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The Roman Catholic System holds a good deal of delightful people. Much of it is leadership is also a treasure before God. But the system itself needs addressing, and will have to cause severe concern to the persons of God. This article speaks of that system as it appeared in the mid to later years of the twentieth century.
At the end of the Old Testament is Malachi. In these last days of the Roman Church, there is Malachi Martin, aggressive “prophet” to the Catholic people, former Jesuit professor, one who served with John XXIII. Comments from his book,The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church, are revealing, even though I am told that Martin needs to be listened to with discernment. In speaking of the lessening Roman membership in these days he says:
“There appears to be no reasonable hope that this decline may be arrested…what form Roman Catholicism will take – it is religious spirit and faith will not die, nor a successor to St. Peter’s Throne ever lack -is one of the tantalizing enigmas we moderns will not live to see solved.”
Oh I don’t know, Malachi. Keep your eyes open. Keys to the mystery are everywhere.
In speaking of John XXIII he says that his appeal was universal. He wanted contacts with all men. He believed that people intuitively at last do the right thing… he (John) later came to reject the idea of a personal Devil and primary sin…This was the father of Vatican II.
He relates that John’s successor, Paul VI, talked with regards to the people of God, not the kingdom idea which so threatened humans -rightly so – who knew of Rome’s history. This same Paul, Malachi says, was used by leftist powers in Latin countries, and seemed to be unable to rein in his bishops that were Marxist leaning. He implies that Paul did not do much in the way of protesting unnatural persecution of believers in Communist countries.
So the next Pope, he says, was determined to restore the old ways of Rome:
“By any measures at our disposition the influence of this Pope and his Vatican surpasses that of most middle class powers in the world today…
Malachi also talks with regards to one who at last will “dominate”…the uttermost dictator, the man of Destiny… This Martin seems to know a lot of indispensable things.
Is Rome declining? Quite possible. It seems as though the enemy, since Vatican II, has been “regrouping,” backing off awhile. In the formation process, though, is a more outstanding than ever world religion, still based in Rome, still identifiable as Babylon the Great. I believe the unchanging church will proceed to evolve, adding parts that will at once disgust believers and amaze the world. But the world will buy those elements. Add to all of this, rising Europe, and you may start out to see the astounding spectacle viewed by John the Revelator on the isle of Patmos. Perhaps we are when it comes to to see it in our day!
The post-Vatican II world of Babylon becomes rather confusing. Within Rome are a myriad of confused voices. Nowhere is this more evident than in the telling of the story of Medjugorje. That’s a little town in present-day Yugoslavia, where a record-setting series of “apparitions” are occurring, or so it is reported.
The story begins in 1981, when, once again, young people who have no queer longing for God, who in fact are going out to a hillside for a smoke, all of a sudden encounter a “presence.” Why has she come, this ghostly but real “blessed Virgin Mary”?
“I wish to be with you to convert and to reconcile the whole world.”
Not a modest beginning. She says a good deal of traditionalisti Catholic prayers with them, and leaves them with the admonition to find peace with God, and advertize peace amidst men. Right away we recognise something is wrong, as God’s peace is only promised for His own, and for the rest is promised a sword, and eventual judgment.
The visions continue, and the Communist government then ruling the land reminds the would be vision-seers that religious services are not permitted outside; the Communists need to control religion in their regime. Seems that “Mary” would have known that from the beginning. But she, and they, all comply, and the meeting is taken indoors.
Over the weeks and months the children are visited by not only Mary, but “various angels, Jesus, the devil, and sure relatives who have died.” They have also seen heaven, purgatory, and hell. By the early 90′s 2,500 appearances have been reported, carrying over 1,000 messages!
But we’ve got galore troubles here:
1) only the young persons see the visions. The “proof” of their veracity is said to be the accompanying miracles, and changed lives. People clean up their act when they are that close to the next world.
2) “Mary” commands things Jesus never commanded: the Rosary is to be prayed, for example.
3) Many assert to have witnessed the accompanying “miracle of the sun,” but often times those looking at the sun for such a miracle are gifted rather with severe eye damage.
4) Even Rome will not say the visions are of God, but neither does she deny access to the site.
5) The Roman bishop located in the area claims that the children have been caught in pure fabrications when cross-examined with regards to these miracles. He is caught up in a struggle with other bishops, and the local Franciscans, who swear these miracles are real.
6) Speaking of those fabrications, at original the visionaries report that Mary was to appear three more times. This plainly changed. First there were five “secrets”, now ten.
7) Doctrinal problem: The woman of Yugoslavia is now stating categorically that “all religions are good before God.”
 In Deuteronomy 18, God condemns necromancy, contacting the dead. In Yugoslavia, a dead mother appears to one of the children.
9) Horror of horrors for the Vatican, “Mary” has come versus their list of banned books. In 1947 Maria Valtorta published Poem of the God Man, a supposed “special revelation” when it comes to the life of Jesus which by Catholic or Protestant standards, is bad theology, bad history, and so on.
Unknown to the vision-worshippers, Pope John XXIII in 1959 has placed this book on the Vatican Index of Forbidden Books. No Catholic is to read it! But one of the “special” young people, Vicka, says in an consultation that Mary believes people ought to read that book because it is like a poem amid God and man.
Mary vs. the Pope. Mary vs. the local bishops. Mary vs. the Bible.
I am in no way a miracle-basher. I believe in miracles with all my heart. I believe God speaks to people in a number of ways. But for believers to net income from them, visions will have to be tested, and equated with the introductory revelations the Holy Spirit gave to His apostles. These Mary visions don’t match up, and the confusedness we are calling Babylon continues.
Catholics Contraception American Catholicism Twentieth Century
As Americans rethought sex in the twentieth century, the Catholic Church’s teachings on the divisive issue of contraception in marriage were in a great deal of ways central. In a arousing and attention holding history, Leslie Woodcock Tentler traces altering attitudes: from the late nineteenth century, when religious leaders of each potpourri were largely united in their opposition to contraception; to the 1920s, when distillations of Freud and the works of family planning reformers like Margaret Sanger started out to reach a popular audience; to the Depression years, for the duration of which even conservative Protestant denominations quietly dropped prohibitions versus marital birth control. Catholics and Contraception cautiously examines the intimate dilemmas of pastoral counseling in matters of sexual conduct. Tentler makes it clear that uneasy negotiations were always necessary amid clerical and lay authority. As the Catholic Church found itself isolated in it is strictures versus contraception–and the object of detrimental rhetoric in the public debate over legal birth control–support of the Church’s teachings on contraception became a mark of Catholic identity, for better and for worse. Tentler draws on proof from pastoral literature, sermons, lay writings, private correspondence, and consultations with fifty-six priests ordained amidst 1938 and 1968, concluding, “the recent history of American Catholicism . . . may only be understood by taking birth control into account.”
From the Back Cover”Leslie Woodcock Tentler brings outstanding subtlety and a compassionate, mature discernment to the difficult history of American Catholicism’s encounter with modernity. She has an extraordinary capacity to represent the each and everyday lived experience of Catholics in vivid, textured detail which encompasses both clerical and usual exercise and understanding. Catholics and Contraception is compelling, distinguished, brilliantly researched, and altogether engaging.”–Robert Orsi, Harvard Divinity School “The Catholic Church is essential to a huge segment of the humane race, yet it is in crisis because of issues relating to sex and reproduction. Leslie Woodcock Tentler’s book takes a historical look at the Church’s doctrines concerning contraception, how these have developed a severe divide amongst the Church and the Catholic laity, and how they have split the Catholic clergy. As we enter the twenty-first century, the importance of advancing obligation in our sexual lives is dandier than ever. Can the Catholic Church find a way to publicize sexual obligation and at the same time know the significant gains that responsible sex brings to Catholic men and women?”–John Bancroft, author of Human Sexuality and Its Problems and former conductor of The Kinsey Institute for Research on Sex, Gender, and Reproduction
About the AuthorLeslie Woodcock Tentler is Professor of History at Catholic University of America. Her books include Seasons of Grace: A History of the Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit and Wage-Earning Women: Industrial Employment and Family Life in the United States, 1900-1930.
Catholics Contraception American Catholicism Twentieth Century Picture
Catholics Contraception American Catholicism Twentieth Century Image
Catholics Contraception American Catholicism Twentieth Century Image
Catholics Contraception American Catholicism Twentieth Century Picture
“Catholics and Contraception” (Some Clues as to Why Catholic Teaching Gets Misconstrued)
While browsing through a college bookstore, I not so long ago came all over Catholic University of America (CUA) Professor Leslie Woodcock Tentler’s “Catholics and Contraception: An American History” (Cornell University Press, 2004) – one of fourteen books from Notre Dame’s Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism. In 335 pages covering 125 years, Tentler offers little proof of appreciating modern methods of Natural Family Planning or Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. She envisions NFP as repackaged “rhythm” and those who hug it as likely to be unable to explain it is theological rationale, as well as likely to abandon it with experience. Be that said, she does offer numerous thought-provoking history.
A “cafeteria” mindset is often brought up to subsist amongst misguided Catholics. Some have gotten the notion that the Church offers instructing on the sanctity of humane life and marriage for “conservatives,” while she alternately offers instructing on social worries for “liberals.” Authentic, seamless connections among teachings on the sanctity of humane life, marriage and family, and social issues get lost. While no history of “Catholic Social Teaching” would be finish without an extensive discussion of Msgr. John A. Ryan, Ph.D, Msgr. Ryan kept Church teachings on humane life, marriage and family, and social issues very much intact.
As conductor of the social justice section of the National Catholic Welfare Conference (now the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) and as a CUA professor, Ryan was the face of Catholic Social Teaching in the firstborn percentage of the 20th century in the United States. Long before Humanae Vitae discussed the anti-family agendas of those furthering contraceptives, Ryan took on Planned Parenthood founder and eugenics pioneer Margaret Sanger. He recognized that advertising of contraceptives served as an accomplice to selfishness among a lot of wealthy and powerful of this country, who would receive workers’ sweat but not their families. To borrow a phrase from Father Cox of 1930s radio fame, Msgr. Ryan fought for wealth control AGAINST birth control. Ryan argued for just family wages, which would concede a worker to in the right manner support his family. While Tentler makes Ryan’s passionate fight versus contraceptives crystal clear, others seem to whitewash that percentage of his legacy.
For respective reasons, Ryan’s forthrightness when it comes to contraceptives was ofttimes the exception. Tentler tells us that the earliest portion of the 20th century was not characterized by regular preaching in regards to contraception from any pulpits. Among non-Catholic clergy, adherents were even quietly gathering to contraceptive promoters. Yet, no Protestant denomination formally supported contraception until the Anglicans in 1930. Tentler sees Pope Pius XI’s encyclical of that year as a counterattack to the Anglican position and a call to arms for more proactive publicity of Church teaching. While Tentler might have us believe “Casti Connubii” to be a simplistic prohibition versus contraception, it is a unfathomed and pretty treatise on marriage. Proclaiming marriage’s dignity and sanctity, Pius XI shows deep positive feeling of liking and paternal concern that humans not be led astray. Preventing such, he calls the “sacred trust” of priests and bishops.
While the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s saw a growing advertizing and acceptance of authentic instructing on marriage and marital relations, hints of dissent became ever more present – starting in the late 1950s. Instead of embracing their “sacred trust,” more and more priests and bishops seemed to be signaling – often times through thundering silence – that a alter in instructing was on the horizon. For a number of years, CUA even held Father Charles Curran – who in an open way advocated such alter – aboard it is faculty. It was into a festering chasm of chaos and confusedness that Pope Paul VI staged “Humane Vitae.” Rather than a Holy spirit inspired and prophetic document, Tentler intimates this encyclical to be the product of minority voices who with great success coerced Paul VI. Yet, she provides an perceptive quote when it comes to it is reception: “‘A peculiar, implicit gentleman’s agreement has produced among clergy and hierarchy in which the hierarchy commits itself not to undertake to seriously enforce compliance with Humanae Vitae so long as the clergy is not too open and public in it is opposition to the encyclical,’ Andrew Greeley asserted in 1972″ (p. 263). While no promoter of Humanae Vitae, Tentler acknowledges that this silent treatment has had a desolating impact: “The result was a church where sexual ethics were seldom discussed, in spite of rapid change in the cultural values…. Divorce rates rose, even among regular churchgoers, as did the exercise of premarital cohabitation. Birth and marriage rates declined….Many Catholics…were newly tolerant of abortion” (pp. 276, 277).
The post Humane Vitae silence has continued for a generation and a half. Some Catholics nearing menopause may have never even came across the clergy’s “sacred trust.” If we veritably love our clergy, don’t those of us who hug the Theology of the Body and NFP bear obligation to remind them that Pius XI’s words were never abrogated? “If any confessor or pastor of souls, which may God forbid, lead the faithful entrusted to him into these errors or ought to at least assert them by approval or by guilty silence, let him be mindful of the fact that he will have to render a rigorous account to God, the Supreme Judge, for the betrayal of his sacred trust”
My Review
I purchased this book for my son who is a Theology Teacher in another state. The book arrived in less than a week. He phoned me when it arrived and said it was in very good condition.
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