Thursday, September 13, 2018

It is Time To Close All the Seminaries - Part 2


Jesus Christ spent over three years with his apostles teaching them what it means to truly love and serve God and His people.  He taught them how to be evangelizers in the fullest sense of the word, not being afraid to get down in the dirt with people in order to lift them up.

Our Lord did this by walking and living among the people, going into their homes, going out among the outcasts, the lepers, the rejects of society.  He laughed with the people and He cried with them. He healed them and even brought them back from the dead.  Finally, He died for them.

But since the time of the Reformation, the Church has decided that the best way to prepare men for the priesthood, for a life of serving God and His Church, is by shutting them away in buildings, regimenting their lives, and teaching them history and philosophy.  Seminarians may occasionally venture out among the people, but it is only on the rare occasion.

To use the words of Pope Francis, our seminarians never get the smell of the sheep on them.

As I discussed in my previous post, seminarians live in an artificial environment, interacting only with each other, never learning how to form deep, meaningful mature relationships with people outside of the seminary.

They are given a great academic education, but there are no classes in the ways of day-to-day living. There are no classes to teach seminarians how to deal with the challenges and pain faced by the laity whom they are supposedly being trained to serve.

This kind of training would never work in the military. When young people join the military, their first step is boot camp. There they learn how to be soldiers. Those in boot camp go through grueling physical training and then are put in combat situations in order to learn how to fight and defend themselves against the enemy. They engage in war games using live ammunition. These war games are as real as the military can make it without actually sending the soldiers to war.

Young men go to seminary to learn how to serve the people of God. But unlike men learning how to be soldiers in the military, seminarians spend very little time in real life situations.  Seminarians rarely venture out among the people whom they will one day serve. The vast, vast majority of their time is spent in the artificial environment of the classroom and with each other, completely isolated from the real world that the rest of us live in.

This is like trying to train a solider by only giving him an occasional brief glimpse of the cold realities of war. How prepared do you think he will be for real combat?


An article from The Arlington Catholic Herald gives an idea of the typical day in the life of a seminarian, this one being at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio. 

These seminarians start their day at 6:45 with morning prayer and Mass. Certainly nothing wrong with that. I try to do the same thing myself.

After that, it is all about academia:
Daniel Rice is one of the diocesan seminarians who came to seminary right after high school. He is now in his third year of college, studying philosophy. After one more year in the college he will have four more years of theology before he can be called to orders.
According to Rice, the seminary's class scheduling process is very similar to other colleges.
"At the beginning of each semester we schedule classes," said Rice. "Twelve credit hours, almost always more."
Instead of filling up their schedules with the typical general education courses, seminarians such as Rice take classes in the celebration of Christian mystery, contemporary philosophy, metaphysics, psychology and sacred music, with a directed independent study session in Greek before or after lunch.
I'm all for a good education, but this is beyond ridiculous.  To prepare for a life of service, these young men spend seven years sitting in classrooms studying philosophy and theology.  Just how much philosophy, metaphysics and "directed study session in Greek" is used by the average diocesan priest?

Doesn't exactly mirror the way in which Christ taught his disciples, does it?

But this article tells us that seminarian life is not all academics.  These seminarians do have "works of service" they perform:
On Thursdays, seminarians participate in various works of service.
"The whole goal of formation is pastoral service, so once a week in order to prepare ourselves for the ministry of the priesthood we have apostolic assignments," said Rice.
Some of the seminarians teach RCIA, others teach high school religion. Rice volunteers at the Heinzerling Foundation, which is a home for severely disabled people, some of whom cannot walk or communicate at all. Rice enjoys visiting the residents and always has a book ready to read to them.
"I really enjoy it, and mostly we are not actively preaching the word of God in words," said Rice. "It is more of a ministry of presence."
This is not exactly going out into a colony of lepers or ministering to prostitutes as Our Lord did with his disciples.

Can you imagine training soldiers for war by having them sit in a classroom 95% of the time and the remaining 5% of the time giving them a brief glimpse of war?!  These men would be good for nothing but target practice for the enemy.

So what do the seminarians do when they are not in class or "pastoral service"?
In addition to their studies, the Josephinum encourages the men to make time for extracurricular activities with their classmates. The seminary is fully equipped for a variety of indoor and outdoor activities. A full indoor basketball court can be converted into an indoor soccer field when it rains, and there is a four-lane bowling alley underneath the gym, which seminarian Tony Bennett manages. According to Bennett, the alley is a very popular pastime on weekends. The school only recently installed the machines to automatically replace the pins. Previously, the pins would be set up by a few brave seminarians with quick reflexes to dodge the occasional flying pin or ball.
"Some would say the new machines took half the fun out of the whole experience," laughed Bennett.
When the weather does cooperate, seminarians play baseball, football, soccer or the ever-popular Ultimate Frisbee.
When Bennett is not manning the bowling lanes under the gym, he can be found fishing with fellow seminarian Jordan Willard at nearby Lake George. The lake is one of many quiet spots on the 78-acre property the men can use for recreation as well as personal prayer.
Certainly I would never deny young men the chance to engage in leisure activities.  We all need time to unwind.

But these men are suppose to be preparing to become servants of the Church.  They are going to go out into the world representing Jesus Christ.  They are suppose to be as ready to die for the Church as our Savior was.

They are never going to get to that point in their lives through bowling, baseball or Ultimate Frisbee.  And in all of these activities, they are still living apart from the rest of the world which they are suppose to be serving.  Their only personal interactions are with each other.


And that leads to another huge problem.
"The brotherhood is very strong here," said James Waalkes, a first-year theology student from the diocese. "There is a real unity of purpose, and hopefully there is a union of mind and will in Our Lord for the pursuit of holiness and the salvation of souls."
So these seminarians are building very strong bonds with each other, apart from the rest of the world. And yet this naive young man still believes that somehow this will translate into "the pursuit of holiness and the salvation of souls."

We have seen exactly what this "brotherhood" leads to: covering up for each other.

The duty of a priest is not to form strong bonds with other priests and take care of each other.  They are here to serve Jesus Christ and His Church.  The only way they will truly learn this is by getting out into the real world into the midst of the sheep and getting the smell of the sheep on them.

That sure ain't happening in the seminaries.



This article from The Arlington Catholic Herald tries to paint a very idyllic picture. There is no mention of the problem of homosexuality in the seminaries.

And it is a very real problem.

I am not a fan of Rod Dreher, but he reported on the experiences of a young gay man in seminary. Here the young man talks about entering seminary:
It was summer after a successful first year of college. I had planned on joining a fraternity in the fall and had a social and academic life that was flourishing, but I was compelled to put it aside to explore the priesthood.
A well connected priest whom I met on the bus en route to Canada and lived near me seemed to simply snap his fingers, and with very little questioning, an MMPI test given to me to fill out at home. A therapist asked what my sexual orientation was (I said straight), and within two short months I was enrolled in a small house of formation for undergraduate men pursuing the priesthood.
. . .
I should be clear that this seminary experience on the outside had every appearance of orthodoxy, and even of traditionalism. This was not a place that promoted homosexuality whatsoever. In fact on paper, we were led to come down very hard on “liberalism” and anything of the like. We scoffed at guitar masses and nuns without habits. We would pass around books like Goodbye, Good Men, which chalked up the low numbers in seminaries to devout traditional men being turned away by so-called liberals and nuns who’d supposedly hijacked seminaries.
This seminary was nothing of the sort. It was an old boys’ club, complete with all the gin (usually scotch) and lace and incense one could imagine, and a love for Latin. Add a penchant for dressing up statues of the Virgin of Fatima with sumptuous fabrics and tiaras, too. In a frat house, there might be Victoria’s Secret catalogues strewn about. At the seminary, it was vestment and liturgical furnishing catalogs.
It was also an atmosphere of suspicion and secrecy. Nothing quite seemed clear, transparent, or holistic. It felt like acting school. The ethos, speech, and behavior that permeated the environment did not match the rather staunch vintage-like Catholic culture we were being trained to live and promote.
One seminarian openly went by a woman’s name as an alter ego. “She” would come out with some choice words over bad choices in liturgical music, bad weather, or complaints about our seminary chef.
There were seminarians in their late twenties who had uncomfortably close friendships with high school boys.
Half-drunk priest guests would be leaving the bishop’s and clergy quarters at the crack of dawn while I was sitting in the refectory eating cereal, usually unable to sleep.
I remember feeling that there was an awful lot of overly casual familiarity between many of the senior priests and monsignors and the well-connected seminarians. Trips, stipends, lots of scotch, and lots of smoking.
In what other world does a young man walk out of high school and into a social life almost exclusively with other men three times his age?
There is much more to this article with a lot of very gross stories of sex between the seminarians and priests.  But is this really surprising?  These young men are all thrown together and isolated from the outside world.  The problem is, men don't stop being sexual when they enter seminary.  They still feel the very same temptations and desires they felt in the "real" world.

But maybe if these men were actually out in the real world, serving the people, working in soup kitchens, volunteering in homeless shelters, visiting prisons, etc., they wouldn't have the time or energy to cater so freely to their sexual appetites.  If they went out in the world and looked for Jesus Christ in the people they are serving, maybe they would be more attuned to the Holy Spirit than to the demonic spirit they seem to be serving.

The former seminarian made an interesting statement to Rod Dreher:
The cliques that form in these so called lavender palaces are founded on a deep fear of being found out, and those who are in these circles — the ones I’ve encountered being the most “conservative” and “traditional” you could imagine — will go to any length at all to remain in the shadows.
They aren’t interested in genuine intimate friendships and healthy relationships outside of their circles, even with family members, who often are among those they are most trying to hide from. They will often dabble in a spiritual book or go to confession someplace far away where they won’t be recognized, as a way to sort of “reset” when they start feeling a little dirty — and then they do it all over again. It looks very much like a typical scene from a mafia movie with an underlying life of scandal and dishonesty often veiled with “family values” or in the case of the priesthood, traditionalism.
This seminarian also tells us that this problem among priests crosses ideological lines:
There are sick, broken, power hungry, scared men on both sides of the “liberal/traditional” Catholic fence. We have to stop blaming differences of opinion about things like guitar music at mass vs. the use of a pipe organ as the source of the problem.
Priests who celebrate the Tridentine mass are often guilty of abusing their power. Priests who couldn’t care less about their choice of vestments are too. Some priests who preach against gay marriage are having gay sex. Some priests who preach acceptance of all people are having gay sex too. A particular priest who ended up sexually assaulting me, after rambling on about his love for the Tridentine Mass, responded to my question of how this results in anyone’s greater holiness and well-being with, “It doesn’t. That’s not the point.”
What is? The mystery and nostalgia hit evokes a time when priests would never have been suspected of anything, and the word gay just meant “happy.”
Conservatives have for decades now been scapegoating the Second Vatican Council for every problem to hit the planet, and this is no exception. It’s simply not the case. No side is innocent, and no display of liturgical, theological, or ideological extremism is a sign of a priest’s well-being.
We all talk about the problems in seminaries, but no one seems to ever think of doing away with seminaries.  Forget about the emphasis on academia and concentrate on service and love of the brethren.  Let us look at the example of Jesus Christ, who trained His disciples in the real world, not behind a high wall set apart from everyone else.  Let men discern and train for the priesthood as they did for 1500 years before the Council of Trent.

The Council of Trent created seminaries because they wanted to keep young men away from the temptations of the world.  This has resulted only in giving the devil a perfect enclosed environment to bring the world in and completely corrupt the priesthood.  And now the entire Church is paying the price.

As the former seminarian said in Rod Dreher's article:
It is extremely difficult for the average lay Catholic to understand something that is at the heart of the present crisis: THE SEMINARY SYSTEM AS IT NOW EXISTS ACTUALLY DESTROYS VOCATIONS IN MANY INSTANCES. THE EVIDENCE IS OVERWHELMING.
Tear down those walls.  Close ALL the seminaries.


14 comments:

  1. Um, what would Michael Voris think of your idea, Catholic in Brooklyn?

    Speaking of Voris, hold your nose and go to the following URL:

    https://youtu.be/oUEGxTi5CcE

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    1. Michael Voris would not be the least interested in this. The only thing he wants to do is throw out Church hierarchy. Voris is not interested in getting to the root of the problem. Has he ever once said "close the seminaries"? No, it's always, "throw out the bishops and cardinals." And now, of course, it's "throw out Pope Francis!"

      Please do not confuse me with Michael Voris.

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  2. Catholic in Brooklyn, you might want to hold your chose and check out the following URL:

    https://youtu.be/10bDDW12rK8?t=5m45s

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    1. Thank you for asking that question to Akin, Christopher. And yes, I definitely hold my nose at his answer. No, it is not true that the only alternative to seminaries is one-on-one training. Isn’t Akin aware of how permanents deacons are trained? They continue to live in the real world and attend regular sessions over several years. There is no reason why we can’t train and teach our priests in the same way.

      Seminaries are not monasteries. These are not men who have made a commitment to completely devote their lives in prayer to God. Those in seminaries are for the most part very young men who barely know who they are. A good number drop out before taking their final promises. They need to keep living in the secular world until the day they make those final promises before God and man. Any other way is just not healthy.

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  3. These posts show a tremendous lack of knowledge about seminaries, but especially about the sexual abuses perpetrated by Priests. Seminaries do not make people become gay and abuse people of the same sex -- seminaries are NOT prisons. Additionally, after 500 years, now these problems take place and the first thought is to blame seminary life? Really? The changes made in seminary life after Vatican II certainly weakened the level of alertness that used to be kept in seminaries, and not only with regards to sexual matters, but doctrinal and liturgical. Something that worked for 500 years doesn't just stop working from one day to the other just like that. You NEED to do far more research and actual reading of the differences in seminary life now compared to such life in the not so distant past. Furthermore, when was the last time (and with what frequency) you saw 12 year old going to seminary?

    Have you not see also that a lot of these abuses took place in parishes and schools? Are you also going to call for the elimination of parishes and schools?

    Moreover, when there were no seminaries, priests were still very sinful and scandalous. What would you blame that on once you realize that there were no seminaries then?

    These two posts are written in a very incomplete manner with a very irresponsible conclusion.

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    1. Nice to hear from you, Eddy. It's been a long time. Hope you are well.

      Yes, it is absolutely true that there have always been sin and scandals among priests, just as there has been among the rest of us as well. Sin is as old as mankind.

      As far as to how long these scandals have been occurring in our seminaries, we don't know. For most of Church history, there was no instant communication as we have now. People were very isolated from one another and did not share stories and experiences as we do now.

      Yes, I am very glad there are not 12 year old boys in seminary any more. However, this was true right through at least the 60's. We can thank the changes that came post Vatican II that this is no longer true.

      You blame Vatican II for much of the scandals. But I can tell you that is not true. My uncle, a priest, went to seminary as a young boy back in the 40's, back when 12 year old boys were allowed in seminary. He was ordained in 1955. He says back then "they were all in love with one another." But of course, no one ever talked about it.

      Most men who attended seminary before the 1940's are dead. My uncle himself is almost 90 years old. So we have no one to tell us what seminary life was like in previous generations.

      You did not address the ex seminarian in Rod Dreher's article. Do you think he was lying when, as a result of his experiences, he said, "It is extremely difficult for the average lay Catholic to understand something that is at the heart of the present crisis: The seminary system as it now exists actually destroys vocations in many instances. The evidence is overwhelming."

      The purpose of seminary is to prepare priests to become shepherds of God's people. Do you think that sitting in a classroom for 7 years is the right way to do it? Don't you think it would be much better if they were living among the people they will one day serve? If we can do that with deacons, why can't we do that with priests?

      How is that incomplete, and how is that an irresponsible conclusion?

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    2. For one, it is odd, to say the least, that based on your focus on the issue, the only possible "scandal" in seminary is the homosexual sexual abuse. While no life is perfect, and seminaries never promised a life of perfect christian purity, it is odd to think that the seminaries themselves led to the crisis. Either you are sexually attracted to a person of the same sex or not. The people who did these things were not made homosexual in the seminary: they already were and were accepted. People with homosexual tendencies should never have been accepted in seminary - period. Seminaries do NOT make people gay or abusers.

      Minor seminaries were not the same as major seminaries. I'm getting the feeling that you do not get the difference. 12 year olds were not sitting together (or worse living together) with late teenagers.

      You cannot say that Vat II is not at fault based on your uncle's description. There were changes to seminary life and education, as well as to organization after Vatican II. That made a difference in the view and experiences of seminary life. It was more common to let active homosexuals into seminary AFTER Vatican II than before. It was common to let males who had no intention to lead a holy life AFTER Vatican II than before. It was common to kick out males who wanted to follow Jesus teachings, while letting those who had "an open mind" in seminary. The educational experience became more relaxed and less responsible, which led to the low level of education among seminarians now even AFTER 7-8 years in seminary. So, no, they do not SPEND their whole day, for all those years, in the classroom. If they did, so many priests would not have gotten is half the trouble they got into or caused.

      As per Dreher's example: I repeat, the seminary system they way in which it exists today IS NOT the same system that was in place before Vatican II.

      Permanent Deacons is a whole different matter. They have to remain where they are because they tend to be married and have families (which is not the ancient tradition of the Catholic Church). They tend to be older and have responsibilities that others do not have.

      Doing away with the seminary system will not solve the problem: it will not unmake perverts/abusers. There must be a change in the seminary system yes, but that does not entail doing away with the seminaries all together.

      Had the seminary system not worked, it would have been obvious right from the very beginning. It would not have been necessary to wait 500 years to find out.

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    3. Did you read my post? I am not at all saying that the only problem with seminaries is homosexuality. Homosexuality is just one major consequence of what I feel is the real failure of seminaries.

      The problem with the seminaries is that they isolate those training for the priesthood from the real world. They are insulated in their own little world with very little contact with the people whom they will one day serve. The only ones they have any real contact with are each other and their teachers.

      This creates many problems, not the least of which is the feeling of being "special" and apart from the others, i.e., clericalism. Why do you think they have been so willing to cover for each other? Instead of bonding with the people they are suppose to be serving, they have bonded with each other.

      When Our Lord was in the garden, He prayed to the Father, "My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one." As Pope Francis has said, Our Lord wanted his disciples to have the smell of the sheep on them. But our seminarians rarely go anywhere near the sheep. When they are thrust into the real world upon ordination, they still have the academic mindset of a seminarian. Many never learn their real vocation: servant to the people of God.

      Have you been reading the accounts of sexual abuse in the Church throughout the world? These accounts are going all the way back to the 40's. The only reason they don't go further back is because both predators and victims are dead. Have you read of the terrible abuse in Ireland - both sexual and physical - which occurred 100 years ago and more? Have you heard of Archbishop Weakland? Ever hear of Cardinal McCarrick? These men, along with many other fallen priests and bishops, were all trained in seminaries before Vatican II.

      I mentioned my uncle. He was trained in seminary in the 40's and 50's. He was not gay, but he was still a very bad priest. He abused at least one young girl, and knowing him, probably many others. I know for a fact that he had a girl friend. Do you think he was an anomaly?

      You are not even 40 years old. How can you say with such certainty that things were so different "in the good old days"? As Father Groeschel use to say, "You were there?"

      Sexual abuse in our seminaries and churches has nothing to do with Vatican II. It is all about fallen human nature. As you yourself wrote, we have always had sinful priests.

      How can we possibly train our priests how to relate to people in the world by keeping them behind walls for 7 years, just occasionally letting them venture out among the rest of us?

      The Council of Trent made some bad decisions. Just one example is the Council Fathers forbade the laity to read or even own a Bible. Did you know that?

      We need to look at the devastation in the Church and try to figure out where we went wrong. And seminaries, as they are now structured, must be completely reformed. Open up the doors and let our seminarians live among the people whom they will one day serve. That is the only way they will learn their true vocation as servants.

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    4. The Church has since the time it offered anything of a nesting place or relative social advantage or opportunity for anyone, been a spot which some opportunists would see as their main chance.

      That is certainly the case with innumerable homosexual males who have admitted just as much: that, they are attracted to the panoply and theatricality which they revel in for their own satisfactions, that the social cover it provides for the (barely) closeted suits them; and that they retain a notion that they don't intend to abide celibacy in any event.

      And yet, removing these mentally disarranged sex perverts - whose very life orientation is contrary the natural law an well as scripture - from the clergy, does not seem to be an interest of yours.

      Instead, you go on and on about love and mercy like some giddy antinomian; forgetting the context and the balancing of mercy which comes with Christ's jots and tittles.

      Love may cover a multitude of sins; but love of sin or its promotion, are not covered.

      Yet, the problem is that the "love" being preached, amounts in effect to a love of behavior which is intrinsically immoral, inherently disgusting, and anti-scriptural. It is a "love" which becomes a love of social suicide, and the love of a status quo which promotes those who engage in sexual degeneracy and prey upon the children. This is not a manifestation of grace and mercy, this is nihilism masquerading as charity.

      And your solution to a house of formation brimming with unwelcome, ungrateful, and destructive guests/pests, is to tear down the house.

      Nice going.

      When "someone" in the Church finally blurts out publicly a new-agey anti-dualistic, and inclusion promoting "integrative personality" concept noting that, "God made Satan too. Therefore ..." Then you will have some hard thinking to do.

      Some have already said as much in their own circles with their notion of the "conflictual nature of reality" and a re-figuring of the ideas of the relation between good and evil. What, if, or when, it becomes the "new paradigm".

      We are told openly and in overall context with the doctrines of the faith, that sex is eucharistic in the manner of holy communion; and by one of the Pope's mouthpieces, abominably, that holy communion has a sexual aspect to it. We also see homosexuals not fearing to carnally and perversely engage at the altar of God, already.

      What then, if they finally muster the courage, or arrogance, to put their 2 and 2 together openly, and a liturgy of abomination is authorized?

      We are halfway there right now.

      Who will you follow come what may, then, Brooklyn?

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    5. You are certainly very intrellligent and articulate, Dave. I would actually agree with you on the possibility of the Church being hijacked by heretics, except that I believe Jesus Christ when He said the Gates of Hell will never prevail. The Catholic Church, while composed of sinful human beings, is a Divine Institution led by the Holy Spirit. Individuals can turn away from God, but the Church never will.

      As far as comparing sex and Holy Communion, here is what Ven. Fulton Sheen wrote:

      “The marital act is nothing but a fragile and shadowy image of Communion in which, after having offered ourselves under the appearance of bread and wine and having died to our lower self, we now begin to enjoy that ecstatic union with Christ in Holy Communion--a oneness which is, in the language of Thompson, "a passionless passion, a wild tranquility." This is the moment when the hungry heart communes with the Bread of Life; this is the rapture in which is fulfilled that "love we fall just short of in all love," and that rapture that leaves all other raptures pain.”

      https://basilica.ca/documents/2016/10/Fulton%20Sheen-These%20are%20the%20Sacraments.pdf#page34

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  4. "As far as comparing sex and Holy Communion, here is what Ven. Fulton Sheen wrote ..."

    Even Sheen, or perhaps most especially Sheen in certain circumstances - this one in analogizing to the phases of the mass - lets his prose run purple; and on a cursory reading overshoots the mark.

    The book, "The Clean Oblation" describes the core of the mass sacrifice in rather more precise and less dramatic language. https://www.amazon.com/clean-oblation-Michael-D-Forrest/dp/B0007DUTWY

    That said, the operative word is not "identity" but "compare" here; as "compare", signifies the construction of an illustrative analogical framework, rather than an identity relation.

    And as turgid as Sheen waxes in comparing the 3 phases of the mass to the three phases of matrimony, it is clear that when describing generally he means to speak analogously, and when speaking specifically, he is speaking metaphysically or abstractly.

    This analogous use of language is made explicit in his very next choice of illustration:

    "The Sacrifice of the Mass may be presented under another analogy. Picture a house which had two large windows on opposite sides. One window looks down into a valley, the other to a towering mountain. The owner could gaze on both and somehow see that they were related: the valley is the mountain humbled; the mountain is the valley exalted.

    The Sacrifice of the Mass is something like that ..."

    "Another analogy" Sheen says.

    Now as for the notion of an "ek-static union" or some rather similar Neo Platonic (or even Gnostic) influenced principle of understanding as applied to what we call communion, that itself does not seem to appear in the Gospels, and Sheen's one supportive Gospel reference to a union, refers not to the Eucharist specifically, but to an affective union of aim and understanding.

    The perverts gone wild, on the other hand, were referring to a carnal act as actually constituting a sacramental facet (aspect) of an act of performance of Divine union. That is paganism of the kind the Old Testament prophets fought against. It is not Christian. It is not apostolic. It is an abomination. And if not of desolation, I don't know what else.

    Or, if it (this notion of an actual sexual union with the Divine) is not an abomination, it is because there is nothing really objectively abominable or good or evil; merely other and alien, found in a relativistic reality wherein moral sensibilities are merely accidents of physiological arrangements implying nothing more than a kind of moral/physical tautology.

    And if that is so, then we can forget all about nonsense like "oneness"; about "universal-ism in morals", about "like-kinds" taken as real categories, and about the silliness of genuine "charity as mercy": This latter, since it will follow that the other is truly, as far as the term "true" may be used, fundamentally alien, and antithetical to the core of its evolutionary being, to those who "feel" otherwise. We will constitute not like-kinds striving to live under a universal principle and capable of shared understandings, but live instead as different and antagonistic moral species ... right ... down ... to ... the evolutionary core.

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    1. That is a whole lot of words, Dave, and the main thing I get from all that is that you think sex is dirty. We are way off topic from my post, but just a few comments,

      The Bible plainly says that marriage pictures the relationship between Jesus and the Church, And St. Paul actually celebrates the marital act when he writes that the marriage bed is undefiled. Heb 13:4. Have you ever read the Song of Solomon? That is all about sexual love between a man and a woman. Of course, what it is really all about is Christ’s love for the Church.

      God created sex. It is a way for a husband and wife to literally become one, and from that union comes life. When we receive Christ in the Holy Eucharist, we spiritually become one with Him, and from that we receive the graces we need to bring others to Him.

      Fr. Rosica was absolutely correct when he said there is a sexual aspect to the Eucharist. As Fulton Sheen said, the marital act is a pale imitation of the Eucharist.

      Marital love is actually spiritual because it is a picture of God’s love for us. That is why sex should never be used in any other way. Sex in marriage is actually sacred, and to take it out of marriage is a sacrilege.

      I know you are never going to accept that Dave. So I am now done.

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    2. "That is a whole lot of words, Dave, and the main thing I get from all that is that you think sex is dirty. We are way off topic from my post, but just a few comments ..."

      No, the topic of rancid perverts running wild in the sanctuary because they have been positively selected for in seminary by higher level prelates equally depraved, is precisely the issue that confronts the Church.

      Remarkable too that I say that the notion of sexual union with God, is paganism, perversity, and an abomination, and what you get from that is that I think sex is dirty.

      Whereas what I get from your view is that you are engaging in the most profoundly sick kind of blasphemy by imputing a literal sense to a metaphor.

      No wonder the church is so sick, so wounded, so filled with wretched perversity ... You would have it a temple of Baal Ammon filled with Qadeshes if Rosica had his ways

      Yeah, I'm done too.

      Delete

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