J.M.J. Dear friends and benefactors of Holy Cross Seminary,
You will have without a doubt heard of the appointment of Archbishop Joseph Levada as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This crucial decision in the appointment of Benedict XVI’s doctrinal right hand man does not presage well. Inasmuch as we can judge by past acts, he is a man who puts on the appearance of conservatism, but who has not only never given any authorization for the traditional Latin Mass, but to the contrary has shown himself to be entirely devoted to ecumenism, and has excelled by his uncanny gift for opportunistic compromise, as Philip Lawler of Catholic World News website has documented. During the nine years that he was Archbishop of Portland (1986-1995), he suspended without hearing the one traditional priest of the diocese, Father Eugene Heidt, for celebrating the traditional Mass. He turned a blind eye to the problem of homosexual priests, and both protected from criminal prosecution and restored to parish work priests whom he knew to have molested children. The law suits that have since caused the diocese to declare bankruptcy are in part a consequence. During the following ten years as Archbishop of San Francisco, his astuteness became clearly evident in his dealings with the homosexual activists that control that city. Whilst on the one hand participating in a public procession against same-sex marriages, he also refused to deny Holy Communion to the “Catholic” Mayor (Gavin Newsom), who publicly rejects the Church’s teaching on stem cell research, abortion, homosexual marriages and contraception. Likewise with pro-abortion politicians. Whilst affirming that they should not receive Holy Communion, he effectively refused to deny it to them, by stating “you don’t start the path of dialogue by telling people you are going to refuse them Communion” or “Can a politician be guilty of formal cooperation in evil? If the person intends to promote the killing of innocent life, he would be guilty of such sinful cooperation? Should every Catholic politician who has voted for an unjust law favoring abortion be judged to have this intention? I hope not”. Such a clever, sophistic argument pretends to exculpate politicians, on the grounds that they do not intend each abortion. However, voting for a law permitting abortions makes these abortions possible. It is giving one’s approval to the perversity of abortion. It truly is formal cooperation, and is not permissible for any reason at all. Such persons are public sinners, and must be refused Holy Communion, regardless of the consequences. Another example of Archbishop Levada’s gift for compromise with the enemies of the Church was with respect to the 1996 San Francisco city law obliging all employers to provide spousal benefits to homosexual partners, under pain of losing government funding. Instead of standing up against the gay rights lobby, and professing the Faith in marriage as a sacred institution and sacrament, alone granting spousal rights, he arranged for a compromise to extend benefits for employees in such a way that an employee can designate any individual to receive what had previously been considered as spousal benefits, hiding behind the fact that this arrangement does not give explicit approval to homosexual relationships. However, in practice it was nothing less than a cunning way to allow for the economic acceptation of homosexual relationships, a horrifying precedent indeed. However, the greatest and most concerning compromise is that of ecumenism, especially in a man who is supposed to be the Church’s watch dog for the orthodoxy of the Catholic Faith. Already in 1988, as Archbishop of Portland, Archbishop Levada led a joint “concelebrated” worship service with a Lutheran bishop for a combined congregation of Lutherans and Catholics. He was the first U.S. bishop to visit a synagogue, following John Paul II’s lead in this regard, and has since participated in interfaith prayer services at synagogues. In 1999 and again in 2003 he organized interfaith conferences with the leaders of the world’s religions, and in 2003 an ecumenical pilgrimage to Canterbury, Rome and Istanbul along with the leaders of the Greek Orthodox and Episcopalian churches from San Francisco. Furthermore, he has also given faculties (i.e. permission) for the openly schismatic Chinese Patriotic Association priests to offer Mass and to administer the sacraments in the diocese of San Francisco.
Manifestly,
then, Archbishop Levada is just as much an ecclesiastic of Vatican
II as the 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church that he helped to
put together is a product of Vatican II. It is constantly the effort
to please men, to make arrangements, to help people to work together
on a common human ground, which is his focus, and not the supernatural
work of the Faith, the salvation of souls. This focus on a purely
human social unity amongst men is immediately the consequence of
the humanism of Vatican II, so aptly described in the document on
the Church and the modern world: Gaudium et spes: Note the reduction of the Church’s essential mission from that of a supernatural unity to the purely, natural, human unity among all men, in which it says that it is in accord with the anti-God humanism of modern secular society. This is, alas, the spirit to be found in the new prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Entirely different is the unity that the Catholic Church has the duty to promote, as so precisely described by Pope Leo XIII in his 1896 encyclical on the Unity of the Church, Satis Cognitum. This is a unity of Faith, of exact same convictions, engendering the unity of government that is the manifestation of the obedience and supernatural charity that characterize the unity of the Church. “Agreement and union of minds is the necessary foundation of this perfect concord amongst men, from which concurrence of wills and similarity of action are the natural results. Wherefore, in His divine wisdom, He ordained in His Church Unity of Faith; a virtue which is the first of those bonds which unite man to God, and whence we receive the name of the faithful – one Lord, one faith, one baptism, so should all Christians, without exception, have but one faith…. For this reason, as the unity of the faith is of necessity required for the unity of the Church, inasmuch as it is the body of the faithful, as also for this same unity, inasmuch as the Church is a divinely constituted society, unity of government, which effects and involves unity of communion is necessary by divine law…It is consequently the office of St. Peter to support the Church, and to guard it in all its strength and indestructible unity. How could he fulfill this office without the power of commanding, forbidding, and judging, which is properly called jurisdiction? It is only by this power of jurisdiction that nations and commonwealths are held together.” This is the unity that Benedict XVI and Archbishop Levada have the duty before God to promote, the extraordinary and holy unity of the Catholic Church, that has been defiled by so many compromises. Let us pray for their fidelity and ours: their fidelity to use their God-given authority to command, forbid and judge, and our fidelity to the Popes who have constantly used their authority not to work out human deals, but to promote the true unity of the Church by commanding, forbidding and judging. Let us never lose that amazing supernatural peace of soul, of total submission, that Christ gives to us through His Church, promising us that no man will take that peace from us. May God reward all of you who have been so regular and faithful in your prayers and support for Holy Cross Seminary, and may the Precious Blood, the infinite price of our eternal salvation, cleanse our souls from dead work to serve the living God, to gain merits, and to offer our lives in satisfaction for our own sins and ingratitude, as well as those of the modernists. Yours faithfully in the Divine Redeemer and the Co-Redemptrix, Father Peter R. Scott
Father Ortiz carries the Blessed Sacrament for the public outdoor
procession for the feast of Corpus Christi.
COME & BRING YOUR FRIENDS!
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Holy
Cross Seminary, Goulburn, Australia
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