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The Persecution of Orthodoxy Continues

“We also find it hard,” says the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (37) “to make room for the consciences of the faithful, who very often respond as best they can to the Gospel amid their limitations, and are capable of carrying out their own discernment in complex situations.”

It is indeed strange, amongst endless ecclesiastical discussions on “mercy”, “dialogue”, and the insistence that we can and should make critical moral decisions according to conscience, that restrictions on academic freedom now grow progressively tighter against such expressions of conscience. That is to say, restrictions applied to to well-formed, orthodox scholars who speak out — in conscience — against theological developments in the Church they find troubling.

When the esteemed Austrian philosopher, Josef Seifert, wrote an article questioning the damaging logical consequences to the Church’s moral teaching that he believed would follow from Amoris Laetitia, the response he received from his Archbishop — Don Javier Martínez — was swift and merciless. His retirement was immediately forced from the the Dietrich von Hildebrand Chair at the International Academy of Philosophy in Granada — a position created explicitly for him — without so much as a direct, personal conversation about the decision. In an article at First Things entitled, “The Persecution of Orthodoxy,” Seifert recounted that this disciplinary action “was never communicated” to him directly, but instead “by some hints in emails and telephone conversations, and by a salary receipt”. The receipt, Seifert said, was dated the same day as a press release that communicated to the world “the immense sadness of the diocese” over his article, and accused — without any justification — that he had “damaged the community of the Catholic Church,” “confounded the faith of the faithful,” and finally, “undermined the authority of the Pope, and served more the world than the Church.”

Was this what was meant in Amoris Laetitia (60) when the pope spoke of “the gaze of Jesus” and how He “looked upon the women and men whom he [sic] met with love and tenderness, accompanying their steps in truth, patience and mercy as he [sic] proclaimed the demands of the Kingdom of God”?

It would seem not.

Bishop Athanasius Schneider, in an interview with OnePeterFive’s Dr. Maike Hickson, said that “The punitive measure against Professor Seifert on behalf of an ecclesiastical office holder is not only unjust, but represents ultimately an escape from truth”. Schneider was not alone in his critique. Statements from a number of Catholic scholars decrying the move accumulated in short order.

Robert Spaemann, himself a renowned philosopher from Germany, said that he was “shocked” by the retributive action of the diocese. “The archbishop,” said Spaemann, in a separate interview with Hickson, “writes that he has to make sure that the faithful are not getting confused because Seifert is undermining the Church’s unity.” And yet, Spaeman continued, “The unity of the Church is based upon the truth.” Spaemann concluded his interview with a truly jarring statement: “It was easier during Nazi times to be a faithful Christian than today.”

This week, another academic was castigated, this time for his signature on the Filial Correction. On October 15, 2017, the the Philosophical-Theological University [Hochschule] Benedict XVI Heiligenkreuz in Austria published a statement on its website*:

Since its foundation in 1802, it is part of the profile of the philosophical-theological University [Hochschule] Benedict XVI Heiligenkreuz, to teach and to act loyally “cum Petro and sub Petro.” Thus we distance ourselves decisively from the fact that a scholar who has taught for a period of time at our Institute signed the public criticism of Pope Francis which euphemistically calls itself  “Correctio filialis de haeresibus propagatis.” Even if the concerned person is only teaching as a guest professor and has given his signature solely in his own name, we still cannot accept that this casts a shadow upon our University. We thus clarify that the University Heiligenkreuz is in everything closely bound to the Roman Magisterium and that we consider it as our greatest honor and supreme duty to be faithful to each successor of Peter, that is to say to our Holy Father, Pope Francis.

No name is mentioned. But there is only one signatory of the Filial Correction from the faculty at Heiligenkreuz: Dr. Thomas Stark.

OnePeterFive reached out to the Institute for clarification on their statement. They responded:

The clarification on the University’s homepage did not mention the visiting professor — who works full-time at another university — by name, since he gave his signature — as we also explain [in the official statement] — in his own name and since he does essentially not belong, as a visiting professor, to our University. The clarification intends to clarify the PROFILE of the university which always distinguished itself by a loving and respectful communion with the Petrine office.

Further requests for clarification on whether it is the intention of the University to dismiss Dr. Stark have not received a response as of press time. OnePeterFive also reached out to Dr. Stark, and will update this story if he provides us with a statement. As of this writing, Dr. Stark’s faculty bio still appears on the University’s website.

Amoris Laetitia (265) tells us that

Doing what is right means more than “judging what seems best” or knowing clearly what needs to be done, as important as this is. Often we prove inconsistent in our own convictions, however firm they may be; even when our conscience dictates a clear moral decision, other factors sometimes prove more attractive and powerful. We have to arrive at the point where the good that the intellect grasps can take root in us as a profound affective inclination, as a thirst for the good that outweighs other attractions and helps us to realize that what we consider objectively good is also good “for us” here and now. A good ethical education includes showing a person that it is in his own interest to do what is right. Today, it is less and less effective to demand something that calls for effort and sacrifice, without clearly pointing to the benefits which it can bring. [emphasis added]

Does “Doing what is right” because “our conscience dictates a clear moral decision” even when “other factors” that can “prove more attractive and powerful” (like losing one’s job) apply to Catholic theologians and philosophers who make use of their many years of training in the Church’s teachings to confront deviations from those teachings, even when they come from the highest reaches of the Church?

These men and women risk their entire professional careers, their means of providing for their families, and their own good name, only to speak out in defense of something with no temporal reward. It seems, then, that these individuals should be held up as models who understand the importance of “effort and sacrifice” on behalf of their Divine Lord and His teaching, and who know the clear “benefits” of such action — even if they will never see them in this life.

It is here once again of benefit to reflect on the warning of Sister Lucia of Fatima to the late Cardinal Carlo Caffarra over a quarter of a century ago:

The final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family. Don’t be afraid, she added, because anyone who operates for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be contended and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue.

The contention and opposition have only just begun. But we must have hope. As Sister Lucia reminded us, “Our Lady has already crushed its head.”

 

UPDATE – 10/21/2017: The Philosophical-Theological University [Hochschule] Benedict XVI has released a new statement, following reports in some outlets insinuating that Dr. Stark had been dismissed (translated by Google):

The news spread by a website that – according to the clarification given below to a guest professor – “confusion in the Stift Heiligenkreuz” or ” this guest professor was dismissed” is simply wrong. The canonical dismissal of a professor falls into the competence of the institution in which he teaches on the whole. They are fake news, fake news, which even reveal a high degree of confusion or perhaps even create a break in the church.

+ Doctor Maximilian Heim OCist 
Rector Prof. P. Dr. Karl Wallner OCist

 

*Translation by Maike Hickson, who also contributed to this report.

117 thoughts on “The Persecution of Orthodoxy Continues”

  1. Steve, you might have heard the expression…”there’s no one as illiberal as a liberal”.

    Well, to paraphrase that expression, “there’s no one as unmerciful as a huckster of mercy”.

    Reply
  2. Way to bury the lede guys. As soon as I saw the headline on Twittface, I thought, Oh hell, they’re going after Tom. When i read the piece, all there was for half the thing was just more about Seifert. I was about to give up and click away when I happened to glance down a little further, and sure enough, it was about Tom.

    Guys, journalism rules: put the thing you’re writing about at the top.

    Reply
    • Yeah. I was wondering if there was something new here. Took a bit to figure out that it wasn’t just about Seifert again.

      This isn’t technically a straight news story, but I would have given more prominence at the outset to the Stark development.

      Reply
    • Tomas Stark is an amazing man. I pray for his forbearance during this trial. When friends were joking with him a year or two ago about the risk to his position, he responded lightheartedly about having to sell his belongings to exist. He is a good-natured, brilliant man. May God bless him here and now, as well as in the future.

      Reply
    • Way to bury the lede guys. As soon as I saw the headline on Twittface, I thought, Oh hell, they’re going after Tom. When i read the piece, all there was for half the thing was just more about Seifert. I was about to give up and click away when I happened to glance down a little further, and sure enough, it was about Tom.

      Guys, journalism rules: put the thing you’re writing about at the top.

      Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. I wrote an email to Steve with some recommendations on this too. I don’t even read the articles here anymore, just come for the comments. The articles and the news I read at other sites, because a lot of the writing here is so unorganized that it takes forever to figure out what the piece is actually trying to say. Once you finally have the topic, then you have to re-read the whole darn thing because the supporting details are first, and didn’t make any sense the first time ’cause they had nothing to support.

      Some on this site are better than others, but there are a couple that I just don’t even waste my time trying to read any more. Further, it has stopped all of my contributions to 1P5. No reason to contribute to something that I can’t read, and that I suspect others don’t for the same reason.

      Reply
  3. Thomas Stark and the other academics who earn their living from working in Catholic institutions are the real heroes for raising their heads above the parapet in this way. They know that they make themselves and their families’ livelihoods vulnerable by speaking up for the truth, but they are prepared to do it anyway. May God bless them and reward them for their fidelity, and may whatever loss they suffer in this life be rewarded 100-fold in the next.

    Reply
  4. “…a loving and respectful communion with the Petrine office.”
    If only there were such love and respect for the Petrine office. Presently the “Catholic” academy upholds “Peter” only when personal notions, impulses and baseless intuitions supersede the perennial Magisterium of Roman Catholicism – furtively regarded as antiquated, if not entirely groundless. The Petrine Office is now “esteemed” only as it is manipulated to craft its own
    eradication while it advances secular materialism.
    Their double speak, their hypocrisy, their forked tongue is most appropriately attributed to the Adversary.
    The “Catholic” academy and the silent and complicit episcopate wallows among the pies in the cattle pasture.
    We have a pope who believes himself mandated to do whatever he wants in contradiction to
    “Pastor Aeternus” of Vatican I [1869-70] which at once defined the nature of papal infallibility and provided its constraints. “The Holy Spirit was not given to the Roman Pontiffs so that they might disclose new doctrine, but so that they might guard and set forth the Deposit of Faith handed down from the Apostles.”
    Pope Bergoglio’s belligerent disregard for the responsibility of the office to which he eagerly cleaves styles a “magisterium” entirely reversible, obliterating his credibility for the faithful who follow us into the future — bergoglianisms justly consigned to decomposition in the paddock.

    Reply
  5. The decisive point here is that orthodox scholars and clergy are nowadays just a tiny minority in a church which is overwhelmingly liberal minded. I therefore expect that orthodox voices will not only be suppressed but completely expelled from the church in the coming years. The Francis elites won’t tolerate orthodox expressions of the faith any longer. There’s a big cleansing in the making. Francis finds his ideal model of priesthood embodied in persons like Fr. Martin S.J. The institutional church is becoming an institutionalized heretical sect. Soon the true Catholics will have to gather in the catacombs, persecuted and excommunicated

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  6. Every day in every way Francis confirms our conviction that his is the most disastrous papacy in the Church’s 2000+ years of history. Frankly, try as I may, I can’t think of a single positive thing to say about his time in the Vatican. Not one single thing.

    Reply
      • I think the distaste for his policies is wider and deeper than he and his cohort assume. I contribute to several Church charities that send me newsletters. I’ve noticed these last months frequent photos there of Benedict, Pius XII, and John Paul. One face is noticeable only by its absence. Many Catholics have seen through the facade finally.

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        • It is my understanding that attendance at papal audiences and at
          the weekly Wednesday Angelus have declined to levels well below
          those enjoyed by both St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI. It’s my
          guess that the bulk of current attendees are merely curious tourists,
          with faithful Catholics now opting to get their edification elsewhere.

          Reply
          • If I were to visit Rome, I’d skip his audiences for a decent meal of pasta and red sauce out on the town. Or perhaps instead I’d search out the grave of Pius XII, a man whose memory I cherish and whose stature has only grown as more truth about him buries the Communist-inspired lies once spread. Even photos of Francis upset me so that I find it better to avoid looking at them.

        • I hope you’re right. It was the hypocrisy that first bothered me. This is the surely the least humble pope of modern times. We saw that from day one: “look at me, how humble I am”.

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        • You can be certain that the choice of which popes to feature in a fundraising mailing is dictated by rigorous scientific testing.

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        • Yep, the first clue for me was when he announced that he was much too humble to simply follow in the tradition of his predecessors and reside in the simple papal apartments. Instead, he would reside in a special suite in a hotel.

          That was the first time he flipped the bird at his predecessors and Catholic tradition, I believe.

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        • He granted faculties to SSPX priests to hear confessions with no doubt about their validity.

          (My main point, though, was that I couldn’t think of two. I suppose if I wasted a lot more time I might just manage it.)

          Reply
          • All religions to him are one.

            SSPX or the local Imam. It doesn’t matter.

            It’s a bit to early to actually invite the Imam to hear Confession, and it won’t happen in his lifetime, but you can be sure that’s the ultimate plan. Therefore take the opportunity to appear nice.

            New World Order. One World Religion.

    • I can, and I’ve been saying it from the first day. This is, at last, the pope we need to demonstrate that the entire experiment of NuChurch that we’ve all been pretending for fifty years isn’t a disaster is in fact a disaster. Every day he makes it more difficult to continue the absurdist farce of papering over the vast chasm between the “Church of Vatican II” and the Catholic Church. And thanks be to God for him, because another “conservative” pope would have allowed the Church to complete the process it had been undergoing for half a century, of bleeding out from a million papercuts. Francis is now forcing “conservatives” out of the false middle ground they’ve been trying to create between “yes” and “no”, between falsehood and truth, between the Faith and apostasy. He is the pope who will go down in history as the instrument of God, winnowing the faithful.

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      • Exactly, The only positive here is that he has forced all Catholics to choose. At least all honest true Catholics can ignore the elephant in the room anymore.

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      • I did not read the documents of V2 until I had a course on the council while studying for my STM. The documents are worded in fine theological jargon that subtly interweaves truth with reasonable sounding distortions, contradictions and rephrasing of established biblical truth, doctrine and teachings. As a result of the reasonableness, although what I read raised my eyebrows, I sipped the koolaid while shaking my head. Similarly questionable documents by subsequent popes along with the destructive innivations that followed the council raised red flags causing me to go back and read V2 again. And then I saw the light, flashing red. JPII and BXVI were psuedo orthodox. Their “orthodoxy” was more pragmatic than actual. They didn’t want to rock the boat so hard that they swamped it. Francis, believing his predecessors since the beginning of the council had firmly laid the Modernist foundation on which he could stand, has thrown virtually all caution to the wind. He cares not whether he swamps the boat. His whole purpose is to convert as nany souls as possible in the shortest amount of time as possible to the unholy relugion of the world and its founder, Satan, for he is its prophet and high priest. In doing so, he will capture a great many souls to feed the fires of hell while dekuding those very souls into believing they will go to heaven. He gas said he may not be around very long. I suspect he recognizes that his master’s time is very short and so is his because the Lord and His angels are on the march with shields raised and swords drawn.

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  7. St. Athanasius who was excommunicated by Pope Liberius became the 1st Doctor of the Catholic Church and who was known as the Father of Orthodoxy stated “The floor of hell is paved with the skulls of Bishops.”

    “Who is going to save our Church? Not our Bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to the people. You have the minds, the eyes, the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops like bishops and your religious act like religious” – Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

     “Whoever does not hate error, does not love the truth”.  – G.K. Chesterton

    “Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.” – G. K. Chesterton

    “Tolerance is an attitude of reasoned patience toward evil… a forbearance that restrains us from showing anger or inflicting punishment. Tolerance applies only to persons… never to truth.”  – Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

    Reply
    • How do we make are priests to be Catholic Priests and our Bishops Catholic Bishops. Fulton Sheen never tells how.

      Reply
  8. Roberto Mattei continues to do his exercise his ministry of resentment and rage against the Pope: https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2017/10/de-mattei-correctio-filialis-and.html
    It’s tired old ideological tarts like Mattei, Rao supported by clericalist show boats like Burke who are driving this Dubia nonsense and it has nothing to do with Jesus Christ, the Gospel or the integrity of the Catholic faith. They are grizzling about a the disappearance of a world ceased to exist four hundred years ago.

    Reply
        • Greg ur on the road to hell. No matter how much rationalization you make out of ur own life experience. Your life is worthless without the Truth. Go suffer so more, you kid.

          Reply
          • In responding to that comment, you are no longer in the realm of rationality either, so I wouldn’t sweat it if I were you. The Bergoglian “Time is Greater Than Space” dog just won’t hunt. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and always.

        • I am still waiting for you to interpret the words of Christ regarding marriage. I know you’re boxed in here, Greg, because you’ll have to call Christ a fuddy dud, heretic or Pharisee or you will have to admit that you don’t know a thing.

          Also waiting for your rebuttal on the article I posted from Cardinal Pell which described Newman’s take on conscience.

          No more flaming, Greg, produce the goods or get behind Christ, Satan.

          Reply
          • Bit slow on the uptake aren’t Brian and very reluctant to get back into the fray? And, by the way, you’re in no position to demand anything of me whatsoever so quit you little authoritarian show boat routine. I would think that the resident sycophants and camp followers are hoping you might show a bit more panache and theological gravitas instead of the load of comic book journalism you have been dishing up them as serious commentary.
            You’re on the wrong side of history and on the fringe of where the Church is and I think that you are totally clueless about both. Cognitive dissonance seems to be the hall mark of your little company of dissenters.

          • If you find the opinions and attitudes expressed here so unfortunate, one wonders why you continue to engage here, instead of taking off for a site more congenial to your way of seeing things.

            Seems to me the only sensible thing to do.

          • I see what you did there, Gregory. Brian asked you a question, and you attacked him and many of us here who see things as he does.

            So, now, please, would you argue that Christ is a fuddy-duddy, a heretic, or a Pharisee?

          • Ah, now we see your mind, Greg: accusing somebody of being on the wrong side of history is a telltale give. How do you know the future, Greg? Are not those who follow the clear and ambiguous teachings of the Bible always assured that we are on the “right side of history”? Or did you mean history in terms of temporal opinion? If so, I might call to your mind the narrow gate; being in but not of the world; Christ’s promise that his followers will be hated; Christ’s comment that he brought the sword, not peace.

            Also, Aquinas was not the end of theological development. I have yet to attend mass in which there is a reading from Summa instead of the Bible. Nor do Cathesis classes use the Summa as the definitive teaching tool. But it would be a good tool, especially since Aquinas makes known that heretics are unwelcome and makes perfectly clear that a heretic is one who dissents from Chuch teaching because of the contrivances of his own mind.

          • You’re welcome, Brian, however, what you need to work on is the reactive tendency people like yourself to invoke apocalyptic judgments and incantations of eternal exclusion on those perceived to be opponents when once the suppled script is exhausted and the lazy slogans fizzle out.
            What Harrison, you and the other apologists on this board are doing is to brand yourselves as predictably dull, witless, paranoic and appallingly ignorant. That’s a very dangerous mix when it comes to attacking and subverting the Pope with such relentless carping and whining. You might read what Dr Ed Peters wrote about this on his blog recently. No doubt he’ll be discounted and held in suspicion too.

          • You are an enemy. The Only contribution Christianity’s has made to the the world’s Wisdom is that it is Christ who perfects our humanity. Anything less is actually inhuman, there is no default position.

            You begin you statements with ad hominem attacks on people’s character, you’ve already dismissed their justification to be reactionary in Christ. You don’t speak words of Christ in any of your propositions, only only make reference to men who where clerical barbs, only to vomit maggot after maggot out of ur mouth. So incoherent, just like an excorcism. What do you say Fr Rip?

            And btw, we’ve been in the apocalyptic end times since the Ascension of Christ, you have no out. Christ owns you, He paid for you.

          • Greg, I need your help here, friend: can you do something besides respond with invective to what is being proposed? Are you capable of intelligent discussion? I mean, inject the invective but include something more: a passage from the Bible, a section from a Cathecism–any Cathecism.

            We’ve already been treated the full array of your vocabulary (pity you waste it on insulting others). We have seen you weave together three or more paragraphs replete with insults and completely lacking objective, verifiable facts. It needn’t be so, Greg.

          • Please, not “any catechism.” That would include the “Dutch Catechism” – with which our esteemed heterodox troll is apparently all too familiar.

          • I think that Merriam-Webster of yours may need replacement. It’s tattered and worn from so much use on these posts.

          • Calling another man stupid is only shows that you are low-minded and vicious, and it indicates that you lack either the will and/or the ability to use reason.

          • Greg, Greg, Greg! Slow down and take a deep breath, amigo! We can almost hear you panting through those typos and your declining control over your English. And, in the heat of battle, occasionally some phrase you choose blows your cover entirely. I mean who but a you-know-what would ever use something so revealing as “the wrong side of history”?

          • But surely you accuse us of what you yourself are guilty of…..Cognitive dissonance of the “in your face”
            reality of Church discipline breaking down.

            Run up the hill with your rainbow flag and be swept up by who it REALLY IS that sits on its summit.

          • Read what I wrote Brian especially on the authority of Christ’s words on the permanence of marriage. Then compare the standard Catholic teachings as spelt out by Thomas Aquinas and Joseph Ratzinger with the heterodox drivel trotted out by Pell. Take your time reading Brian, it couldn’t be simpler or clearer.

          • http://www.najumary.or.kr/English/

            Reconcile this first, and u’ll see all those names, excluding Aquinas because he knew his best theology was bunk, were morons; This includes Ratzinger. The only thing that ever mattered was the Truth of Christ, and not conscience. Former precedes the latter, and prior to Christ the latter was only wishful thinking.

          • Greg, Christ’s words are simple and clear. There is nothing for you nor Thomas to add. I don’t need to read slowly, as you said it is simple.

            Also, here is Thomas’s definition of a heretic:

            Accordingly there are two ways in which a man may deviate from the rectitude of the Christian faith. First, because he is unwilling to assent to Christ: and such a man has an evil will, so to say, in respect of the very end. This belongs to the species of unbelief in pagans and Jews. Secondly, because, though he intends to assent to Christ, yet he fails in his choice of those things wherein he assents to Christ, because he chooses not what Christ really taught, but the suggestions of his own mind.

          • Don’t hold back, please, please interpret the bit about ‘the suggestions of his own mind’ and you might even decipher the meaning of the ‘hmmmm’
            We await the exegesis, Brian.

          • I think suggestion of one’s own mind is quite clear: it is what one wants, possibly a disordered desire in some instances. A desire that perhaps one even recognizes as being antithetical to Church teaching but which one justifies as being good or proper.

            This leads, then, to a contradiction: if we must follow conscience in all cases, even in contradiction to God’s commandments and laws because it would be a sin not not to do so because the conscience is written into us by God, then God is contradicting Himself. When would God command a person to commit sin under the auspices of it being a sin not to sin?

            Now, Greg, let’s read the reply in which you, citing definitive teaching, prove me wrong. Forget the arc of history, the camp followers attacks, calling Cardinal Pell’s article drivel without evincing proof that it is drivel.

          • It wouldn’t make the slightest difference to you or your pals here, Brian, if Jesus Christ came along to refute you. You are not defending anything whatsoever to do with Christ, Revelation, the Church and its Faith. It’s a package of psychopathology and ideological fixations, Brian, and it has nothing to do with God or God’s Kingdom.

          • Entry into God’s Kingdom is predicated on conforming our lives to His teachings. He forbids idol worship, murder, sodomy, adultery, envy; commands that we honor our mother and father; keep holy the sabbath; love they neighbor. He laid out clear definitions of marriage and other eternal truths. Male and female he created them.

            He never put it up for a vote. He didn’t include caveats about conscience overriding that which He commands. Christ never asked the apostles to advise him on his teachings. God did not leave us ambiguous commandments, he did not ask us to do anything impossible. He did tell us it would be difficult and that many would seek but few will enter the narrow gate.

            Ratifying sin doesn’t get people to Heaven, Gregory. I might also remind you that it is Heaven which we are trying to attain for ourselves and others. Earthly comfort is meaningless. Our lives are not to be valued above our souls nor the souls of our brothers and sisters.

            I defend Christ and fearlessly proclaim His truths.

            Give the objective, Biblical evidence that I am wrong, Gregory. Bring forth the evidence!

          • Please explain to me, Brian, how the Catholic Church can permit at least two grounds for annulment to the marital union when God’s original command, reaffirmed by Christ, that the command admits of no exception. Does this not show that the Church assumes authority to actually change a divine law? How can it change something that God says cannot and must not be changed?
            Does this not contradict the Principle of Contradiction?

          • Well, for somebody who castigated others for being slow on the uptake, you are clearly very slow: the Church does not have the authority to change divine law. In other words, the Church should not be granting annulments. How could I be clearer?

    • Greg ur on the road to hell. No matter how much rationalization you make out of ur own life experience. Your life is worthless without the Truth. Go suffer some more, you kid.
      …and if I wasn’t a Christian, I’d be the first poop on u, and ur family for giving birth to you. Cause sophists like you have always been a bane on society, 10s of thousands of years before Christ.

      … fr rip, I respect you, and edited the curse ‘word’. If it’s the Truth, don’t you dare take it down. Can’t stomach it? Then you need to suffer more too. This one is on all you coorportate clerics. So unless your gonna fix it, go find something more useful to regulate.

      Reply
    • You speak like a modernist which says that truth must change to keep up with the times. God and His Truth are unchanging. What religion are you?

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    • That divorce and “remarriage” smarting a bit, Greg? All the invective and insults in the world can’t bury sin, you know.

      Reply
    • You are apparently not familiar with the definition of ad hominem. It is:

      (of an argument or reaction) directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining:
      “vicious ad hominem attacks”

      Reply
  9. “undermined the authority of the Pope, and served more the world than the Church.”

    Someone is serving the world more than the Church, and it’s not Josef Seifert.

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  10. When Prof. Spaemann’s says, “It was easier during Nazi times to be a faithful Christian than today., he knows, since he lived through the Nazi times. In a talk he gave he related how he and his fellow German boy scouts would have clandestine meetings and go on hikes despite the fact that it was highly illegal. Everyone had to be a member of the Hitler Youth and scouts were forbidden.

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  11. A friend of mine told me a story; he was in Church (Baptist) and was an usher, when passing the basket a man was writing a check and couldn’t make up his mind about the amount and took forever to write the check. My friend was embarrassed at standing there in front of the whole church and got very angry. When he finally returned to the back of the Church he told an old man, who was an usher, how mad he was at the man writing the check. The older man said; “don’t you know satan is not ‘out there”, but is here in the Church. The old man said; “Satan tried to destroy the Church for many years from the outside and finally decide he would do much better within the Church, don’t be his assistant”.

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  12. How did it come to this, that the most enthused advocates (and welders) of Doctrinal Development and Papal Supremacy are Catholic Leftists.

    What trickled their enthusiasm; how do they hammer the anvil?

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  13. Conscience in the hands of the Pope and his henchmen simply means obey or else. Truth has nothing to do with the issue. Christ has nothing to do with the issue. The fallacious flexible conscience argument used at Vatican II to make friendly with Protestants, allowing them a kind of free pass to heaven, is set aside for anyone disagreeing with the Pope while he himself uses conscience to win favor with unrepentant adulterous Catholics. The Pope is a complete hypocrite.

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        • I really don’t think he can. Bless you for your charity, however, as well as the others here who continue to be polite to this remorseless purveyor of baseless insults.

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          • He finally did get bounced yesterday, over some particularly vicious comments which he directed at Father RP in the comments section of the article about Pope Francis’s most recent “slap down” of Cardinal Sarah.

        • This fellow is a Francis sycophant and a pest. He uses inflated phrases like “the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council” to stuff straw into the empty shell of his arguments. I will be a tad less charitable but perhaps more succinct than Michael and simply say Greg is a blowhard.

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  14. “Tolerance is an attitude of reasoned patience toward evil… a forbearance that restrains us from showing anger or inflicting punishment. Tolerance applies only to persons… never to truth.”  – Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

    “Only a live fish can swim against the current, the dead go with it.” G.K. Chesterton

     “Whoever does not hate error, does not love the truth”.  – G.K. Chesterton

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    • I have purchased a compilation of Archbishop Sheen’s “Life is Worth Living” talks, which are great. In one of the talks, he laments prayers for peace, talks about Christ bringing the sword. He was a real man.

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      • There was more common sense between his ears than you’ll find among the entire of collection of mitered heads at any USCCB meeting today.

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  15. Does anyone know how it would be possible to make a small donation to the work of either of these gentlemen?

    I am slightly reluctant to ask as I know that 1P5 needs our money too and would quite understand should Steve be a little upset at me posting this, but I do think that all three (Seifert, Stark and Skojec) are perhaps more worthy of whatever amount, great or small, that we can afford, than is the Church that many of us will attend this weekend.

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  16. Arguing with the little commie bastards on Twitter today (in this case it was about the corporal discipline of children) I really felt the shadow of the guillotine. If anyone thinks this is hyperbole, he is blind and stupid. Had Hillary been elected President I can’t even imagine what my life would be like right now.

    Definitely need more long guns.

    Reply

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