By PAUL KRAUSE
(Editor’s Note: Paul Krause in 2018 wrote an article for The Wanderer entitled: “Liberalism and the Crisis of Catholicism.” He is a senior contributor to The Imaginative Conservative.
(The document Male and Female He Created Them that Krause refers to in the first paragraph of the article below was issued June 10 by the Congregation for Catholic Education. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is expected to publish a more in-depth theological and anthropological text than the guide published by the Education Congregation.)
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Schism is defined as willful refusal to submit to the Roman Pontiff and those who are in communion with him. This does not, of course, mean that the Holy Father is never to be criticized. But the more pertinent reality to schism, here, is those refusing to submit to those who are in communion with the Roman Pontiff. Those subjects who are in communion with the Pope, whom we, as Catholics, are also obliged to submit to, include the writers of Male and Female He Created Them.
In the National Catholic Reporter, Paul J. Schutz, a religious studies professor at Santa Clara University, is the latest to critique the document as harmful, “concerning,” and denying the experience of self-identifying LGBTQI+ persons. He has an impressive résumé behind him, a BA from Boston College and an MA and Ph.D. from Fordham University, the former employer of Dietrich von Hildebrand.
But the fact that Schutz comes out of the Catholic educational establishment, and is employed by the Catholic educational establishment, shows how compromised and corrupt the Catholic educational establishment is.
I am not daft enough to condemn all Catholic education as being in de facto schism. There are some good Catholic educational institutions. But the vast majority, even flagship institutions with the veil of deep Catholicity, are in a state of willful disobedience to the teachings of Christ and His Holy Church.
From Fr. Theodore Hesburgh to the rebellion of the Catholic educational establishment regarding Humanae Vitae, which truthfully proclaimed the depravity and sinfulness of the use of contraception, the Catholic educational establishment in the last 40-50 years has invited the spirit of Satan into its halls in this longstanding rebellion against the truths of the Catholic faith and those who uphold it in pious obedience.
The corruption of Catholic education starts with Fr. Hesburgh at the University of Notre Dame on the issue of contraception. The widespread schismatic spirit of Catholic educational began with most schools and their teachers and professors, men and women who were supposed to profess (affirm) the Catholic faith, in their willful rebellion against the truthful teachings about contraception in Humanae Vitae.
It isn’t surprising that the terrible state of Catholic education flows from the corrupting poison of rebellion on a matter of moral truth, in particular, a sexual truth.
Since sex is so close to the human person, it is, truly, something that defines us as human creatures. However, it is precisely because of its closeness that sex can become a weapon used by Satan to sow discord and division in the self, and among the faithful. Look no further than the state of the Church today. And if one cannot control their sexual appetites or is compromised because of their faulty views of human sexuality, one will inevitably be entirely compromised in life and no longer be able to distinguish right from wrong.
This is why Dante places the lustful in the first proper circle of Hell after Limbo. By not being able to control sexual passion, which becomes disordered passion, all the worst sins subsequently follow: violence to self, violence to others, and violence to God, ultimately leading to deceit and death — the way of Satan.
The Catholic educational establishment now serves as the revolutionary vanguard for Satan and the demons. Students, young men and women who should be instructed and formed in the Catholic faith, attend these supposedly Catholic establishments and are corrupted by the tenets of subjectivism and relativism.
What matters is private conscience, private interpretation, and personal feelings. No one has a right to do violence, or harm, this mode of the thought argues, to a person’s conscience, personal interpretative method, or feelings. As such, many young men and women go through “a Catholic education” and come out bent, broken, and morally confused. The great value they learned was not truth, but non-harm.
Freedom from harm is not a biblical conception. Freedom from harm is not a Christian concept. Suffering and sacrifice are at the heart of the biblical life and Christian life. From the great saints of the Old Testament, to Christ Himself, to the saints down throughout the ages, the suffering and sacrifice to live a life united to God is the spirit of Catholicism. Freedom from harm, by contrast to the demanding and disciplining love of God in Scripture, is the dream of rebellious man. It is the dream of the liberal philosophers from Thomas Hobbes and John Locke to John Stuart Mill and John Rawls.
Send your child to a Catholic school and he or she, the only two genders there are, will almost certainly graduate with a schismatic spirit running through their veins which jeopardizes their souls.
Catholic education is not a place for disobedience and rebellion. It should be a place to cultivate virtue and learn the truths of the revealed religion. Instead, it has become a den of relativism and subjectivism, of private conscience and personal interpretation, of intersectional propaganda and feelings.
Catholic education suffers from the spirit of schismatic rebellion irrespective of how many appeals to “Catholic” these rebellious clerics, teachers, and activists make. After all, it was Christ who said, “But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female.” There is nothing more wicked and rebellious than to confront the revealed truth of Christ behind the veil of the Church He started. This spirit of rebellion harms not only the Church but also makes a mockery of Christ.
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