Author Topic: Papal Neutrality in the Culture War? (Read 2125 times)

Lover of Truth · « **on:** November 15, 2013, 07:00:28 AM »

http://buchanan.org/blog/papal-neutrality-culture-war-5995

Papal Neutrality in the Culture War?
By Patrick J. Buchanan

Friday - November 15, 2013

"Pope Francis doesn't want cultural warriors; he doesn't want ideologues," said Bishop Blase Cupich of Spokane, Wash.:

"The nuncio said the Holy Father wants bishops with pastoral sensitivity, shepherds who know the smell of the sheep."

Bishop Cupich was conveying instructions the papal nuncio had delivered from Rome to guide U.S. bishops in choosing a new leader.

They chose Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., who has a master's degree in social work, to succeed Archbishop Timothy Dolan whom Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times describes thus:

"[A] garrulous evangelist comfortable in front of a camera, [who] led the bishops in their high-profile confrontation with the Obama administration over a provision in the health care mandate that requires most employers to have insurance that covers contraceptives for employees."

That mandate also requires employers to cover abortion-inducing drugs and sterilizations.

Yet here is further confirmation His Holiness seeks to move the Catholic Church to a stance of non-belligerence, if not neutrality, in the culture war for the soul of the West.

There is a small problem with neutrality. As Trotsky observed, "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." For the church to absent itself from the culture war is to not to end that war, but to lose it.

What would that entail? Can we not already see?

In America, the family has disintegrated. Forty percent of working-class white children are born out of wedlock, as are 53 percent of Hispanic children, and 73 percent of black children. Kids from broken homes are many times more likely to drop out of school, take drugs, join gangs, commit crimes, end up in prison, lose their souls, and produce yet another generation of lost souls.

Goodstein quotes the Holy Father as listing among the "most serious of the evils" today "youth unemployment." And he calls upon Catholics not to be "obsessed" with abortion or same-sex marriage.

But is teenage unemployment really a graver moral evil than the slaughter of 3,500 unborn every day in a land we used to call "God's Country"?

Papal encyclicals like Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno have much to teach about social justice in an industrial society.

But what is the special expertise of the church in coping with teenage unemployment? Has the Curia done good scholarly work on the economic impact of the minimum wage?

The cultural revolution preached by Marxist Antonio Gramsci is continuing its "long march" through the institutions of the West and succeeding where the violent revolutions of Lenin and Mao failed.

It is effecting a transvaluation of all values. And it is not interested in a truce with the church of Pope Francis, but a triumph over that church which it reviles as the great enemy in its struggle.

Indeed, after decades of culture war waged against Christianity, the Vatican might consider the state of the Faith.

Our civilization is being de-Christianized. Popular culture is a running sewer. Promiscuity and pornography are pandemic. In Europe, the churches empty out as the mosques fill up. In America, Bible reading and prayer are outlawed in schools, as Christian displays are purged from public squares. Officially, Christmas and Easter do not exist.

The pope, says Goodstein, refers to proselytizing as "solemn nonsense." But to proselytize is to convert nonbelievers.

And when Christ admonished his apostles, "Go forth and teach all nations," and ten of his twelve were martyred doing so, were they not engaged in the Church's true commission -- to bring souls to Christ.

Pope Francis comes out of the Jesuits.

Hence, one wonders: Did those legendary Jesuits like St. Isaac Jogues and the North American Martyrs make a mistake proselytizing and baptizing, when they could have been working on youth unemployment among the Mohawks?

An Italian atheist quotes the pope as saying, "Everyone has his own idea of good and evil," and everyone should "follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them."

Does this not reflect the moral relativism of Prince Hamlet when he said to Rosencrantz, "there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so?" Yet, is it not the church's mission to differentiate good and evil and condemn the latter?

"Who am I to judge," Pope Francis says of ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖs.

Well, he is pope. And even the lowliest parish priest has to deliver moral judgments in a confessional.

"ince he became pope," writes Goodstein, Francis' "approval numbers are skyrocketing. Even atheists are applauding."

Especially the atheists, one imagines.

While Pope Francis has not altered any Catholic doctrines in his interviews and disquisitions, he is sowing seeds of confusion among the faithful, a high price to pay, even for "skyrocketing" poll numbers.

If memory serves, the Lord said, "Feed my sheep," not "get the smell of the sheep." And he did not mean soup kitchens, but more importantly the spiritual food essential for eternal life.

But then those were different Jesuits. And that was long ago.

Croix de Fer · « **Reply #1 on:** November 15, 2013, 07:59:54 AM »

It's good to see Buchanan write this article. He made very good points (even if they've already been mentioned by the Resistance).

I voted for Buchanan in the 2000 election. He was either on the ballot in my state for the Reform Party, or I just wrote in his name - I can't remember, but I do know I voted for him.

RomanCatholic1953 · « **Reply #2 on:** November 15, 2013, 08:15:40 AM »

Francis is taking the Church down to the road to the antichrist with his moral laxity, and the surrender to the cultural wars which will result in no peace.
And bring on more persecution of the Church and the Faithful.

Lover of Truth · « **Reply #3 on:** November 15, 2013, 08:53:19 AM »

Quote from: RomanCatholic1953

Francis is taking the Church down to the road to the antichrist with his moral laxity, and the surrender to the cultural wars which will result in no peace.
And bring on more persecution of the Church and the Faithful.

When there is no resistence the evil ones get bolder in their designs.

Mama ChaCha · « **Reply #4 on:** November 15, 2013, 10:35:04 AM »

Who was it that said the floor of hell is covered with the skulls of priests??
It was the first thing that came to mind...

Anthony Benedict · « **Reply #5 on:** November 15, 2013, 10:45:44 AM »

The quote has been attributed to St. John Chrysostum, Mama Chacha.

Thurifer · « **Reply #6 on:** November 15, 2013, 11:05:20 AM »

Quote

There is a small problem with neutrality. As Trotsky observed, "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." For the church to absent itself from the culture war is to not to end that war, but to lose it.

Why is he not capitalizing Church? Strange coming from Pat.

Either way, the Culture War is already lost. We got smeared. That's what appears to have happened once the Pro-Life Movement became nothing more than an arm of the RNC, and most of its rank and file became bitter political activists.

The best of us, talked about the need to convert people's hearts. But I fear we didn't really mean it. Much easier to simply vote Pro-Life, be consumed by the issue as political, and make your weekly pilgrimage to the abortion mill, rosary in hand. In hindsight it appears that time with your rosary would have been time better spent in front of the Blessed Sacrament.

It was only going to be a matter of time before the Republicans, the so-called conservatives, were going to drop the abortion and ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ marriage fight. And now it has happened and they left all Catholics who at least had these issues right twisting in the wind.

But let's face it, most of the people in the Pro-Life Movement do not know the Faith. Many are Protestants, and we were foolish to join forces with them. It was also foolish to point to the Declaration of Independence, specifically the preamble, where the words include "the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness". The Founding Fathers were not the new Apostles, this country was not founded as a Christian Nation, and our docuмents are not Holy Writ. But try telling that to the majority. You might as well beat your head against the wall. When that tactic was losing traction, we tried to tie the abortion issue to the Civil Rights movement. Another not so brilliant move.

When the death rattle for the Culture Wars built on these houses of sand could actually start to be heard, Robert George and George Weigel, and other assorted Neocons like those found at publications like First Things, promoted the Manhattan Declaration. Great. That docuмent told bishops to simply concentrate their efforts on abortion and ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ marriage and to leave the issues like healthcare and the economy to the experts. Looking back, it is obvious that we gave away the entire store over one issue. And we allowed that one issue to be built on a foundation of sand, rather than on the Rock.

What a tragedy. Hindsight, tells me that the forty years of intense Pro-Life activity would have been much better spent in a New Catechization, or would that have been a first? Yes, I actually think it would have been a first. Rather than the New Evangelization. We might have had more well-formed Catholics ready to fight for a proper Social Justice which would have included things like keeping manufacturing and jobs in this country, fighting unjust taxation, ending government schools and keeping the cost of higher education manageable, looking at the evils of fractional reserve banking and ending usury, and not allowing ourselves to be duped into unjust wars.

Not only did we fail in this proper advocation of Social Justice, most Pro-Life Republican/Catholics, would sneer at those who may have actually been against these wars or against the death penalty as flaming liberals. Most Anti-Abortion Republican-Catholics were well pleased seeing their 401(k) plans making them rich on paper. Many felt even richer because they also practiced contraception and had hardly any mouths to feed or educate. But at least they never had an abortion. So it was all good. This helped them to become anti-union and to look at men who were in unions as corrupt parasites. Working as slaves in offices for 60 to 70 hours a week on a fixed salary made them more bitter towards their fellow Catholics in the unions as they had fantasies of reaching the top in their organizations by abandoning any kind of justice in labor.

Well there are all kinds of way to steal your labor. Which is the only thing those who are not in the super elite happen to possess as assets. Let us count the ways; 1) working overtime on a fixed salary, 2) taxation, 3) inflation, 4) exporting of jobs and importing of cheap labor which drives everyone's wages down, 5) usury and 6) women and children in the work force, just to name a few. Did you know that Alexander Hamilton thought a big problem in his day were all the people who happened to be idle? And do you know who he considered to be the biggest groups of idlers? Why it was women and children. Isn't that great?

Well the entire Ponzi Scheme seems to be winding down. That is one of the benchmarks of a successful enterprise, is it not? The winding down of a business. Is it any surprise that the abortion and same sex marriage fight should now be abandoned by the Republicans? They have served their purpose. While we were fighting for life with these monsters as our only hope we also managed to help them steal what may soon turn out to be our last dime.

Pat Buchanan was always right on the issues and maybe he saw all of what I have merely started to indicate here. I say "merely started", because believe me when I tell you I'm just scratching the surface here. But he never, to my knowledge stated the problems with the urgency or clarity in which I have just done. Perhaps he realized that he could not. I'm sure he was smart enough to realize this even if he had the knowledge that pertained to a higher truth. We were, after all in a "Christian" Nation and the Americanist Heresy was the Heresy that destroyed the Church in our day as the Enlightenment Country par excellence. If St. Pope Pius X were to rewrite Pascendi today, I think he would have identified the Americanist Heresy as the "synthesis of all heresies".

Lover of Truth · « **Reply #7 on:** November 15, 2013, 11:53:03 AM »

Quote from: Thurifer

Quote
There is a small problem with neutrality. As Trotsky observed, "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." For the church to absent itself from the culture war is to not to end that war, but to lose it.

Why is he not capitalizing Church? Strange coming from Pat.

Either way, the Culture War is already lost. We got smeared. That's what appears to have happened once the Pro-Life Movement became nothing more than an arm of the RNC, and most of its rank and file became bitter political activists.

The best of us, talked about the need to convert people's hearts. But I fear we didn't really mean it. Much easier to simply vote Pro-Life, be consumed by the issue as political, and make your weekly pilgrimage to the abortion mill, rosary in hand. In hindsight it appears that time with your rosary would have been time better spent in front of the Blessed Sacrament.

It was only going to be a matter of time before the Republicans, the so-called conservatives, were going to drop the abortion and ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ marriage fight. And now it has happened and they left all Catholics who at least had these issues right twisting in the wind.

But let's face it, most of the people in the Pro-Life Movement do not know the Faith. Many are Protestants, and we were foolish to join forces with them. It was also foolish to point to the Declaration of Independence, specifically the preamble, where the words include "the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness". The Founding Fathers were not the new Apostles, this country was not founded as a Christian Nation, and our docuмents are not Holy Writ. But try telling that to the majority. You might as well beat your head against the wall. When that tactic was losing traction, we tried to tie the abortion issue to the Civil Rights movement. Another not so brilliant move.

When the death rattle for the Culture Wars built on these houses of sand could actually start to be heard, Robert George and George Weigel, and other assorted Neocons like those found at publications like First Things, promoted the Manhattan Declaration. Great. That docuмent told bishops to simply concentrate their efforts on abortion and ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ marriage and to leave the issues like healthcare and the economy to the experts. Looking back, it is obvious that we gave away the entire store over one issue. And we allowed that one issue to be built on a foundation of sand, rather than on the Rock.

What a tragedy. Hindsight, tells me that the forty years of intense Pro-Life activity would have been much better spent in a New Catechization, or would that have been a first? Yes, I actually think it would have been a first. Rather than the New Evangelization. We might have had more well-formed Catholics ready to fight for a proper Social Justice which would have included things like keeping manufacturing and jobs in this country, fighting unjust taxation, ending government schools and keeping the cost of higher education manageable, looking at the evils of fractional reserve banking and ending usury, and not allowing ourselves to be duped into unjust wars.

Not only did we fail in this proper advocation of Social Justice, most Pro-Life Republican/Catholics, would sneer at those who may have actually been against these wars or against the death penalty as flaming liberals. Most Anti-Abortion Republican-Catholics were well pleased seeing their 401(k) plans making them rich on paper. Many felt even richer because they also practiced contraception and had hardly any mouths to feed or educate. But at least they never had an abortion. So it was all good. This helped them to become anti-union and to look at men who were in unions as corrupt parasites. Working as slaves in offices for 60 to 70 hours a week on a fixed salary made them more bitter towards their fellow Catholics in the unions as they had fantasies of reaching the top in their organizations by abandoning any kind of justice in labor.

Well there are all kinds of way to steal your labor. Which is the only thing those who are not in the super elite happen to possess as assets. Let us count the ways; 1) working overtime on a fixed salary, 2) taxation, 3) inflation, 4) exporting of jobs and importing of cheap labor which drives everyone's wages down, 5) usury and 6) women and children in the work force, just to name a few. Did you know that Alexander Hamilton thought a big problem in his day were all the people who happened to be idle? And do you know who he considered to be the biggest groups of idlers? Why it was women and children. Isn't that great?

Well the entire Ponzi Scheme seems to be winding down. That is one of the benchmarks of a successful enterprise, is it not? The winding down of a business. Is it any surprise that the abortion and same sex marriage fight should now be abandoned by the Republicans? They have served their purpose. While we were fighting for life with these monsters as our only hope we also managed to help them steal what may soon turn out to be our last dime.

Pat Buchanan was always right on the issues and maybe he saw all of what I have merely started to indicate here. I say "merely started", because believe me when I tell you I'm just scratching the surface here. But he never, to my knowledge stated the problems with the urgency or clarity in which I have just done. Perhaps he realized that he could not. I'm sure he was smart enough to realize this even if he had the knowledge that pertained to a higher truth. We were, after all in a "Christian" Nation and the Americanist Heresy was the Heresy that destroyed the Church in our day as the Enlightenment Country par excellence. If St. Pope Pius X were to rewrite Pascendi today, I think he would have identified the Americanist Heresy as the "synthesis of all heresies".

Thank you for this excellent post.

Quote

In hindsight it appears that time with your rosary would have been time better spent in front of the Blessed Sacrament.

Very well stated. I used to have a hard time convincing my pro-life friends that I do more good at Mass than at an abortion clinics when I had to pick one or the other. They just did not get it. Forget our political system. Humanistically speaking the war is over and we lost. God has to take care of it in due course. I believe I agree with everything you have written above. Nothing good will come from naturalistic men with naturalistic principles and a true Catholic would never win an election or be killed for trying to do the right thing if he could not be bought off. It is not we the people even from a naturalistic perspective. It is we the elites and they the dogs.

I have wondered if Pat fights the war on their level or as a Catholic. At least he is a voice of reason in the naturalistic world.

Capt McQuigg · « **Reply #8 on:** November 15, 2013, 02:02:10 PM »

Pat Buchanon is definitely on to something.

I wonder if, in his spare time, he studies what happened during Vatican II. I know he attends an indult church in the Washington DC area.

The world is not the Church. So if the world is continuing it's death spiral, that's just par for the course. It wasn't until Vatican II that the Church decided to become one with the world and be the leaven in the bread.

If the Catholic Church was standing firm against this world, then they would be fulfilling their mission too. Convert souls to Christ and be a moral beacon, be the representative of Christ's Kingdom on Earth. The Church must not become just another social activist agency.

Traditional Guy 20 · « **Reply #9 on:** November 15, 2013, 06:14:16 PM »

Quote from: Capt McQuigg

I wonder if, in his spare time, he studies what happened during Vatican II. I know he attends an indult church in the Washington DC area.

Pat made a whole article on the disaster that is Vatican II back in 2002 here:

An index of Catholicism's decline

As the Watergate scandal of 1973-1974 diverted attention from the far greater tragedy unfolding in Southeast Asia, so, too, the scandal of predator-priests now afflicting the Catholic Church may be covering up a far greater calamity.

Thirty-seven years after the end of the only church council of the 20th century, the jury has come in with its verdict: Vatican II appears to have been an unrelieved disaster for Roman Catholicism.

Liars may figure, but figures do not lie. Kenneth C. Jones of St. Louis has pulled together a slim volume of statistics he has titled Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church Since Vatican II.

His findings make prophets of Catholic traditionalists who warned that Vatican II would prove a blunder of historic dimensions, and those same findings expose as foolish and naive those who believed a council could reconcile Catholicism and modernity. When Pope John XXIII threw open the windows of the church, all the poisonous vapors of modernity entered, along with the Devil himself.

Here are Jones’ grim statistics of Catholicism’s decline:

Priests. While the number of priests in the United States more than doubled to 58,000, between 1930 and 1965, since then that number has fallen to 45,000. By 2020, there will be only 31,000 priests left, and more than half of these priests will be over 70.

Ordinations. In 1965, 1,575 new priests were ordained in the United States. In 2002, the number was 450. In 1965, only 1 percent of U.S. parishes were without a priest. Today, there are 3,000 priestless parishes, 15 percent of all U.S. parishes.

Seminarians. Between 1965 and 2002, the number of seminarians dropped from 49,000 to 4,700, a decline of over 90 percent. Two-thirds of the 600 seminaries that were operating in 1965 have now closed.

Sisters. In 1965, there were 180,000 Catholic nuns. By 2002, that had fallen to 75,000 and the average age of a Catholic nun is today 68. In 1965, there were 104,000 teaching nuns. Today, there are 8,200, a decline of 94 percent since the end of Vatican II.

Religious Orders. For religious orders in America, the end is in sight. In 1965, 3,559 young men were studying to become Jesuit priests. In 2000, the figure was 389. With the Christian Brothers, the situation is even more dire. Their number has shrunk by two-thirds, with the number of seminarians falling 99 percent. In 1965, there were 912 seminarians in the Christian Brothers. In 2000, there were only seven. The number of young men studying to become Franciscan and Redemptorist priests fell from 3,379 in 1965 to 84 in 2000.

Catholic schools. Almost half of all Catholic high schools in the United States have closed since 1965. The student population has fallen from 700,000 to 386,000. Parochial schools suffered an even greater decline. Some 4,000 have disappeared, and the number of pupils attending has fallen below 2 million – from 4.5 million.

Though the number of U.S. Catholics has risen by 20 million since 1965, Jones’ statistics show that the power of Catholic belief and devotion to the Faith are not nearly what they were.

Catholic Marriage. Catholic marriages have fallen in number by one-third since 1965, while the annual number of annulments has soared from 338 in 1968 to 50,000 in 2002.

Attendance at Mass. A 1958 Gallup Poll reported that three in four Catholics attended church on Sundays. A recent study by the University of Notre Dame found that only one in four now attend.

Only 10 percent of lay religious teachers now accept church teaching on contraception. Fifty-three percent believe a Catholic can have an abortion and remain a good Catholic. Sixty-five percent believe that Catholics may divorce and remarry. Seventy-seven percent believe one can be a good Catholic without going to mass on Sundays. By one New York Times poll, 70 percent of all Catholics in the age group 18 to 44 believe the Eucharist is merely a “symbolic reminder” of Jesus.

At the opening of Vatican II, reformers were all the rage. They were going to lead us out of our Catholic ghettos by altering the liturgy, rewriting the Bible and missals, abandoning the old traditions, making us more ecuмenical, and engaging the world. And their legacy?

Four decades of devastation wrought upon the church, and the final disgrace of a hierarchy that lacked the moral courage of the Boy Scouts to keep the perverts out of the seminaries, and throw them out of the rectories and schools of Holy Mother Church.

Through the papacy of Pius XII, the church resisted the clamor to accommodate itself to the world and remained a moral beacon to mankind. Since Vatican II, the church has sought to meet the world halfway.

Jones’ statistics tell us the price of appeasement.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2002/12/16195/#2g3G67JekZ4mh8Dh.99

Croix de Fer · « **Reply #10 on:** November 16, 2013, 12:18:36 AM »

Quote

But he [Pat Buchanan] never, to my knowledge stated the problems with the urgency or clarity in which I have just done.

Well, besides fighting the good fight in the cultural and moral war, he was always urgently and vociferously against shipping jobs overseas and importing foreigners as cheap labor into our country, but most people, including Catholics, never listened to him.

jman123 · « **Reply #11 on:** November 16, 2013, 08:37:21 AM »

I think Buchanan is the best cultural spokesman we have in this country. This man is good.