MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2013
The Saturday Windsor Star January 18, 1986
MARTY GERVAIS ON RELIGION
Basilian Deacon puts sharing at forefront of religious aims
THE WORD Thomas Rosica repeats over and over again is “scandalous.”
He’s referring to the way in which churches tend to remain segregated, isolated, interested in their own.
If you spend any time talking to Rosica, he will tell you just how frustrated he gets when he hears how Roman Catholic priests speak in such chauvinistic ways about salvation in the “Catholic Church.” He doesn’t even like it when they refer to themselves as Catholics, when the word “Christian” would not only have been good enough, but preferable.
It’s not that he doesn’t like Catholics – he is one. In fact, this spring he will be ordained a priest of the Basilian religious order.
The fact is, Rosica spent a good part of his field training as a priest working on ecumenism. In 1984 he surveyed churches in the Montreal area for the Canadian Centre for Ecumenism to determine where they stood on church unity. His findings, and especially the approach Rosica took to the survey, are being examined and considered by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. There is the possibility that the Roman Catholic Church’s umbrella organization in Canada will implement a survey of this kind on a national basis.
THE YOUNG DEACON working at St. John the Baptist Church in Amherstburg with its other Basilian priests regards the whole matter of ecumenism as “scandalous.” He sees “the Catholic ghetto mentality as a stumbling block and knows just how reticent clergymen from other denominations can be when it comes to authentic sharing. Some of it has to do with being “too set in their ways” but there are other reasons, too. In some cases, the clergymen know little of the ecumenical movement, and they haven’t bothered to do “any reading at all about it.”
There’s also the notion that their churches are suffering serious losses in membership. The direction now is to shore up what they can count on.
UNFORTUNATELY, the notion exists that some churches have the exclusive copyright on the “word of God, “ says Rosica.
“But the word of God is for all people,” says Rosica, who adds that it isn’t just for Catholics or Anglicans or Presbyterians.
Another fact, says Rosica, is that many denominations must learn that no one is out to threaten the existence of any one church. In addition to this, the myth has to be dispelled that the only way in which the Roman Catholics are going to be part of church unity is for all Christian denominations (to) join Rome.
Rosica says there is no reason real ecumenism -- even to the point of an organic union – can’t mean a harmony of various Christian denominations in one community.
The Basilian deacon could sit all day in his office at St. John the Baptist and talk about the ecumenical movement. While he doesn’t regard himself as an expert, the survey did teach him something. His objective is to set into motion something that will bring churches in Amherstburg closer together.
ROSICA EXPECTS to return here after ordination, and if he does, he feels he will continue his ecumenical work in the town. The real test for the ecumenical movement, he says, is at the grass roots: moving the “local” churches into a situation where they will share more and pray more together.
Sunday will see the first step in that direction: St. John the Baptist is holding an ecumenical prayers service at 2:30 p.m. where five different Christian denominations – the Baptists, United Church, Anglicans, Presbyterians and Roman Catholics – will be participating.
Rev. John Parker, Pastor of Wesley United Church, will deliver the homily. The service coincides with the first Sunday, in the Week of Christian Unity, celebrated by Catholics and Protestants around the world. The service in itself is admittedly a “minor act” says Rosica, but it could be the beginning of a new awareness the churches will have for one another.
HE SEES Amherstburg as no different than any other community, pointing out that no matter how much dialogue the national churches hold, unless clergy and congregations at the local level are prepared to start talking to one another in a meaningful way, then ecumenism is simply a dream.
He says if churches persist in taking the attitude that they “have all the answers,” then nothing is going to be advanced in church unity.
But while Rosica likes being an idealist, he is intimately aware of the obstacles.
Intercommunion is certainly the first to spring to mind. In some ways, he regards the Roman Catholic Church’s reluctance to permit Catholics and Protestants to take communion in their churches as an embarrassment. On the other hand, he also has a lot of respect for his church in holding back from the pressure until other obstacles have been cleared away.
THIS IS BECAUSE Rome regards the eucharist as “the fullness of unity,” Rosica says.
He added until other obstacles have been resolved, there can be no unity.
Bishop Sherlock told the fall synod of Canadian Bishops that the extension of communion to non-Catholics would be a “form of cheating.”
He had said, “It assumes a unity which has not yet occurred.”
But Rosica agrees with the new CCCB vice-president, Archbishop James Hayes of Halifax, that the issue should be pursued, and that “shared communion” with Protestant denominations at times of mixed marriages and funerals should be encouraged.
The church sanctions such a practice.
Unfortunately, Rosica says some priests aren’t even aware of “this possibility” – to them it’s a non-issue.
ESSENTIALLY, such an attitude or lack of awareness is a formidable obstacle to church unity. Rosica says it comes down to the glaring fact that many clergy just won’t bother to acquaint themselves with what is being done about church unity.
Apathy is another obstacle, Rosica said explain how some priests regard the issue as “just another job” they have to do. As a result, he says, there is no compelling urge to do anything more than pay lip service to it.
Another stumbling block lies with the training institutions which tend to want to propagate and further their own denominational interests and philosophies. As a result, there are institutions that tend to favour one religion over another, when in fact they ought to be “open” to the whole spectrum.
IN HIS REPORT to the Canadian Ecumenical Commission, Rosica wrote that while it might be difficult “to complain” about training in the past from the era before or during Vatican II which spurred on ecumenism, “We have a right and duty, however, to take objection with these young people (including young professors), who, through their theology courses and their religious beliefs, wish to move the Ecumenical movement back to a time when it new no possibilities for growth.”
Rosica says unless the church – not only the Roman Catholic Church – begins to take a “a vested interest” in the formation of clergy, making sure they are less chauvinistic about their denomination – then ecumenism is going to remain at a standstill.
Because of the lack of any read dramatic unity, Rosica says people have indeed, lost interest in church unity.
He said this in his report too, pointing out that the findings showed that “many have lost the desire for unity over the past years, and even fewer really sense the scandalous division existing within our own church and also among the Christian churches.
ROSICA KNOWS that the move toward church unity has to be gradual and it must go through a set of “sequences.” Sunday’s service is the beginning. The next step is to form a ministerial association.
The next step is to work on “twinning” churches, where churches begin to do some real sharing and experimenting with liturgies.
Rosica isn’t sure how successful he will be. He hopes for the best. He says as long as congregations are praying, “somehow the spirit of God is alive.”
He’s certain this will ease the impatience.
“Indifferentism” is the belief that it does not matter what religion a man professes, he can be saved nonetheless. The Church has roundly condemned this notion as a heresy in very strong language, holding it to be a denial of
extra ecclesiam nulla salus. Here, we feature a brief passage from
Mirari Vos, by the last great monk-pope, Gregory XVI (August 15, 1832).
All emphasis (bold and italics), paragraph numbers, and reference numbers as in original on the
Papal Encyclicals site; please go there to see the references.
13. Now We consider another abundant source of the evils with which the Church is afflicted at present:indifferentism. This perverse opinion is spread on all sides by the fraud of the wicked who claim that it is possible to obtain the eternal salvation of the soul by the profession of any kind of religion, as long as morality is maintained. Surely, in so clear a matter, you will drive this deadly error far from the people committed to your care. With the admonition of the apostle that “there is one God, one faith, one baptism”[16] may those fear who contrive the notion that the safe harbor of salvation is open to persons of any religion whatever. They should consider the testimony of Christ Himself that “those who are not with Christ are against Him,”[17] and that they disperse unhappily who do not gather with Him. Therefore “without a doubt, they will perish forever, unless they hold the Catholic faith whole and inviolate.”[18] Let them hear Jerome who, while the Church was torn into three parts by schism, tells us that whenever someone tried to persuade him to join his group he always exclaimed: “He who is for the See of Peter is for me.”[19] A schismatic flatters himself falsely if he asserts that he, too, has been washed in the waters of regeneration. Indeed Augustine would reply to such a man: “The branch has the same form when it has been cut off from the vine; but of what profit for it is the form, if it does not live from the root?”[20]
14. This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. “But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error,” as Augustine was wont to say.[21] When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly “the bottomless pit”[22] is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth. Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws — in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty.
— Pope Gregory XVI,
Mirari Vos
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Vic Biorseth,
http://www.Thinking-Catholic-Strategic-Center.com
Choose. Indifferentism is a mortal sin; a condemned heresy. That's the Catholic view of the matter. In civil (as opposed to ecclesial) law, there is a legal indifferentism that is not condemned. This is an attempt by civil government to be indifferent between the religious professions of the governed - the citizens of and travelers within the land to which the civil law applies. In the proper interest of separation of Church and State, the State should not direct or legally differentiate between religious convictions – within reason, of course.
In a land ruled by Representative Government, we might reasonably expect the Government, and Civil Law, to be fully representative of views of the electorate. If the clear majority of the voters adhere to Judao-Christian morality, as they do in the USA, then it would be unreasonable for their theoretically representative legislators to pass laws, or worse, for un-elected bureaucrats to pass unlegislated regulations with full force of law, allowing such religious practices as, say, human sacrifice, or cannibalism, or torture of animals, and so forth. Representative government is supposed to follow the same moral guidelines and norms as are followed by those the government represents. Otherwise, it is not representative government.
In the interest of maintaining representative government, an overwhelmingly Christian People should not be ruled by atheists or other non-Jewish - non-Christians.
And a Christian People should certainly not be ruled by
secularists; a term that describes the non-neutral, proactive secularizing, or religious-cleansing activists who seek to eliminate religion, or at least Christianity, not only from the public square, but from the beliefs of school children and ultimately from the people. American secularists work to legally eliminate “Merry Christmas” from the lips and cards of school children and from the displays of merchants and from corporate language, from all public view, in a land that is populated by an overwhelming majority of Christians. Just who, exactly, do they truly represent?
Where is all this coming from? I have written elsewhere about what I call the Unholy Trinity,
Darwin,
Freud and
Marx, as representing the most egregious examples of massive social acceptance of error and false teaching presented in very pretty pseudo-scientific wrapping. Once these serious errors were adopted by the intellectual elites, especially the ranking academics, the masses just followed along, right down the garden path.
Of course, Marx was clearly the worst of the Unholy Trinity, as the history of Marxism proves. The great social upheaval that began in the 1960s in America was, at least in part, an attempted Marxist-Communist Revolution, which, like almost all others like it, failed rather miserably, except in academia, where it already had strong roots. It took over the American college campus, and it already practically owned American journalism and American show business. But it couldn’t come close to taking over the American government. Yet. The only other part of this “revolution” that had any success at all was the so-called sexual revolution, aimed at weakening if not destroying our moral fabric.
Since then, it’s been anything goes; if it feels good, do it; whatever floats your boat; get rid of your hang-ups, and get out there and screw, like everyone else. It’s natural; it’s normal; it’s expected.
Many of the same people who wholeheartedly participated in drug-fests, sex-fests, filth-fests like Woodstock are now the people in charge of universities, and holding or running for high political office. Campuses all across America caved and surrendered to the sit-ins and love-ins and demonstrations and riots, and now, the asylum is run by the inmates. People steeped in error pass on their error in the form of formal education.
Being as it is very nearly impossible to convert all the American people to atheism, the next best thing is to move them toward indifferentism and moral relativism; the belief that all religious belief is purely subjective and therefore improvable, and therefore equal, in so far as none can be proven true.
And there, right there, they reveal their materialism-atheism. The materialist-atheist, who believes (by faith alone) that all that exists is matter, requires empirical (material) evidence of “truth” before it can be accepted as truth. The closest the practicing Jew or Christian can come to “proving” the existence of the object of his belief is through history and archeology regarding human events recorded by human beings; nothing purely empirical or purely material. One either accepts the Divine Revelation as handed on by other human beings or one does not. Many of the events of salvation history can be shown to have happened in the historical/archeological record; but not the whole of it.
This is the dividing line; this is the point where the Spirit, i.e. The Kingdom, meets the Flesh, i.e. The World. The devout Jew and the devout Christian are ruled by The Kingdom, while the devout materialist-atheist is ruled by The World. While the Jew and the Christian can recognize and accept The World, the materialist-atheist can neither recognize nor accept The Kingdom.
Should any materialist-atheist ever be in charge of us?
The effect of Indifferentism is, of course, moral relativism, which relegates all religions and all belief systems to be equal, because they are equally improvable. It doesn’t matter so much what you believe, so long as you believe in something. This is, of course, a sin; and sin, itself, is a term unfamiliar to the ears of the materialist-atheist.
And so we see the strange fixations of the materialist-atheists come to the forefront to replace the old time Judao-Christian moral problems in the public eye. We have a giant, unrepresentative bureaucracy in the Department of Education, in which we see the Leviathan State (e.g., the Dictatorship of the Proletariat) controlling the education of the children as recommended by Marx in his Communist Manifesto. This is a distinctly un-American idea, yet adopted in America with little or no protest. We see Hillary and Billary gaining ground in getting the Leviathan State – the Federal Government - to take charge of medically treating your child’s case of the sniffles. There’s room for a whole new genre of unrepresentative bureaucracy and unrepresentative regulation there. Algore would have a whole new unrepresentative bureaucracy in charge of weather and climate, to clamp down on all the big business and free enterprise that exhales so much carbon dioxide, the newest identifieddeadly substance.
Von Mises told us that Communism is, almost definitively, bureaucracy. It is rule by an elite authority organized in a hierarchy, long-titled big bureaucrats at the top, authority-mad petty bureaucrats at the bottom. Some time ago we passed the point where fully ten percent of the American working population is working for the government in some capacity; almost all are working in bureaucracy. With job titles like, Principle Senior Assistant Vice Deputy Under Secretary Of The Department Of Something Or Other.
None of these efforts is aimed at reduction of government; all seek to increase it, and put it in charge of more and more of the mundane little details of our lives. We are schmoozed and bamboozled into accepting more and more bureaucratic control over different areas of our lives and different segments of the economy, because it sounds like it’s all in our own best interest. They are, after all, representing us.
Not true. They represent themselves, and their personal climb to the top, of a hoped-for eventual total bureaucracy that will replace the older American model.
Indifferentism paves the way. Don’t let it seep into your thinking.
I have been accused of the opposite of Indifferentism, which is defined as Rigorism, and the charge is not without some merit. I believe in a rigorous following of Church doctrine and in strict accuracy in proper Catholic catechesis, and I openly attack watered-down Catholic doctrine and catechesis whenever and wherever I encounter it. A beloved nephew has complained about this, saying that it’s my way or the highway. But here’s the thing: it’s not my way; I didn’t make up all (or any of) the rules of Catholicism. I was “not invited” into the Catholic Diaconate program after passing all the required courses, because I was “too rigid in your doctrine,” as if it were my doctrine. (I argued with the professors about their pro-sodomy and pro-priestess teaching, and about their clear and obvious indifferentism.)
When it comes to Catholic catechesis, there is only one Church teaching, and it is represented in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. I’m prepared to defend any item in it, against any opponent. When it comes to the American Ideal, there is more wiggle room; however, I still draw the line at indifferentism and moral relativism. All belief systems are not the same. The ones who push it the most are the ones who seek to replace it with something less. Again, indifferentism paves the way. Don’t let it seep into your thinking.
May you please God, and may you live forever.
Regards,
Vic
"I believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church"
Creed
"Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my Church"
Matthew 16:18
"And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: "Go, get thee down: thy people which thou hast brought out of the land of Egypt have sinned. They have quickly strayed from the way which thou didst show them: and they have made to themselves a molten calf, and have adorned it and sacrificing victims to it, have said: 'These are thy gods, O Israel, that have brought thee out of the land of Egypt.'"
Exodus 32:7
Pope Benedict XVI held the final General Audience of his pontificate on Wednesday in St Peter's Square. Below, please find 
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