 83

Okay, let’s start over. Insulting you was not my intention. If you took my response to your suggesting I was an “adherent” to the SSPX as an insult, I apologize.

That was another poster not me

I also assume that you were not intending to be insulting by suggesting that I hadn’t the 16 Vatican II documents.

No why would it be an insult if I wonder if you had.

As for the prefix “neo”, is that really insulting? Is it not the “New” Mass? Is it not the “New” Theology (Nouvelle Théologie Quite frankly, I thought it was a fair means of distinguishing “adherents” to Vatican II from the traditionalists. Nevertheless, if you take it as insulting I won’t use it.

Yes it is insulting. There is no such thing as a “new” mass. I do appreciate you not using it anymore.

But more to the issue at hand, yes I have read the documents and would be prepared to discuss each and every one of them if you wish. But you must understand that the problem that is going on within the Church with regard to the Vatican II teachings is not some supposed “misinterpretation” of what the Council taught; it is a fundamental disagreement with the teaching of the Council itself.

Fair enough. Although I would be interested I am not sure that it would be in keeping with the threads purpose.
Perhaps another thread should be started.

 

[edwest2]

Oy vey, to borrow a phrase from my Ashkenazi friends…

To blame the culture of the 60s for today is like blaming a teenage driver whose parents only ever taught her to drive in a bumper car for a crash that she caused when she got into a Lamborghini for the first time.

It’s not the 60s that explains the secular trends in the world today, including among Catholics in America, nor is it the Second Vatican Council. For the most part, it’s the Industrial Revolution, with the underlying capitalist economy, that explains how our culture got how it is today.

It’s not abortion or the Pill that explains the movement away from traditional families. It’s factories. If you look up “demographic transition” on any web site (preferably a scholarly one, but here it is from Wikipedia), it’s easy to see that birth rates started to decline in the early 19th century in the nations that we now consider as the Western industrialized world.

In the U.S., the example is the “Mill Girls” of Lowell, Massachusetts. Lowell was a “company town” built around textile mills that recruited young women to work in the factories. To quote the Wikipedia entry on them, “While their wages were only half of what men were paid, many were able to attain economic independence for the first time, free from the controlling influence of fathers and husbands.” That’s how the major changes in Western culture really began: women becoming economically independent. For the first time, the factory jobs gave a large number of women incentive and ability to postpone marriage and childbearing.

Growing industrialization accelerated the trend, along with the urbanization that resulted from the economic transition away from agriculture.

Another of the the major roots of modern culture date to this era as well. In 1839, Charles Goodyear discovered a new way to process natural rubber, and vulcanization followed in 1844. The first rubber condom was manufactured in 1855, but for decades, condoms were considered uncomfortable and prone to failure. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that new manufacturing techniques and the invention of Latex rubber that condom sales really took off. And in response to the epidemic of sexually-transmitted infections in U.S. soldiers returning from overseas deployments in the Spanish American War, the U.S. military made condoms standard-issue equipment for servicemen in World War I. The first fully automated condom manufacturing line was built in 1930.

In 1930, the Anglican Church’s Lambeth Conference said that the use of condoms was morally acceptable, a statement echoed by U.S. Protestants a year later. In reply, the Catholic Church issued the encyclical Casti Connubii in 1930, opposing contraception, abortion, and eugenics.

In World War 2, the U.S. military distributed and heavily promoted the use of condoms by servicemen going overseas. To me, that is the most likely way that Catholic families started thinking that contraception is OK in large numbers.

That is pure, unadulterated nonsense. It is not based on facts but conjecture. I’ve seen the literature used by the military to promote all types of protection and good hygiene. We’re not talking about handing out loaded guns to kids but young men who served God and country. Just encouraging them to use condoms and why, was the message. Assuming everyone who served was not God-fearing and realistic about fornication with strangers is contradicted by those wartime booklets that told young men what the risks were. I’m not saying no one fornicated. That is further contradicted by the fact that the “Baby Boom” started right after the war. Men wanted wives and kids. The kinds of real families that the Church has always promoted.

The post-World War II bust in constructing weapons of war, meant women could quit their jobs, find husbands and raise kids, which they did. They understood a simple fact: you bring children into the world - you take care of them. Builders at the time built neighborhood after neighborhood of relatively inexpensive wood-frame homes. Why? They knew kids were coming - families. World War II vets also had access to the G.I. Bill, which ‘included low-cost mortgages, low-interest loans to start a business, cash payments of tuition and living expenses to attend college, high school or vocational education, as well as one year of unemployment compensation.’

The late 1960s was a coordinated attack against the Church, sexual morality and prudent living, including raising children in stable homes. No, we had crime, murder, and death by other means, but WE DID NOT LOCK OUR DOORS AT NIGHT. Most of our neighbors were on the same page which meant we had functional (for the most part) communities.

Peace,
Ed

 

[edwest2]

Dearly beloved friends,

.

The Christian consciousness that had generally held sway prior to the moral revolution of the sixties was gradually replaced by the moral relativism which continues to plague the Western world today. Certainly, we must never look back to previous generations with rose-tinted spectacles (Ecclesiates 7: 10), but neither must we be blindly sanguine as regards the present age in which our lot is cast. It admits of no serious doubt, dear friends, that we have, since the permissive Sixties, witnessed an unprecedented moral and cultural deterioration as a consequence of the irreligion and moral relativism that became so popular during those turbulent times. Indeed, this is why that whenever a devout man who has “understanding of the times” contrasts more sober and God-fearing times with the present age he is swiftly accused of crying up the past whilst choosing to close his eyes to its less desirable features. That is seldom the case and is usually a straw man erected to discredit his cogent reasoning, for most men will readily acknowledge that all ages have been imperfect in some respects. However, one can say without fear of contradiction, that prior to the Sixties, that decade of decadence, men did generally walk in the good way and did not transgress the boundaries of decency and good taste. With the diminuition of the Christian consciousness and the wholesome influence of a vibrant Catholic witness, came a torrent of wickedness encouraged by the so called ‘enlightened thinking’ of the avante garde. Thus you had the general corsening of manners and a loss of gentlemanly behaviour, the decriminalization and normalization of homosexual vice, the pill which gave men an women licence to fornicate and godless feminism which revolted against the husband’s headship and primacy in marriage and sought to obliterate the God-given distinction between the sexes (it has sadly enjoyed great success - witness women being permitted in the US to fight in combat zones on the frontline, the very ultimate in female degradation). Moreover, whilst birth control certainly existed before the permissive Sixties, its use was accelerated with the advent of the wicked pill. Things have moved on and now we have people arguing the case for ‘transgenderism’ - a denial of a person’s very essence. So called ‘gender identity disorder’ is a mental illness and men and women should be helped to come to recognise their God-given sexuality.

Incontrovertably, dear friends, the Catholic faithful have not remained impervious to the moral and cultural deterioration with which they are daily surrounded. Many of the youth, for example, are very confused today and are forever talking about ‘grey areas’, especially as regards the call to personal sanctity and separation from the godless world in their midst. Many have adopted a hand in hand with the world type of religious practice, which is less concerned than former generations with living up to the arduous requirements of our most holy religion. All manner of worldliness is rationalised by a morbid fear of ‘overscrupulosity’ or of being unduly prissy. However, this sad state of affairs prevails because many Catholic parents who were negatively impacted by the moral decay of the Sixties have passed their progressive thinking on to their children. Moreover, it is undeniable that there has been a woeful neglect of rigorous catechesis coupled with a more trendy and relaxed approach to imparting moral teaching. This is just wrong and does our youth a grave disservice in the long-term. It is imperative that the youth provide a vibrant Christian counter-culture, daring to be different from their contemporaries. Indeed, we must all dare to be different from our contemporaries, for otherwise we will increasingly loose our credibility and cease to be the moral disinfectant that we Catholics ought to be. My fear is that this has already happened as more of our youth opt for a ‘Catholicism Lite’ and virtually become indistinguishable from the pagan worldling’s around them.

Finally, dear friends, in light of our tragic crisis and the moral and cultural deterioration with which we are beset now, we surely ought to earnestly covet the undoubted goodness of former ages such as the 1950’s and lament their passing a great deal more than we are wont to do. It is very fashionable, among liberal Catholics especially, to focus exclusively upon racial and female oppression in any discussion of the past, but this only results in unbalanced and emotive debate and eclipses the very many merits of more God-fearing ages. Without wishing to sound uncharitable I just cannot help but think that this is a ploy to cover up the fact that many modern Catholics have shamefully succumbed to the secular drift of the age and have lowered their standards accordingly.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

In Christos

Well said, dear brother. You have described the situation with admirable clarity. No, the past, meaning the 1950s and 1960s, were not without many of the things that still plague us today, like crime, death by accident and murder, alcoholism and so on, but we felt real joy. We understood death was a part of life and were not morbid. The pattern of civil society meant understanding what it meant. What was right and wrong and how one should behave and speak in public. Going to Mass was second-nature. I felt good about being as good as I could be. Our parents encouraged us in good things. Yes, there were problems for some but solutions were at hand. Communities - something I sorely miss - existed, not “do your own thing that may be right for you but not for me.” We had a moral compass, a yardstick if you will, to measure our behaviors and thoughts against. But we must not forget the means employed to influence, coerce and eventually force, in some cases, the embrace of evils, great and small.

 

[edwest2]

Indifference was fostered over the years. I lived through it. The problem was this: speech, actions and behaviors that were limited or not tolerated emerged from the shadows and told us: “We will live how we want!” Alright. Who was stopping you before? But they were angry. “Don’t force your religion down my throat!” Alright. But I say, don’t force your deviancy (and I use the dictionary term) on me either. As the late 1960s turned into the 1970s, the media gradually began to join the chorus of acting out and portraying bad behavior, dysfunctional behavior. Year after year, what was on TV and in movies got worse and worse, like slowly turning up the volume on your radio. Right now, there is a TV show whose tag line is “Life is nothing but shades of grey.” And if I may be so bold to say it, but the Body of Christ on earth was poisoned gradually and not by accident. Words and images and portrayals came from all media as the volume continued to be turned up.

Today it’s “accept my deviancy, my sins, my immoral behavior - I have a right to it.” At no time should we reject persons but celebrating perversity (falsely called ‘diversity’) needs to be called what it is. Even so-called comedians have sunk into the mud, reveling in their ability to be part of promoting degenerate and dysfunctional behaviors. The 1950s and 1960s had legitimate wrongs that needed to be righted and needs to be addressed, but now it’s slavery. Slavery to the flesh. Man as God. With no one having the right to even suggest the “old,” “antiquated,” and “irrelevant” teaching of the past. We need, my dear brother, to know what was done and by who, to help prevent the disease from spreading. With facts and true witness, the Renewal needs to understand why hearts and minds were confused so that we may answer their questions, and offer them guidance, so they may see rightly and avoid the pit. Some will refuse or reject it, but the saving of one soul has value without earthly measure. That we have saved one or two instead of 100 is how the world thinks. It is not be about how many but each of us doing as God gives us the strength to do. God will give the increase if we plant and water.

biblehub.com/1_corinthians/3-7.htm

biblehub.com/2_corinthians/11-3.htm

May God bless you.

Warm wishes,

Ed

 

[Abu]

Irishpol #87
Is it not the “New” Mass? Is it not the “New” Theology (Nouvelle Théologie Quite frankly, I thought it was a fair means of distinguishing “adherents” to Vatican II from the traditionalists.
the problem……is a fundamental disagreement with the teaching of the Council itself
The traditionalists are simply saying that the teaching is a rupture from what has been taught by the Church over the centuries.
I believe the teachings in Nostra Aetate are simply false
I’m now against Vatican II; I’m against false teaching.

Such a mismash of dissent is pathetic – that any Catholic should feel that they have God’s support for rubbishing the teaching of an Ecumenical Council and arrogantly claiming a superior knowledge and faith!

In considering past dissensions, Vatican II calls for “mutual understanding (to) preserve and promote peace, liberty, social justice and moral values.” (Nostra Aetate, 3).

They do “often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself.” (Nostra Aetate, 2). She sees that ray of truth which they possess that can lead to Christ, whom She proclaims – as we should.

Those who do not believe in Christ may be saved. The Popes never have condemned those who have not heard the gospel. We know that Pope Clement I specifically taught that pagans could be saved: Pope Clement (circa A.D… 95) affirmed that “those who repented for their sins, appeased God in praying and received salvation, even though they were aliens to God." Christ’s Church knew from the beginning that non-Catholics could be saved.

Those who, through no fault of their own, have never known Christ or his Church can still be saved. But their salvation, too, is the effect of Jesus working through his Church. In a positive sense, this theological principle “means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body” (CCC 846).

But this cannot make us indifferent to the situation of those outside, saying that “no doubt they are in good faith and so can be saved.” While this of course may be so, objectively such people are exposed to many more difficulties. Lacking so many sources of strength, they are weaker against the attraction of evil and the devil and more exposed to the temptation of ultimate despair (cf. Vatican Council II, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, 16).

Therefore, the Church feels urged to intensify her missionary activity toward them (cf. Vatican Council II, Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity, Ad Gentes, 8). That mission of the Church involves all of us. A Christian who does not understand Christ’s words about being salt and light and leaven has little sense of the world’s need, and of his or her own mission.

“Thus the Church is (in its way) as indispensable as Christ for man’s salvation…as a divinely instituted means, provided a person knows that he must use this means to be saved.” (The Catholic Catechism, Fr John A Hardon, SJ, 1974, p 236).

Thus, just as without Christ there is no salvation, so without the Church there is no salvation. *Catechism of the Catholic Church *# 846 – # 848]. The Catholic Church, regardless of whether or not a person knows of its divine origin and founding, is the body through which ALL salvation comes to anyone whom God deems worthy to receive it.

Extra ecclesiam, nulla salus (literally, “outside the Church, there is no salvation”). Some people have wished to understand this saying in the most literal sense: that is, that the person who is not formally a practicing Catholic cannot be saved. The Church has condemned such an interpretation (cf. Denzinger-Schönmetzer, 3870-3873).

This is not to say that the maxim is false. Properly understood, it is quite true. The Latin word extra can mean either “without” or “outside.” The correct interpretation and sense of the maxim is that we cannot be saved without the Church. It is through the Church, which carries on and makes present the salvific work of Jesus Christ in the world, that all who are saved reach heaven (even if it is perhaps only there that they realize it).

 

[Cirdan_XII]

If the proverbial ‘Good Old Days’ were in the 1940’s and 1950’s - before the 1960’s - then what influence did those then-children have growing up in the 1940’s and 1950’s that would have prompted them to turn to the pill and LSD and “free love” once they turned 18? The “good old days” must not have been that good if it yielded so much sin - I cannot begin to count how many ‘baby boomers’ I know who were molested by family members. (Again, originating from the “good old days” that pre-dated the 1960’s.) So, logically, the “good old days” could not have been in era generation past the 1800’s since people born in the 1800’s would have already passed by the time the 1960’s rolled around.

I believe that every generation has its points of discontent and that it is part of growing up to go through a rebellious phase, This is normal and probably as old as humanity.

But random discontent and rebelliousness does not make a revolution. For that it takes leaders who tell individuals that their individual points of discontent are identical to those of “the cause” and that the energy of their rebellion should be placed at the disposal of the leaders to further their agenda. This is the plug the Fascists and Nazis tapped to rise to power, and a generation later its what fuelled the 1960s rebellion. I don’t think any form of education or background can fully innocullate people against such influences. But what it takes are reasoned voices to speak out and show young people that there are alternative causes they can get involved in and philosophies they can pursue. Both the 1930s and 1960s were periods during which these voices failed.

 

[Portrait]

Dearly beloved friends,

Cordial greetings and a very good day.

It admits of no doubt that the Catholic Church everywhere in the English-speaking world is now very different from the Church of the 1950’'s. Making such a statement has nothing to do with being overly bleak or despondent but is simply stating a fact. Whilst change is inevitable it is clearly not always for the better. The bigger changes have come from outside pressures, for example the pill and the consequent permissive revolution that it gave impetus to, the dreadful coarsening of standards in the new media and hostile legislation that decriminalized homosexual vice and abortion. However, many Catholic communities have been guilty also of self-harm, ignorantly encouraging the secularizations of institutions. Following the reforms of Vatican II, leaders were naïve and optimistic, underestimating the virulence of hostile forces and overestimating Catholic vitality and influence. Much of the self-harm has undoubtedly resulted from illegitimate appeals to ‘the spirit of Vatican II’.

Multitudes of the Catholic faithful, dear friends, have, alas, allowed themselves, either wittingly or unwittingly, to be negatively influenced by the progressive thinking that became fashionable during the Sixties and after. Thus we now have a situation which is historically novel and indeed jolly bizarre. Some still insist on calling themselves Catholic when they reject most of the Church’s teachings on life, marriage and sexuality and regards the Pope and Bishops as hindrances (or irrelevant) to their modernizing agenda. We have seen such a modernizing agenda with the radical feminists and their false egalitarian ideology.

Finally, dear friends, what is quite clear is that there are many misguided Catholics within the bosom of Holy Mother Church today and I think that we can say, without fear of contradiction, that such men have assimilated the progressive thinking of the permissive Sixties revolution. There should be no such misguided men within the Church, established upon the rock of St. Peter, for the Church has unity and universality from the first day of Pentecost. How very sad that false teachers of one sort or another have unrelentlessly tried to divide the community of faith and this fact is at the very centre of the present crisis within the Church. Who can deny that liberal and modernist bishops, priests and religious have done irreparable harm to our beloved Church by any means at their disposal, short of kicking over the traces completely and being censured by Rome. Even among ‘conservative’ leaning Catholics, who are orthodox as regards faith and morals, there is a subtle ongoing attempt to accommodate Catholicism to contemporary culture and ideology. They are driven by a morbid fear of making the Church credible and ‘relevant’ and stripping it of its supposed stuffiness. They may be well-intentioned but they are plainly misguided. The Catholic call to personal sanctity and separation from the world is demanding and living up to the arduous requirements of the religion of Christ is a very difficult business. After all, the entire course of this life is a state of probation and men are preparing themselves for enjoying the Beatific Vision of God in Heaven forever, or at least should be. A hand in hand with the world type of religious practice is simply not an option and potential converts to the Church should be made aware of this - “Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it”. What business have we in widening the posts and making it more easier for men to enter?

My plea, dear friends, is for a healthy return to the more rigorous approach to our most holy religion and a refusal to get caught up with the godless spirit of the age. Let us dare to be different and provide once again a vibrant Christian counter-culture to our fallen world and the lost souls in our midst.

God bless and goodbye. May I wish all viewers and contributors of this thread a jolly splendid and relaxing weekend.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait:tiphat:

In Christos

 

[edwest2]

I believe that every generation has its points of discontent and that it is part of growing up to go through a rebellious phase, This is normal and probably as old as humanity.

But random discontent and rebelliousness does not make a revolution. For that it takes leaders who tell individuals that their individual points of discontent are identical to those of “the cause” and that the energy of their rebellion should be placed at the disposal of the leaders to further their agenda. This is the plug the Fascists and Nazis tapped to rise to power, and a generation later its what fuelled the 1960s rebellion. I don’t think any form of education or background can fully innocullate people against such influences. But what it takes are reasoned voices to speak out and show young people that there are alternative causes they can get involved in and philosophies they can pursue. Both the 1930s and 1960s were periods during which these voices failed.

The media that had been our friend prior to 1968, gradually, very gradually, began to poison us in the late 1960s. We brushed off their infrequent and odd, risque and off color moments. Like a chameleon, their light and bright color, which at least accepted virtue and respected Christian values, gradually turned a little grey, and, as time passed, became slowly darker and darker till now, where it is nearly black.

The modern media propaganda machine is very similar to the Nazi methods. Extol certain things and suppress dissent. Speak out against those voices who dare speak against what is being promoted today. Call them bigots or fundamentalists or any term that inspires doubt and confusion - their primary weapons. Distract the masses with celebrity nonsense and dysfunctional TV shows and movies that model bad behavior. That present them as funny or worth emulating. Virtue? Who needs it? Satisfy your immoral desires but present it as good, or as “Hey, What’s the big deal?”

The propaganda machine drowned out the voices you can hear daily on Catholic Radio. The media will cover pro-abortion rallies but will ignore, with rare exception, pro-life rallies. It will tell us what to believe.

In the late 1960s, the dissidents inside the Church launched their full-scale assault. And we, who trusting, too trusting, were eventually confused by them.

online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704586504574654282563939764

Only in the last few years is the story being told, and action, which began in the 1970s, is bearing fruit now. It is wrong to believe that there is no way to combat this. The Catholic Renewal requires all of us to find ways and trust in God.

Peace,
Ed

 

[edwest2]

Dearly beloved friends,

Cordial greetings and a very good day.

It admits of no doubt that the Catholic Church everywhere in the English-speaking world is now very different from the Church of the 1950’'s. Making such a statement has nothing to do with being overly bleak or despondent but is simply stating a fact. Whilst change is inevitable it is clearly not always for the better. The bigger changes have come from outside pressures, for example the pill and the consequent permissive revolution that it gave impetus to, the dreadful coarsening of standards in the new media and hostile legislation that decriminalized homosexual vice and abortion. However, many Catholic communities have been guilty also of self-harm, ignorantly encouraging the secularizations of institutions. Following the reforms of Vatican II, leaders were naïve and optimistic, underestimating the virulence of hostile forces and overestimating Catholic vitality and influence. Much of the self-harm has undoubtedly resulted from illegitimate appeals to ‘the spirit of Vatican II’.

Multitudes of the Catholic faithful, dear friends, have, alas, allowed themselves, either wittingly or unwittingly, to be negatively influenced by the progressive thinking that became fashionable during the Sixties and after. Thus we now have a situation which is historically novel and indeed jolly bizarre. Some still insist on calling themselves Catholic when they reject most of the Church’s teachings on life, marriage and sexuality and regards the Pope and Bishops as hindrances (or irrelevant) to their modernizing agenda. We have seen such a modernizing agenda with the radical feminists and their false egalitarian ideology.

Finally, dear friends, what is quite clear is that there are many misguided Catholics within the bosom of Holy Mother Church today and I think that we can say, without fear of contradiction, that such men have assimilated the progressive thinking of the permissive Sixties revolution. There should be no such misguided men within the Church, established upon the rock of St. Peter, for the Church has unity and universality from the first day of Pentecost. How very sad that false teachers of one sort or another have unrelentlessly tried to divide the community of faith and this fact is at the very centre of the present crisis within the Church. Who can deny that liberal and modernist bishops, priests and religious have done irreparable harm to our beloved Church by any means at their disposal, short of kicking over the traces completely and being censured by Rome. Even among ‘conservative’ leaning Catholics, who are orthodox as regards faith and morals, there is a subtle ongoing attempt to accommodate Catholicism to contemporary culture and ideology. They are driven by a morbid fear of making the Church credible and ‘relevant’ and stripping it of its supposed stuffiness. They may be well-intentioned but they are plainly misguided. The Catholic call to personal sanctity and separation from the world is demanding and living up to the arduous requirements of the religion of Christ is a very difficult business. After all, the entire course of this life is a state of probation and men are preparing themselves for enjoying the Beatific Vision of God in Heaven forever, or at least should be. A hand in hand with the world type of religious practice is simply not an option and potential converts to the Church should be made aware of this - “Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it”. What business have we in widening the posts and making it more easier for men to enter?

My plea, dear friends, is for a healthy return to the more rigorous approach to our most holy religion and a refusal to get caught up with the godless spirit of the age. Let us dare to be different and provide once again a vibrant Christian counter-culture to our fallen world and the lost souls in our midst.

God bless and goodbye. May I wish all viewers and contributors of this thread a jolly splendid and relaxing weekend.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait:tiphat:

In Christos

Dear Portrait,

As I lived through those times, the following facts existed: a greater desire for holiness, stronger families, respect, forms of proper behavior and trust, much trust. In a 5 year plan from 1968 to 1973, the revolutionaries inside and outside the Church, led a coordinated attack inside and outside the Church. This was done by creating a propaganda machine that included underground newspapers, comix, porn (Adult) Bookstores and strip clubs, which began to creep into mainstream media. Without being uncharitable, they were purposely out to corrupt our spirits and there were those who sought to assassinate our way of life by finally encouraging us to kill our own children. In a short - for us - time, these people came into our neighborhoods and lived with us and loudly proclaimed their lies while seeming sincere and otherwise harmless. “Here, try some weed. It’ll expand your mind.” “Have sex with your girlfriend. You know you want to.” It was very confusing to see people I knew begin to use illegal drugs, which affected their judgment.

The 1970s brought the family haters to the fore. The dividers of men and women got much media coverage and created their own media.They sowed fear, distrust and rearranged the thinking of women: Men are bad, Being a housewife is bad. Sex, on your terms, is good. Get a career, get power. Overthrow the world run by men - the patriarchy, which included the Church. More confusion. Who were these women? Why were they so angry? They were not out to solve the very real problems that existed between women but to cause strife.

biblehub.com/hosea/4-6.htm

This is our time. Faith without works is dead.

May God keep you and guide you,

Ed

 

[felsguy]

In a 5 year plan from 1968 to 1973, the revolutionaries inside and outside the Church, led a coordinated attack inside and outside the Church.

Ed, you frequently make reference to the existence of this organized movement, dare I say conspiracy, to bring down the Church… Just who were the these people? How were they able to be so well organized? And to fly under the radar for so long? How did you discover it?

 

[Ridgerunner]

I don’t think Vatican II caused any of the excesses and rebellions in the Church. It think it was already there, ready to explode, and VII was given the “credit” for it.

I lived in a very traditional, conservative place. Still do. I did know our generation was huge in numbers and, therefore, in sheer peer dominance. There were so many young people relative to older people, and the sheer weight of numbers led to a sort of independence of thinking. But that wasn’t the thing really, it was just the background condition of what happened.

The rebellion predated VII, and it started with people older than us. I went to a Jesuit college. On the surface, and at first, all was well. The Jesuits taught orthodoxy at the time, and lived it, or so it seemed. But there were suggestions to me that things were different in other places. Some of the students had very unorthodox views and at least purported to have gotten them from their high school teachers and mentors…in Catholic schools. They acted as if somehow a great light had erupted, and it was, in the core, rebellious.

And while I didn’t have two nickels to rub together myself, (scholarship) so very many of my fellow students were, to my way of thinking, astonishingly well off economically. They could go where they wanted, afford what they wanted to do, dress as well as they wished. And morality was kind of viewed relativistically. Yes, it was a mortal sin, sort of, to engage in sexual escapades. But on the other hand, it was the “cool” thing to do and, after all, “wasn’t all that bad anyway”. It was “love” (of a sort) wasn’t it? Didn’t Dante only put the fornicators in the first circle of hell and frowning bishops down much deeper? And wasn’t “social awareness” really more important anyway, particularly when one could love one’s neighbor theoretically and from afar? And too, weren’t all truly upscale things combined in all advertising of every sort, with at least the suggestion of fornication, drug use and the like? And the more upscale the product, the heavier the message. While all of that seemed great fun to me at the time, it was still disturbing. But I thought “well, that’s what city people do”. (I was from a rural place) I was in that world, and, God help me, I participated in its intoxication. But it still seemed off, wrong, a direction one didn’t take for life. Even “rebel politics” were intoxicating. But one expected to grow out of it, or at least I did. Some did and some didn’t.

Then when VII exploded onto the scene, it seemed everybody just got more deeply into it. Priests and nuns first went politically liberal, then rebellious against the Church and then got laicized, married, whatever. But I don’t think VII did that. I think it was the excuse for joining the party that was going on anyway. It sometimes even seemed the Church became “sexualized” in a way, with “sensitivity training” that could turn into sexual indulgence in a heartbeat and, frankly, sometimes did.

And then it seemed everything that went before just vanished into a mishmash of relativism and “all you need is love”, moral ignorance. A lot of people who were clerical or religious then are still around, and they selected and trained a whole generation of priests and nuns and inculcated a lot of them with “political religion” and relativism. Until they all die off, I think, improvements will be very slow.

Truthfully, I think a generation had been inadvertently trained to be massively selfish, which, by degrees, became rebellion against constraints. I don’t think anybody intended it especially, but the means of self-indulgance were so readily at hand. It was all done so joyously, and by people who could afford, financially, to be risky in their rebellion. The sex-and-drug scene among the middle and upper middle class predated that of the lower classes. The latter, however, couldn’t wend their way through it to middle class safety, and tanked in just about every way there is to do it.

And the spirit of that age is kind of long in the tooth, but it’s still around. Obama, Hillary, Pelosi, Biden, so very, very many of our leaders, including Catholics, are so “1960s” or perhaps more properly “1970s” when it was much, much worse, that they almost seem as if they stepped out of a time machine into our own time.

I get tickled sometimes when I see the church hymnals still chock full of hymns from that era. Look through it. Vast numbers of them written in the 1970s and early 1980s when the “kids” of the 1960s and some of the adults of the era went so deeply into their own era, and then froze.
It wasn’t so very long ago that they were still putting up those dreadful burlap signs in church; remnants of the era, preserved as in a time capsule. The last repository of something that had passed but didn’t want to admit it or accept it.

And you know for sure that those who keep those old faux folk tunes in the hymnals and strip the churches for the installation of 1960s and 1970s decor of all sorts, are still living in those heady days of yore. And you see whole (shrinking) orders of nuns in civvies still acting as if it was 1970, and still thinking those thoughts and living out their last rebellions as if they had not aged (or matured) a single day. It it wasn’t so sad, it would be funny.

But I’ll say it’s my impression that the young people who have not gone Buddhist or agnostic or “miracle evangelical” are of a more sober sort if they’re still Catholic. They can see, and don’t particularly appreciate the artifacts, either in decor or concept, so cherished by those who grew up in the 1960s. And it’s about time.

 

[Abu]

felsguy #98
this organized movement, dare I say conspiracy, to bring down the Church… Just who were the these people? How were they able to be so well organized? And to fly under the radar for so long?

Where have you been? See post #19 for the facts.