Church & World
United States: Black Mass at Harvard Canceled
Prestigious Harvard University, on the east coast of the United States, had authorized a re-enactment of a satanic ritual on its property on May 12, 2014, until it was canceled as a result of pressure from Catholics.
The sacrilegious ceremony was planned by an association of students on the university campus, the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club, conjointly with the organization of the Satanic Temple. According to an article published by the American newspaper National Catholic Reporter (NCR) dated May 8, 2014, this student association insisted that the event “was meant to be educational, not offensive.” Nevertheless, according to a report by Fox News, these students did intend on that occasion “to reaffirm their respect for the satanic faith.”
According to the article in the National Catholic Reporter, when the Catholic chaplain on campus, Fr. Michael Drea, complained to the authorities about an attack “on the dignity of the Catholic faith,” the university administration indicated that it supported the “right of the students to express themselves and to gather freely.” The Archdiocese of Boston regretted that there was to be “an activity that separates people from God…and brings the participants dangerously close to the destructive forces of evil.”
Catholics stressed, furthermore, that a black mass was “by nature a parody of a Roman Catholic ritual including the profanation of a consecrated host.” When questioned by the American weekly newspaper on this subject, the Satanic Temple replied that “anyway, no one would notice the difference” since it was only a “piece of bread.” The fact that Satanists profane consecrated hosts in black masses is proof positive that for them it is not just a “piece of bread.”
The Archdiocese of Boston had urged Catholics not to respond by demonstrating in the street, but instead with a prayer vigil that was attended by 1,500, on May 12, in a church near the place where the black mass was to be held. The faithful of the chapel of the Society of Saint Pius X also reacted by organizing, that same evening, a procession behind the statue of Our Lady of Fatima. The procession, led by Father Nicholas Gardner, stopped in front of the place where the satanic ritual was to take place. Many hymns in honor of the Blessed Virgin were sung and a Rosary was recited.
At the same time, from May 11-13, at the school of La Salette in Georgetown, in northeast Illinois, where a Eucharistic Congress was being held with Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais presiding, ten priests, several seminarians, the students of the school and around a hundred faithful observed three days of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament exposed in reparation for the black mass, which finally was canceled. No doubt the fervor of the Catholic reaction helped to win this victory over the forces of evil.
(Sources: apic/National Catholic Reporter/Fox News/Le Figaro/sspx.org – DICI, No. 297, June 6, 2014)
On the Ecumenical Meeting between Pope Francis and the Patriarch Bartholomew
The Pope’s journey to the Holy Land from May 24 to 26, 2014, took place on the fiftieth anniversary of the historic meeting between Pope Paul VI and the Patriarch of Constantinople, Athenagoras, on January 5 and 6, 1964.
At the time, this meeting had a great impact, since it had been 525 years (from 1439) since a pope, Eugenius IV, had received the patriarch of Constantinople, after four centuries of schism. It was in Ferrara, and the Eastern Church seemed ready to return to the Catholic communion. But is that the case today?
On Sunday, January 5, 1964, Athenagoras visited Paul VI in the buildings of the Apostolic delegation in Jerusalem. After their historic embrace, exchanged on a level of strict equality as dictated by the protocol, a 20-minute private conversation was held between the two men. The patriarch declared to the pope “that it was time to put an end to the division. Why remain separated when there is nothing fundamental to divide us?” He then addressed to the representative of the “most Holy Church of ancient Rome” a speech in which he expressed the wish that this meeting might be “the dawn of a luminous and blessed day” that would end “the night of separation” in which “the Christian world has been living for centuries.”
The next day, on the morning of January 6, Pope Paul VI visited Patriarch Athenagoras in his residence on the Mount of Olives. He evoked the figure of John XXIII as the man who had begun bringing the Catholic Church and the Patriarchate of Constantinople closer together “after centuries of silence and waiting.” Above all, he laid out the path that ecumenism ought to follow with regard to the Eastern schismatics. He declared: “The paths that lead to union may be long and strewn with difficulties. But the two paths converge and end up at the sources of the Gospel.” In other words, since Rome and Constantinople both claim to come from Christ and His Gospel, their destination—the unity of the Church willed by Christ—must also be the same. Which clearly comes down to considering that since 1054 the Church founded by Christ has been no longer one.
“The doctrinal, liturgical, and disciplinary divergences will have to be examined at the right time and place,” continued Paul VI. But fraternal charity between Christians should begin to progress now, especially by forgiving the offenses of the past. A common statement was published, in which a prayer was voiced “that the truth of the one Church of Christ and of His Gospel might shine forth ever more, in the eyes of all Christians.”
Since this first meeting, others have followed. Paul VI met with Patriarch Athenagoras on October 25, 1967, after the mutual revocation of the excommunication decrees of 1054, on December 7, 1965. His successor, John Paul II, met with the patriarch of Constantinople in 1979, and kept up this dialogue with several meetings.
In parallel, a mixed international Commission was created to meet regularly and study pending questions (apostolic succession, authority in the Church, Uniatism, the primacy of the bishop of Rome, etc.).
In 1981, the Metropolitan Archbishop Damaskinos, while still in a state of schism, was invited to preach to Catholics in St. Peter’s Basilica at Rome. A few years later, on December 6, 1987, Patriarch Dimitrios I co-presided at a “liturgy of the Word” with John Paul II. The next day, a common declaration rejected “any form of proselytism.” This position led to the agreements of Balamand, so called after a monastery in Lebanon, whose common declaration on June 23, 1993, in its Article 22, saw the Catholic Church renounce “any will to expand that would be detrimental to the Orthodox Church.” Which meant forbidding any return to the communion of the Church in Eastern Europe…
In the Balamand Declaration, it is written that “the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church recognize each other as sister churches, responsible together for keeping the Church of God faithful to the divine plan, especially as far as unity is concerned.” This expression was repeated in the common declaration signed by John Paul II and Bartholomew I on June 29, 1995, in Rome. But it was included neither in the declaration signed on November 30, 2006, by Benedict XVI and the same patriarch of Constantinople, nor in that of Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew on May 25, 2014.
Pope Francis met with the successor of Patriarch Athenagoras on the same site that saw the historic embrace of 1964. The pope and Patriarch Bartholomew published a common declaration presenting “this brotherly meeting” as “a new and necessary step on the path towards the unity to which the Holy Spirit can lead us, that of communion in a legitimate diversity.” After recalling the steps of this ecumenical dialogue, the declaration mentions different essential points:
1. “The possibility of being able ‘to profess our faith in the same Gospel of Christ, as it was received by the Apostles, expressed and transmitted to us by the Ecumenical Councils and by the Fathers of the Church. While we are aware that we have not obtained the goal of a full communion, today we confirm our commitment to continue walking together towards the unity for which Christ Our Lord prayed to the Father ‘that they may all be one’ (John 17:21)” (§2).
We must point out that the Councils in question are only the seven first Ecumenical Councils, since the Orthodox Church refuses the fourteen others.
2. The goal remains to one day share “together the Eucharistic banquet,” which supposes “the confession of the same faith, a persevering prayer, an interior conversion, a renewed life and a fraternal dialogue” (§3)
3. The privileged means remains the theological dialogue undertaken by the mixed international Commission. Here, it is interesting to point out that the declaration pays homage to this “exercise in truth and love that requires an ever deeper knowledge of the other’s traditions in order to understand them and learn from them,” all the while refusing to “seek the lowest common denominator on which to conclude a compromise,” for theological dialogue “is rather destined to deepen the understanding of the whole truth that Christ gave His Church, a truth that we never cease to understand better when we follow the impulse of the Holy Spirit. Consequently, we declare together that our fidelity to the Lord demands a brotherly meeting and a true dialogue. Such a quest does not draw us away from the truth; on the contrary, through an exchange of gifts, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, it will lead us to the full truth” (§4). (See John 16:13).
It would seem therefore that neither of the two parties in question holds the whole truth, for it still must be found through meeting and dialogue. Can we be satisfied with such a position?
The declaration then mentions the grounds on which Catholics and Orthodox can “work together in the service of humanity, especially by defending the dignity of the human person in every step of life and the sanctity of the family based on marriage, by promoting peace and the common good, and by responding to the suffering that continues to afflict our world.” “Hunger, poverty, illiteracy, and unequal distribution of wealth” are then mentioned, along with exclusion and marginalization in society, saving the planet and the fight against waste (§§5-6).
Lastly the common declaration exhorts Christians to “safeguard everywhere the right to express [their] faith publicly and to be treated justly when promoting what Christianity continues to offer contemporary society and culture. On this point, we invite all Christians to promote an authentic dialogue with Judaism, Islam and other religious traditions. Mutual indifference and ignorance can only lead to mistrust, and even, unfortunately, to conflict” (§7).
After expressing their deep concern for the Christians in the Middle East, “especially for the Churches in Egypt, in Syria and in Iraq” (§8), the two signatories voiced a call to all Christians, and to all believers in all religious traditions and to all men of good will, to recognize the urgency of the times that obliges us to strive for the reconciliation and unity of the human family, while fully respecting legitimate differences, for the good of all humanity and of the generations to come” (§9).
The ecumenical procedure with the Eastern Church over the last 50 years has consisted in a dialogue between two sister churches on an equal level, one founded by Peter in Rome, the other by Andrew in Constantinople. It presupposes that the Church is no longer one, but divided, and that the path towards the full truth, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, “requires an ever deeper knowledge of the other’s traditions, in order to understand and learn from them.” This ecumenical process hopes for a mutual enrichment that will allow all to reach the full truth and to reconstitute a unity that has been broken for almost a thousand years. This vision is doubly false. For one, it is unaware of the true nature of the Church of Christ, founded upon Peter and always one regardless of departures, schisms, and heresies. And while it is legitimate to regret division and to work to put an end to schisms, bring back those who are lost and extinguish heresies, we must use the means that the one, holy Church has always used.
Before Vatican II, the popes did not fail to explain how God wished, in order to save the greatest possible number of souls, to found a society that would be not only interior and spiritual as to its goal and its causes that produce grace and sanctity, but also exterior and visible in its members and the means used to transmit the spiritual goods. To the great merit of Leo XIII, he defined this unity of the Church that is the first of her four marks. In his remarkable encyclical Satis Cognitum, he explained that just as Christ is one by the union of His divine and human natures, in the same way the Church is one by the union of her invisible Head with her visible members: “There is one God, one Christ, one Church of Christ, one faith, one people, established in the solid unity of one body by the bond of concord. The unity cannot be broken: a body that remains one cannot be divided by fractioning its organism” (St. Cyprian of Carthage).
The Church is one “even though heresies try to tear her apart into different sects” (St. Clement of Alexandria). Her members form but one society, one kingdom, one body, according to the will of the Lord (See John 17). The basis of this union is the unity of faith, indispensable for concord between men, since understanding and union of intelligences is necessary if they wish to work together. But God could not have willed this unity of the faith without providing the means for preserving it; that is why Jesus Christ established an exterior principle of unity in the faith by giving His Apostles a divine summons and trusting them with a public mission to save souls: “As the Father sent Me, so I also send you” (Matt. 28:18-20).
Christ thus established the Church as the guardian of the faith, to conserve its integrity and purity. To do this—continues Pope Leo XIII —He instituted “a living, authentic and perpetual magisterium” that He invested with His own authority, giving it the spirit of truth and ordering “its doctrinal teachings to be received as His own”: “He who hears you, hears Me; He who despises you, despises Me” (Luke 10:16).
And Christ built His Church as a perfect society in which all nations are to be united. Both divine and human, she is governed by a sovereign power that requires by divine right a unity of government and of communion. It is the authority of Peter, to whom the care of the whole flock was confided (Matt. 16:18; John 21:15-17): “The Lord spoke to Peter: to one only, in order to found the unity on one only” (St. Pacian of Barcelona).
Peter alone received the power of the keys that ensures the permanence and solidity of the whole edifice. True pastor of the one flock, the Roman Pontiff is the only one who has the authority to govern the whole Church—what we call universal jurisdiction, which is a proper and true power, and not only an honorary primacy as the Eastern schismatics claim. As the support of the faith of his brethren that he must strengthen (Luke 22:32), he enjoys the privilege of infallibility in order to ensure the transmission of the immutable divine faith. His sovereign, universal and independent authority is exercised over all the pastors and sheep of the flock.
The Fathers of the Church, the councils, and the unchanging Magisterium of the Church have not ceased to affirm the primacy of the Roman pontiff and his authority over the other bishops and over councils, by divine right: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church” (Matt. 16:18). “The Roman Church, through the disposition of the Lord, holds dominion and ordinary powers over all other Churches, in its capacity of mother and mistress over all the faithful of Christ” (4th Lateran Council). “Root and mother of the Catholic Church” (St. Cyprian), “one cannot keep the Catholic faith without teaching that one must keep the Roman faith” (St. Augustine).
It is indeed through the mouths of his successors that Peter continues to speak (Council of Chalcedon and Council of Constantinople III, profession of faith of Pope Hormisdas). The principle and center of the unity of faith, of government and of communion, he holds from his proper Chair the place of Christ of whom he is the vicar on earth. To him is confided in particular the care of leading the one flock, and of recalling to it those who may have had the misfortune of leaving it.
The teaching of the Church, the one Bride of Christ, on the nature of its unity, is at the root of a proper understanding of Catholic ecumenism. It is explained by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Mortalium Animos on the unity of the true Church, and by Pius XII in Mystici Corporis on the Mystical Body of Christ. In the name of dialogue and of fraternal encounters, this doctrine has been set aside since Vatican II because it is refused by non-Catholics. It is nonetheless an article of faith. How can we “dialogue in truth” if we deliberately ignore it?
After World War II, the ecumenical movement took the shape of the foundation of the Ecumenical Council of Churches (ECC). The Holy See forbade Catholics to take part in it. Pius XII instructed the Holy Office to regulate the eventual participation of members of the Church in discussions with non-Catholics. In response the Holy Office sent an Instruction to the bishops throughout the whole world, which were published in the Osservatore Romano on March 1, 1950. The Vatican newspaper summarized the spirit that must guide the hierarchy of the Church “in these delicate matters”: “It is out of the question that, in hopes of a result desired by all, the requirements of the Faith—the first step towards unity—be in any way diminished or concealed.…True Christian unity can only take place in the Faith of the Catholic Church which has been entrusted to the care of its hierarchy….”
The Instruction of the Holy Office sets forth the prudential measures that must be respected in accordance with the wishes of the Holy See. The chief concern is that any approach must be devoid of ambiguity, and that care be taken “so that, under the false pretext that we must consider what unites us much more than what separates us, we do not nourish a dangerous indifferentism.…” This must be absolutely avoided: “...that in a spirit known today as irenic, Catholic doctrine, whether dogma or related truths, be through comparative study and a vain desire to progressively assimilate different professions of faith assimilated with the doctrines of dissidents or accommodated to suit them, to the point that the integrity of Catholic doctrine should suffer or that its true and certain meaning be obscured.”
To be avoided with even more care is “this dangerous fashion of expressing oneself that gives rise to erroneous opinions and fallacious hopes that can never be realized, by saying for instance that the teachings of the Sovereign Pontiffs in the encyclicals on the return of dissidents to the Church, should not be taken into much consideration since not all of it is of faith, or worse yet, that in matters of dogma, not even the Catholic Church possesses the fullness of Christ, and that it can be perfected by other Churches.”
So that vain hopes and doomed illusions are not encouraged, the Instruction insists on the essential: “Catholic doctrine must therefore be proposed and explained in its whole entirety; that which Catholic truth teaches on the reality of nature and the steps required for justification, on the constitution of the Church, on the primacy of jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff, and on the one true unity to be obtained through the return of separated Christians to the one true Church of Christ, must not be passed over in silence or obscured with ambiguous terms. It can certainly be said that in returning to the Church they will lose nothing of the good that the grace of God has accomplished in them until the present, but by their return this good will be completed and led to its perfection. We must avoid speaking on this point in such a way that those returning to the Church believe themselves to be bringing it an essential element that it previously lacked. These things must be said clearly and without ambiguity, first of all because they seek the truth, and then because no true unity can exist outside of the truth.”
The great prudence of the Holy See is motivated by the “grave danger of indifferentism” presented by such meetings, because of the risk of confusion. It is incidentally for this reason that “any mutual participation in sacred functions” is to be absolutely avoided.
To summarize in brief the Church’s circumspect attitude in matters of dialogue and ecumenical relations, it keeps ever in mind the idea that “unity can take place only in the Catholic Church and through the Catholic Church; it can only take place in the truth.”
In light of the traditional teaching of the Church, the new step taken in Jerusalem by Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew on May 25th cannot be accepted without question by Catholic consciences, such is its apparent disregard for the true nature of the unity of the Church and the deviation from the prudential rules established by apostolic authority.
This new dialogue was inaugurated by the Vatican Council II in its decree Unitatis Redintegratio (November 21, 1964), in which the Church adopted a benevolent attitude toward non-Catholic Christians, whether heretic or schismatic. Its latest manifestation follows in the wake of actions taken by the predecessors of Pope Francis, in particular John Paul II, who did not hesitate to state:
“If in the course of centuries the dolorous break between the Eastern and Western Churches took place, a wound from which the Church still suffers today, the duty to rebuild unity imposes itself on us with a special urgency, that the beauty of the Spouse of Christ may appear in all its splendor. For from the very fact that they are complementary, these two traditions are to a certain extent imperfect if they are considered separately. It is in their reunion, their harmonization that they complete each other and present a less inadequate interpretation of the “mystery which hath been hidden from ages and generations, but now is manifested to his saints (Colossians 1:26).”
Such an understanding totally undermines the constant teachings of the Roman pontiffs.
Yet, it could be said, it is undeniable that today the Church continues to recognize the persistence of doctrinal, liturgical, and disciplinary differences. Pope Francis himself, in the ecumenical prayer meeting over which he presided in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on May 25, 2014, admitted that “there is still a long way to go before we arrive at the fullness of communion that can be expressed in sharing the same Eucharistic Table.” But he does not hesitate to maintain the illusion of a common faith before his audience, and in order to overcome the differences that exist he renews the “vow already made by [his] predecessors, to maintain dialogue with all our brothers in Christ so that a manner of exercising the ministry proper to the Bishop of Rome, who, in keeping with his mission, is open to a new situation, can be found; may it be in the current context a service of love and of communion recognized by all (see John Paul II, encyclical Ut Unum Sint, May 25 1995, §95).” This inversion is gravely damaging: the Pope, the visible foundation of the unity of the Church instituted by Jesus Christ, whose responsibility is to lead His whole flock of shepherds and sheep, lowers himself to the level that those who deny his office are inclined to grant him.
Today the doctrinal differences of fifty years ago remain. They include the fourteen Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church held between the ninth and the twentieth centuries, which the Eastern Church refuses to recognize, and with them the dogmas that were proclaimed or reaffirmed, and all the moral teachings that followed… They include the Filioque clause, the universal jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff and his infallibility when speaking ex cathedra, as well as Marian dogmas such as the Immaculate Conception... These are not minor points, in spite of Athenagoras’s words in 1964: “Why remain separated when nothing fundamental divides us?”
The truth—to return to the proper terms of the Holy Office under the Angelic Pope—is that an irenic spirit is preferred to the immutable doctrine of Catholicism and that, through a vain desire for progressive assimilation, we should accommodate the spirit of error that led so many souls to distance themselves from the one Bride of Christ—to the point of attacking the purity of Catholic doctrine and clouding its true and certain meaning.
Pope St. Pius X worked for true unity, exhorting pastors to work tirelessly “that the sheep lost through dissension might be reunited in the profession of the one Catholic faith, under one supreme Shepherd.” He explained that indeed “any effort can only be vain if the Catholic faith is not maintained whole and faithful, as it was transmitted and consecrated in Holy Scripture, the tradition of the Fathers, the consent of the Church, and in the general councils and decrees of the Sovereign Pontiffs. Let those who defend the cause of unity take heart then; armed with the helmet of faith, holding firmly to the anchor of hope, burning with the fire of charity, may they work with all their zeal at this most divine task. And God, the Father and friend of peace, the master of times and of hours, will hasten the day where the peoples of the East will return triumphant to Catholic unity and, in union with the Apostolic See, purified from all error, will enter the port of eternal salvation.”
(Source : SSPX/GH – DICI, No. 297, June 6, 2014)
United States: An increasingly Hispanic Catholic Church
The Catholic Church in the United States is becoming more and more Hispanic. But in a parallel trend, the Hispanics are becoming less and less Catholic: raised in the Catholic faith, they become Protestants or profess no religion (the “nones”). This was revealed by a new study published on May 7, 2014, by the Pew Research Center: The Shifting Religious Identity of Latinos in the United States, reviewed by the American weekly newspaper National Catholic Reporter (NCR) on May 9.
“Both trends can occur at the same time,” the Pew Research Center explains, “because of the growing size of the Hispanic population, which has increased from 12.5% of the total U.S. population in 2000 to 16.9% in 2012. Indeed, if both trends continue, a day could come when the majority of Catholics in the United States will be Hispanic, even though the majority of Hispanics might no longer be Catholic.”
Since 2012, a third of American Catholics are Hispanics, but the percentage of Hispanic Catholics has fallen from 67% in 2010 to 55% in 2013. Of the 12% that left Catholicism, 4% became Evangelical Protestants and 8% abandoned all religious identity. If this trend does not change, Catholics will make up less than half of the Hispanic population in 2015: 45% of young Latinos (aged 18 to 29) are Catholic, but 70% of those who leave the faith do so before the age of 24.
The study explains that these departures from the Catholic Church by Hispanics are an international phenomenon. The main causes for leaving mentioned by the Hispanics are a gradual detachment from the religion in which they were raised (55%) and the fact that they no longer believe in the teaching of their childhood religion (52%). Thirty-one percent say that they were looking for a community that was closer to its members and offered more support, and 23% associate their departure with a “profound personal crisis.”
In October 2012, the Pew Research Center announced that during the past five years, those who are religiously unaffiliated (the “nones”) increased by a little more than 15% to make up a little less than 20% of all adult Americans. This study on persons with no religious affiliation revealed that a third of adults aged 30 or over have no religious affiliation (32%), as opposed to only one out of ten aged 65 or over (9%). In conclusion, today’s young adults are much more likely to be unaffiliated than preceding generations were at the same age.
(Sources: apic/ncr/pfc – DICI, No. 297, June 6, 2014)
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