I received this email today, that I wanted to put on my blog. If only two people who care enough follow through and support the action, then it is worthwhile. This is a long post. It's a letter from Karl Keating, from catholic.com I don't live in America, but I can see the reason why this action is important. The Catholic Church is OUR Catholic Church, and we need to ensure that we don't allow disease to enter our faith and erode it from the inside. Please, read this letter and do what you can to help. The email allows use of the text, here it is in full:
How to Keep the Catholic Church from Being Undermined by Dissenters Who Have Lost the Faith and Are Trying to Destroy the Faith of Everyone Else, Too!
Dear Friend of Catholic Answers,
This is a painful letter for me to write.
Why? Because it deals with a painful problem that affects thousands of priests, nuns, deacons, and other individuals who are in charge of millions of souls.
The problem is the wave of theological and moral dissent that is in danger of overtaking the Church in America.
The dissenters—who are well organized—are systematically trying to subvert and “reconstruct” the very foundations of our Catholic faith.
I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.
I’ve written many times to warn people about Call to Action, Women’s Ordination Conference, Catholics for a Free Choice, CORPUS (the National Association for a Married Priesthood), Dignity, FutureChurch, and many other self-proclaimed “change agents” present in the Church today.
They all have a similar agenda: to dismantle the existing structure and essence of the Catholic Church and then re-make it in their own image and likeness.
Their common concerns? They desperately want the Church to change its “rigid” stand on such issues as abortion, contraception, divorce, homosexual activity, women’s ordination, and married priests.
It’s almost hard to believe that these people are serious. But they are.
For many of us, it may even be hard to believe that
pose a serious threat to the Church. But they certainly do.
Did you know that at a recent Call to Action national convention (in Milwaukee, Wisconsin), a couple of hundred priests were in attendance?
It’s true. Also present were many radical feminist nuns, religious educators, chancery officials, liturgists, theologians, and various Church bureaucrats.
Altogether, about 4,000 to 5,000 people were in attendance.
So, as you can see, this group of dissenters actually represents . . .
A Powerful Force within the Church Today!
And they have a clear, systematic agenda: to tear down the Church as we know it— you’ve been seeing it happen for the last 40 years—and then re-build it into a different “NewChurch” structured around their own agenda.
As proof, we here at Catholic Answers just finished an eye-opening new report that spells out this crisis in detail.
It’s titled Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing—and it’s devastating. It contains hard-hitting facts and quotations from the dissenters themselves about their plans for remolding the Church into something no faithful Catholic would recognize.
Their own words incriminate them.
One of the most insidious plans being laid by the dissenters is to have a “constitution” adopted by the Church—which would give so-called “rights” to “the people” (or, more accurately, to the dissenters).
The “Constitution for the Catholic Church” is being widely promoted right now by a group called the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church, which was founded in 1980 in reaction to Vatican censure of such radical theologians as Edward Schillebeeckx, Jacques Pohier, and Hans Küng.
Let me show you some of the key articles of this Constitution. You’ll be able to see for yourself how they would destroy the Catholic faith if adopted.
Article 1 is the most important of all—laying the groundwork for everything else to come.
It says, “All Catholics have the right to follow their informed consciences in all matters.”
Notice it doesn’t say “properly formed” consciences. You see, the dissenters believe that the final arbiter of any decision must be the person’s own conscience - regardless of whether it is properly formed or not.
Of course, if the Church were to accept this “ideal,” then the original standard—reliance on a properly formed conscience based on the authority of the magisterium—would be swept away, replaced by a mandate for pure moral relativism.
This is what leads men like Frank Bonnike, co-founder of CORPUS, to say, “I keep all the rules, but I also respect people who don’t keep all the rules. The key is to respect their consciences.”
Of course, the dissenters don’t really believe that all Catholics have the right to follow their consciences. Why? Because whenever orthodox Catholics oppose abortion, homosexual “marriage,” contraception, and the like, the dissenters viciously condemn us and ridicule our views!
As with “tolerance” and “non-judgmentalism,” this reliance on personal conscience is simply a tool that the dissenters use to further their goals.
You Won’t Believe These
Take a look at some of these other articles in the proposed charter and “Constitution for the Church” (you can read these on the ARCC website at http://arcc-catholic-rights.org):
Article 2: “Officers of the Church have the right to teach on matters both of private and public morality only after wide consultation with the faithful prior to the formulation of the teaching.”
Article 5: “All Catholics have the right to a voice in all decisions that affect them, including the choosing of their leaders.”
Article 16: “All Catholics, regardless of canonical status (lay or clerical), sex or sexual orientation, have the right to exercise all ministries in the Church for which they are adequately prepared, according to the needs and with the approval of the community.”
This blatant call for women’s ordination is repeated in Article 26: “All Catholic women have an equal right with men to the resources and the exercise of all the powers of the Church.”
Then there’s Article 28: “All married Catholics have the right to determine in conscience the size of their families and the appropriate methods of family planning.”
I don’t have to tell you what that means: The acceptance of abortion, sterilization, and all means of contraceptive and abortifacient birth control.
But here’s a real whopper.
Articles 30 and 31: “All married Catholics have the right to withdraw from a marriage which has irretrievably broken down. All such Catholics retain the radical right to remarry. All Catholics who are divorced and remarried and who are in conscience reconciled to the Church have the right to the same ministries, including all sacraments, as do other Catholics.”
These folks need to re-read Matthew 19:9, Mark 10:11–12, and Luke 16:18, which recorded our Lord proclaiming, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
But these dissenters ignore such a direct statement made by Christ himself. That’s why their ability to deceive themselves knows no boundaries.
And as if all that weren’t enough, here’s Article 32: “All Catholics have the right to expect that Church documents and materials will avoid sexist language, and that symbols and imagery of God will not be exclusively masculine.”
But what makes me even more upset is that the dissenters envision holding a “constitutional convention” in order to enact all of the demands described above, and they want to call it . . .
“Vatican III”
We already know how much damage these same people did to the Church in the name of “the spirit of Vatican II.” Imagine what they would do if they succeed in holding “Vatican III.”
One of the things they want, for instance, is for every continent, nation, diocese, and parish to have a detailed constitution of its own, whose articles and amendments would be arrived at by popular vote of the bodies of individuals concerned, one in each different area!
This is actually the key to fulfilling the dissenters’ dream of the destruction of the hierarchical Church.
They want to be the ones who ultimately hold power at the top. For example, their constitution would set up a complicated judicial system of diocesan, national, and international tribunals, culminating in a Supreme Tribunal whose job would be to hear cases charging illegal or unconstitutional actions…
By the POPE!
Bizarre but true!
And the constitution warns darkly, “There shall be no judicial appeal from the judgments of the Supreme Tribunal.”
And again, I’m not making this up. You can read it on their web site!
At the recent Call to Action conference, attendees were asked by a journalist what motivates them and why they don’t just leave the Church if they dislike it so much. A typical response revealed the true reason dissenters stay in the Church and are trying so hard to change it:
“The Church has absolutely no right to make us feel guilty
about activities that our consciences tell us are moral.”
You see, they know that if they leave the Church, they will be nothing special—just another gaggle of splinter groups in the great world supermarket of churches.
But like parasites, they seek to drain the “host” of its vitality for their own purposes. Also like parasites, the dissenters have gradually burrowed their way into the very structure of the Church.
Almost two-thirds of Call to Action conference attendees actually work for the Church! Many of them work in positions as pastoral assistants, teachers at Catholic schools and seminaries, or directors of religious education.
If they get their way, the Church won’t be able to teach anything other than “follow thy conscience.”
As proof, here’s a quote from Anthony Padovano, the current president of CORPUS:
“Conscience or so-called ‘cafeteria’ Catholicism is infinitely more beneficial for the Church than cathedral Catholicism. Cathedral Catholicism does not give us a community of believers, but an assembly of servants and slaves.”
What an insult to faithful Catholics!
Truly, their audacity knows no bounds. Mr. Padovano asserts that it is wrong for the pope to rule on birth control since he “has no personal experience” in the area, never having been married.
When Pope Benedict XVI was elected, Padovano stated, “American Catholics will not allow this papacy to prevail. Some will openly resist; others clandestinely subvert; most will simply not comply.”
Yes, he’s that arrogant and defiant.
Who’s Really Obsessed with Sex?
When you look at the dissenters’ writings, you’ll notice that they accuse everyone else (especially our Pope) of being “obsessed” with sexual issues. But in fact, the people who are really obsessed are the dissenters themselves.
Even just a casual look at their literature reveals that most of their scribblings deal with sex-related subjects such as contraception, abortion, priestly celibacy, and homosexuality.
Dissident organizations that abound today are so preoccupied with sex—and especially . . .
Sexual Deviancy
For instance, one of the newer groups is New Ways Ministry—whose job is to advocate for gay Catholics and gay priests. Yep, just what the Church needs.
There’s DignityUSA, which boldly states in its mission statement:
“DignityUSA envisions and works for a time when Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Catholics are affirmed and experience dignity through the integration of their spirituality with their sexuality, and as beloved persons of God participate fully in all aspects of life within the Church and Society.”
CORPUS (a group of ex-priests who left ministry to get married) states its goal this way:
“We are committed to working for a renewed priesthood of married and single men and women in the Catholic Church. We continue to work for an inclusive priesthood . . . one that is open to women and men, married and single, gay and straight.”
It boasts on its web site that “on July 31, 2006, eight Roman Catholic women were ordained as priests in Pittsburgh. They were validly ordained by three consecrated female bishops.”
These people take themselves very seriously. And they’re in positions of power within the Church—especially at the parish level—so we need to take them seriously, too.
So, I want to send you a copy of our new research report, Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing—and I also want to ask for your help in getting it widely distributed to the millions of Catholics all across the United States.
Won’t You Help Us Sound the Alarm?
This report is must reading for every Catholic who loves the Church and cares enough to defend it.
That’s why, with your help, I want to send a copy of this report to as many Catholics as possible so they can take action in their own parish—because so much of the dissenters’ poison is now spread at the parish level through CCD classes and RCIA classes.
But we can’t send a single copy to anyone without your help.
The initial cost of this project will be approximately $150,000. We need to raise that money in the next 30 days so we can launch this vital defense of the faith.
As Fr. John Hardon, S.J., once pointed out:
“The Church cannot be destroyed, but let’s be clear: The Church in any particular country CAN be wiped out. We have some 1,900 extinct dioceses in the world today. Barring a miracle of grace, one diocese after another in the United States will disappear.”
Those are very sobering words—so we must take heed!
This is why we at Catholic Answers are so dedicated to getting widespread distribution of our new research report, Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing.
As you know, our central purpose is to defend the Catholic faith. And right now in America, it’s under severe attack by the dissenters.
If we don’t do something now, we will live to regret it. But even worse, our children and grandchildren will live to resent us for it, and millions will never know the faith at all.
They will wonder why we didn’t fight to save our beloved Church when we had the chance.
They Will Wonder If We Really Loved It at All!
We must not let that happen.
And we must not make the mistake of thinking that God will just take care of everything by himself. Listen: If we don’t fight to defend his Church, then we don’t deserve his help!
It’s that simple.
Looking on the bright side, this terrible onslaught of heresy, schism, and apostasy will actually serve to strengthen the Church in the long run—and get people to rally around the orthodox teachings of the faith.
People will be inspired to learn and live their faith so they can defend it.
Many vocations to orthodox religious orders will no doubt come out of this, too.
In a word, God will draw GOOD out of the evil we face . . .
. . . but only if you and I do our part to cooperate with him.
We at Catholic Answers are totally dependent on your generosity in order to send out our new report. As I mentioned, the initial cost will be $150,000—which we don’t have right now.
Therefore, would you be able to send us your gift of $35 or more to help with this project? In return, I will send you a copy of our eye-opening report, Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing.
If you can afford it, please dig deep and give $100 or more. It’s that important.
I know I’m asking for a lot. But the Church in America has virtually no one else to stand up for it and defend it besides faithful Catholics like you.
If you don’t stand with us, who will? And if we don’t defeat the dissenters now, when?
It’s Up to Each of Us to Do Our Part
The dissenters are working to dismantle the Church and replace it with an institution of their own design.
Consider this quotation from a leading dissenter, Fr. Bill Callahan:
“The Church system is showing such strains and contradictions that it is ready to crumble. Systems crumble much more readily if there are people marching around the walls, everyone with a little rock pick, working on their part of the wall. You can’t repel them all.”
To that I say, “Yes we can, Father. Watch us. There are more of us than there are of you. Leave our Church alone!”
Will you join me in this battle?
All you have to do is make your donation—by clicking here now.
We need to hear from you right away so that we know we have the resources to go forward.
So please donate now—and then pray harder than ever that God will bless our humble efforts on behalf of his Church.
As Fr. Hardon said, it will take a miracle to keep the Catholic Church in America from being destroyed from within by dissenters. So let’s start praying—and working—right now for that timely miracle.
God bless you, and I look forward to hearing from you very soon.
Sincerely in Christ,
Karl Keating
p.s., One of the worst dissent groups in the Church today is Catholics for a Free Choice—the pro-abortion outfit established by Frances Kissling.
In our new research report, we expose CFFC—and we show why it’s anything BUT Catholic.
We also show you where it gets its money—millions upon millions of dollars a year.
Despite what you might think, the dissenters are well-funded by people who hate the Catholic Church and want to see it fall.
That’s why we need your financial help more than ever before—because this project can help stop the dissenters in their tracks. But only if we raise the money.
May God bless you for helping us and shower his graces upon you and your family for keeping the faith!
Click here to donate.
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