Choices Reveal Convictions

by Thomas A. Droleskey

[The first posting of this article contained a reference to Mr. James Larson's conclusion, found on the website of Christian Order, that the then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger believed in the heresy of consubstantiation. Mr. Larson based that conclusion on a quotation from the then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith dealing with the physical properties of the bread and wine once they had been changed into the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Several individuals have pointed out that this statement is perfectly orthodox, one stating that the reason for the apparent confusion is the current Pope's rejection of the use of Thomistic language (which is itself a problem, both pastorally and doctrinally)

[Even if the quote of Cardinal Ratzinger is perfectly compatible with Catholic doctrine as has been contended by several individuals, it has to be read in the context of how the then Cardinal Ratzinger ascribed to Martin Luther a belief in the doctrine of Transubstantiation. It is useful, therefore to cite once more from Mr. Larson's article

[In the seven pages of the interview which deal with the Eucharist, Cardinal Ratzinger uses the word "transubstantiation" or "transubstantiated" four times. Like Rosmini, however, he uses the word in a fashion which violates its meaning. While repeatedly using the word, he is personally contradicting the Church’s defined doctrine of Transubstantiation – that the entire substance of the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of Christ, only the accidents (appearances) remaining – and is instead embracing consubstantiation (the belief that Christ is in, under, or with the bread) under the guise of transubstantiation.

[It only makes sense, therefore, that on the previous page of this book the Cardinal states that "Luther held out (against Calvin, etc.) in favour of transubstantiation here, with great emphasis…". The Cardinal has simply changed the meaning of the word transubstantiation so that it is similar to the Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation. The notion that Luther held on to the belief in Transubstantiation is a total absurdity. He detested both St. Thomas and the doctrine of Transubstantiation. In his Large Catechism he writes: "What then is the Sacrament of the Altar? Answer: It is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, in and under the bread and wine…". As the Lutheran Formula of Concord states: "Just as in Christ two distinct unchanged natures are inseparably united, so in the Holy Supper the two substances, the natural bread and the true natural body of Christ, are present together here upon earth in the appointed administration of the Sacrament (#37)." The Lutheran formulation for the real presence is "in pane, sub pane, cum pane" – "in the bread, under the bread, with the bread (#38)."

[Additionally, there is other evidence about the Holy Father's views on the Eucharist, especially those involving his decision to overturn the condemnation of Father Antonio Rosmini, to raise serious questions. Father Lawrence C. Smith reviewed some of them in his precis analyzing Pope Benedict XVI's Theology, which was published last week on this site. It must be remembered that Pope Benedict XVI is a disciple of the late Father Hans Urs von Balthasar, an Hegelian.

[Pope Benedict XVI is thus prone to phrase things in ways that can be construed in any number of ways, which is part of parcel of one of the chief problems with the documents of the Second Vatican Council, yet another indication that something so simple, the Faith, must be made complex in order to convince the average Catholic not to trust his sensus Catholicus. Any reliance at all upon the likes of Hans Urs von Balthasar and the other "new thinkers" indicates a predisposition to "re-think" and to "re-formulate" the truths of the Faith so as to "adapt" them to the "mentality of modern man."  Father Regis Scanlon's oft-cited analysis of the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar thus sheds great light on the convoluted thought processes of the current Holy Father. The problems, therefore, remain great, as will be seen in an article to be published on this site on Monday, May 1, 2006.]

Pope Benedict XVI's choice of the former Archbishop of San Francisco, William Cardinal Levada, to succeed himself as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith revealed a great deal about the Holy Father's theological bent to those who were unfamiliar with the Modernist bent of his writings as a priest, bishop and cardinal. The full impact of this devastating appointment is becoming clearer and clearer with the unfolding of events, although I wrote two articles last year, Generating Controversy and Negative Press and Rescind the Appointment at Once dealing with some of Archbishop Levada's past history. A much more extensive analysis was done by Mr. John Vennari in the June, 2005, issue of Catholic Family News.

As it turns out now, the appointment of Archbishop William Levada, who was elevated on March 24, 2006, to the College of Cardinals by Pope Benedict XVI, as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was no accident. Pope Benedict, who stalled for years proceedings against the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Father Marcel Maciel, and Cardinal Levada are of like minds on any number of subjects, including their views of the Eucharist. John Vennari, in an extensive report on then Archbishop Levada published last year in Catholic Family News, wrote the following about the new cardinal when he was the Archbishop of Portland, Oregon:

Archbishop Levada, while Ordinary of Oregon, also had run-ins with Father Eugene Heidt, a feisty traditional priest. Levada eventually illicitly “suspended” Father Heidt for his no-compromise adherence to Tradition. Before the “suspension”, during a meeting with the Archbishop, Father Heidt complained that the Archbishop’s Pastoral Letter on the Eucharist contained no mention of Transubstantiation. Levada replied that Transubstantiation is a “long and difficult term” and that “we don’t use it any more”.

This is a mockery to the infallible Council of Trent, that committed the Church to this precise scholastic definition, hallowed by long usage. Even Pope Paul VI’s 1965 Mysterium Fidei reiterated that the parish priest is duty-bound to speak of “Transubstantiation.” (#54) Levada’s approach is also an insult to “modern man” to whom post-Conciliar churchmen constantly claim to be appealing. It implies that modern man is too stupid to comprehend a term that 2nd grade Catholic school children grasped only fifty years ago.

How can a man who believes that Transubstantiation is "a long and difficult term" be appointed to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith? Even if Mr. James Larson has indeed misread the quotation from the then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger to conclude erroneously on that point alone that he believed in the heresy of consubstantiation, which has been covered in the prefatory remarks above, there is enough other evidence about the problems in the Holy Father's views of the Eucharist to be found in the overturning of the condemnation of Father Antonio Rosmini to cast into doubt the orthodoxy of his views. That evidence suggests very strongly that William Cardinal Levada does indeed share the Holy Father's "difficulties" with traditional Catholic terminology--and all that that implies on the level of doctrine itself.

To wit, much was spoken by then Cardinal Ratzinger about "cleaning up the mess" in the Church as he preached the Way of the Cross in the Coliseum in Rome on Good Friday, March 25, 2005. Many of his most enthusiastic supporters believed that such firm language would result in a reaffirmation of the 1961 prohibition of men inclined to perversity to study for the Holy Priesthood. Ah, not so After much sound and fury signifying hypocrisy, the actual text of the document issued last year dealing with this subject is even weaker than it appeared at the time. In fact, its very effectiveness has been blunted entirely as a result of a change requested specifically by William Cardinal Levada in his capacity as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, as reported by the Rorate Caeli website:

Alas, a last-minute alteration of a note to the document, whose official version has only recently been published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis (AAS), the official Register of the Vatican, has considerably limited the power of bishops and other superiors to detect those seminarians who hide their "intrinsically disordered" condition behind behavioral façades, in the name of the seminarian's "right to intimacy." Il Foglio reports the modification in its Tuesday edition:

"Relatively to the original [version], released in the end of 2005, the definitive and official version contains an added paragraph to note 19:

"'It remains always forbidden to Ordinaries, Superiors, and authorities in general to induce, in any way, the candidates to Orders to manifest their own conscience, since it is not licit to anyone to violate the right that every person has to defend his own intimacy.'

Il Foglio also reports that this alteration was especially desired by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "to avoid the use of psychological and psychoanalytical techniques to discover eventual 'deep-seated homosexual tendencies' present in seminarians". The first version of the document, still available in the Vatican website (and sent to the bishops and superiors in late October/early November) included only this text in note 19, which refers to the text, "The discernment of a vocation and of the maturity of the candidate is also a serious duty of the rector and of the other persons entrusted with the work of formation in the seminary. Before every ordination, the rector must express his own judgment on whether the qualities required by the Church are present in the candidate."

Cardinal Levada was not just "hinting" that seminarians should keep quiet about their perverse tendencies, as had been reported last month. Oh, no, he was "hinting" about the change that his own Congregation had inserted into the text on the "Instruction." In other words, it matters not at all if men who are perversely inclined are able to keep their perverse inclinations to themselves. Such perversity is no impediment to the reception of Holy Orders and thus imaging the God-Man Himself in the offering of Holy Mass. This change could not have been done without the explicit permission of Pope Benedict XVI himself. All of the "excitement" over the Instruction when it was first release was an effort to mollify "conservatives" and other critics while the recruitment of perverts into the priesthood and their subsequent promotion to the hierarchy continues without the slightest change whatsoever. This is a common tactic of revolutionaries: tell the public one thing and then do a complete about-face.

The same methodology is being employed now with respect to the matter of the use of a certain immoral device to prevent the transmission of AIDS in married couples. Two cardinals, Carlo Mario Martini, the former Archbishop of Milan, and Javier Cardinal Lozano Barragán, the Prefect of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, suggested recently that said immoral device can be used by married couples under the "principle of the lesser of two evils," begging the question as to whatever happened to abstinence in cases of illness or incapacity? Cardinal Barragan backtracked in an interview with Zenit, but not much, saying that his pontifical council is preparing a study. The ultimate responsibility for approval rests with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by a man shown to be "sensitive" to such issues, William Cardinal Levada.

That the net result of all this will be a horrific document, based on false moral principles, is clear from a report carried on April 26 in on LifeSiteNews.com:

Noted Vatican reporter John Allen published an article in the National Catholic Reporter yesterday saying that a document was indeed to be published shortly.  Allen quoted an unnamed source in Cardinal Barragán's office who, according to Allen said, "that the document will sanction the use of condoms to halt the spread of the disease 'inside marriage and the family, not outside of it.'"  The official also reportedly told Allen that the document has been approved by the consultors of the Council for Health Pastoral Care, and is now awaiting review from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He said it should appear shortly.

We are witnessing a wholesale abandonment of the Catholic Faith, which will be the subject of an article to be published on this site on Monday, May 1, 2006. How is it possible that men who elect the pope can have such a warped view of morality and can endorse, as Cardinal Martini did recently, the view that life begins after conception? (Memo to Cardinal Martini: life begins at fertilization.) One is forced wonder aloud as to whether these men have any understanding of the Faith as it has been handed down to us. Or is it not the case--and one becoming clearer and clearer as events unfold--that these men have actually rebelled against the Faith and are intent on making war against it?

Cardinal Levada and the Charismatic "Renewal"

Part and parcel of an acceptance of a Modernist theological agenda is, in many instances, an embrace of the novelties of various aspects of Protestantism. Popes Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Saint Pius X addressed this in many ways during their respective pontificates, stretching from 1846 to 1914. Notwithstanding these warnings and exhortations, William Cardinal Levada, along with our recent popes, has endorsed enthusiastically, the so-called Catholic Charismatic Renewal (see an article of his appended below, which reveals the support of then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger for a 1982 book in praise of the Charismatic "renewal"). The belief that the "spirit" is moving the Church in a way contrary to how she has lived her life prior to the Second Vatican Council runs contrary to the patrimony of the Catholic Faith. However, it is very much in line with the ethos of Protestantism and of the Hegelianism of Modernism.

Pope Leo XIII, for example, addressed the errors of Protestant Pentecostalism, "reborn" as the so-called Catholic Charismatic Renewal in the 1960s, in his Apostolical Letter to James Cardinal Gibbons, Testem Benevolentiae, January 22, 1899:

Coming now to speak of the conclusions which have been deduced from the above opinions, and for them, we readily believe there was no thought of wrong or guile, yet the things themselves certainly merit some degree of suspicion. First, all external guidance is set aside for those souls who are striving after Christian perfection as being superfluous or indeed, not useful in any sense -the contention being that the Holy Spirit pours richer and more abundant graces than formerly upon the souls of the faithful, so that without human intervention He teaches and guides them by some hidden instinct of His own. Yet it is the sign of no small over-confidence to desire to measure and determine the mode of the Divine communication to mankind, since it wholly depends upon His own good pleasure, and He is a most generous dispenser 'of his own gifts. "The Spirit breatheth whereso He listeth." -- John iii, 8.

"And to each one of us grace is given according to the measure of the giving of Christ." -- Eph. iv, 7.

And shall any one who recalls the history of the apostles, the faith of the nascent church, the trials and deaths of the martyrs- and, above all, those olden times, so fruitful in saints-dare to measure our age with these, or affirm that they received less of the divine outpouring from the Spirit of Holiness? Not to dwell upon this point, there is no one who calls in question the truth that the Holy Spirit does work by a secret descent into the souls of the just and that He stirs them alike by warnings and impulses, since unless this were the case all outward defense and authority would be unavailing. "For if any persuades himself that he can give assent to saving, that is, to gospel truth when proclaimed, without any illumination of the Holy Spirit, who give's unto all sweetness both to assent and to hold, such an one is deceived by a heretical spirit."-From the Second Council of Orange, Canon 7.

Moreover, as experience shows, these monitions and impulses of the Holy Spirit are for the most part felt through the medium of the aid and light of an external teaching authority. To quote St. Augustine. "He (the Holy Spirit) co-operates to the fruit gathered from the good trees, since He externally waters and cultivates them by the outward ministry of men, and yet of Himself bestows the inward increase."-De Gratia Christi, Chapter xix. This, indeed, belongs to the ordinary law of God's loving providence that as He has decreed that men for the most part shall be saved by the ministry also of men, so has He wished that those whom He calls to the higher planes of holiness should be led thereto by men; hence St. Chrysostom declares we are taught of God through the instrumentality of men.-Homily I in Inscrib. Altar. Of this a striking example is given us in the very first days of the Church.

For though Saul, intent upon blood and slaughter, had heard the voice of our Lord Himself and had asked, "What dost Thou wish me to do?" yet he was bidden to enter Damascus and search for Ananias. Acts ix: "Enter the city and it shall be there told to thee what thou must do."

Nor can we leave out of consideration the truth that those who are striving after perfection, since by that fact they walk in no beaten or well-known path, are the most liable to stray, and hence have greater need than others of a teacher and guide. Such guidance has ever obtained in the Church; it has been the universal teaching of those who throughout the ages have been eminent for wisdom and sanctity-and hence to reject it would be to commit one's self to a belief at once rash and dangerous.

A thorough consideration of this point, in the supposition that no exterior guide is granted such souls, will make us see the difficulty of locating or determining the direction and application of that more abundant influx of the Holy Spirit so greatly extolled by innovators To practice virtue there is absolute need of the assistance of the Holy Spirit, yet we find those who are fond of novelty giving an unwarranted importance to the natural virtues, as though they better responded to the customs and necessities of the times and that having these as his outfit man becomes more ready to act and more strenous in action. It is not easy to understand how persons possessed of Christian wisdom can either prefer natural to supernatural virtues or attribute to them a greater efficacy and fruifulness. Can it be that nature conjoined with grace is weaker than when left to herself?

Can it be that those men illustrious for sanctity, whom the Church distinguishes and openly pays homage to, were deficient, came short in the order of nature and its endowments, because they excelled in Christian strength? And although it be allowed at times to wonder at acts worthy of admiration which are the outcome of natural virtue-is there anyone at all endowed simply with an outfit of natural virtue? Is there any one not tried by mental anxiety, and this in no light degree? Yet ever to master such, as also to preserve in its entirety the law of the natural order, requires an assistance from on high These single notable acts to which we have alluded will frequently upon a closer investigation be found to exhibit the appearance rather than the reality of virtue. Grant that it is virtue, unless we would "run in vain" and be unmindful of that eternal bliss which a good God in his mercy has destined for us, of what avail are natural virtues unless seconded by the gift of divine grace? Hence St. Augustine well says: "Wonderful is the strength, and swift the course, but outside the true path." For as the nature of man, owing to the primal fault, is inclined to evil and dishonor, yet by the help of grace is raised up, is borne along with a new greatness and strength, so, too, virtue, which is not the product of nature alone, but of grace also, is made fruitful unto everlasting life and takes on a more strong and abiding character.

Pentecostalism owes a great to the he American spirit of unbridled individualism, a product of Protestantism in general and Calvinism in particular. This ethos was bound to undermine a Catholic's belief in the sacraments as the principal means by which he receives supernatural helps to resist sin and to grow in holiness. The Pentecostal movement, which was taking many Protestants by storm at the time Pope Leo wrote Testem Benevolentiae (and would be christened the "Charismatic Movement" in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council), contended that individuals did not need any intermediaries with God. Yes, this is one of the cornerstones of Lutheranism and Calvinism, to be sure. Pentecostalism, however, rejects all semblance of external authority in matters of the interior life as an impediment to the working of the Holy Ghost, Who they believe acts immediately and personally upon individuals to enlighten and to strengthen them without the sacramental action of the Church Christ founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. This leads individuals into thinking that they are "empowered" by God directly, and that it is possible to know infallibly God's will for them, as well as to believe that God wills for them to do things that are contrary to what is taught in His name by His true Church, which of her nature is hierarchical and authoritative. No, individuals are authoritative, not any "artificial" construct made up of mere men. How can such mere men who wear "fancy costumes" know more than any one of us?

This spirit infects most of the bishops of the world, including the American hierarchy, in any number of nefarious ways. The Protestant and Pentecostal rejection of a visible, hierarchical society instituted directly by the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made man leads many in the hierarchy to give half-hearted (and frequently, feigned) lip-service to the various poitns of Catholic doctrine as the "spirit" moves them with the "times."

Well, there are all types of spirits. Not all of them are holy. Some of them are quite demonic. And anyone who asserts that the "spirit" is leading them to define the Faith differently than that which Christ Himself taught is being led by a "spirit" of darkness and evil, not the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Ghost. This includes Pope Benedict XVI and William Cardinal Levada, among many others. What the Holy Father and Cardinal Levada do not realize is that the implication that the "spirit" has impelled the Church to shift field during the Second Vatican Council is an admission that the Holy Ghost was either asleep for over 1,900 years or that He is capable of changing His mind, that is mutable, neither of which is in accord with the truths of the Catholic Faith.

Once again, the arrogance of modern man, who believes that he is somehow more enlightened and better equipped to achieve "progress" (as the world defines it) than men in the past. This is why the glory of the Middle Ages must be dismissed by Protestant and secular history textbooks as "The Dark Ages." This is why even the obligatory memorials, as they are called now, on the new liturgical calendar are frequently ignored by priests; how can the modern man of science and "advanced" Biblical exegesis believe that people who did not live in the framework of democracy and consensus and pluralism have anything positive to offer us in our own dynamic era?

It is this contempt for the past, in which the Holy Ghost must have been asleep, which ultimately infected the Vatican itself, leading Annibale Bugnini and his revolutionaries even before the Second Vatican Concil to purge the calendar of many saints and martyrs, about whom, it was alleged, very little was known for sure. Never mind the nasty little fact that most of the liturgical presuppositions that served as the basis of the changes in Holy Week in 1955 and as the basis for Sacrosanctum Concilium at the Second Vatican Council (and of the Consilium headed by Bugnini) have been disproved by scholarship as excercise in antiquarianism, the projection back onto the past of one's revolutionary schemes for the present and the future. No, the modern era, guided by the "spirit," is what should be exalted. This is true of all revolutions. The revolutions of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the Church demonstrate time and time again their contempt for the past, infecting Catholics with an abject ignorance of the true history of the Church of the lives of the saints, expunged as most of them have been from our calendar. It is here that we see the intersection of the currents which produced by the "spirit of the times" in both Americanism in our country and the various secular ideologies of European origin, the veritable witches' brew that would serve as the theological and philosophical backdrop for the Second Vatican Council. (See, for example, Father Ralph Wiltgen's The Rhine Flows Into the Tiber.)

Yes, we are enlightened by the actual grace given us by the Holy Ghost, which actual grace is one of the fruits of the Holy Mass. All actual grace flows out into the world as a result of Masses. However, it is difficult to discern the will of God. We are fallen creatures with a darkened intellect and weakened will. Only a relative handful of genuine mystics have been spoken to by God directly (and have submitted their experiences to the Church for examination and ratification). We need a spiritual director to help us to discern the will of God and to help chart our path as we attempt to grow (despite our falls) in the interior life as we cleave to the path of Tradition without any novelties or innovations. We need, in other words, an external guide to help us to discern the will of God in most instances and to help us to know what the Holy Ghost has actually taught over the course of the centuries and what He has anathematized in dogmatic councils.

It is important to note all of this because the "movements" (the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, Focolare, Communion and Liberation, et al.) form an integral part of breaking down a Catholic's resistance, an inherent part of his sensus Catholicus, to revolutionary changes and to accept uncritically whatever the "spirit" is saying through the "leaders" of the particular movement. The irony here is inescapable: movements born in a spirit of individualism wind up enslaving men to "structures" that are meant to replace the necessity of a visible, hierarchical Church which is shaped by the Tradition she has received from her Divine Bridegroom through the Apostles and under the protection of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Ghost, Who is absolutely immutable, incapable of change. Thus we see the false spirits responsible for the Second Vatican Council itself and for the propagation of the revolution in the years that have followed, a propagation that was planned very carefully by a cadre of revolutionaries in the late-1950s, as Mary Ball Martinez reported in The Undermining of the Catholic Church.

William Cardinal Levada thus reflects very perfectly the views of a man who participated in those meetings in the late-1950s, Father Joseph Ratzinger. Consider this brief excerpt from Mrs. Martinez's book:

“By the late 1950's the days of Eugenio Pacelli [Pope Pius XII] were drawing to a close and the time of the Council approaching. Unusual light is thrown on the feverish activity of that time by Elizabeth Gerstner, an assistant to the German who headed the Bonn office of the Lay Apostolate, a newly set up Vatican organization. It was the illness of her chief that brought young Mrs. Gerstner to the central office, some twenty rooms in a complex of old buildings in Rome’s Piazza di San Calisto. The coordination and promotion of major assemblies throughout the world was the aim of work carried out with strenuous efficiency by a staff of twenty-five under the direction of a young Australian convert from Judaism, Rosemary Goldie.

“From the beginning Mrs. Gerstner was astonished at the familiarity with which Miss Goldie and the other members of the staff treated Curial cardinals and bishops. There was no difficulty in communicating with them at any hour of the day. Gradually it dawned on her how important this committee was, functioning as a kind of processing center for every phase of hierarchy-laity relations throughout the world.

“In retrospect, however, the center has taken on an even greater significance for her as an ante-chamber of the Second Vatican Council. Well before the announcement of the Council the kind of churchmen who moved in and out of the offices at San Calisto presaged the changes ahead. There was the jolly old German, Augustin Bea, 78, whose episcopal consecration, his negotiations with Jewish leaders and his Secretary of Christian Unity were still ahead of him. There was the protege of that long-deceased pioneer of change. Cardinal Mercier of Malines-Brusssels, Leo Suenens, now Auxiliary Bishop of the same diocese, not yet ‘born again’ nor converted to Pentecostalism. There were the younger avant-garde Jesuits, Jean Danielou, Malachi Martin, Robert Tucci who would on to head Vatican Radio and there were the even more avant-garde theologians such as Yves Congar, Josef Ratzinger, Bernard Haring. Members of the Laity Committee itself included Francois Dubois-Dumee, journalist and avowed Communist as well as Msgr. Achille Gloireux who would be found to have been in charge of the waylaying operation in which an anti-Marxist draft resolution signed by 450 Council fathers vanished from sight. In his The Rhine Flows into the Tiber Fr. Wiltgen wrote, ‘From four different sources I learned that the person who had withheld the document was Msgr. Glorieux of Lille, France, who was holding down half a dozen Vatican posts at the time.’

“Inevitably the continued presence of men like these engendered an atmosphere entirely new to the young representative from Germany. Neither her considerable travel nor her wide international contacts had prepared her for the kind of language she was hearing at San Calisto. She was unable to reconcile it with anything she knew to be Catholic. When news came that a Council had been summoned it suddenly became clear to her that these men had not only been working toward Vatican II but were moving way beyond it, planning situations and inventing structures for an entirely new kind of Church in which the priesthood, the liturgy of the sacraments and the Mass itself would be of little importance.

Anyone who contends that the current Holy Father has not been a revolutionary to the core of his being throughout the course of his priesthood is not facing reality as it is. Pope Benedict XVI's choice of men such as William Levada, whose Congregation is busy at work producing a document to state that Limbo does not exist, to continue his own work reveals only too well his commitment to continue an agenda of redefining the Faith in the image of a Council that has done exactly what he, as a young priest, desired it to do: to raze the bastions of Catholicism.

Beseeching Our Lady, in whom we place our entire trust, we stay close to her Divine Son in the Most Blessed Sacrament as we seek to maintain the Faith in our own lives, getting to Confession frequently and making sure to pray the Rosary and to wear the Miraculous Medal and the Brown Scapular. All we can do right now is to maintain the Faith as it has been handed down to us. While we pray for those who hold ecclesiastical office, we must understand that they are wolves in shepherds' clothing. We must understand that these wolves have had an agenda for well over a century, an agenda that they have put into place and enforced with demonic fury. We can have nothing to do with them, just as Saint Basil separated himself from his Arian bishop when he was a lector.

We never lose Faith. We never grow discouraged. We must, though, not let our own sensus Catholicus be broken down by the revolutionaries as we cleave close to Tradition without compromise and stand at the foot of the Cross with Our Lady (and all of the angels and saints) every day at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Mass of all ages that Our Lord Himself taught the Apostles to offer.

Our Lady, Help of Christians, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Pope Saint Gregory the Great, pray for us.

Saint Jerome, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saint Basil the Great, pray for us.

Saint Augustine, pray for us.

Saint Paul of the Cross, pray for us.

Saint Vitalis, pray for us.

Saints Gervase and Protase, pray for us.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

Saint Charles Borromeo, pray for us.

Saint Peter Canisius, pray for us.

Saint Francis de Sales, pray for us.

Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us.

Saint Robert Bellarmine, pray for us.

Saint Louis IX, King of France, pray for us.

Saint Henry, pray for us.

Saint Canute, pray for us.

Saint Edward the Confessor, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius V, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius X, pray for us.

Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe, pray for us.

Blessed Emperor Charles, pray for us.

Blessed Jacinta, pray for us.

Blessed Francisco, pray for us.

Sister Lucia, pray for us.

Pentecostal Catholics--The Catholic Charismatic Renewal by The Most Reverend William J. Levada, Archbishop Emeritus of San Francisco, May 31, 1996

Modern Pentecostalism began in 1906 in a small black Protestant church on Azusa Street in Los Angeles. It has had an astonishing growth -- first among Protestants in the United States, and in the latter decades of this century, across all denominations in Latin America, Africa and indeed throughout the world. Father Kilian McDonnell, OSB, the Collegeville Benedictine who is both theologian and chronicler of the movement, has recently opined that by the year 2000 the number of Pentecostals of all denominations will far exceed the number of Protestants and Orthodox combined.

The first group of Pentecostal Catholics experienced the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the manner unique to Pentecostalism at Duquesne in Pittsburgh in 1967 and at Notre Dame in 1968. By 1972 Cardinal Suenens personally encountered the charismatic renewal, the preferred terminology for Catholics and mainline Protestants, for the first time during a visit to the United States. He was immediately taken by this encounter, appealing as it did to his keen desire to see the church flourish as in a new Pentecost through the work of the Holy Spirit. For him this amounted to a life-long goal.

In many ways Suenens was an unlikely person to carry the banner for the Catholic charismatic renewal. Personally reserved, even shy, at times almost overly intellectual, he was profoundly touched in his own personal experience and in assessing the fruits of the Holy Spirit in so many Catholics (and Protestants, too, I should add) whose spiritual journey had been deepened and advanced through the renewal. Cardinal Danneels captures it perfectly in his funeral homily:

"How could a cardinal with a face that did not show many emotions, with a straight and immobile stature, with a grave and steady voice, find himself at ease in the midst of a crowd that sang, danced, clapped hands and spoke in tongues? Was it a late life conversion to fantasy and imagination in a man who had been until then too rational and responsible? No. Rather, he perceived in this revival a return to the church of the Acts of the Apostles about which he had always dreamed -- with a taste for the Scriptures, spontaneous prayer, joy, a sense of community, the stirrings of the Spirit, the proliferation of charisms. The renewal gave the legitimate role of the heart and the body back to the spiritual life of Christians."

Suenens dialogued with the Catholic leadership of the new movement -- Ralph Martin, Steve Clark, Kevin Ranaghan, Father Jim Ferry in the United States, and in Europe as well. He made a singular contribution by explaining the renewal to the pope and the Curia, and by alerting its
leadership to what I would call their "amnesia" about the gifts of the Holy Spirit to the church: the Eucharist, The Blessed Virgin Mary, the
pope as visible center of unity, the scope of Catholic teaching and practice.

From 1974 to 1986 Suenens composed a series of six "Malines Documents," which still serve as a guide to the renewal, with precious insight into its possibilities and its needs. Charismatic Renewal, with Kilian McDonnell as lead consultant, was followed by Ecumenism and Charismatic Renewal (1978). In 1979 Charismatic Renewal and Social Action was written in collaboration with his longtime friend, Dom Helder Camara of Brazil. In 1982 he wrote Renewal and the Powers of Darkness, with a Foreword by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. The final two "Malines Documents" treat two specific issues the renewal had to deal with: an over-reliance on introspection, in Le Culte du Moi et Foi Chretienne (1985); and the controversial phenomenon Resting in the Spirit (1986), sometimes also referred to as "slaying in the Spirit."

1975 marks the year of the renewal’s "coming of age" in the Catholic Church. Thanks to Veronica O’Brien’s urging of the cardinal and the cardinal’s convincing recommendation to Pope Paul, the renewal was invited to have its world congress at Rome on Pentecost during the Holy Year. As Father Walter Abbott notes, during the 1975 Holy Year "the charismatic renewal was decisively accepted into the Catholic Church when Pope Paul endorsed it in St. Peter’s Basilica on Pentecost Sunday." Peter Hebblethwaite, in his book, Paul VI--The First Modern Pope, concludes, "Suenens won another battle." It is also fair to say that Suenens was the man of the hour for the renewal. His patient, intelligent, ongoing dialogue showed many in the charismatic renewal how to integrate their new enthusiasm for religious experience blessed by the gifts of the Spirit into the faith and practice of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.

On July 14, 1979, less than a year into the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, Suenens submitted his resignation as archbishop of Malines-Brussels. It was a duty which he, above all, would not neglect or refuse, since he had been the first to publicly call for the retirement of bishops. While the council heard his plea without enthusiasm, Pope Paul VI introduced the rule, motu proprio.

On Jan. 4, 1980, he was succeeded as archbishop by Godfried Danneels, then bishop of Antwerp. His has been an active retirement, as his many books and lectures throughout this period will attest. His successor has publicly stated what Pope John Paul II said to him as he began his ministry, "Cardinal Suenens played a crucial role during Vatican II, and the universal church owes much to him."

At this symposium we look to the 21st century and the third millennium of Christianity. I was asked to speak to you about the charism of Cardinal Suenens. I have tried to be reasonably thorough, and I hope reasonably objective, in the time given to me. I know that he was genuinely looking forward to this very symposium on retrieving charisms for the 21st century to find the new insights and new directions of the Spirit, who blows where he wills.

By way of conclusion, I would recall again Suenens’ singular achievement in providing direction for the council in its earliest days, when he outlined a simple framework for its deliberation and the council decided to concentrate its work around the central theme of the church as such -- ad intra and ad extra.

It seems to me that he models a very significant charism to be retrieved for the new millennium: an ability to frame the question properly. Of course our society and its media already have a political framework for characterizing religious statements: They are usually cast on the grid from liberal to conservative. The frame of reference is most often the current political campaign, with comments as thoughtful as a sound byte. The Gospel message handed on in the living tradition of the church is either unknown or so far in the background that it is unrecognizable as a
frame of reference.

In my view, even the church people tend to mimic the secular frame of reference, with its penchant for labels. I suggest a moratorium on labels in the church and a retrieval of the unified vision of the council, which did not issue a "conservative" Lumen Gentium and a "liberal" Gaudium et Spes.

To frame the question properly for these last days of our advent before the Jubilee of the Year 2000 and for the third millennium, we would be well served to focus more clearly, and with greater unity as Catholic Americans, about our task as sacramentum mundi -- the sacrament of Christ in the world.

In his apostolic letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente, on preparation for the Jubilee of the Year 2000, Pope John Paul calls the Second Vatican Council, in which he participated as auxiliary bishop of Krakow, "a providential event, whereby the church began (to prepare) for the jubilee of the second millennium." In commenting on the series of Synods of Bishops begun after the council, he says:

"The theme underlying them all is evangelization, or rather the new evangelization, the foundations of which were laid down in the apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi of Pope Paul VI, issued in 1975 following the third general assembly of the Synod of Bishops. These synods themselves are part of the new evangelization: They were born of the Second Vatican Council’s vision of the church. They open up broad areas for the participation of the laity, whose specific responsibilities in the church they define. They are an expression of the strength which Christ has given to the entire people of God, making it a sharer in his own messianic mission as prophet, priest and king."

John Paul relates the themes of Catholic social doctrine to the new evangelization, continuing the vision of Evangelii Nuntiandi, which proposed "evangelization" precisely as a Gospel vision which embraces the church ad intra and ad extra. It thus transcends the categories of dialectical perspective of action and reaction which characterize so much of modern political thought and strategy, of liberal vs. conservative as a dominant framework.

To enable and to serve this new evangelization, the Second Vatican Council provided its providential clarification of the true nature of the church, so that knowing who she is, the church might be better able to be the sacramentum mundi. The pluralism of contemporary society challenges us more than ever today to know and say why we believe in Christ and who we are as church.

For this reason the question of Catholic identity is necessary and central both for the church as a whole and for each individual disciple within the community. In the face of the well-documented religious ignorance among Catholics in America, I think we must look more urgently at the task of how well we form ourselves as church for our mission in and to the world. What Cardinal Newman called for more than a century ago in England -- a well-formed, well-educated and convinced Catholic laity -- will be more than ever a necessity in an increasingly democratic and pluralistic world of the third millennium.

Father Benedict Ashley has suggested that we pay more attention to the "documents" of this Catholic identity: the teachings of the Second Vatican Council as developed through the Synods of Bishops and their resulting apostolic exhortations, and particularly as presented in an integrated manner, updated with the teachings of Vatican II, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In his 1994 McGinley lecture at Fordham, Father Avery Dulles, a symposium speaker, called the catechism "the boldest challenge yet offered to the cultural relativism that currently threatens to erode the contents of the Catholic faith."

Put another way, the broad task of the new evangelization, the church’s mission, requires the concomitant task of ongoing catechesis, I might even say a "new" catechesis, to provide the indispensable foundation for effective engagement in the church’s mission in the world, which is the baptismal vocation of the laity.

Framing the question for the next century and the new millennium in this way, as our readiness for the challenge of the new evangelization, will
ideally bring us to an ongoing participation in the new Pentecost envisioned by Pope John XXIII and Cardinal Suenens for the Second Vatican Council.

In his final chapter of the Hidden Hand of God, Suenens gives us quite consciously his last testament: "As I look to the future, I cannot avoid
stressing the role of the Holy Spirit in the church of tomorrow. He is always ‘the life-giving Spirit,’ in the fullest meaning of the words. This is the idea I would like to emphasize by way of farewell."

Cardinal Suenens, we thank you for the charism -- the gift -- your life has been for us as church. In our farewell to you, may we pay to you the tribute you so kindly gave to your friend John XXIII in your homily at Vatican II: "At his departure, he left us closer to God and the world a better place for us to live." Requiescat in Spiritu Sancto.

For the full text of Archbishop Levada’s keynote address of May 31, 1996

 

The Longer Version of the Saint Michael the Archangel Prayer, composed by Pope Leo XIII, 1888

O glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Prince of the heavenly host, be our defense in the terrible warfare which we carry on against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, spirits of evil.  Come to the aid of man, whom God created immortal, made in His own image and likeness, and redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil.  Fight this day the battle of our Lord, together with  the holy angels, as already thou hast fought the leader of the proud angels, Lucifer, and his apostate host, who were powerless to resist thee, nor was there place for them any longer in heaven.  That cruel, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil or Satan who seduces the whole world, was cast into the abyss with his angels.  Behold this primeval enemy and slayer of men has taken courage.  Transformed into an angel of light, he wanders about with all the multitude of wicked spirits, invading the earth in order to blot out the Name of God and of His Christ, to seize upon, slay, and cast into eternal perdition, souls destined for the crown of eternal glory.  That wicked dragon pours out. as a most impure flood, the venom of his malice on men of depraved mind and corrupt heart, the spirit of lying, of impiety, of blasphemy, and the pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity.  These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on Her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck the sheep may be scattered.  Arise then, O invincible Prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people of God, and give them the victory.  They venerate thee as their protector and patron; in thee holy Church glories as her defense against the malicious powers of hell; to thee has God entrusted the souls of men to be established in heavenly beatitude.  Oh, pray to the God of peace that He may put Satan under our feet, so far conquered that he may no longer be able to hold men in captivity and harm the Church.  Offer our prayers in the sight of the Most High, so that they may quickly conciliate the mercies of the Lord; and beating down the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, do thou again make him captive in the abyss, that he may no longer seduce the nations.  Amen.

Verse: Behold the Cross of the Lord; be scattered ye hostile powers.

Response: The Lion of the Tribe of Juda has conquered the root of David.

Verse: Let Thy mercies be upon us, O Lord.

Response: As we have hoped in Thee.

Verse: O Lord hear my prayer.

Response: And let my cry come unto Thee.

Verse: Let us pray.  O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we call upon Thy holy Name, and as suppliants, we implore Thy clemency, that by the intercession of Mary, ever Virgin, immaculate and our Mother, and of the glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Thou wouldst deign to help us against Satan and all other unclean spirits, who wander about the world for the injury of the human race and the ruin of our souls. 

Response:  Amen.