Another Part of the Great Facade Begins to Crumble

One of the many nefarious parts of the great facade that has been erected by the doctrinal and liturgical revolutionaries in the past four and one-half decades is episcopal collegiality. This very important cornerstone of the great facade introduced a novelty that masked real differences among the world's bishops in the quite mistaken belief that it is better to demonstrate to the faithful and to the world a united front of episcopal solidarity than for one bishop to criticize one of his brother bishops or to take policies that put other bishops in a bad light and/or force them to respond to questions as to why they are not doing the same thing in their own dioceses. It has taken the presidential candidacy of the pro-abortion Catholic renegade, Senator John F. Kerry (D-Massachusetts), to help bring make this part of the great facade crumble like so much blue cheese.

The embrace of episcopal collegiality, especially during the pontificates of Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II, served to make an important concession to the spirit of Protestantism and Freemasonry that helped to spawn the modern nation-state and thus most of the problems of modernity itself. That is, the rejection by Protestants and Freemasons of a divinely instituted hierarchy headed monarchically by the Successor of Saint Peter led logically to the triumph of the illusion of egalitarianism while the actual reality was and remains that small elites, principally those in political parties and the corporate and banking worlds, do as they want while the slogans of equality and brotherhood are bandied about to feed the myths believed in by the masses. And in those institutions, such as all Protestant denominations, where a practical egalitarianism has been realized, chaos has been the result. Everything is at the whim of the dictates of the majority, as was seen last year when the Episcopal "Church" in the United States grappled with the issue of a practicing sodomite who had been "elected" to serve as a "bishop" in his home diocese. We have thus seen the true Church embracing the most fundamental errors of Protestantism and Freemasonry, resulting in tremendous confusion for the average Catholic and further contributing to nothing less than diabolical assaults on the fullness of the Catholic Faith and Catholic Tradition from within the highest quarters of the Church in many instances.

The false ideology of episcopal collegiality is what has paralyzed the two aforementioned popes when confronted with bishops who clearly did not believe in the Catholic Faith and/or who looked the other way as others under their direct supervision and control undermined the Faith with the flock entrusted to their pastoral care unto eternity. It took a virtual revolution on the part of lay people in France in 1994 to effect the ouster in January of 1995 of a diocesan ordinary who supported the human pesticide, the French abortion pill, RU-486. It took gargantuan efforts on the part of Roman Catholic Faithful, Inc., to get the Holy See to pay attention to a South African auxiliary bishop, Reginald Cawcutt, who supported sodomy on a now infamous website, going so far as to express that violence be done to the person of the Holy Father. Indeed, the stories are legion of priests and lay people who have tried over the years to get the Holy See to remove bishops who were undermining the Faith, if not actually engaged in unrepentant acts of perversity. Look at how long it took the Vatican to act in the case of the former bishop of Springfield, Illinois, Daniel Ryan, even though Stephen G. Brady, the founder of Roman Catholic Faithful, Inc., had presented all of the facts quite publicly, facts that proved to be incontrovertibly correct. No one, including Ryan's successor, the Most Reverend George Lucas, has ever acknowledged that Steve Brady did a commendable and courageous thing for the good of the Church and thus for the good of souls by bringing the Ryan matter to public view. That would be to admit, eegads, that a bishop was capable of being wrong and that a lay man was correct in attempting to save souls and to point out the connection between the countenancing of doctrinal heresy and personal misconduct on the part of bishops and priests.

The false ideology of episcopal collegiality is what maintained the recently deceased Kenneth Untener as Bishop of Saginaw, Michigan, for so long. It is what kept the now disgraced Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland in power in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee for so long. It is what has kept Bishop Matthew Clark of Rochester, New York, in power despite his having said years ago that the Church had to find some way to "bless homosexual unions." It is what has kept Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany, New York, in power for twenty-seven years (and he is only sixty-five years old, ten years shy of retirement age). It is what kept the late John Raymond McGann in power in the Diocese of Rockville Centre as he dismantled the Faith in a very revolutionary manner.

The false ideology of episcopal collegiality is what kept Bishop Walter Sullivan of Richmond, Virginia, and Archbishop Thomas Kelly, O.P., of Louisville, Kentucky, in power after they endorsed Mrs. Hugh Finn's decision to seek a court order to remove food and water from her brain damaged husband in 1998. And it is this false ideology of episcopal collegiality that has kept Roger Cardinal Mahony in power as he has destroyed the Catholic Faith all throughout California, getting his contacts in the Vatican to appoint (with only a few exceptions) his men as bishops up and down the Pacific coast. It is why the Holy Father never criticizes any of the outrageous comments of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger or Walter Cardinal Kaspar about their contention that Jews are saved by the Mosaic Covenant. Pope John Paul II has thus become a prisoner of the ideology he helped to create at the Second Vatican Council.

The cracks that are now emerging in the great facade of episcopal collegiality began to show forth a little bit in the early part of 2003. Sacramento, California, Bishop William Weigand said that then California Governor Gray Davis should not present himself for Holy Communion and that a pastor in his diocese was correct to deny him, Davis, an opportunity to appear in an institution run by the diocese. This placed Bishop Weigand at odds with the Metropolitan Provincial of California, the aforementioned Roger Cardinal Mahony, who has never met a pro-abortion politician he did not like and embrace, including former President William Jefferson Clinton. A little crack emerged.

A few more cracks started to become noticeable during the summer of 2003 when the case of Mrs. Terri Schindler-Schiavo was much in the news. The Bishop of St. Petersburg, Florida, the Most Reverend Robert N. Lynch, more or less said that the whole matter of providing food and water was something to be determined by family members--and that the removal of food and water could be considered moral in some circumstances. Breaking with collegiality, though, Bishop Robert Vasa of Baker City, Oregon, came out to say what the Holy Father himself ultimately reaffirmed earlier this year: that there is never any circumstance in which it is permitted to withdraw food and water, no matter how they are delivered, from a patient to expedite his or her death. Several other bishops, having dipped their toes into the water and put their fingers into the wind, following Bishop Vasa's lead, putting Bishop Lynch in the most unusual position for a conciliarist bishop of having to defend himself against public disagreements with his brother bishops.

A great chunk from the facade of episcopal collegiality fell from the wall of the regime of novelty last Fall when the current Archbishop of St. Louis, the Most Reverend Raymond Leo Burke, issued an edict before he left the Diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin, barring pro-abortion politicians from the reception of Holy Communion, something he reiterated upon being installed in St. Louis in January of this year. Archbishop Burke's leadership thus opened the way for more of his brethren in the hierarchy to break ranks from the conspiracy of silence that has muted the voices of shepherds as one of the four sins that cries out to Heaven for vengeance is supported openly by Catholics in public life.

The cracks now, though, are wide open and very visible. They are reminiscent of the spirit of manly courage that once prevailed amongst the American hierarchy in the Nineteenth Century, a time when there were quite animated disagreements over such matters as papal infallibility and the appointment of Papal legate to the United States and the heresy of Americanism. Bishops were not afraid in the Nineteenth Century to put pen to paper to express their positions, even if this meant that they were at odds with their brother bishops. There was no pretense of episcopal collegiality. Disagreements were stated quite forcefully. Thus, what we are seeing at present in the case of what to do with pro-abortion Catholic politicians and those who vote for them is a welcomed return to the earlier, more manly era in the history of the Church in the United States in which bishops made no pretense of agreeing with each other when they in fact disagreed quite strongly.

The cracks in the great facade of collegiality that have emerged in recent weeks and months, though, are really remarkable to behold. The Most Reverend Michael Sheridan, the Bishop of Colorado Springs, Colorado, has taken the long overdue but nevertheless extraordinary step of pointing out to ordinary Catholics that to vote for someone who supports evils contrary to the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law separates them from full communion with the Catholic Church and thus denies them the right to receive Holy Communion. Amen. Bishop Sheridan is absolutely correct. So, too, have been Archbishop John Myers of Newark, New Jersey, Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz, of Lincoln, Nebraska, Bishop Joseph Galante of Camden, New Jersey, Archbishop Charles Chaput, O.F.M. Cap, of Denver, Colorado, in making statements of varying degrees of firmness concerning the sacrilege committed against the Most Blessed Sacrament by Catholics in public life who support the destruction of innocent human beings under cover of law.

On the other side of the fence, though, there are the usual suspects who believe that the Eucharist should never be used to "penalize" anyone, a remarkably hypocritical thing to say on the part of men who state, falsely, that those who assist at the Mass of our fathers in venues not approved by them are excommunicated and thus barred from the reception of the sacraments. Thus, Catholics who simply want to worship God in the manner He has been worshiped in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church for the better part of 1500 years must be treated like dogs; those who support abject evils under cover of law must be accorded every respect and benefit of the doubt.

Among the bishops on this side of the facade of collegiality are: Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, the Archbishop of Washington, D.C., Roger Cardinal Mahony, Bishop Howard Hubbard, Archbishop Sean O'Malley, O.F.M., the Archbishop of Boston, Massachusetts, and Archbishop Daniel Pilarcyzk, the Archbishop of Cincinnati, Ohio. These enablers of pro-abortion politicians and their supporters are no dummies. They know full well that the Holy Father, who is the prisoner of collegiality, will never discipline them. Pope John Paul II will never bring order to bear within the Church by attempting to mandate a policy in this regard, no less solemnly proclaim what is the actual fact of the matter: that those who support abortion have excommunicated themselves from the Church. They know that if the Vicar of Christ will not remove the Bishop of Monterey, the Most Reverend Sylvester Ryan, even though he is alleged to have an actual abortionist who has served (and may still be serving) on his diocesan sexual abuse review panel, that nothing will happen to them. The Holy Father simply instructs subordinates in Rome to tell the American bishops to work the matter out amongst themselves, which is what is being done in a committee headed by McCarrick himself. How is this substantially different than how the Episcopalians in this country handled the matter of "bishop" Gene Taylor last year?

Episcopal collegiality is a lie born of Protestantism and Freemasonry, as noted above. It must be yanked out by the roots by some pope, which may not happen, as I have noted in recent commentaries on this site, until Russia is actually consecrated to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. However, it is not futile to at least attempt to point out the simple fact that episcopal collegiality has been one of the chief instruments by which the Faith has been undermined, thus permitting the false values of a false and perverse age to have more and more sway in the minds and the hearts of baptized Catholics.

Anne Katherine Emmerich wrote of the perils of our times when she described what Our Lord saw as He suffered His Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane:

The scandals of all ages, down to the present day and even to the end of the world--every species of error, deception, mad fanaticism, obstinacy, and malice--were displayed before his eyes, and he behold, as it were floating before him, all the apostates, heresiarchs, and pretended reformers, who deceive men by an appearance of sanctity. The corrupters and the corrupted of all ages outraged and tormented him for not having been crucified after their fashion, or for not having suffered precisely as they settled or imagined he should have done. They vied with each other in tearing the seamless robe of his Church; many ill-treated, insulted, and denied him, and many turned contemptuously away, shaking their heads at him, avoiding his compassionate embrace, and hurrying on to the abyss where they were finally swallowed up. He saw countless numbers of other men who did not dare openly to deny him, but who passed on in disgust at the sight of the wounds of his Church, as the Levite passed by the poor man who had fallen among robbers. Like unto cowardly and faithless children, who desert their mother in the middle of the night, at the sight of the thieves and robbers to whom their negligence or their malice has opened the door, they fled from his wounded Spouse. He beheld all these men, sometimes separated from the True Vine, and taking their rest amid the wild fruit trees, sometimes like lost sheep, left to the mercy of the wolves, led by base hirelings into bad pasturages, and refusing to enter the fold of the Good Shepherd who gave his life for his sheep. They were wandering homeless in the desert in the midst of the sand blown about by the wind, and were obstinately determined not to see his City placed upon a hill, which could not be hidden, the House of his Spouse, his Church built upon a rock, and with which he had promised to remain to the end of ages. They build upon the sand wretched tenements, which they were continually pulling down and rebuilding, but in which there was neither altar nor sacrifice; they had weathercocks on their roofs, and their doctrines changed with the wind, consequently they were forever in opposition one with another. They never could come to a mutual understanding, and were for ever unsettled, often destroying their own dwellings and hurling the fragments against the Corner-Stone of the Church, which always remained unshaken. (Anne Katherine Emmerich, The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 110-111.)

The cracks in the great facade of the false ideology of collegiality just prove once more the errors of the conciliarist age, errors that have been harmful both to the state of the Church and thus the state of the world. Although we know that Our Lady's Immaculate Heart will triumph in the end, we must offer to the Immaculate Heart all of our joys and sorrows and sacrifices and penances so that the bishops who are breaking with the lie of collegiality might one day publicly denounce the novelties of the past forty years and thus see in our glorious Tradition the path to order within the Church and thus the world, as was discussed in "The Full Faith Must be Taught" on this site.

Our Lady, Help of Christians, pray for us.