Remnant News Watch

(March 31, 2009)

Coordinating Apostasy

Group Urges Lukewarm Catholics to Leave Church

Mark Alessio
REMNANT COLUMNIST, New York


(Posted 04/03/09 www.RemnantNewspaper.com) In an effort to “reduce the church's political influence, Argentine atheists and feminists are spearheading a drive to get people who were baptized Roman Catholic but disagree with the church's politics to formally renounce their faith,” reports Reuters (Mar. 4, 2009):

The "Not in my Name" Internet campaign, also called Collective Apostasy, encourages people who are Catholic in name only to write to the bishops where they were baptized to officially register that they have left the church. Latin America is home to about half of the world's Roman Catholics but many people who were baptized Catholic do not practice the religion. "The church counts all those who've been baptized as Catholic and lobbies for legislation based on that number, so we're trying to convey the importance of people expressing that they no longer belong to the church," said campaigner Ariel Bellino, a member of an atheist group and a former Catholic.

While over 75 percent of Argentina’s 40 million population define themselves as Catholic, roughly 20 percent attend Mass regularly, according to a recent government survey. According to Reuters, “The country's relatively liberal social mores clash with Catholic doctrine on birth control, abstinence before marriage and homosexuality.” On December 13, 2003, Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, became the first city in Latin American to recognize homosexual civil unions. Prior to the 1994 reform of the Argentinean Constitution, the country’s presidents were required to be Roman Catholics.

There have never been more destructive and insidious enemies of the Church than those who attempt to destroy her from within. The malign spiritual descendants of Judas are legion, and some of their names are already legendary – e.g., Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, architect of the Novus Ordo Missae, who declared, “We must strip from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren, that is for the Protestants,” and Fr. Hans Kung, who has dedicated his life to the destruction of our ancient doctrinal patrimony, and who is forbidden by the Vatican to teach as a Catholic theologian because of the “serious doctrinal errors” of his work.

 Manning Johnson, a leading member of the Communist Party in America during the 1940’s-50’s, told the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1953, “The Communists discovered that the destruction of religion could proceed much faster through infiltration of the Church by Communists operating within the Church itself .... This policy of infiltrating seminaries was successful beyond even our greatest expectations.”

Manning’s revelations were complemented by the testimony of Bella Dodd, who served as legal counsel to the Communist Party in the United States until her conversion to Catholicism. Dodd, who also appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950’s, admitted that, “In the 1930s we put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within," the plan being that some of these men would eventually become Monsignors and Bishops, where they could use their position to weaken the Church from within. A decade before the Second Vatican Council, Dodd said that the changes wrought by these covert agents within the Church would be so radical that "you will not recognize the Catholic Church.”

Today, deceivers can be found in parishes and chanceries throughout the world, and they have so many “problems” with the Church’s teachings about the nature of the priesthood, birth-control, abortion, the Real Presence, you name it. But, they are devout. Never miss Mass, in fact. Do you suppose these deluded “Catholics” would ever think to leave the Church? At this point, would they even recognize their apostasy? What is the purpose of the Church? If you read your average church bulletin, or talk to your average RCIA teacher, you would think that this purpose was principally “community,” a warm place where everyone can hug during the Kiss of Peace, or feed the poor, or meet “nice” people.


The Church is not mentioned often in the New Testament. We glimpse the Church more so through the role of her priests, when Jesus Christ spoke about the tasks of the Apostles (i.e., priests) in the Church – i.e., they would baptize, hear confessions, celebrate Mass, etc. But, when the Church is mentioned directly, she is portrayed, not as a club or social-service center, but as a hierarchical entity which possesses the sole authority to interpret, preserve and transmit doctrine:

-                 Jesus saith to them: But whom do you say that I am? Simon Peter answered and said: Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answering said to him: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but My Father who is in heaven. And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Mt. 16:15-18)

-                 But if thy brother shall offend against thee, go, and rebuke him between thee and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou shalt gain thy brother. And if he will not hear thee, take with thee one or two more: that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may stand. And if he will not hear them: tell the church. And if he will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican. Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven. (Mt. 18:15-18)

Community, a place where those trudging along the weary road to Eternity can worship together, a place where the most unfortunate members of society can find aid and succor, is merely a happy by-product of the establishment of the Church. But her sole reason for existing is to lead people to Christ (and protect the faithful) by faithfully preserving the doctrinal legacy He has bequeathed to us.

The people behind the “Collective Apostasy” campaign imagine that they can harm the Church by reducing her numbers, never realizing that those who call themselves “Catholic” but reject Church teaching have already separated themselves. They have become dead branches, still hanging onto the trunk, but lifeless. Their “Catholicism” has become a mere formality.

Atheists, feminists and whatnot can never “reduce” the Church’s numbers, for this data is known to God alone: “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me..... Not every one that saith to Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of My Father Who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

During the 4th century, when it seemed as though the Church was being swallowed whole by the Arian heresy, the great St. Athanasius stood firm against both ecclesiastical and temporal powers (hence the expression "Athanasius contra mundum" – Athanasius against the world).

Later, during “Reformation” England, when Catholic bishops and clergy were falling like dominoes before the New Religion, men like Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher held their ground in the face of the apostasy surrounding them. Yes, the Catholic Church has weathered “declining numbers” before, and has always emerged the stronger for it.

 After the Last Supper, Our Lord prayed: “And now I am not in the world, and these are in the world, and I come to Thee. Holy Father, keep them in Thy name whom Thou has given Me; that they may be one, as We also are. While I was with them, I kept them in Thy name. Those whom Thou gavest Me have I kept; and none of them is lost.”

Those whom Thou gavest Me have I kept; and none of them is lost. This applies not only to those who were blessed to be His disciples when He walked the earth, but it applies in perpetuity. There are many things that can tempt us away from Christ – persecution, heartache, difficulties, worldly idols, etc. But a half-baked “Apostasy Initiative” launched by a bunch of atheists and feminists with too much time on their hands? No way. But, wouldn’t they be tickled to realize how big a favor they would be doing the Church if they helped us haul out some of our trash?

 

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