Father James Martin Supports Catholic Teaching: Father John Zuhlsdorf Attacks Him

The traditional/conservative Catholic blogosphere have been unrelenting in their condemnation of Father James Martin. They have attacked him over and over again because of his compassionate stance towards gay people. Father Martin has been preaching that, in accordance with the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we should treat gay people with respect and dignity. The blogosphere has accused Father Martin of heresy and teaching against Church doctrine.

People like Father John Zuhlsdorf have pressured organizations to reject Father Martin and cancel his appearances. A particularly pointed attack by Father Zuhlsdorf against Father Martin resulted in the cancellation of one of Father Martin's appearances. The post is entitled, "Should a seminary headline a homosexualist activist as a speaker?" Father Z was sparing in his words, but the fact that he would label a fellow priest in good standing as a "homosexualist" is truly unconscionable. 

Father Z later protested [HERE] that he "did NOT campaign for anything. I didn’t ask anyone to call TC. I asked some questions. Period." Oh give me a break, Father Z. Just "asking some questions" was your campaign. You are not fooling anyone except yourself and your willingly blind followers.  In that post, Father Z quoted from an article by Father Martin in which Father Martin discussed the attacks against him. Father Z made his usual sarcastic comments [Z comments in red]:

So I share with you as much as I can in the interests of transparency, which we need in our church. And to show you the outsize influence of social media sites motivated by fear, hatred and homophobia.  [Rubbish.  He is a public figure.  He defends even homosexual acts, not just homosexuals as human beings.  He is, right now, a lightning rod.]

So we have Father Z accusing Father James Martin of defending "even homosexual acts, not just homosexuals as human beings." Father Martin has said repeatedly that right now all he is trying to do is lead the Church in treating the gay community with love, respect and dignity, as we should treat all people. Father Martin has repeatedly said that we can't even begin to come together until we learn respect for one another. Father Z seems unwilling to learn this lesson.

Well, Father Martin has finally bowed to the pressure from the Catholic blogosphere, and has published his defense of Catholic teaching. Yes, you read that right - Father James Martin has published a defense of Catholic teaching. You can read his article HERE. These are some of the main points in the article.

Meditation On Hell

I write this mediation on hell on Easter Sunday. This would not normally be the time to think about hell. Easter Sunday is the most joyous day of the year. Today we celebrate Jesus Christ gaining victory over sin, death and hell. Because of the great sacrifice and resurrection by God Himself, we sinful human beings, deserving only of death, have now had the Gates of Heaven flung open to us. There is nothing we can do to merit this. It is a free gift given to us by a Loving God. All we need to do is admit our sinfulness and accept the Love of Jesus Christ and allow that Love to grow within us. We gave death to God, and He gives us Eternal Life. And it is Eternal Life filled with such complete happiness and joy that our mortal human minds cannot begin to comprehend it.

God dying for man? It is absurd to our human minds. In all of man's religions, human beings must constantly strive to please their god, and be happy for any crumbs that may fall their way. No pagan gods ever did anything to save those who worshipped them. On the contrary, the Christian God knows how incapable we are of ever doing anything on our own that would be remotely pleasing to Him. So He came to earth as one of us, lived in our miserable sinful world as one of the lowliest of the low, and then allowed us to crucify Him as a common criminal in payment for our sins. In human terms, God's Way makes no sense at all. But as we are told in Isaiah 55:8, God's ways are not our ways. God's Way is Love - ultimate, totally giving, unselfish love of which no human being of and by himself is capable.

The Ongoing Story of Catholic Traditionalist Hypocrisy

The conservative/traditional Catholic blogosphere has devoted massive amounts of cyber ink to condemning homosexuality,  especially whenever it is found in the Catholic Church.  They also have no use for anyone who shows the least compassion for those who struggle with same sex attraction, as witnessed by their unrelenting attacks upon Father James Martin.

No To The Gospel of No

Father John Zuhlsdorf did a post a couple of months ago in which he stated, "Looked at from one point of view, the main job of the priest is to say, 'No.'"  This statement sums up the entire problem with the traditionalists / opponents of the post Vatican II Church, and most especially, of the critics and opponents of Pope Francis.

Msgr. Charles Pope: Love Without Kindness?

As I have written many times on this blog, the great division in the Church is between the law-and-order traditionalists, who believe that showing people their sins and judging them is the most important duty of the Church, and Pope Francis, who believes that the true mission of the church is bringing people to salvation in Christ by preaching the mercy and love of Our Lord without condemnation.  Pope Francis believes Our Lord's statement as recorded in John 3:17:  "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." The traditionalists, by their words and actions, have shown that they reject this teaching.  They believe their job is to condemn the world, and that this condemnation will somehow save the world.

This attitude was shown clearly in a recent post by Msgr. Charles Pope, a traditionalist who has often criticized Pope Francis and other members of the Church hierarchy.  In his recent post, Msgr. Pope tells us that "Kindness Is Not Love."

Why I Don't Support or Attend the March for Life

I am staunchly pro life. My political and religious beliefs have changed many times throughout the decades of my life, but I have always been against abortion. I am old enough to remember when the Supreme Court legalized abortion. I cried when I saw the headline in my local paper. I could not believe we were now going to kill our babies.

For the past nine years, I have been praying almost every week in front of an abortion clinic. I stand in front of the abortion clinic because, out of all the great evils in our world, I don't believe there is a greater evil than than killing innocent, defenseless life. Abortion kills not only the babies, but is spiritually, emotionally and mentally lethal to all of those involved: the parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, potential friends and spouses of the aborted babies, and harms society and the world in general. We will never know how much we have lost in the deaths of all the hundreds of millions and maybe billions of aborted babies throughout the world.

Response to An Ex-Gay Cradle Catholic

When people react to and condemn Father James Martin, I learn a lot more about those who are reacting than I do about Father Martin.  Father Martin is a lightening rod for all of those who believe that gay people basically make the choice to be gay and that all gays could become straight, or at least leave the gay lifestyle and live celibate lives,  if someone just laid out all of the rules of the Church to them and basically said, "Straighten up and fly right" (pun intended).  I am really amazed at how often I hear this line from "ex-gays".

The latest to push this line of thinking is Robert Oscar Lopez, who published an article on stream.org entitled, "As an Ex-Gay Cradle Catholic, I Know the Devastation That Awaits Those Who Follow Fr. James Martin."  Mr. Lopez tells us that he was brought up in a liberal Catholic environment and was never informed of the dangers of sexual sin.  As a result, he became a promiscuous gay man, the blame for which he lays directly at the feet of "liberal Catholics":

I grew up in a Catholic milieu that was nothing if not gay-friendly. And I paid quite a price for that.

Our Lady of Guadalupe: The Greatest Evangelist In History

Today is the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  The story of Our Lady of Guadalupe is one of the greatest stories in human history.  It is also one of the greatest proofs of the existence of God and His overwhelming and incredible love for mankind.

In the 16th Century, Catholic missionaries were in Mexico trying to convert the Aztec Indians from their pagan religion to Christianity.  The Aztecs engaged in barbarous practices including human sacrifice where they would literally cut the heart out of a living person.  As one source relates:

The victim was stretched out over the sacrificial stone. In seconds, a priest with an obsidian knife broke open his chest and ripped out his still beating heart, dashing it against the sacrificial stone.

Father Ray Blake and Poor People

I recently wrote a blog post in which I showed the deceitfulness of a a blog post by Father Ray Blake which was linked to by Father John Zuhlsdorf.  Both of these priests are radical traditionalists who believe the Catholic Church is basically in apostasy with the exception of the traditionalists, who are the only real Catholics left in the world.

In my post, I referenced another blog post by Father Blake in which he talks about the poor and homeless and what a pain in the a-- they are.

Traditionalists Twist the Truth To Defame Catholic Church

I find it ironic to the extreme that those who present themselves as the only faithful Catholics left in the world openly declare their complete contempt for the Church's Magesterium over and over again.  This is no where better personified than in Father John Zuhlsdorf.  Father Z, like every good radical traditionalist, feels that the only salvation for the Church and the world is not Jesus Christ but the pre-1962 liturgy.   According to Father Zuhlsdorf, every problem in the Church and the world can be traced to the Second Vatican Council and the implementation of the "Novus Ordo" garbage, er, Mass.

This assertion was seen in all its glory in a recent post by Father Zuhlsdorf in which he linked to a post by another rad trad priest, Father Ray Blake.  I have never previously read anything by Father Blake.  However, he is considered quite controversial in his native England, especially when he blamed the poor for making a mess in his church:

A priest has launched an attack on the poor and homeless describing them as ‘lying and messy’ people sent by God to test his faith.

Outspoken Father Ray Blake even said one who regularly turned up at his church pleading for money was ‘an irritating little b******d’.

He accused the beggar of making a mess of his prayers as he passed his cap around his congregation looking for donations.

The controversial Catholic cleric said in a blog post: 'The trouble with the poor is that they are messy.

'There is a secluded area between the church and our hall, a passage, occasionally we find someone has got a few cardboard boxes together and has slept there, and if it has been raining leaves a sodden blanket, cardboard there to be cleaned up.

'Often it also smells of urine and there is often excrement there and sometimes a used needle or two.'

Why I Continue To Support Father James Martin

There seem to be two great burning issues on the Catholic blogosphere these days, and they both involve showing mercy and compassion to sinners.  One issue is how to deal with divorced and remarried couples in the Church, and the other involves the Church's outreach towards the gay community.  The Catholic blogosphere has personified these issues in two people:  Pope Francis and Father James Martin.  Those who self identify as the only true Catholics in the world today have relentlessly attacked and vilified Pope Francis and Father Martin, accusing them of heresy and basically saying they are agents of the devil.

I have recently written a couple of posts regarding Pope Francis.  Today I am focusing on Father Martin.  An article from Catholic World Report by Janet Smith encapsulates this issue very well.  She starts her article by claiming that Father Martin's approach is "full of ambiguity."  She pointed to a talk at Villanova University in which she pulled exactly one small quote from an hour long conversation Father Martin had with Brandon Ambrosino, a gay Catholic man.

The Blogosphere Shows Its Ignorance

Today is the Feast Day of St. Jerome, a great saint and doctor of the Church who gave us the Vulgate Bible. Vulgate is another word for "the speech of the common people and especially of uneducated people". St. Jerome translated the Bible so that the ordinary person could read and understand it.

Despite this great gift given to us in the Fourth Century, the Church has not always promoted study of scripture. The Council of Trent prohibited even owning a Bible, much less reading it, without special written permission from the local bishop. Traditionalists love to quote from the Council of Trent, considering it at least as infallible as Sacred Scripture. They certainly quote from it much more often than they quote the Holy Bible. The Filial Correction, which accused Pope Francis of spreading heresy, used innumerable quotes from the Council of Trent to prove their points.

Did A Priest Convicted of Sexual Perversion Sign The Filial Correction?

Maybe those who have drafted and signed the Filial Correction need to take a closer look at who is supporting them.

I was looking through the names of the signatories to the Filial Correction and came across one name, Father John Houston, which gives no description of who he is or his place of origin.  So I did a Google search.  The only item I found for a Father John Houston was an article from an Australian website called "Broken Rites Australia" which is self described as "researching the cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church."

Filial Correction: The Traditionalists Could Not Be More Wrong

There is a definite war between the conservative, traditional factions of the Catholic Church and the Church's Magesterium.  This has never been made more clear than in the Filial Correction signed by a growing number of traditionalists.  And yes, they are all hardcore traditionalists.

The signatories to this document include such hardcore radical traditionalists as:

• Dr. John Rao (history professor) who has completly denounced Vatican II and the *Novus Ordo* Mass; 
• Chris Ferrara (lawyer, secular not canon) who makes his living bashing the contemporary Church and publicly denouncing Pope Francis; 
• Bishop Bernard Fellay, the head of the SSPX, a group that refuses to recognize the validity of Vatican II and the *Novus Ordo" Mass; 
• Roberto de Mattei, an Italian journalist who has been described as "a renowned apologist for ultra-traditional Catholicism"
• Joseph Shaw, Chairman of the Latin Mass Society;
• Deacon Nick Donnelly, whose blog was shut down by the bishop of his diocese of Lancaster, England.  Deacon Donnelly now contributes to OnePeterFive, a radical traditionalist blog which is in constant conflict with the message of Pope Francis;
• Father Claude Barthe, a radical traditionalist priest and foe of the Second Vatican Council.

Father Zuhlsdorf Leads Traditionalists In The Art of Dissembling

There is a conference in Rome celebrating the tenth anniversary of Summorum Pontificum from September 14 to September 17. On February 11, 2017, the group which organized this pilgrimage, Coetus Internationalis Summorum Pontificum, described the purpose for this conference as follows:

At the press conference, it was confirmed that, on Thursday, 14 September 2017, there will be a colloquium on the tenth anniversary of the motu proprio at the Pontifical University of Angelicum, during which Archbishop [Guido] Pozzo, among others (their names will be communicated over the coming months), will take stock of these ten years of renewal of the traditional liturgy in the Church.

So they are taking "stock of these ten years of renewal of the traditional liturgy."  But was "renewal of the traditional liturgy" the reason for Summorum Pontificum?  This is certainly not the reason given in the Motu Proprio, which plainly says that, despite the Second Vatican Council's desire "that the respect and reverence due to divine worship should be renewed and adapted to the needs of our time", some in the Church were still holding on to the Traditional Latin Mass.  Pope Benedict felt that since the TLM was and always will be holy, there was no reason to withhold this Mass from them.