Darkness To Light
By JOE SIXPACK
A darkness has descended upon the whole Earth — the Church, the United States of America, developed “civilizations” in the West, and even the Third World. In all my years — from the ’50s until now — I’ve never seen things the way they are today. Right has become wrong, emotion dictates what passes as truth instead of proven principles, logic, and right reason, and it seems everyone is offended at the least little thing said or done.
The only hope for our world is Jesus Christ, and He gave us the Catholic Church to act on His behalf in this crazy world. But now the Church is without credibility among the people, and there is corruption from top to bottom. The Church is still the world’s best hope, though.
The question is, how do we turn things around in the Church to once again make her the arbiter of truth? Well, first we must identify where the problem began, who’s to blame, and then how to fix it.
Homosexuality and pedophilia are nothing new to the priesthood. They’ve always been there, and will always be there. You can’t prevent it. Priests are mere men, subject to the effects of original sin just like we are. While the vast majority of priests are good men (at least 96 percent) who take their priesthood and vows seriously, it is that tiny minority who get all the bad attention that the media make out to be a boys’ club of perverts.
Still, the priesthood isn’t the problem.
We, meaning the Church, began the journey on the slippery slope to the point we’ve reached today after Vatican II. The problem isn’t Vatican II, but rather the evil-minded traitors who raised their maleficent heads after the council: the neo-modernists.
Modernism was a heresy that began to ravage the Church during the nineteenth century. Modernism taught, for example, that dogma could evolve over time, which is why some Catholics believe the Church is a bit behind the times on LGBT issues.
Modernism is much more than this example, but I think you get the idea. So in 1893, Pope Leo XIII gave us the encyclical Providentissimus Deus, which effectively silenced Modernism. Notice I said it was silenced, not eradicated. Those who held to Modernism simply slid under their proverbial rocks and did whatever they had to in order to keep their ideology alive, albeit quietly. Then they waited . . . and waited.
In 1962, the Modernists saw their long-awaited opportunity with the convocation of Vatican II. While the Second Vatican Council produced magnificent work, it was the heretical descendants of Modernists, called Neo-Modernists, who heaped havoc upon the Church.
They quickly — almost before the council concluded — infiltrated diocesan chanceries and played themselves off as the Vatican II “experts.” There is always a lot of confusion for about 20-25 years after a council, but this time things were much different. Priests, always overworked in every age, were encouraged to attend workshops and seminars led by these “experts” rather than read the conciliar documents.
“Come on,” they said, “let us save you all the time and effort of studying those boring documents. We’ll summarize them for you and give you all you need to know.”
Remember what I said about priests being subject to the effects of original sin just like us? Well, the vast majority of them attended these events and never bothered to read the documents. Since these “teachers” seemed to have all the right credentials and episcopal credibility, the majority of priests bought into what these Neo-Modernists were teaching.
As a result, the Neo-Modernists built an army of priests who didn’t realize they were being manipulated and used.
It was these same Neo-Modernists who infiltrated the chanceries and seminaries, where they attempted to destroy the Church from within. They virtually changed the face of the Church with abuses too numerous to mention here. In fact, if I did list them you’d get upset with me about mentioning some of them, because they would seem normal to you, so embedded are they in Catholic thought. One change/abuse I will mention, though.
These Neo-Modernists so watered down catechesis so as to produce generations of an ignorant laity. Neo-Modernists realized that if you keep the laity ignorant of the faith, then you can tell them anything and they’ll believe it.
Maybe you don’t believe me when I tell you they watered down catechesis and robbed you of a decent catechetical education. Let me prove it. If you’ve been reading this column for any length of time, you should be able to answer the following question, so try asking it of Catholics who don’t read this series and see what you get.
QUESTION: How many sacraments are there, what are their names, and what do they do?
Very rarely will you find even weekly Mass-attending Catholics who can answer that question, and I’ve even met PSR teachers who couldn’t answer it, yet any Catholic eighth grader could answer it 80 years ago. A Catholic eighth grader! And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
And to my way of thinking, watered-down catechesis is the most devastating abuse heaped on us by the Neo-Modernist crew. Why? Because a well-catechized, well-informed laity cannot be fooled, and the corruption we see in the Church today couldn’t be possible.
