LEADING US INTO TEMPTATION
Pauly Fongemie
August 24, 2014
Feast of Our Lady, Health of the Sick
But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea. --- Matt. 18:6
And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of scandal, to them who stumble at the word, neither do believe, whereunto also they are set. ---- 1 Peter 2:8
Who turning, said to Peter: Go behind me, Satan, thou art a scandal unto me: because thou savourest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men. ---- Matt. 16:23
Woe to the world because of scandals. For it must needs be that scandals come: but nevertheless woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh. ---- Matt. 18:7
The priest began his sermon by stating that he would be departing from his usual format. The topic was St. Peter. He descended the pulpit and went to the other side of the sanctuary to the ambo where he took on the role of St. Peter who addressed us as the first Pontiff and one of the twelve Apostles, not as the local pastor of the little parish, already inoculated against Tradition by and large. The opening words of "St. Peter" were not promising for he led with banal small talk one is not used to from a Pontiff, that is, until recently. And unfortunately matters got worse, all downhill from there and so disreputable that a non-traditional leaning gentleman later conveyed to me how scandalized he was and shocked. Not given to critical analysis it takes something and then some to raise his hackles. I was scandalized too, but not shocked. The so-called address by "Peter" has been a long time in the making and anyone who has been paying attention was expecting it!
"Peter" was full of "Catholic" updates, evangelizing for "reform" while actually providing agitprop for revolution and total devolution of the Faith. The priest who put this blasphemous diatribe into the mouth of Saint Peter has either lost his faith, is ignorant or crass and cavalier or all of them. Only God knows. But the disgrace of the disgrace is that so many people were not bothered at all! As I said, inoculated against Tradition and Catholic Truth. What did the false Apostle say? That we were to look to the late Fr. James Kavanaugh and Joseph Cardinal Bernardin as models, citing the former's book, A Modern Priest Looks at His Outdated Church, and the latter's initiative, Common Ground, from which the "seamless garment" sprang into the consciousnesses and consciences of Catholics being led like lambs to the slaughter, right off the cliff. Where Bernardin is concerned this is the least of his offenses against the Faith and public morality. The Cardinal was known as a "flaming homosexual" to insiders [and those of us who kept an eagle eye on the same] and an avowed dissenter from the infallible teaching of the doctrinal Council on the Mass, The Council of Trent. [View an image of Pope St. Pius V] When Bernardin died on November 14, 1996 he had left instructions to have Chicago's Windy City Gay Chorus sing at his funeral, a demonic first for never before had such a chorus been allowed to sing on Church property because of the scandal involved and the signal it would send. As Randy Engel, author of the monumental research tome on homosexuality and the Catholic Church, The Rite of Sodomy, wrote: "Thus, even in death Cardinal Bernardin continued to promote the interests of the Homosexual Collective." [p. 911]
The priest who pretended to be Peter neglected to mention just how sordid the Bernardin affair was. Just as he forgot to cite the passage from the New Testament concerning Peter. If Christ were there as He was with Peter on that day, would not He say once again, get behind Me, Satan, to the priest?!! Surely if Catholic means anything at all! Mrs. Engel has many pages chronicling Bernardin's disastrous tenure as a leading prelate of the US hierarchy and the inordinate influence this degenerate and disordered man had on more than one generation of Catholics. The stench is so putrefying and the implications so penultimate one scarcely knows where to begin. I prefer to stop here for the sake of brevity, not to mention decency in consideration for the more delicate reader, except to briefly discuss the so-called "Seamless Garment ethic" favored by such as Bernardin and others of his ilk in the hierarchy and those priests who seem "uncomfortable" at best with the Church's solid, unchanging teaching on abortion, etc.
The Seamless Garment was a desperate attempt to appear pro-life while retaining one's bona fides as an accredited liberal. In other words, a Trojan Horse whereby falsehood is spread as if truth. Bernardin proposed that there is this "seamless garment" of unifying ethos that actually equates those who favor abortion and those who faithful to truth and the natural law, do not, cannot under any circumstance. How did this idea work? All life issues that fall under the mantle of social justice are absolute equals. Distinctions ARE DELIBERATELY ABSENT IN APPLICATION. Distinctions, such as the difference between the innocent and the guilty. Under this rubric, the child in the womb under threat of execution is equal to a proven condemned murderer and both deserve to be rescued. Now an argument can be made that we ought to not exercise the death penalty option in any particular case, but this is not the same as equating the two, one is not a victim, unlike the baby in the womb. The promoters of the "Seamless Garment" were so strident and insistent on their point of view as the moral high ground that what they accomplished is in reality the guilty are worth more than the innocent. By this I mean that if you were against the death penalty as an activist or a politician, but for abortion, this canceled out the affront against the natural law and made one somehow equal to the pro-lifer who upholds the natural law. The natural law and Church teaching have always held that in some limited cases the murderer may be put to death, but never is it permitted for a baby to be killed!
I will quote Matthew Bellisario of the CatholicChampionBlogspot: [http://catholicchampion.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-corrupt-theology-of-seamless-garment.html]
"Although Cardinal Bernardin, the main proponent of this theologically bankrupt idea, often paid lip service to these distinctions of innocence and guilt, he did not apply them in principle. This is typical of those who have been in the game of corrupting Catholic doctrine in the modern age. Notice the bait and switch tactic he pulled in his William Wade lecture series given in 1984. He stated first that he acknowledged the distinction between the innocent and the guilty in regards to moral issues such as abortion and capital punishment, but the conclusion that he draws right after this statement is completely at odds with his acknowledgment. It is like saying, 'I am against abortion, but I think I should not let that influence my decision on who I will vote for.' First Bernardin said, 'Some of the responses I have received on the Fordham address correctly say that abortion and capital punishment are not identical issues. The principle which protects innocent life distinguishes the unborn child from the convicted murderer. Other letters stress that while nuclear war is a threat to life, abortion involves the actual taking of life, here and now. I accept both of these distinctions, of course, but I also find compelling the need to relate the cases while keeping them in distinct categories.' Sadly however Bernardin does not keep them separate at all. He continues on using a cloak of contradiction and ambiguity stating, 'Abortion is taking of life in ever growing numbers in our society. Those concerned about it, I believe, will find their case enhanced by taking note of the rapidly expanding use of public execution. In a similar way, those who are particularly concerned about these executions, even if the accused has taken another life, should recognize the elementary truth that a society which can be indifferent to the innocent life of an unborn child will not be easily stirred to concern for a convicted criminal. There is, I maintain, a political and psychological linkage among the life issues --- from war to welfare concerns --- which we ignore at our own peril: a systemic vision of life seeks to expand the moral imagination of a society, not partition it into airtight categories.' (Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, A Consistent Ethic of Life, 1984)
"Far from Bernardin's rejection of airtight categories, he completely rejects any distinction or categorization at all in relation to the moral acts that are actually being addressed. Bernardin attempted here to sell the idea that if one embraces the State's right to exact the just use of capital punishment, then they are somehow complicit and psychologically linked to the acceptance of abortion!"
Precisely, and this is what influenced our weaker bishops and priests still today. Reluctant to pray at abortion mills they are all too willing to defend the absolute right to life of the convicted murderer of whose guilt there is no doubt.
Perhaps Bernardin thought that if he went after the death penalty as always unjust that he would somehow be absolved of his ribald acts of sodomy and the notorious cover up of so many pederasts under his watch and I use this last term with some hesitance for obvious reasons.
Now let us return to the infamous Father Kavanaugh. Once a priest always a priest according to the order of Melchisdech. But not exactly, for James Kavanaugh left the active priesthood to marry. He was a dissenter early on, calling for acceptance of birth control, divorce and remarriage, even premarital conjugal acts, and he favored marriage for priests, of course - the ubiquitous ghosts that haunt those who want sin and salvation, too, blaming the Church for their inability to reconcile sin and sanctity. He once wrote that "We continue to explore life, hoping to uncover its ultimate secret." But Christ has already provided us with this ultimate secret and so have all the Saints who have gone before us, especially Our Lady. If only we would learn to be content with as much perfection as the life of a saint can give us. James was the fourth of seven sons in an Irish Catholic family. His brother Robert, also ordained, left as well. Kavanaugh was divorced twice. He died in January of 2010.
So here we have it in the open at last, we are being led into temptation by a priest who thinks it quite clever to play the part of Saint Peter, leading us into perdition by encouraging us to follow and take the advice of such intemperate, theologically flawed priests, none of whom were faithful to their vows. The ersatz Peter did not mention this aspect to his parishioners. I wonder why?????
For good measure, while he was at this mischief he could not resist letting the audience know that St. Peter was publicly correcting St. Hilary on a point - the matter is not germane, for St. Hilary, a Bishop was never the Pontif and so did not enjoy infallibility in faith and morals when defined. Not even St. Peter as Pope did either. When in error, but not teaching it as to be believed under pain of sin not to do so, Peter had to be corrected to his face in Jerusalem by St. Paul, the correction being accepted in humility. The phony Peter, the blasphemous Peter never bothered to point this out also!
The priest acting in lieu of St. Peter ended on a note of irony, one which I think he did not catch. He bewailed [rightly] the loss of the sense of Sunday as a Holy Day to be observed as it was always before back when; one of the sticking points was that Sunday had become a shopping day - absolutely correct, Father. However just a small mention, which is hardly a small matter, this same pastor has been known to tell parishioners to go shopping as it is not a sin to do so on Sunday [I do not refer to emergencies or exemptions allowed in the catechism for adults by Jones]. Irony as well as rank hypocrisy. Now, if he has undergone a conversion on this aspect, wonderful, but because of the scandal of encouraging sin, he needs to make a public avowal to alert those parishioners who may have been unduly led astray!
In the Our Father, we pray "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." With this scandalous sermon, it seems it is Father who is leading us into temptation by a clever little dramatic tactic, by which we are to be supposedly entertained.
Dear Lord in Heaven, deliver us from this pertinacious evil ....
Our Lady, Health of the Sick, pray for us and all errant priests who are diseased in spirit.
Lord, deliver us from temptation to uncontrolled anger at such infamy, deliver us from this chastisement, we beseech Thee ...
View an image of St. Peter for printing
View the same image of St. Peter as it actually is
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