By FR. JAMES ALTMAN
Dear family, each year when I would begin to teach high schoolers at the best high school in the diocese (measured by the greatest Catholic identity), I would tell the kids that the number one thing that annoyed Fr. Altman was uninformed opinions. I didn’t mind if anybody asked any question. However, the most dangerous words out of anyone’s uninformed mouth were: “Well, what I think is. . . .” I would tell them that the simple fact is that my opinions did not count and — neither did theirs.
That was a shocking statement to them. It also is shocking to our modernist American ethos. It is shocking because our modernist American ethos is imbued with the erroneous proposition that we are entitled to our opinions. No, we are not.
As Catholics, we are entitled to receive — and commanded to speak — facts. To do otherwise is to bear false witness. There is a Commandment about that, one of only ten, and Almighty God never has said “nine out of ten ain’t bad.” No. This is a very serious Commandment, as Sacred Scripture itself elucidates. Thus, we find in the Book of Daniel the incident where two men bore false witness against an innocent women and paid for it with their lives. (Yes, Virginia, capital punishment never has been forbidden in Judeo-Christian history and the recent rewriting of the Catechism is another fine example of the gnostic heresy of “I know better than 2,000 years of saints and martyrs”).
Before looking directly at the Church, let us ponder how the mainstream media have become so diabolical in bearing false witness. None of the left-wing, and not so much of the right, really just presents facts. Rather, the news is all couched in their agenda. Everything is presented through the colored lens of their ideologies.
I remember a regularly occurring feature in a Boston publication that said something like “thank God we are a two-newspaper town.” Then it would present the differing headlines from the left-wing and right-wing newspapers. Both were based on the same set of facts. Both presented exactly opposite “opinions” on the same set of facts. Both could not be true and correct.
Here is a perfect example of the idiocy of ideologies running rampant in the propaganda presented by so much of the mainstream media. All we have to do is remember that video of the “news” reporter preposterously claiming — even as the multi-story building behind him burned down — that all was a “peaceful protest.” All we have to do is hear the Seattle mayor call the takeover of a big section of downtown a “summer of love.” All we have to do is watch 100-plus days of Portland criminal rioting and hear Kamala Harris say protesting will and should continue.
One final point about “opinions” before moving on to the Catholic Church. The reason why people are not entitled to their “opinions” is that opinions can cause harm. Think of it this way. My constitutional right to swing my fist ends at your nose. My constitutional right to do anything ends when it causes harm. So again, we are not entitled to any opinions. We are entitled to well-formed opinions, based on the Truth which is Jesus. We see this fact in the true meaning of “following your conscience” which really means — contrary to Jesuit Fr. James Martin’s deception on the issue — following a conscience well formed in the unchanged and unchangeable Truth of 2,000 years of Catholic saints and martyrs, handed on from Jesus the Lord.
As Catholics, we know that the real harm regards eternal damnation. Thus, no one is entitled to an “opinion” that endangers eternal souls. No one. It does not matter what color of cassock he is wearing, nor what any un-habited nun-on-the-bus says. None are entitled to an opinion that endangers eternal souls.
This Truth should concern us all — that Jesus came to save our eternal souls from eternal damnation. No Savior, no salvation. Period. That is why Jesus warned us thusly: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.” In other words, be very much afraid of someone’s opinions that differ from Jesus, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
That brings us to the Godless proposition of “synodalism” — whereby the unity of Truth is handed off to “synods” of bishops in their respective geographical locations. This inherently creates relativism based on geography and person opinion. The Winnipeg Statement is a perfect example.
After Humanae Vitae was published, something like 90 out of 96 Canadian bishops published a statement essentially saying that any Catholic, based upon his/her personal opinion, could choose to act outside of the unchanged and unchangeable directive against artificial contraception. Specifically, these Canadian bishops said that Catholics “should remember that their good faith will be dependent on a sincere self-examination to determine the true motives and grounds for such suspension of assent and on continued effort to understand and deepen their knowledge of the teaching of the Church.” Further, “In accord with the accepted principles of moral theology, if these persons have tried sincerely but without success to pursue a line of conduct in keeping with the given directives, they may be safely assured that, whoever honestly chooses that course which seems right to him does so in good conscience.”
The Winnipeg Statement bore false witness. Those Canadian and bishops were false shepherds, wolves in sheep’s clothing. Their statement was contrary to the universal and unchanged teaching of Judeo-Catholic history dating back to Genesis and God’s command to be fruitful and multiply. The very fact that it properly is understood as artificial — as opposed to God-created — tells us all we need to know about it. It is not from God, but from sinful man. The absurdity of the proposition set forth in the Winnipeg Statement — “whoever honestly chooses that course which seems right to him does so in good conscience” — is revealed when applying that same idiotic proposition to any other sin.
Nobody — absolutely nobody — has the right to personal interpretation of anything as sin or not-sin. The definition of sin is given to us by God and God alone. So no, Virginia, we do not get to “honestly” choose any course of conduct which seems right to us based upon our personal opinions. Once more with feeling: The Canadian bishops were false shepherds and risk damnation by their own un-recanted false leadership.
Another perfect example is the travesty wreaked upon the faithful in the United States by Theodore McCarrick in 2004. If you remember, that was the year that an imposter of a Catholic, John Kerry, was running for president. The question arose whether a priest could give to an open and notorious proponent of the slaughter of innocents in the womb — such as Kerry — the Real Presence of Jesus the Lord in Holy Communion.
As head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, wrote a letter to the USCCB instructing them that no one shall give Holy Communion to politicians holding views like Kerry’s. The letter was addressed to Bishop Wilton Gregory, then head of the USCCB.
Then, essentially, McCarrick misrepresented the truth of the letter at the U.S. bishops’ summer meeting, saying that the decision was up to each individual bishop of the approximately 195 dioceses in the United States.
That is bearing false witness. That is a lie. What is true in any of the 195 dioceses is true in all of the 195 dioceses. In fact, it is true around the globe, and all of the approximately 5,000 bishops — including the Bishop of Rome — better be on the same page. So, when we hear of late that a bishop in South Carolina supported his priest who denied Biden reception of Holy Communion yet Wilton Gregory publicly stated he would give Biden Holy Communion, both sides cannot be right. Truth and falsity are mutually exclusive.
Now let us turn our attention to the lie that is “synodalism.” No bishop, nor any synod of bishops, may change the unchanged and unchangeable Truth. Yet, we see in places around the globe — Germany is a particularly damnable example — bishops, cardinals, and synods bearing false witness and spreading their poisonous personal opinions amongst the baptized.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which reflects 2,000 years of unchanged and unchangeable Truth, states as follows:
“Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”
Nevertheless, several German bishops and cardinals publicly have supported blessings and rites for homosexual unions. We only can wonder what special gnostic knowledge the Germans — and, as reported, also the Austrians — think they have that they can change God’s natural law to comport with their own highly exalted personal opinions. They bear false witness that endangers the eternal souls of God’s children, and that literally is a damnable offense. Memo to the Germans: God’s opinion counts. Yours does not.
Spreading soul-threatening poison amongst their own flock is bad enough. But, as CNA Deutsch reported, Bishop Georg Batzing, the president of the German bishops’ conference, has repeatedly suggested that the forthcoming assembly in Rome of the Synod of Bishops on the theme of synodality could help to implement changes proposed by the German bishops and the country’s “Synodal Way” — not just in Germany, but throughout the Catholic Church. The “Synodal Way” is a process bringing together German lay people and bishops to discuss four major topics: the way power is exercised in the Church; sexual morality; the priesthood; and the role of women.
Dear family, we, who strive to be truly faithful, strive to be faithful to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, founded by Truth Himself, Jesus the Lord. We follow Him, not some bishop and not some synod of bishops, no matter what color of cassock they wear. We do this because at the Last Judgment, we will appear before Jesus the Lord, and not some bishop and not some synod.
That is not my opinion. That is the Truth.
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