On the Origin and Destiny of the American Catholic Identity Crisis.

The ongoing 50+ year American Catholic identity crisis was born of a split between the Magisterium who protected it, and the academics who taught it.

Vic Biorseth, Tuesday, May 12, 2015
https://www.catholicamericanthinker.com/

As a local delivery driver, I don't get to hear any "complete" broadcast of any of the big-time talk show hosts, and that's unfortunate.  From 9 AM until noon, I flip between Glenn Beck, Herman Cain and Catholic Radio.  Somewhere between 10:30 AM and noon, for about 15 minutes, I eat my lunch and turn it off for my rosary.  From noon until 3 PM, I listen to Rush.  After 3 PM, I start out with Sean Hannity, but shortly thereafter, I almost always wind up flipping to EWTN Catholic Radio and staying there.  But, like I say, I'm always in and out of the vehicle, so I miss a lot.  The one I try to miss the least is Rush. 

Yesterday, on Catholic Radio, Al Kresta's guest was Fr. Peter Mitchell, author of The Coup at Catholic University, subtitled The 1968 Revolution in Catholic Education.  I found the conversation riveting, because of my unhappy experience going through the Cincinnati Archdiocese's Lay Pastoral Ministry Program (LPMP) offered through the Athenaeum of Ohio. 

Around the turn of the last century I went through the entire LPMP as a required prerequisite to entering the Diaconate program.  At the end, I was "not invited" into the Diaconate program, quite specifically and officially because I was too rigid in "my" doctrine.  Even though it was, quite specifically and officially, the Church's doctrine, not mine.  You can read about my experience in the LPMP in the multiple "Cafeteria Catholic" articles among the Refuting Perverted Catholicism Pages. 

Fr. Mitchell's words resonated, striking familiar harmonious chord after chord.  They brought to mind old LPMP arguments with professor priests, nuns and lay scholar teachers, over matters so settled in Catholic doctrine as to be stunning when openly challenged if not opposed, by official teachers of the Catholic faith.  The worst of it all was the unflinching defense of erroneous if not heretical faculty, texts and teaching material, all strongly defended by then Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk. 

I remember going through Vatican II documents with great care, because Vatican II was blamed for all the breakdown in the faith we were seeing.  But there was nothing wrong with Vatican II; there was a
"Spirit of Vatican II" movement that falsely claimed to base itself on the Council, but the documents themselves refuted everything they claimed.  The Spirit of Vatican II claims were so false as to have been manufactured out of thin air. 

And, going through the original Order Of The Mass for Paul VI's 1969 Novus Ordo showed, similarly, that it was unfairly blamed for all the liturgical excesses and wild goings-on in Catholic Masses all over the country.  See the Liturgical Abuses article for the diabolical plot to destroy the Catholic Liturgy.  But, even though infected with the infamous Bugnini Schema, the New Mass, as originally ordered, refutes all the Liturgical claims of the Liberal innovators. 

So where did all this un-Catholic crap come from? 

It was part of the 1960's Marxist-inspired and instigated American Cultural Revolution that brought us race riots, the sexual revolution, campus burnings, and finally, a fully and completely Marxified Democrat Party.  The Marxist Revolutionary social sickness had infected and been allowed to metastasized within the Church, too, as shown in Lucifer and the CCHD, Dorothy Day and elsewhere herein. 

Fr. Mitchell's book, The Coup at Catholic University may have nailed it.  In his interview with Al Kresta, he identifies the critical point of demarcation as being between actual Catholic Doctrine and teaching Catholic Doctrine.  At question was who, between the Catholic academics and the Catholic Magisterium, had the best understanding and thus the best authority to properly present Catholic Doctrine to Catholic students. 

Which should have been a no brainer.  Who needs a brain to figure that one out? 

It was to His chosen Church that our Lord handed the Keys, and it was to them that He promised to send the Holy Ghost to guide them into all Truth, and to remind them of all that He had taught them, including that which was not written (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:7).  Not to the Scribes and Pharisees (or the elite academics) but to His chosen Apostles (the ordained Church).  That's just black and white. 

In 1968, Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical Humanae Vitae, issued to the whole Church and to the whole world, in multiple languages.  Humanae Vitae strengthened the Church's existing doctrine condemning artificial contraception through the exercise of the Ordinary Magisterium, as a strong, clear, definitive papal teaching on a matter of faith and morals.  It was, thus, an infallible teaching.  And it wasn't even the first.  Pius XI issued Casti Cannubii way back in 1930, in another such infallible papal teaching reinforcing continuously existing Catholic doctrine. 

I still remember arguing with a priest-professor in an LPMP class, in which he loudly challenged me "Be careful what you call a definitive papal teaching on faith and morals" in front of the whole class.  And I asked him, if Humanae Vitae was not a definitive teaching on faith and morals, issued by a pope to the whole Church, then, what, exactly, was it?  But he just moved on with the rest of the class agenda.  (Which was very, very bad.) 

Fr. Mitchell's The Coup at Catholic University highlights what may be the historic point of the beginning of the larger cultural Marxian - anti-authoritarian rebellion actually entering the Church in America.  In 1968, Fr. Charles Curran, professor of theology at Catholic University in Washington DC, issued an infamous "Statement of Dissent" signed by some 500 theologians.  This Statement of Dissent declared, with unmitigated gall, that Catholics were not bound in conscience to follow the Church's teaching as laid out in Humanae Vitae, regarding the mortal sinfulness, familial, cultural and social destructiveness of artificial contraception. 

Fr. Curran had fired the first shot in opening what was touted to be a new war over "Academic Freedom", ostensibly seeking to answer the straw villain question "What is the meaning of academic freedom in a Catholic University?"  What he and his co-signers were actually attacking was Doctrine.  And, ultimately, belief. 

And they were not resisted enough. 

I have ordered Fr. Mitchell's book but not received it yet.  When I have read it I will include it among the Reference Material.  But this radio interview was quite revealing of the original source of much that has troubled me over many years.  See the Artificial Contraception page, and also the Contraception Perversion page, among others among the Infiltration of Evil pages, the Death of Morality pages, and elsewhere herein. 

Everything Paul VI prophesied in Humanae Vitae has come to be. 

I remember 1968.  It was a very busy year.  Campuses were burning.  Flags, bras and draft cards were burning.  The Democrat National Convention in Chicago news was eclipsed by the revolutionaries and anarchists who were rioting outside.  We lived through the Detroit race riots, in which most of the city burned; we were locked and loaded, but came through OK.  There were race riots all over America, just like today.  On queue.  With union support.  With professional racial "demonstration" support.  Withe bullhorn demands.  With chants.  With News support.  With Democrat support.  (Now, with Presidential support.) 

It was all just as it is today, as it was since Marx authored his Manifesto.  It was all anti-authoritarian.  Wherever authority was, it was attacked.  And most of it was in universities.  Back in the 1930s and 1940s it was mostly labor, and race.  In the 1960's it was mostly students, and professors, and journalists, and race. 

Today, its the whole educationally-produced underclass, and organized labor, and journalism, and academics, and Hollywood, and, of course, race.  Race has become Marxism's second most valuable revolutionary tool in America. 

But Marxist revolution's most valuable tool in America is immorality. 

Immorality is even more culturally destructive than educated stupidity. 

The Marxist Frankfurt School first infiltrated then dominated formal education in America, and the fruit of their efforts was their purposely educationally produced Revolutionary Man, which they described as:

A better description might be a sociopathic time bomb.  There is no one left for him to be alienated against.  A pure anti-authoritarian.  Which pretty much describes the Hippies, the Occupy Wall Streeters, the "No Justice, No Peace" and the "Black Lives Matter" twits.  None of whom realize that they have been set up for slaughter in a larger Machiavellian plan of assuming dictatorship.  Which may or may not come about in this particular cycle of bottom-up community organized, and top-down carefully orchestrated cultural violence; or perhaps the next one. 

Now, with Fr. Mitchell's revelations, we see at least one historical place where the anti-authority movement entered Catholic education, big time.  It was a double-whammy.  It challenged Magisterial authority over the Church's own Doctrine, and it challenged the "immorality" and sinfulness of artificial contraception. 

With heavy support and mild resistance. 

Firing a few dissident academics was not nearly enough to stop this.  All signers should have been fired and excommunicated, as open opponents of established Church doctrine, fully intending to teach opposing Church doctrine, acting as Catholic teachers, in Catholic teaching institutions. 

"Academic Freedom"?  Excuse me?  Freedom to teach falsehood? 

In Conquest By Delusion we talked about purposeful, educationally induced Gender Identity Disorder in young students, who are being formally taught in public schools such utter falsehoods as, Your true gender is not your physical gender but how you feel at the moment, and, Homosexuals are born that way and cannot change, and, The only real differences between men and women are institutional and cultural differences.  It's an actual recruitment drive, aimed at increasing Identity Disorder among the citizenry. 

Well, guess what?  "Catholic" academics appear to me to be purposefully, educationally inducing Catholic Identity Disorder among the Catholic faithful.  I know for a fact that that's what the LPMP (Lay Pastoral Ministry Program) is all about.  Maybe it's been going on and increasing in Catholic education since 1968.  It was not resisted, and indeed it was encouraged and protected in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. 

I am older than most, but I can remember being, and recognizing others as being, distinctly Catholic.  Most of you probably cannot.  There is almost no such thing any more in American culture as recognizable, distinct Catholicism, out in the public square.  You don't see people crossing themselves, or saying grace before meals in restaurants, and there are no Friday Fish Specials in restaurants any more.  We are blending in with the Protestants and the Secularists and the Atheists.  Is there any such thing as a distinct Catholic identity any more?  Only here and there; only in a scattered way.  We have not properly learned our own faith. 

Thanks to flawed Catholic Catechesis, most Catholics have adopted Cafeteria Catholicism, which I now prefer to call Cafeteria Sinfulness, because that's really what it is.  "Catholics" who pick and choose what mortal sins they will or will not commit.  If they don't "feel" it's a sin for them, then it isn't a sin, for them.  Isn't that convenient? 

And how far is that from what they've been officially taught?  They still consider themselves to be Catholics in good standing.  They simply don't know any better. 

What Fr. Curran's Statement Of Dissent, signed by 500 theologians, actually did was promote mortal sin.  It followed the pattern set by various other revolutionaries in other parts of the American culture, and other parts of Western culture.  There is close relationship, and a discernible linkage, between

1. promoting mortal sin;
2. opposing the American Constitution;
3. opposing nature;
4. opposing natural science.

I submit that you cannot commit a mortal sin without simultaneously opposing the Constitution, or nature, or the laws of natural science, or some combination of them, or all of them.  This is not a coincidence.  This is the Natural Law. 

Dissent turns doctrine upside down.  What was once mortal sin becomes a personal choice; something less than mortal sin, in your mind.  But you cannot change the nature of it.  This explains why Liberals say the word love when they mean to use the word lust.  They don't know the difference. 

Contraception enabled sex for the sole purpose of achieving sexual gratification; the Revolutionaries call it "making love".  But real love is a whole lot more than sex.  Love involves commitment, and responsibility; but Revolutionaries detest and reject commitment and responsibility.  Love is the foundation of families; but Revolutionaries detest families.  Too restricting. 

Look at our American Marxocrat Party today, and see if you can identify any mortal sin at all that the Marxocrat Party does not love, sponsor, promote, champion and seek to somehow legally impose upon the whole of the American population. 

They even turn adult judgment upside down accusing faithful Catholics and other Christians, and Jews, of the new invented sin of Judgmentalism.  And they turned Discrimination completely upside down. With an absolute redefinition of Natural Civil Rights. 

The Natural Civil Rights, from our Declaration of Independence, are Equality before the law, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.  That's Natural Law.  No government, and no man, can take them away, because no government, and no man, instituted them in the first place.  Fleshed out in more detail in the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, are freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, arms, security of property, jury trial, proof of guilt, etc., etc., etc.  All of them - every one of them - put constraints on government, not citizens.  

That's why Revolutionaries hate the Constitution.  It limits the government in order to free the citizenry.  So, when you look at Discrimination law, you are (or you should be) looking at restrictions on government to discriminate, which is to say, the people are left perfectly free to discriminate. 

Freedom is, definitively, the ability to freely discriminate and make free choices.  What is freedom if you cannot discriminate? 

Freedom of religion means, precisely, that the Catholic Church (among others) is perfectly free to discriminate between Catholic and non-Catholic doctrine, disciples, teachers, clergy, liturgy, sacrament, catechesis, etc.  But the American government is not. 

Your Liberty and Freedom means that you are perfectly free to associate with whomever you wish to associate, and to shun whomever you wish to shun; but the American government is not. 

The Revolutionaries, with the Marxocrat Party and their News Media in the lead, have turned this upside down.  Always using unconstitutional means, they seek to force Homo-Nazi "rights", and Femi-Nazi "rights", and Racial-Nazi "rights", and Eco-Nazi "rights" down everyone else's throats.  Charging us of the invented mortal sin of Discrimination, they take away our God given right to discriminate, and force us against our will into the close company / cooperation with people we choose not to associate with. 

We have said elsewhere that no one should discriminate against anyone based on race.  But, guess what?  If we were a decent, moral and just people, in the Judao-Christian sense of the those terms, we would not discriminate based on race. 

Guess who politically opposes Judao-Christian decency, morality and justice? 

No - it wouldn't be the Revolutionaries and the Marxocrats, would it? 

I can't wait to get this book.  May write more after I read it. 

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Additional thoughts, Friday, May 15 2015. 

1968 was a big year for the advance of Marxism in America in many, many ways.  It was the year of the Tet Offensive, which was deliberately mal-reported by our Marxist media in such a way as to make an overwhelming American victory into a major defeat, in the eyes of the public.  The deliberate pro-Communist, anti-American lies of our thoroughly Marxist Mainstream Media, right here in America, were what turned a crushing military defeat for Communism into a "Political Victory" for Communism over America.  You can read about these pro-Communist journalistic lies in the Vietnam War page. 

The war in Vietnam was not lost on the battlefields of Vietnam, where no American unit ever lost one single battle.  That war was lost in the streets of America, by an educationally dumbed-down and Marxist-indoctrinated youth, incited to revolutionary violence through pure Marxist manipulative propaganda.  It was enough to break an American Presidency, and to incite the Marxocrat Party in Congress to eventually use its budgetary power to cut off funds, meaning fuel and ammo, to American fighting men on the ground in an active combat zone. 

That ended it, in favor of Communist expansion and popularity. 

The worst forms of disgrace - a fall from grace into sin - are those forms that are not even recognized.  The best kind of trick is the one where the victim never discovers he was tricked.  The best fraud is the one in which the defrauded never discovers the nature of the fraud.  I have to hand it to the Media.  Most Americans, to this very day, do not have the foggiest clue of how the Vietnam war was lost right here, in the streets of America; not over there.  They still don't know. 

Within the Catholic community, the aftermath of the 1968 "official" academic resistance to Humanae Vitae appears to have been exactly the same.  Today, how many Catholics commit the mortal sin of artificial contraception and continue in what they fully believe to be a grace filled, fully sacramental and active Catholic life? 

They still don't know they've been fooled and disgraced, in yet another victory for falsehood and evil through smooth propaganda. 

The results of the 1968 incursion of anti-Catholic thought into all levels of Catholic education are now all around and easy to see.  It has had the same culturally degenerative affect that Protestantism has had, and it introduced yet another break in unity of Christian message.  What the Church teaches on morality has its affects, for better or for worse, on the larger culture. 

Yesterday, parents worried about the movies they should allow their children to go see, unattended.  Today, in their own living rooms, they should be, but mostly are not, worried about the ads, on TV and on radio, let alone the internet.  Viagra.  Cialis.  Male Enhancement. 

Sexual obsession is now all around us.  On conservative talk radio, I hear, with too much regularity, a too long ad featuring two modern women discussing their intimate sex lives, involving ED and PE solutions.  One woman recommended the other send her husband to a clinic specializing in ED and PE issues, because it worked for her husband.  It saved her marriage, see?  That's what marriage is about now.  Forget all that for better or for worse stuff, and all that commitment, and all that covenant blather.  Sexual gratification for its own sake, and lots of it, is now the sole basis of marriage. 

How do you keep a kid from hearing this crap? More importantly, if that's the value heteros put on marriage today, is it any wonder that so many heteros now support homo marriage? 

As much as I despise the man and his diabolically evil ideology, I have to admire the evil genius of Karl Marx.  Communism may be the second most globally successful frauds ever perpetrated against humanity, right after Islam.  The majority of the American citizenry are still blithely unaware of the pro-Communist, anti-Christian and rabidly anti-American Constitution ideology that predominates, where it does not absolutely dominate, right here in America, top to bottom, in: 

1. Formal education;
2. Upper Academia;
   
3. The News Media;
4. The entire field of Journalism;
5. Scientism;
   
6. The Entertainment Industry;
7. The Marxocrat Party;
8. And now, it appears, from many evidences, the Catholic Church.  

Like I said, the best kind of a trick is the one where the victim always remains oblivious to the fact that he was tricked. 

God help us. 

=====

Sarcastic Acronym Hover-Link Footnotes: For the convenience of those readers using devices that lack a mouse, these footnotes are provided for all webpages, in case any webpage contains any hover-links. (If you don't have a mouse, you can't "hover" it over a link without clicking just to see the simple acronym interpretation. Click any footnote link to see the acronym and a detailed explanation; "Hover" the mouse over it just to see the simple interpretation.)

SLIMC¹ Secularist Liberal Intellectual Media Complex
GESGOEAEOT² Gradually, Ever So Gradually, Over Eons And Eons Of Time
PEWAG³ Punctuated Equilibrium's Wild-Assed Guess
TTRSTF⁴ Them There Real Scientifical-Type Fellers
TTRSPTF⁵ Them There Real Smart Perfesser-Type Fellers
TTRSJTF⁶ Them There Real Smart Journalistical-Type Fellers
SNRTACBT⁷ Surely No Right Thinking Adult Could Believe Today
STNSEACPB⁸ Surely Today No Serious Educated Adult Could Possibly Believe
WDN⁹ We Don't Know
BMDFP¹⁰ Baboons, Mongrel Dogs, Filthy Pigs and ...
HBAACOTE¹¹ Human Beings Are A Cancer On The Earth
ACLU¹² Anti-Christian Litigation Union
FLORMPORIF¹³ Flagrant Liar, Or, Mindless Parrot, Or, Innocent Fool
MEJTML¹⁴ Marxist Ends-Justify-The-Means Liar
IEJTML¹⁵ Islamic Ends-Ends-Justify-The-Means Liar
MPAV¹⁶ Marxist Principles And Values
WBESSWG¹⁷ Wise, Benign, Elite, Super-Scientific World Governance
TRMITM¹⁸ The Reason Man's In This Mess
IYI¹⁹ Intellectual Yet Idiotic
TTRSCBTF²⁰ Them There Real Smart Catholic Bishop Type Fellers
IACMPVND²¹ Illegal-Alien-Criminal Marxocrat-Party-Voting Nation-Destroyers
PEJTML²² Palestinian Ends-Justify-The-Means Liar
PSYOP²³ "Psychological Operation" Mind Trick
CDC²⁴ Covid Developmentally Challenged
LGBTQ+ Every Letter Represents A Serious Psychotic sexual Identity Disorder
HEJTML²⁶ Hedonist Ends-Justify-The-Means Liar
SEJTML²⁷ Scientistic Ends-Justify-The-Means Liar

Reference Material

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oldest at the top, newest at the bottom of the list.]

Culture=Religion+Politics;  Who Are We?  Vic Biorseth

The Brilliantly Conceived Organization of the USA;  Vic Biorseth

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Date:  Fri May 15 13:45:55 2015
From:  RickB
Email:   rbutkowski5@comcast.net
Location:  Taylor, MI. USA
Comment: 

A very good article, Vic. Very Good. And you exemplify the process by which the whole of Western Civilization has been undermined by the Illuminists since 1776. Are you familiar with the book entitled "A Few Good Men"? (I can't remember the author's name) But it described the method by which faithful, qualifid men in the seminaries (particularly the Archdiocese of Cincinatti)are being weeded out by the advanced levels of Freemasonry (32nd degree & above).Truly evil and insidious. Keep up the exposure. We know cockroaches can't stand the light.

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Date:  Fri May 15 2015
From:  Vic Biorseth
Comment:  

RickB:

Thank you; no, all "A Few Good Men" pulls up for me is the book and popular movie about the Marine Courts Martial. 

You could be talking about Goodby! Good Men by Michael S. Rose, which exactly covers this topic, although I don't think it mentions freemasonry.  It's listed among my site's Reference Material.  The book was recommended to me by Dr. Chris Kahlenborn, MD, a dedicated pro-life speaker and activist, around the time or shortly after I was in the Cincinnati LPMP program.  

The book is excellent; it has an introduction by Dr. Alice Von Hildebrand, a wise and wonderful woman whom I have long loved from afar.  It documents how love of sin infected Church leaders, and then, formed a "gate" to seminaries.  All who would not condone sin were disqualified, which means, true vocations were automatically disqualified. 

And that is precisely what I found going on in the LPMP at the Athenaeum of Ohio. 

Regards,

Vic

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Date:  Sat May 23 15:06:19 2015
From:  Magdalen
Email:   mwquacker@charter.net
Location:  Beloit, WI USA
Comment: 

Dear Vic,

Blessings be upon you for continuing to educate and enlighten. I'm in the 'later boomer' generation category, and am still catching up on how dissent became so endemic in the American Catholic Church. This article and book helps fill in some of the gaps for me.

I do hope the 'tide is turning' toward orthodoxy (and know it is in some areas), esp. where there is a 'no-apologies' orthodox Bishop. Do you think that, in perhaps 2 more generations or so, we will see the resurgence of authentic Catholicism in the USA?

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Date:  Sat May 23 2015
From:  Vic Biorseth
Comment: 

Magdalen: 

It will come, but when is anybody's guess.  My hope is in Catholic youth I see, and in the youngest, newest ordained Priests I see.  But that's just within my limited scope of vision.  Every time I see something encouraging, something sudden out of hard cold reality smacks me in the face, and it looks like we're losing ground again. 

A recent Vortex episode of Michael Voris (ChurchMilitant.com) showed that, for every 1 newly baptized Catholic, there are 8 who leave the faith. 

Smack. 

At this point in time, it is not getting better.  It is getting worse.  We know that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church.  I wish I could say the same thing about America. 

Nobody is going anywhere worth going without morality, morality comes out of religion, and our religious leaders are not leading the way. 

Regards,

Vic

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