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NEWS: June 16, 2004
Bird’s Eye View of the News
Atila Sinke Guimarães
VATICAN II, THE BROKEN IDOL – Fr. Andrew Greeley, SJ, known for his progressivist tendencies, recently published a book titled The Catholic Revolution: New Wine in Old Wineskins (University of California Press, 2004, 237 pp). His thesis is clear: The reforms of Vatican II destabilized the structures of the Church. He explains that the Council Bishops poured new wine into the old wineskins, and the wineskins burst. In the heady atmosphere of the post-conciliar Church, Catholics decided that if the Church could change some rules, then they could also alter others. So people changed the moral and disciplinary rules in the wake of Vatican II reforms, Greeley continues. Hence came what he calls The Catholic Revolution. That is to say, using the term revolution, he admits the Council upset one order to be replaced by another.
Fr. Greeley saving Vatican II from public indignation |
Greeley tries to be subtle. He does not directly accuse Vatican II as the promoter of a revolution. He tries to present the conciliar Bishops as very well intentioned. The problem, as he presents it, is that they were apprentices of a wizard (my metaphor) whose unleashed powers went spinning out of control.
I don’t agree with Greeley. I have published three books on Vatican II demonstrating with ample evidence that the revolution was planned and executed by the theologians and Prelates of the progressivist current. Also I proved that the post-conciliar consequences were knowingly desired by the same current. This deliberate intent constituted a desire to destroy the Catholic Church as she was until then. To date I have received no serious refutation of the evidence I presented. Therefore, I am convinced Greeley’s argument is false.
What is curious is that even though he feels obligated to call the post-conciliar phenomenon a revolution, he still tries to save Vatican II and the Bishops who approved its documents. Why is he obliged to take this course? Because the tide against Vatican II is growing stronger. Traditionalists, conservatives, centrists, and even leftists are increasingly admitting that the Council steered the ship off course and produced the crisis in the Church. So, Greeley enters the discussion, admitting a revolution but making Jesuitic distinctions, trying to deviate public indignation from the right target.
My purpose here is not refute Fr. Greeley, nor to review his book. It is just to celebrate with my reader that the tide of disapproval of Vatican II is growing. A toast to Our Lady for that!
SABOTAGE ON THE DOCUMENT ON LITURGY – The recently launched Vatican document Redemptionis Sacramentum supposedly aims at correcting liturgical abuses. However, it is already being set aside by the ones who should apply it. Let me report one incident of ecclesiastical sabotage against the document.
Card. Wetter obstructs the use of the document on Liturgy |
The document encourages Catholics to report liturgical abuses in their parishes to the competent religious authority. Many German Catholics took this charge seriously and began accusing priests before the Bishops. Instead of welcoming these actions as a useful collaboration, Cardinal Friedrich Wetter, Archbishop of Munich, issued an indignant response to such accusations. “Blackening people’s names …. will not get anyone anywhere in our Diocese,” he stated in an open-letter. He denied that the Vatican document had encouraged such denunciations. The German Cardinal used a twisted argument to justify his interpretation: Denunciation implies “underhandedly maligning people for despicable reasons,” and the Church simply could not possibly encourage this, he claimed (The Tablet, May 22, 2004, p. 33).
Cardinal Wetter went on to order that whosoever “finds, or thinks he has found” a priest guilty of liturgical abuse must first of all talk to the priest concerned in person. This advice seems an obstruction to the application of the norms of the document. Instead of facilitating the reporting of abuses, the Cardinal discourages the faithful from informing against the guilty, since obviously the accuser or his family could face many inconvenient consequences if he were forced to personally confront the priest with his wrongdoings. But the Cardinal firmly instructed the people to turn to their Bishop only as a last resort. Welter closed by telling the faithful that the Vatican document “contained nothing new.”
Reading this authoritarian decision of Cardinal Wetter, one is led to ask: Is he singing out of choir, violating the letter and law intended by the Vatican for the document? Or did he first consult the Vatican and receive license to do what he did? If this last hypothesis were true, and I think it is, we would be facing a double game of the Vatican: on one hand it publishes a document to appear conservative, on the other hand it doesn’t demand its application and even allows its obstruction. Is it possible? So far, the German Cardinal does not appear to have been chastised for his interpretation. Let us watch and see if there will be other such cases involving high-ranking Prelates.
SATANISM ON THE RISE – Last week the Italian magazine L’Espresso published a report on the growth of Satanism in Italy and worldwide. The topic was suggested by a recent ritual murdering in northern Italy. Sandro Magister, who signs the article, distinguishes between two kinds of Satanism: the “high” and the “low.” The former is organized and approved by the authorities. Its rights safeguarded by law, it holds meetings, publishes magazines, and hosts websites.
A "gothic" punk sits as a common citizen at a fast food place, but he is implicitly spreading Satanism |
This brand of Satanism was founded by Anton Szandor LaVey and inspired by Aleister Crowley. The journalist included Charles Manson, the known Californian Satanist behind the ritual murdering of actress Sharon Tate, as part of the “high” Satanism.
The latter, the “low” Satanism, is spontaneous and unorganized, without books or bylaws. It is practiced by many criminal gangs, drug addicts, rock bands, homosexuals, pedophiles, sadomasochists, and others. The article warns especially against the so-called “dark wave” or “gothic wave” born in England and United States in the 1970s led by Alice Cooper and the rock band Black Sabbath. They created a “subculture dripping with blood, death, and macabre acts,” accuses Magister. According to the article, “low” Satanism is on the rise and out of control (ACI Digital, June 11, 2004).
Since the Revolution imagines it is drawing near its end – the destruction of the Catholic Church and Christendom – it is not surprising that the chief of the Revolution, Satan, thinks that the time came for him to be publicly worshiped. He is not counting, however, on a sudden flip of the coin and the final victory of Our Lady that we know will happen, as she promised it at Fatima …
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