Is Pope Francis Promoting Contraception?

Birth control is the single biggest contributor to the immorality which is so prevalent in our world today.  Since the introduction of the birth control pill in 1960, sex has become nothing more than a way for two (or more) people to masturbate with one another.  Sex is no longer a means of expressing love between a husband and wife, and from that expression of love, to create new life.  Sex is now just another way to feel good.  Sex has become no different than alcohol, drugs, eating a good meal, or any other way people find pleasure in life.  Not only is love or any kind of concern for the other not a necessary component of sex, you don't even need to know or have any intention of ever seeing your partner again.

Prior to the widespread use of birth control, the element of procreation was an integral part of the sex act, as God meant it to be.  God did not give us sex just so we could experience pleasure.  Sex was meant to be a primary means of bonding a husband and wife together, and through that bonding, bring children into the world who would have the security and love of a mother and father in their lives.  With the introduction of birth control, people could engage in sex without creating new life, and thus sex lost all meaning.

Condemning The Next Pope Before He Is Elected

I was talking to a good friend today who is a very devout Catholic.  We got on the subject of the papal conclave. He said to me, "I hope this next pope is not the anti-pope." That kind of made my head snap back. Where in the world did that come from? Why would such an idea even enter into any Catholic's mind? He said to me that there are prophecies predicting the anti-pope. I said to him, "You know the danger with a statement like that is that if the next pope does anything that you don't agree with, you could start accusing him of being an anti-pope." His response was that not everything a pope does is infallible. I asked my friend to give me an example, and he brought up Pope Paul VI and the "mistakes" he made with the liturgy.

Both my friend and I agree that we are not happy with the creation of the New Mass in 1969. We both love the Traditional Latin Mass, the Mass of the Ages going back 1500 years that produced probably millions of saints over the centuries. However, my unhappiness with the New Mass is purely personal. I do not share my friend's view that the New Mass was an "error" of Pope Paul VI. Like most Traditionalists, my friend blames Pope Paul VI, the one who gave us the Novus Ordo, or the Ordinary Form of the Mass as it is now called, for being one of the major contributors to the spiritual crisis in the Church. And like all good Traditionalists, my friend said the real problem goes back to Vatican II, which he has basically condemned as the root of all evils in the Church. Anyone who reads my blog knows that even though I call myself a Traditionalist, I have no problem with Vatican II. Many claim that because Vatican II was a pastoral council as opposed to a doctrinal counsel, we don't have to accept it. The Vatican II documents were signed by the Pope in his capacity as Vicar of Christ, therefore making them part of the Magesterium. We must accept this just as we do all official teachings of the Church.

Yet, my friend is certainly right that there is a major crisis in the church that has been ongoing for 40 years. But what really was the catalyst for this crisis? Was it Pope Paul VI and his introduction of the New Mass, with its roots in Vatican II? Does this mean that a pope - the Vicar of Christ, the divinely appointed Head of Christ's Mystical Body on earth - can be wrong and that not only can we, but we actually should question his decisions?

I did a lengthy post on Vatican II entitled, "Vatican II: Blessing Or Curse?" I don't want to rehash this subject, so if you're interested, you can read it here. In this post I lay out the thesis that the root of the spiritual problems we see in the church today, and actually all throughout the world, can be traced back not to Vatican II but to Humanae Vitae.  I quoted from Dr. Ralph McInerny's book on this subject, "What Went Wrong With Vatican II?" in which he explains very clearly and logically that Vatican II is not to blame  for the spiritual crisis we are experiencing, but that the cause of the crisis is the rejection by so many in the Church, including clergy, of Pope Paul VI's encyclical condemning the use of artificial birth control. Interestingly, the conversation I had with my friend today was in front of an abortion clinic where we were praying. As I said to him, we would not even have been standing there if so many in the church had not rejected Humanae Vitae.

Everyone looks at Vatican II as the beginning of the current spiritual crisis we see in the church, but they all seem to forget about the real spiritual crisis of the 20th Century, and that is the rejection of Humanae Vitae in 1968.  Historians all agree that 1968 was a watershed year in the history of the world.  That is when everything began to change.

Here is a sample screenshot of the results of searching for "1968 Watershed Year".  As you can see, there were 219,000 results:

From one website entitled phinnweb.org

1968 was a watershed year, the year when the 60s optimism with its utopian hippie dreams and hopes of social change for the better future started to turn sour. Nothing that came after that would ever be the same as what had come before. It was a year of deep tragedy, pain and anger, but also a year of remarkable social upheaval.

Historians naturally would never consider the acceptance or rejection of a Papal Encyclical as a momentous event in the history of man.  But outside of the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ, nothing has ever had a more profound impact on the direction of the entire world than the rejection of Humanae Vitae.  It is the cause of almost all the turmoil and evil we see happening around us.  The rejection of this most important encyclical has resulted in the deaths of untold hundreds of millions of unborn babies around the world (35,000 per day in China alone), the acceptance of homosexuality, the meteoric rise in sexually transmitted disease, the AIDS crisis, the rise in cancer among women directly caused by birth control and abortion, the overall general destruction of the family which is the foundation and building block of all societies, and even the sexual abuse crisis in the Church and around the world, to name just a few of the horrific consequences.

Credit:  www.gracepickerington.org 

When so many in the Church rejected Humanae Vitae, they did not reject Pope Paul VI. The rejected the Lord and Master of the Universe. They rejected their Creator.  They told Him they can make their own decisions, and they don't need Him interfering in their lives. As I have mentioned in previous posts, this has resulted in our Lord allowing us to wander in the spiritual wilderness, just as He allowed ancient Israel to wander in the desert wilderness when they rejected Him at Mt. Sinai and turned to other gods. Our Lord promised He would never leave the Church, and that is true to this day and will be true to the end of time. But the rejection of Humanae Vitae was, in reality, a rejection of Jesus Christ. That is the moment when a great number literally turned their backs and walked away from God and the guidance and protection of the Holy Spirit.

The spiritual chaos and confusion that we see in the church today is not the result of "papal error". It is the result of God's people turning away from Him. It started in 1968, a year that secular historians note as an unprecedented year of upheaval and change. It is now 45 years later and the world is on the verge of complete moral collapse, just as Venerable Pope Paul VI predicted.

Here in the United States for the past several presidential elections we have been told that each one is "the most important election in our lifetime." The election of a pope is always a momentous event, but I think it is safe to say that the papal conclave set to start on Tuesday, March 12, 2013, is possibly the most important papal conclave in the 2000 year history of the Church, dwarfing the significance of any presidential election. His Holiness, Benedict XVI, said his decision to abdicate was not just a personal decision "to retire" but the result of a revelation from God. As he said in his last Angelus message on February 24:

I hear this Word of God addressed to me in a special way during this moment of my life. Thank you! The Lord is calling me to “scale the mountain,” to dedicate myself still more to prayer and to meditation. But this does not mean abandoning the Church – on the contrary, if God asks this of me, it is to serve the Church with the same dedication and the same love with which I have tried to do so hitherto, but in a way that is more adapted to my age and my strength.

The New York Post had an amusing headline that read "Pope Gives God Two Weeks Notice."  But as Pope Benedict XVI told us, it was Our Lord who made this decision.  Jesus could have easily made the decision to install a new pope by ending Pope Benedict XVI's life.  But creating exceptional circumstances completely focuses the world's attention on the election of a new pope.  It seems Jesus wanted this papal election done under extraordinary circumstances to draw attention to the fact that this is not an ordinary papal election.

The man who will be chosen to sit in the Chair of Peter will quite literally have the weight of the world upon his shoulders.  It is every Pope's role to walk the road of Calvary, but this time, I believe, the Church will be walking that road with him.  I think Our Lord wants us to know that the Chair of Peter is not being filled "in the ordinary course of business".  We live in extraordinary times of crushing evil, and it will take a man of extraordinary spiritual strength to lead the Church.  We will not know the full significance of all of this until we can look back on it.

One thing I think we can be sure of is that whoever is elected as our next Holy Father will be facing tremendous persecution and opposition.  He will be under immense pressure to "modernize" the Church and basically turn it into another protestant denomination, in effect destroying the Catholic Church.  We have a firm promise from Jesus Christ that He will never allow this to happen.  The Church has survived incredible odds over its 2000 year history and it will survive this.  But that doesn't mean we will do so without great suffering.

It will be more important than ever before that the Church be completely loyal and supportive of our next Holy Father, whoever he may be.  In his homily on Ash Wednesday, Pope Benedict XVI made the following statement:

The readings that have been proclaimed provide us with ideas that, with the grace of God, we are called to make concrete attitudes and behaviors during this Lent. The Church proposes to us, first, the strong appeal that the prophet Joel addressed to the people of Israel, "Thus says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning" (2:12). Please note the phrase "with all my heart," which means from the center of our thoughts and feelings, from the roots of our decisions, choices and actions, with a gesture of total and radical freedom. But is this return to God possible? Yes, because there is a force that does not reside in our hearts, but that emanates from the heart of God. It is the power of his mercy.

The prophet says, further: "Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, rich in faithful love, ready to repent of evil" (v. 13). The return to the Lord is possible as a 'grace', because it is the work of God and the fruit of that faith that we place in His mercy. But this return to God becomes a reality in our lives only when the grace of God penetrates to our inmost being and shakes it, giving us the power to "rend our hearts." The same prophet causes these words from God to resonate: "Rend your hearts and not your garments" (v. 13). In fact, even today, many are ready to "rend their garments" before scandals and injustices - of course, made by others - but few seem willing to act on their own "heart", on their own conscience and their own intentions, letting the Lord transform, renew and convert.

Finally, the prophet focuses on the prayers of the priests, who, with tears in their eyes, turn to God, saying: "Do not expose your heritage to the reproach and derision of the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, 'Where is their God?' "(v.17). This prayer makes us reflect on the importance of the testimony of faith and Christian life of each of us and our community to show the face of the Church and how that face is sometimes disfigured. I am thinking in particular about sins against the unity of the Church, the divisions in the ecclesial body. Living Lent in a more intense and evident ecclesial communion, overcoming individualism and rivalry, is a humble and precious sign for those who are far from the faith or indifferent.

We should not be talking about or even thinking about "anti Popes". Our Lord told us in Matthew 16:18 that the Church is built on the "Rock", on St. Peter and all his successors, and there is nothing that can destroy that. "And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." We either trust in the guidance of the Holy Spirit or we don't. And if we refuse to put our trust there, then we have put ourselves outside of the Church and outside the safety and salvation found only in the Church.

When the next pope is elected, all of the Cardinals assembled will personally pledge their loyalty and obedience to him. His Holiness, Benedict XVI, has already done so. And we must follow their lead. The Church will survive, despite the tempestuous storms surrounding it. The question is, will we as individuals survive. The answer: only if we are under the authority of the Vicar of Christ.

What Is The Cause of the Crisis in the Church?

Christ has endowed the Church with the gift of infallibility, the highest level of participation in His teaching authority. “This infallibility extends as far as does the deposit of Divine Revelation; it also extends to those elements of doctrine, including morals, without which the saving truths of the faith cannot be preserved, explained, or observed” (CCC, n. 2035).  
Cardinal Raymond Burke

I have posted many times on this blog about the great crisis of faith we have been experiencing in the Church in the last several decades.  The very fact that 50% of Catholics voted for a pro-abortion, pro gay rights, anti-Catholic for president of the United States should tell us everything we need to know.  Women want to be priests, priests want to get married, Catholics support abortion and same sex marriage, Mass attendance is at all time lows.  Many in the Church, including many religious, i.e., the nuns on the bus, feel they are completely justified in questioning and even disobeying the authority of the Magesterium.  But it isn't just the United States.  For example, Ireland, once the most Catholic country in the world, has had a major drop off in Mass attendance and those faithful to the church.  The entire country is down to one seminary and the continued existence of that one is in question.  Similar circumstances can be found throughout the entire world.

I was recently listening to Michael Voris, and I found one Vortex episode particularly interesting.  Michael asked for viewer participation in a survey to determine  the top cause of the crisis we have witnessed in the Church in the past 50 years. He started out by stating that there are many causes to the Catholic Church crisis:

The crisis in the Church in the west has many causes and these causes create NEW causes which sometimes become responsible for even MORE problems that the original cause.

We’ve heard from hundreds of priests and seminarians .. as well as sisters and brothers and deacons .. even some bishops on what they each are the most concerned with. We’ve communicated with thousands and thousands of laity .. a lot of it face to face. So .. as we said .. we have put together a list of the top 10 most frequently pointed to causes of the crisis in the Church and here they are .. in no special order:

The 10 ten causes listed by Michael Voris are:

1. False Ecumenism – (too much protestant influence in liturgies and life of the Church)

2. Liberal Social Justice Agenda (including lack of attention to Pro-life issue)

3.  Rebellion Among Clergy (being disobedient to the Magisterium)

4.  Secular Relativism (attacks against the faith from outside the Church)

5.  Cafeteria Catholics (indifferent and lukewarm Catholics)

6. Abuses at Novus Ordo Mass (lack of reverence, understanding of the Sacrifice)

7. Lack of Zeal by Bishops (more interested in earthly concerns than spiritual)

8.  Unwillingness/Cowardice in Confronting Dissent (a “don’t rock the boat” attitude)

9. The Homosexual Clergy network (the infiltration into parish life, seminaries and orders)

10. Poor Lay Education and Priestly Formation (on all levels, school, college, RCIA, seminary)

These are all extremely serious problems in the Church and put millions of souls at risk.  I see the problems listed above as spiritual cancers that have infected the Body of Christ, and just as cancer destroys us physically, these spiritual cancers are destroying millions of souls, robbing them of eternal life.  The Oxford dictionary defines cancer as "a disease caused by an uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in a part of the body."  Cancer is an organic disease, which means something has gone wrong with an organ or organs of the body.  Cancer does not occur without a reason.  There must be something to cause "an uncontrolled division of abnormal cells." All of these spiritual cancers attacking the church did not just spontaneously happen.

My question is this:  what has caused this explosion of spiritual cancer in the Church?

Raymond Cardinal Burke

I found a wonderful posting that I believes helps to answer this question,  It is a presentation given on July 15, 2006 in Louisville, Kentucky by then Archbishop, now Cardinal, Raymond Burke on the importance of "Obedience to The Magisterium and the Responsibility of the Bishop Toward the Laity."  Cardinal Burke was the bishop of St. Louis at the time he gave this talk.  He is now Cardinal Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest judicial authority in the Catholic Church.  I am personally a huge fan of His Eminence.

Archbishop Burke started out with a very profound statement in which he says that our very relationship with Jesus Christ and our eternal salvation are bound up in the Magesterium.  This should catch our attention immediately:

The relationship of the Magisterium to our eternal salvation lies at the very foundation of our life in Christ.

"The Roman Pontiff and the Bishops are servants of Christ

and of His Holy Word. The Magisterium 'teaches

only what has been handed on to it. At the command and 

with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this 

devotedly, guards it with dedication, 

and expounds it faithfully' (Dei Verbum, n. 10b)."

His Eminence further explained how the Magesterium, which is vital to our salvation, has become so marginalized in the lives of Catholics:

In a world which prizes, above all else, individualism and self-determination, the Christian is easily tempted to view the Magisterium in relationship to his individualism and self-pursuit. In other words, he is tempted to relativize the authority of the Magisterium. The phenomenon today is popularly known as “cafeteria Catholicism.”  [This statement supports #5 (Cafeteria Catholics) of Michael Voris' list.] 

Archbishop Burke defines the "Magesterium" :

The entire content of our faith, what Saint Paul in his First and Second Letters to Timothy calls the deposit of faith, is found in Sacred Scripture and Tradition (1Timothy 6:20; and 2Timothy 1:12-14). The faith, in its integrity, has been entrusted to the Church by Christ through the ministry of the Apostles. The deposit of faith is the teaching of the Apostles and the living of that teaching in the life of prayer and the sacramental life, and the witness of the teaching in the moral life. The foundation is the sound doctrine which finds its highest expression in the Sacraments, above all the Holy Eucharist, and which is witnessed in the holiness of life of the believer (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church (hereafter CCC), n. 84).

When Christ gave Peter the
Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven,
He established the Magesterium

The Magtesterium  - the teaching authority of the Church - has been given directly by Jesus Christ to the Church.  Since the Magesterium is "the entire content of our faith. . . entrusted to the Church by Christ through the ministry of the Apostles," everything we think, say and do should be completely in line with the Magesterium.  This point is emphasized even further in the next statement from Archbishop Burke:

The responsibility for the deposit of the faith and its transmission in every age belongs “to the living teaching office of the Church alone” (Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum, “On Divine Revelation,” 18 November 1965, n. 10b). The “living teaching office” or Magisterium of the Church, exercised by the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops in communion with him, has its authority from our Lord Jesus Christ. Christ has conferred upon the Apostles, with Peter as their Head, and their successors, the Bishops, with the Successor of Peter as their head, the authority to teach authentically (CCC, n. 85).

The Magesterium gets its teaching authority directly from the Head of the Church:  Jesus Christ.  This means that to follow the Magesterium of the Catholic Church, the "living teaching office of the Church", is to follow Christ.  Conversely, to reject the Magesterium - to reject the authority of the Bishops and the Pope - is to reject not just the Church, but to reject God in the second Person of the Trinity.

Archbishop Burke emphasizes the fact that the Magesterium is the voice of Christ on this earth:

The Roman Pontiff and the Bishops are servants of Christ and of His Holy Word. The Magisterium “teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devotedly, guards it with dedication, and expounds it faithfully” (Dei Verbum, n. 10b). The Roman Pontiff and the Bishops in communion with him teach only what is contained in the deposit of faith as divinely revealed truth (CCC, n. 86).

The Magisterium, in obedience to Christ and by the power of the particular grace of the Holy Spirit, interprets the Word of God, contained in the Sacred Scriptures and Tradition, in matters of both faith and morals. The Roman Pontiff and the Bishops in communion with him define the dogmas of the faith, that is, the truths contained in the deposit of faith and “truths having a necessary connection with these” (CCC, n. 88).   

The Magesterium leads the
Church just as the Pillar of Cloud
and Fire lead the Israelites

Our loving and merciful Lord did not leave us alone on this earth to try to figure out on our own the best way to serve him, as the Protestants believe.  In the Old Testament of the Bible, we are told of how God led the Israelites through the desert with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.  This directly foreshadowed the Magesterium of the Church.  Since He founded His Church 2000 years ago, Jesus Christ has led His Mystical Body through the spiritual desert on this earth by means of "the 'living teaching office' or Magisterium of the Church, exercised by the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops in communion with him."

Archbishop Burke gives a further explanation into the workings of the Magesterium:

The Magisterium is exercised in solemn declarations and in “catechesis and preaching” (CCC, n. 2033). The Roman Pontiff and the Bishops in communion with him are, in the words of the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium, “authentic teachers, that is, teachers endowed with the authority of Christ, who preach the faith to the people entrusted to them, the faith to be believed and put into practice” (Second Vatican Ecumenical Council: Lumen gentium, n. 25).

Archbishop Burke would seem to take strong exception with those who say teachings of Vatican II are not part of the Magesterium and that we are not bound by them because Vatican II was pastoral and not doctrinal in nature.  As a side comment, it is interesting to note that Archbishop Burke constantly referred to the documents of Vatican II to show the authority of the Magesterium.  Archbishop Burke makes it plain in the following statement that all ecumenical councils are part of the Magesterium:

The Magisterium is either ordinary or extraordinary. The Ordinary Magisterium is all that the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops in communion with him teach. The Extraordinary Magisterium consists of the “definitions of the ecumenical councils or the ex cathedra definitions that the Popes might pronounce” (Louis Bouyer, Dictionary of Theology, tr. Charles Underhill Quinn, New York: Desclee Company, 1965, p. 290).

This is not something we can take lightly.  To turn away from the teachings of the Magesterium puts us in the same danger spiritually that the Israelites would have been in physically if they had not followed the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire at night.  They would have been subject to the dangers of wild animals and dangerous men intent on killing them.  The Israelites would have further been exposed to the inhospitable and life-threatening conditions of the desert itself.  They also would not receive the daily manna that was given to them directly from heaven. The Magesterium was given to us by Jesus Christ to protect us from the spiritual dangers in the world and to lead us to the true promised land:  eternity in the presence of the Beatific Vision.

When we reject the Magesterium, we put our souls in extreme peril, and that is as true for "traditional" Catholics as for "progressives."  This is why our Holy Father is insisting that the Society of St. Pius X accept all of the Second Vatican Council.  To allow them to reject any part of the Council is to allow them to reject the Magesterium, an act expressly forbidden by the Holy Spirit.  

Next, Archbishop Burke goes on to explain how and why the Magesterium is infallible.  The gift of infallibility of the Magesterium "extends as far as does the deposit of Divine Revelation; it also extends to those elements of doctrine, including morals, without which the saving truths of the faith cannot be preserved, explained, or observed” (CCC, n. 2035)."  The Magesterium, according to this statement, not only explains the "saving truths of the faith", but actually preserves them.

Further, the infallibility given to the Bishops and the Holy Father in teaching the Divine Truth is also given to the faithful when it comes to believing these truths so that the "whole body of the faithful cannot err in matters of belief".  The faithful's belief and acceptance of the Magesterium is just as much the work of the Holy Spirit as it is in the teaching of the Bishops and the Roman Pontiff:

The gift of infallibility, by which the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops in communion with Him, exercise most solemnly the teaching authority of Christ, refers to the all-generous gift of Christ to the Church by which the “whole body of the faithful cannot err in matters of belief” (Lumen gentium, n. 12). The gift is manifest in what is called the sensus fidei, which is the grace to give assent to the faith, poured out by Christ on all the faithful. The Magisterium guides the faithful by handing on to them “the faith, once for all delivered to the saints” (Lumen gentium, n. 12).

The faithful, inspired by the Holy Spirit dwelling within them “unfailingly [adhere] to this faith, [penetrate] it more deeply with right judgment, and [apply] it more fully in daily life” (Lumen gentium, n. 12). It is clear that the sensus fidei is not the foundation for some democratic form of Magisterium but a reflection of the fundamental and essential obedience to the Magisterium in the lives of the faithful.

The next statement by Archbishop Burke gives, I believe, the key to the crisis of faith that we have seen in the Church:

When Bishops and faithful obediently submit themselves in mind and heart to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, the perennial truth of the faith shines forth in the whole Church for the building up of the Body of Christ and the transformation of the world.  

I say that this statement is the key to understanding the crisis in the Church because the converse would also have to be true, that when the Bishops and faithful do not "obediently subject themselves in mind and heart to the promptings of the Holy Spirit", then the "perennial truth of the faith" will not shine forth and the Church and the world will be left in darkness and chaos.

Archbishop Burke shows us the consequences that arise when the bishops and the faithful do not "obediently subject themselves in mind and heart to the promptings of the Holy Spirit":

In what pertains to morals, in particular, the faithful “have the right to be instructed in the divine saving precepts that purify judgment and, with grace, heal wounded human reason” (CCC, n. 2037). At the same time, the faithful “have the duty of observing the constitutions and decrees conveyed by the legitimate authority of the Church” (CCC, n. 2037). The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us that even the disciplinary norms of the Church “call for docility in charity” (n. 2037). One cannot fail to observe the grave harm done in the Church and in her mission to the world by the lack of obedience to the disciplinary norms regarding the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy, the teaching of the faith and the right order of the individual communities of the faithful. Our Lord Himself cautioned us that our fidelity in little things is the indispensable condition to our fidelity in great things (Luke 16:10).   [This statement would seem to support #6 (Liturgical abuse), #7 (Lack of zeal by bishops) and #10 (poor Catechesis) of Michael Voris' list]

Archbishop Burke puts the major responsibility upon his fellow bishops:

When the shepherds of the flock are obedient to the Magisterium, entrusted to their exercise, then the members of the flock grow in obedience and proceed, with Christ, along the way of salvation. If the shepherd is not obedient, the flock easily gives way to confusion and errors. The shepherd must be especially attentive to the assaults of Satan who knows that, if he can strike the shepherd, the work of scattering the flock will be made easy (cf. Zechariah 13:7).  [This covers #3 (rebellion among the clergy) on the Voris list]

I would submit that the root cause of the cancerous growths in the Body of Christ and, by extension, throughout the world, can be summed up in one word:  sin.

Oh c'mon, you say. That's not the question. We want to know what causes people to turn away from church teachings.

Sin is both the the cause of all the ills in life we suffer and the result of our actions.  It can be either our personal sin or the sin of others.  Sin is what causes the growth of "abnormal cells."  Sin is when, like Satan, we say to God "Non Serviam",  "I will not serve."    Each sin we commit is a replay of the original sin of our first parents. We are taking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We are becoming our own magesterium, deciding for ourselves what is right and wrong, what is good and evil.  When we do that, like our first parents, we are cast out of the Garden of Eden to a greater or lesser extent, and we are on our own in a spiritual wilderness.  Disobedience to the Magesterium of the Church is sin, which leads to even greater sin in our lives until, if our sin is not repented of and absolved, we say to God as Satan did, "Non Serviam."

Since the time of Christ, our Lord has worked through only one Church, and has guaranteed that the teachings of that one church, the Catholic Church, are perfect.  This does not mean that the people in the Church are perfect.  Far from it.  But the one thing in this world that you can rely on with 100% certainty is the Magesterium - the teaching - of the Catholic Church.  You will never be led astray if you stay in line with the teachings of the Church.

Archbishop Burke tells us that obedience to faith is "the disposition of mind and heart to believe all that God has revealed to us and to do all that He asks of us."  He goes on to say that obedience to the Magesterium, which is "the guardian and teacher of the faith, is the fundamental disposition of the baptized and confirmed Catholic."  In other words, disobedience to the Magesterium destroys our faith, and as Hebrews 11:6 tells us, "without faith it is impossible to please God."

A glaring example of how problems of morality
stem from disobedience to the Magesterium

Archbishop Burke tells us that "the moral life flows from faith in God.  It is the 'obedience of faith' in action. . . . When we fail morally, we also fail in faith. . . . Where there are problems of chastity, there are problems of obedience."  If we live a life of faith, then we are living a life of obedience to the Magesterium, which produces a moral life.  Immorality is a sign of disobedience to the faith and thus, to the Magesterium.   Therefore, it is wrong to blame the Church for the immorality found in the clergy.  In fact, the answer to immorality among the clergy is not to change the teachings of the Church by allowing the clergy to marry, as so many argue, but for them to return to "obedience of faith" and obedience to the Magesterium.

The moral life flows from our faith in God. It is the “obedience of faith” in action. The first tablet of the Ten Commandments governs our right relationship with God, which makes possible our right relationship with others and the world, governed by the second tablet. When we fail morally, we also fail in faith (CCC, nn. 2087-2088). I often recall the words of a sage professor of Canon Law, who taught me the Church’s discipline regarding clerics. More than once, he told the class: “Where there are problems of chastity, there are problems of obedience.” Our rebellion against the moral truth is a rebellion against God and all that He teaches us. 

Archbishop Burke readily admits that obedience to the Magesterium is no walk in the park.  It has always been difficult and in many ways, is even more difficult in our modern times:

Obedience to the Magisterium is difficult for man in every age. The practice of the “obedience of faith” is difficult to master. The difficulty comes both from within us and from outside of us. We suffer the effects of the sin of our First Parents, which fundamentally was a sin of prideful disobedience, of rebellion against God’s will. The grace of the Holy Spirit, poured forth into our soul through Baptism, strengthened and increased in our soul through Confirmation, and nourished within our soul through the Holy Eucharist, alone helps us to overcome our inherited tendency to rebellion and disobedience.

Archbishop Burke goes on to explain the difficulties we face in our modern culture in being obedient to the Magesterium:

The world around us, the culture in which we live, to the degree that it is has succumbed to Satan’s deceptions, is a source of strong temptation for us. Our culture, in fact, has been described as “godless” both by the late and most beloved Pope John Paul II and by Pope Benedict XVI. Our culture teaches us to act as if God did not exist. At the same time, it teaches a radical individualism and self-interest which lead us away from the love of God and from the love of one another.

Now Archbishop Burke makes a very important point.  He points out that our obedience to the Magisterium often is "not total but selective."  This is where "cafeteria Catholicism" comes from.  This is the accusation Traditionalists often make against Progressives, and that, sadly, is often a very true charge.  But Traditionalists must realize that they are not above this error, either.  They can do the "traditional Catholic thing", but if they are speaking out against the Magesterium, they are in as much spiritual danger as the Progressives:

Often the lack of obedience to the Magisterium is not total but selective. Our culture teaches us to believe what is convenient and to reject what is difficult for us or challenges us. Thus, we can easily fall into “cafeteria Catholicism,” a practice of the faith, which picks and chooses what part of the deposit of faith to believe and practice.

Archbishop Burke now touches upon what I believe is one of the main sources of the crisis in the Church.  It is not Vatican II, but the rejection and disobedience to Humanae Vitae:

A most tragic example of the lack of obedience of faith, also on the part of certain Bishops, was the response of many to the Encyclical Letter Humanae vitae of Pope Paul VI, published on July 25, 1968. The confusion which resulted has led many Catholics into habits of sin in what pertains to the procreation and education of human life.

Archbishop Burke now goes on to tell us how to obey the faith:

To meet the challenges to the practice of the “obedience of faith,” we must draw upon the grace of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. 

How do we draw upon the Holy Spirit?  Archbishop Burke gives us two key steps.  First of all, we must have a life of prayer, "an indispensable condition for being able to obey God’s commandments.  It is only through communion with God in prayer that we come to know His will in our lives and that we find the courage to do what God asks of us."  Archbishop Burke emphasizes contemplative prayer, which is "hearing the Word of God."  He tells us this is not a passive act, as it may appear from the outside, but "attentiveness is the obedience of faith, the unconditional acceptance of a servant, and the loving commitment of a child."  It is our participation with Christ in saying to the Father, "Not my will but yours be done", and with Mary when she said "Yes" to being the Mother of God.

Then we must do something that is pretty much considered anathema in our world today.  We must live a life of discipline and sacrifice, which means saying no to our own desires and wants on a fairly regular basis.  We must make sacrifice a regular part of our lives.  These sacrifices are "our union with Christ in His Eucharistic Sacrifice throughout the day. We must embrace those sacrifices, both small and great, which are necessary if we are truly to love God and our neighbor (CCC, nn. 2099-2100, and 2340). If we are to meet the great challenges in the following of Christ, we must discipline our thoughts and desires, so that they become more Christlike. The more we practice self-discipline, the easier it becomes for us to grow in the obedience of faith."  To understand more fully what it means to make daily sacrifices in our lives, I cannot recommend highly enough the autobiography of St. Therese of Liseux, "The Story of A Soul."  I did a post on her "little way" which is a life of sacrifice in our daily lives.  You can read the post here.

Prayer and sacrifice will lead us directly to obedience of faith.  In fact, Archbishop Burke says that it is impossible to have a life of obedience of faith without prayer and sacrifice:

Prayer and sacrifice necessarily lead us to attend to our growth in the life of the virtues. Prayer and sacrifice both unveil for us the virtues which make obedience possible and win for us the grace of the Holy Spirit to grow and develop in those virtues, for example, justice, prudence, temperance, fortitude, humility, chastity, and, above all, charity (CCC, nn. 2340-2342).

Prayer, sacrifice and the practice of the Christian virtues lead us to hear God’s Word ever more attentively in our lives and to put it into practice, without hesitation or compromise. There is no other way to know God’s will in our lives and to do it, to know who we are and to be true to our identity. Clearly, they are the most important heritage for us to hand on to our children and young people.

Archbishop Burke does not hold back but tells us plainly that our obedience of faith could ultimately lead to martyrdom, especially as our culture becomes more and more anti-Christian, as the trend now is:

The obedience of faith obliges us in all situations of life, also in situations in which it is most difficult to do what God asks of us. Ultimately, the obedience of faith could require martyrdom. In his Encyclical Letter Veritatis splendor, “Regarding Certain Fundamental Questions of the Church’s Moral Teaching” of August 6, 1993, our late and most beloved Holy Father Pope John Paul II taught us that there can be no compromise in the obedience to the moral teaching of the Magisterium:

Even in the most difficult situations man must respect the norm of morality so that he can be obedient to God’s holy commandments and consistent with his own dignity as a person. Certainly, maintaining a harmony between freedom and truth occasionally demands uncommon sacrifices, and must be won at a high price: it can even involve martyrdom (n. 102a).

How often our beloved Father John A. Hardon, S.J., taught us that living the Catholic faith today in our totally secularized society demands a readiness to give the ultimate witness of martyrdom!

Going way back to the beginning of this post, what is the answer to Michael Voris' question on the cause of the crisis of faith in the Church?  It is all of the reasons he listed, which are in reality the result of rejection of the Magesterium of the Church.  The Magesterium is our Pillar of Cloud and Fire to lead us through the spiritual desert in which we live.  It is the means by which God protects us from the mortal dangers that surround us.  To step outside of the protection of the Magesterium is to place ourselves outside the protection of our Lord and Savior, and to subject our souls to the very real danger of eternal hellfire.

A crisis of faith boils down to a crisis of authority, and takes us right back to the Garden of Eden - shall we eat of the Tree of Life, which is the Magesterium of the Catholic Church, or do we become our own Magesterium and eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and find ourselves cast out into spiritual darkness.

Archbishop Burke concludes with the following statements, in which he tells us that there is no other way to salvation than obedience to faith, which is obedience to the Magesterium:

It is my hope that these few reflections will help us all to understand the fundamental importance of obedience to the faith for our eternal salvation and the irreplaceable service of the Bishops in leading us all to an ever purer and stronger obedience. There is no other way to salvation than hearing God’s Word and putting it into practice with all our being. The Letter to the Hebrews which teaches us, in a particular way, the “obedience of faith” reminds us that our Lord Himself “learned obedience from what He suffered” and thus became the source of eternal life, of eternal salvation, for us all. We ask for the obedience of Christ each time we pray to God the Father in the words which our Savior Himself taught to us: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” We pray through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that we may imitate her belief that God’s promises to us will be fulfilled.

I conclude with the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, inspired by our prayer, Christ’s prayer in us, that God’s will be done in all things. How much more reason have we sinful creatures to learn obedience – we who in Him have become children of adoption. We ask our Father to unite our will to His Son’s, in order to fulfill His will, His plan of salvation for the life of the world. We are radically incapable of this, but united with Jesus and with the power of His Holy Spirit, we can surrender our will to Him and decide to choose what His Son has always chosen: to do what is pleasing to the Father (n. 2825).

May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church and Queen of the Apostles, intercede for us, that we may grow in the obedience of faith, in obedience to the Magisterium, for our own salvation and for the salvation of the world.

"Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church." 

-St. Ignatius of Antioch

Pope Paul VI To Be Declared Venerable

Pope Paul VI

I just recently saw the headline that Pope Paul VI is to be declared venerable on December 20.  I searched around the Internet to look for commentary on this story, and surprisingly at first found next to nothing.  The following is from Romereports.com and repeated on several different websites:

December 14, 2012. (Romereports.com) (-VIDEO ONLY-) On December 20, Benedict XVI will declare former Pope Paul VI venerable. Cardinals belonging to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints approved on December 10 a report on the heroic virtues of Paul VI.

The former Pope had a very important role in the Second Vatican Council. The acceptance of his heroic virtues falls exactly 50 years since the start of the Second Vatican Council.

The beatification of Pope John Paul II caused no small controversy in the Church.  More than a few of my traditional Catholic friends had some serious problems with it, feeling John Paul II had not been faithful to the teachings of the Church.  Many Traditionalists feel even more strongly that Pope Paul VI was the cause of many evils in the Church because of, among other things, his introduction of the Novus Ordo Mass in 1969.

At first I didn't see any reaction from the Catholic blogosphere on this story, but now the first rumblings are starting to emerge with a posting from A Reluctant Sinner which can be found here.  Many felt that the beatification of John Paul II was basically a political move on the part of the Vatican, and A Reluctant Sinner seems to feel this is also true in regard to Pope Paul VI:

The near infallible Andre Tornielli ('Vatican Insider',La Stampa) reported last week that the Congregation for the Causes of Saints has “given the go ahead for [Pope] Paul VI’s beatification.” On 10 December, it seems that the Congregation’s cardinals and bishops voted unanimously in favour of recognising the ‘heroic virtues’ of Giovanni Battista Montini -- who was Pope from 1963-78.

This means it is highly likely that Pope Benedict XVI will now promulgate a decree of heroic virtues, granting the Conciliar and post-Conciliar Pope Paul the title ‘Venerable’. It is expected that the Holy Father will issue this decree on or soon after 20 December, when he is next scheduled to meet Cardinal Angelo Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

According to Tornielli, Pope Benedict XVI is very keen to beatify his predecessor before the end of the Year of Faith, which closes on the Feast of Christ the King 2013. The Italian Vaticanologist explains that 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of Montini’s election as Pope and is also the 35th anniversary of his death. He also reports that there are already two miracles attributed to Pope Paul VI’s intercession – one involving the healing of an unborn child and the other the miraculous and unexplained restoration to health of a nun who had a tumour.

It is my understanding that when the Pope beatifies or canonizes someone, this is an act of infallibility, not a calculated political move.  We may not understand or intellectually accept what the Pope does, but the fact is that the Holy Spirit will not allow the Vicar of Christ to mislead the Church.  We either believe this or we don't.  Mt. 16:19 tells us this: "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.."

This being the case, I'm not quite sure how Reluctant Sinner can make the following statement:

Though no expert in the rather eccentric[?] field of canonisation [thank you for this admission], I am a bit uneasy at the way modern popes seem obsessed with raising their immediate predecessors to the Altars [and as a lay person, it matters what you think because . . .?]. It makes me think of the Roman Emperors, who would more often than not deify the Caesar who had been reigning just before them. Sometimes, and for the sake of decency, then, I feel it might be better to be a bit less hasty about these things – there is nothing wrong in waiting centuries before declaring someone a saint. Fast-track beatifications and canonisations can, sometimes at least, prove to be a source of confusion.

St. Gregory the Great

Hmmm.   Canonization is an "eccentric field"?  Plus, I have to admit, I'm very uncomfortable with comparing the Vicar of Christ beatifying his predecessor with Roman Emperors deifying Caesar.  Is it really the job of the laity to offer our opinion about what the Pope should do "for the sake of decency" and that we feel "it might be better to be a bit less hasty about these things"?  Reluctant Sinner feels "there is nothing wrong in waiting centuries before declaring someone a saint."  I wonder how Reluctant Sinner would have felt had he been alive at the time of the canonization of St. Anthony of Padua, who was canonized less than a year after his death, or St. Gregory the Great, who was declared a saint on the day of his death.  Does Reluctant Sinner feel these were "sources of confusion"?

After offering these opinions, Reluctant Sinner admits that he knows very little about "Montini" as he refers to Pope Paul VI.  (I find it interesting that those who are critical of popes will often refer to them using their surnames instead of their papal titles, a practice I find very disrespectful):

I do not know much about Montini. To be honest, I have never really felt the urge to seek his heavenly intercession, and I don't know many who have. What did he do that was so saintly, bar being pope, which is not a guarantee of personal holiness? Of course, he did publish Humanae Vitae in the face of strong opposition from liberals and modernists in the Church, and he also recognised that Marian devotion had all but disappeared under his watch, and tried correcting this tragic loss. He also appeared to have been a simple man, and a man of prayer.

Is Reluctant Sinner telling us that no one should be beatified or canonized unless he or she is popular among the Church laity?  I didn't realize that was a requirement.  I will admit that it is rather generous of Reluctant Sinner to give some credit to Pope Paul VI for doing a "few" good things, such as publishing Humanae Vitae, which as I have stated on this blog, is arguably the most important document of the 20th Century.

Liturgical abuse which become all too common in the Church

Ah, and now come the arguments I was waiting for.

But, it could be argued that the Church suffered near collapse during his pontificate, as the decrees of the Second Vatican Council were implemented in a way we now know to have been contrary to the real mind of the Church. Liturgical abuses went viral soon after the promulgation of the Missal of Paul VI, whilst Marxist ideology and lack of discipline infiltrated se  minaries, and priests and nuns abandoned their vocations in droves. And, of course, traditional Catholics were virtually persecuted within their own Church during Montini's [again using his surname] pontificate, as those attached to the 'old Mass' had to metaphorically take to the catacombs! (I am not suggesting he was behind the purge of the old rite [that's kind of you], just that it seemed most virulent and unchecked during his reign.)

As we know, Paul VI was aware of the chaos that was causing such confusion to the faithful in the 1960s and 70s, which led so many souls out of the Church. He was concerned about the dark clouds that had blackened the post-Conciliar skies. He famously announced, after going into a sort of trance[?] during his homily (see here) for the Feast of St Peter and St Paul 1972, that: ‘By some fissure, the smoke of Satan has entered into the Church.’ He therefore knowingly tried to steer the Barque of Peter through some of the stormiest seas the Church has ever seen. Some say he often went off course, whilst others think he did what was needed at the time.

The Magesterium of the
Church has been faithfully
guided by the Holy Spirit
since the first Pentecost

"Some say he went off course"?  Why would we listen to anyone who makes such a statement and, even more to the point, why would you repeat it?  We were promised by our Lord Himself that the Vicar of Christ cannot "go off course."  That is not to say that he cannot personally jump the track, but he can never lead the Church astray.  See above, Matthew 16:19.

Reluctant Sinner goes on to say that "It is a Christian hope that all members of the Church, all the baptised, will one day become saints."  He admits that there are many saints in heaven who are unknown to us on earth. He also says that most souls will have to spend time in Purgatory and that not all men are saved, which is undoubtedly true. But what has all of this to do with the Vicar of Christ declaring someone venerable?

Reluctant Sinner then goes on to give us more of his opinion:

Having said all that, then, I find it odd that nearly every pope from the time of the Second Vatican Council onwards has been fast-tracked to sainthood. Surely, there are holier popes than these -- ones who have been hanging about, waiting for canonisation, or just some form of recognition, for centuries? What about Blessed Urban II, when will he finally be canonised? What about Leo XIII, a great man indeed, or the angelic Venerable Pope Pius XII? And what about all the other saintly bishops, priests, religious, and lay men and women who already have popular cults, but whose canonisation processes have ground to a bureaucratic halt?

Again, this makes it sound like canonization has become a political move rather than an infallible act of the Pope, which I find to be a very disconcerting statement.  It is not the job of the laity to decide who should or should not be canonized.  I believe offering opinions such as these shed no light whatsoever on the subject and serve only to cause more division in the Church.

And now Reluctant Sinner give us what has become the stereotypical description about the state of the Church since Vatican II.

Since Vatican II, the Church has suffered greatly. The past 50 years have brought little light and an awful amount of darkness and distress for the Catholic Church. Surely, then, it seems a little strange to be rushing to raise some men to the Altars whose pontificates were not that great compared to some others. In centuries to come, will it be said that Papa Montini's [Papa Montini?] reign was one of truly happy memory?

Pope Paul VI
wearing Papal Tiara

Who are we, the laity, to decide which pontificates are "greater" than others?  And what's with the disrespectful "Papa Montini" crack?

Even though I labeled it "stereotypical", I certainly agree that the last 50 years of the Church have been a time of great upheaval.  I have done other posts on this blog about what some say is an unprecedented crisis of faith in the Church.

This crisis has produced basically two groups seemingly in direct opposition to one another, but I feel are, in reality, two sides of the same coin.  Progressives see the questioning of authority and the breakdown of traditional beliefs and practices in the Church as a good thing.  They feel it is time to bring the church up to date and more in line with contemporary needs and mores of our modern culture.

Then, of course, there are the "Traditionalists" at the other end of the spectrum who feel that anything that happened from Vatican II on is suspect and almost no one in the Church hierarchy, from the Pope on down, is to be trusted.  Some seem to believe that Our Lord has basically lost control of His own Church.  They may not realize that this is what they are saying, but when we read such commentary as we have seen here from Reluctant Sinner, there can be no other conclusion.  To even suggest that a pope "went off course" is to call Jesus Christ a liar, who told us that the gates of hell will never prevail against the Church.

The unifying factor between these two groups is rejection of authority.

Since we know that the Pope cannot go against the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we have to ask why we have seen all these troubling events.  Why has our Lord allowed these things to happen in the Church?  Why is the Church of 2012 (almost 2013) seemingly so different from the Church of 1962?

I believe that our Lord has given us the answer to this question in the Old Testament, more specifically in the ancient Israelites' journey from Egypt, where they had been held as slaves, to the Promised Land, a land "flowing with milk and honey".

Moses parting the Red Sea

Moses, who was chosen to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, was most definitely a man of God.  Yet the Israelites, under Moses' guidance, were constantly rebelling against God and being punished for it.  The first sign of rebellion among the Israelites happened as soon as they departed from Egypt.  God, under the leadership of Moses, led the Israelites out of Egypt straight to the Red Sea, putting the Israelites between the Red Sea and Pharaoh's army, which was in hot pursuit.

From Exodus 14:

¹⁰ As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord. ¹¹ They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? ¹² Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”

Now granted, things did not look good for the Israelites.  It looked like their choice was to drown in the Red Sea or be killed by Pharaoh's army.  But remember, they had just seen tremendous miracles that caused Pharaoh to allow them to leave.  They had just gone through the first Passover when the first born of all creatures, both human and animal, in the entire land of Egypt were destroyed by the angel of death, save for the Israelites, who were not touched.  Despite having just seen the Hand of God in freeing them from slavery to the Egyptians, the Israelites started moaning and complaining and accusing Moses, who was chosen by God, of leading them directly to their deaths.

Are we really any different than the ancient Israelites?  Our Lord came down from heaven, took on the form of a man, died and rose from the dead, freed us from slavery to the devil and to our own fallen nature, and gave us the Gift of the Holy Spirit, who is the Third Person of God, to guide, lead and comfort us at all times.  He gave the Keys to the Kingdom to Peter and all of his successors and promised that the gates of hell would never prevail against the Church.  In 2000 years of history great nations have risen and fallen, and the Church has persevered, always coming through the ashes stronger than before.

Yet, like the Israelites who, as soon as they were faced with difficulty immediately forgot all the Lord had done for them, so we too forget all that the Lord has done for us in the last 2000 years: the great miracles and saints, the unswerving protection and guidance.  We moan and complain and accuse the one chosen and led by the Holy Spirit of basically leading us to our spiritual deaths.

"But," some say, "what about all of the terrible things that have happened in the past 50 years?  Pope Paul VI basically dismantled 2000 years of church history.  And now we're going to canonize this 'Montini' guy?  This is not venerable but scandalous!"

So why would our Lord, who promised that the gates of hell would never prevail against the Church, allow so much scandal to occur?

Again, the answer can be found with the ancient Israelites.

Israelites worshiping the golden calf

Shortly after God rescued the Israelites from Pharaoh's army by parting the Red Sea and then drowning Pharaoh and his army in that same Red Sea, Moses went up to Mount Sinai for 40 days to receive the Law of God.  During his absence, the Israelites became restless and not knowing what had happened to Moses, decided to take matters into their own hands.  They made a golden calf and pronounced this the god who had freed them from slavery in Egypt.  They then began partying "like it was 1999," to borrow a phrase, engaging in all kinds of debauchery.  From Exodus 32:

¹⁹ When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain. ²⁰ And he took the calf the people had made and burned it in the fire; then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it.

This seems rather odd, that Moses would make the people drink the golden calf, but this says to me that he is saying to them that if they wanted their own god, he would allow them to have it in full force and see what this "god" was really made of, that it was no "god" at all.  Also at this point our Lord was telling Moses that he was ready to destroy all of the Israelites and give the Promised Land to Moses' descendants.  Moses interceded on behalf of the people and God relented.  However, the Israelites still paid a heavy price when Moses sent the Levites through the camp to kill the worst of the sinners - about 3000 people - and the Lord struck the Israelites with a plague, killing even more.

God sent quail on
ancient Israel

A similar thing happened when the Israelites started complaining that they were bored with the manna which the Lord gave them everyday from heaven.  They complained that they wanted meat.  Moses said, okay, you want meat, you'll get it until it comes out of your nostrils.  Numbers 11:

18 The Lord heard you when you wailed, “If only we had meat to eat! We were better off in Egypt!” Now the Lord will give you meat, and you will eat it. ¹⁹ You will not eat it for just one day, or two days, or five, ten or twenty days, ²⁰ but for a whole month—until it comes out of your nostrils and you loathe it—because you have rejected the Lord, who is among you, and have wailed before him, saying, “Why did we ever leave Egypt?”   

Again, when the Israelites rebelled against God, the answer was to give them exactly what they asked for, to let them see the full consequences of their actions.  They rejected the manna from heaven and wanted their own food instead.  So our Lord gave them what they asked for.

Pope Leo XIII

How does this story about meat and manna and the ancient Israelites relate to the crisis of faith in the Church?  The crisis of faith we now see in the Church is not something that just spontaneously occurred after Vatican II.  This crisis of faith can be defined by the term "Modernism".  Wikipedia actually has a pretty good definition:  "Modernism refers to theological opinions expressed during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but with influence reaching into the 21st century, which are characterized by a break with the past. Catholic modernists form an amorphous group. The term "modernist" appears in Pope Pius X's 1907 encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis."  Modernism has been a creeping infection in the Church for over 100 years, and is something that Popes have been speaking out against since the time of Pope Leo XIII in the 1800's.  As noted, Pope Pius X wrote the famous encyclical, PASCENDI DOMINICI GREGIS in 1907 warning about the dangers of Modernism.  Pope St. Pius X also was the one who instituted the oath against modernism which all priests were required to take until the time of Pope Paul VI.  All of the popes up to the time of Vatican II warned about and fought against this terrible scourge that has afflicted so much of the church.

So why have the Popes since the time of Vatican II seemingly dismantled all that their predecessors did in fighting the terrible spiritual disease of Modernism?  Why did Pope Paul VI introduced a New Mass?  Why did Pope Paul VI drop the requirement that priests take an oath against Modernism?  Why did Pope John Paul II allow communion in the hand, altar girls, etc?  Why have we seen so many Catholics actively rebelling against Church authority and still calling themselves "Catholic?"

From Pope St. Pius X

The disease of Modernism, despite the best efforts of the Vatican, had run rampant through many seminaries.  It came into full bloom and infected the laity in 1968 with the publication  of Humanae Vitae, as I wrote in my post about Vatican II, which you can read here.  When soon-to-be Venerable Pope Paul VI released Humanae Vitae and told the Church and the world in no uncertain terms that the use of birth control was and is a mortal sin, subjecting our souls to eternal damnation, there was a major revolt among both the clergy and the laity that continues to this day.   This exactly mirrors the rebellion of the Israelites against Moses and ultimately, against God Himself.

When the vast majority of the Church rose up in rebellion against Pope Paul VI, I believe our Lord looked at us and said, okay, you want to choose your own way, you want to decide for yourselves and take of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and I'm going to let you do it. I have been warning you through the Magesterium for centuries and even more so during the last century, how deadly this decision is, but now you're going to find out firsthand.  Reluctant Sinner wants to blame Pope Paul VI for the fact that "Liturgical abuses went viral soon after the promulgation of the Missal of Paul VI, whilst Marxist ideology and lack of discipline infiltrated seminaries, and priests and nuns abandoned their vocations in droves. And, of course, traditional Catholics were virtually persecuted within their own Church during Montini's  pontificate, as those attached to the 'old Mass' had to metaphorically take to the catacombs!"

A world of difference between a Smart Car
and a Rolls Royce Bentley

The reason all of these evils infiltrated the Church is because this is what the Church wanted.  This is what they asked for when they basically turned their backs on the Vicar of Christ and said, "Later for you, buddy."  As even Reluctant Sinner admits, Pope Paul VI warned us in 1972 that the smoke of Satan had entered the Church.  If we believe the words of Christ, we know that it could not have entered in through the Magesterium.  I believe that since the Pope is guided in everything he does by the Holy Spirit, he was also inspired by the Holy Spirit to take away the beautiful Mass of the Ages and in its place, give us the New Mass, while most certainly a valid Mass, left way too much room for abuse as we saw in the following decades. It was like going from a top of the line Rolls Royce to a Smart Car.  The Smart Car gets you where you want to go, but what a loss.

We wanted to go our own way, and our Lord allowed us to do just that.  The spiritual catastrophe that followed was the result of our own willfulness   We wonder why the Popes since Vatican II have seemed so powerless to stop the rebellion in the Church.  I believe God has held back their hands in order to allow the Church to learn a lesson which she refused to learn any other way.  That is what we have seen in the past 50 years in the Church, and spiritually, it is more destructive than any war has ever been.  Millions and millions of souls have been lost, both spiritually and physically.  To have to stand back and watch this devastation must have caused unbearable suffering in our Popes from Pope Paul VI to Blessed John Paul II to our current Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, and even to John Paul I during his short reign.  I have no doubt that just as Moses pleaded for God to spare the children of Israel, our Holy Fathers have pleaded with Him to spare the Church.

Pope Paul VI and future Pope John Paul II

This comment on Reluctant Sinner' blog echoes my feelings:

Catherine said...
The more I have read of Pope Paul VI's writings in recent years, the more I am totally impressed by him and by his complete dedication to Christ. So if the news is true, then I rejoice, and also think that it is well past time that this courageous witness to the truth of Jesus Christ was honoured like this.18 December 2012 01:53

Pope John Paul I and
future Pope John Paul II

I believe our popes in the 20th Century and now into the 21st Century have been men of remarkable spiritual courage and devotion to our Lord.   They have reigned over a Church that has been as close to complete chaos as we have ever seen in her 2000 year history.  Not only have these popes had to deal with a hateful, anti-God world, but they have had to deal with it in the Body of Christ on a scale never seen before.

Canonization is always a reason to rejoice.  Holy Mother Church is recognizing that one of her children is advancing towards sainthood.  We now have someone else who can intervene on our behalf.   And certainly soon-to-be Venerable Pope Paul VI is acutely aware of the crisis we face on this earth and knows what to ask for.  Let us pray to him that he will go before our Lord and plead that our hearts be softened and turned toward our Savior and His Vicar here on earth.