The following is written by Michael Lofton, author of the website www.consolamini.org
A Brief Examination of the Crisis
One would have to be delusional not to recognize that there is an extremely great crisis taking place in the Catholic Church today. Let’s examine the present situation in the church:
The Liturgy is in shambles. Let’s face it, if you attend the average Catholic parish today, you are more likely to discover a liturgy that resembles a Protestant service than the way the Mass has been offered for nearly 2,000 years. With Holy Communion treated like fast food, women storming the altar, iconoclastic buildings and heterodox homilies, one has to wonder if they are in a Catholic Church or a hippie love-in.
The Clergy undermine the faith. With the occasional exception, the clergy are more likely to convince you about why the Catholic Church is wrong rather than why it is right. With clergy teaching that sodomite unions are moral, using artificial contraception is not a sin, cohabitation is merely a lesser good than the “ideal standard” of marriage, one has to ask why they haven’t been defrocked and excommunicated.
The faith isn’t practiced. Though the Catholic Church is clear about what it teaches and what is to be done in nearly every conceivable situation, the faith one encounters in practice is often contrary to the faith the Catholic Church actually professes. For example, though the church is clear that people living in adultery may not receive Holy Communion, this is simply ignored and many are given Holy Communion anyway. Thus, even if the average Catholic has enough sense to profess the Catholic faith in word, they often undermine it in deed.
Conversion is no longer necessary. Though the Church teaches that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation, the vast majority of Catholics do not believe this teaching. For this reason, evangelization and calling people to convert is simply seen as uncharitable or outdated. One would be more likely to encounter a “Catholic” who believes all will be saved, including Satan, than that it is necessary to convert to the Catholic Church for salvation.
The Good News
Though there is a great crisis taking place in the church today, God has not abandoned His church. Bishop Athanasius Schneider, in his recent interview with Michael Voris, says:
“God renews His Church… I can observe in so many parts of the world the beginning of the renewal of the Church, slowly, but very clearly.”
This is definitely the case. Many people are beginning to see the bankruptcy of the faux Catholicism embraced by so many, and are turning back to the real Catholic faith and the real Catholic liturgy. Vocations for the traditional priesthood are booming, Tridentine Mass parishes are packed and the traditional Catholic faith is making new converts daily. There is much to hope for when it comes to God’s grace through the present crisis. May God speedily renew His Church and through the Blessed Virgin Mary crush the head of the serpent.
Michael Lofton is a Latin Rite Catholic in the Diocese of Shreveport, Louisiana and is also a member of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, in full communion with the Bishop of Rome. He is a Catholic convert from Protestantism (his conversion story can be found here) and is an author of over a dozen books on Sacred Scripture, Catholic Theology and Apologetics as well as the editor of the St. Jerome Study Bible, found here. He is occasionally a guest on Radio Maria and is the author of the website www.consolamini.org
You see the problem in large part: But the problem starts and\or is confirmed by the pope. union with the pope and use of post conciliar invalid sacraments especially ordination of bishops is the crux of the problem. False protestantized ordination means all active bishops and most priest are laymen. Going to a latin does not change the fact, it hides, camouflages the problem.
That comment is simply not true. Unless the true line of succession has been broken, they are still valid bishops and priests.
Ditto
Wow, that bad? Where? At my own home parish in Northern Virginia as well as masses I’ve attended elsewhere throughout the country, I certainly haven’t come across such practices. The only exception was a mass I once attended at a church in downtown Syracuse, NY. Must be several other like-minded churches here and there. Fortunately I’ve been “protected” from most of them.
Offered for clarification: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 836 – 848, pasted below from http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p123a9p3.htm#836
Who belongs to the Catholic Church?
836 “All men are called to this catholic unity of the People of God. . . . And to it, in different ways, belong or are ordered: the Catholic faithful, others who believe in Christ, and finally all mankind, called by God’s grace to salvation.”320
837 “Fully incorporated into the society of the Church are those who, possessing the Spirit of Christ, accept all the means of salvation given to the Church together with her entire organization, and who – by the bonds constituted by the profession of faith, the sacraments, ecclesiastical government, and communion – are joined in the visible structure of the Church of Christ, who rules her through the Supreme Pontiff and the bishops. Even though incorporated into the Church, one who does not however persevere in charity is not saved. He remains indeed in the bosom of the Church, but ‘in body’ not ‘in heart.'”321
838 “The Church knows that she is joined in many ways to the baptized who are honored by the name of Christian, but do not profess the Catholic faith in its entirety or have not preserved unity or communion under the successor of Peter.”322 Those “who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are put in a certain, although imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church.”323 With the Orthodox Churches, this communion is so profound “that it lacks little to attain the fullness that would permit a common celebration of the Lord’s Eucharist.”324
The Church and non-Christians
839 “Those who have not yet received the Gospel are related to the People of God in various ways.”325
The relationship of the Church with the Jewish People. When she delves into her own mystery, the Church, the People of God in the New Covenant, discovers her link with the Jewish People,326 “the first to hear the Word of God.”327 The Jewish faith, unlike other non-Christian religions, is already a response to God’s revelation in the Old Covenant. To the Jews “belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ”,328 “for the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.”329
840 And when one considers the future, God’s People of the Old Covenant and the new People of God tend towards similar goals: expectation of the coming (or the return) of the Messiah. But one awaits the return of the Messiah who died and rose from the dead and is recognized as Lord and Son of God; the other awaits the coming of a Messiah, whose features remain hidden till the end of time; and the latter waiting is accompanied by the drama of not knowing or of misunderstanding Christ Jesus.
841 The Church’s relationship with the Muslims. “The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.”330
842 The Church’s bond with non-Christian religions is in the first place the common origin and end of the human race:
All nations form but one community. This is so because all stem from the one stock which God created to people the entire earth, and also because all share a common destiny, namely God. His providence, evident goodness, and saving designs extend to all against the day when the elect are gathered together in the holy city. . .331
843 The Catholic Church recognizes in other religions that search, among shadows and images, for the God who is unknown yet near since he gives life and breath and all things and wants all men to be saved. Thus, the Church considers all goodness and truth found in these religions as “a preparation for the Gospel and given by him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life.”332
844 In their religious behavior, however, men also display the limits and errors that disfigure the image of God in them:
Very often, deceived by the Evil One, men have become vain in their reasonings, and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and served the creature rather than the Creator. Or else, living and dying in this world without God, they are exposed to ultimate despair.333
845 To reunite all his children, scattered and led astray by sin, the Father willed to call the whole of humanity together into his Son’s Church. The Church is the place where humanity must rediscover its unity and salvation. The Church is “the world reconciled.” She is that bark which “in the full sail of the Lord’s cross, by the breath of the Holy Spirit, navigates safely in this world.” According to another image dear to the Church Fathers, she is prefigured by Noah’s ark, which alone saves from the flood.334
“Outside the Church there is no salvation”
846 How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers?335 Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:
Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.336
847 This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:
Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience – those too may achieve eternal salvation.337
848 “Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men.”338
320 LG 13.
321 LG 14.
322 LG 15.
323 UR 3.
324 Paul VI, Discourse, December 14, 1975; cf. UR 13-18.
325 LG 16.
326 Cf. NA 4.
327 Roman Missal, Good Friday 13:General Intercessions,VI.
328 Rom 9:4-5.
329 Rom 11:29.
330 LG 16; cf. NA 3.
331 NA 1.
332 LG 16; cf. NA 2; EN 53.
333 LG 16; cf. Rom 1:21, 25.
334 St. Augustine, Serm. 96,7,9:PL 38,588; St. Ambrose, De virg. 18 118:PL 16,297B; cf. already 1 Pet 3:20-21.
335 Cf. Cyprian, Ep. 73.21:PL 3,1169; De unit.:PL 4,509-536.
336 LG 14; cf. Mk 16:16; Jn 3:5.
337 LG 16; cf. DS 3866-3872.
338 AG 7; cf. Heb 11:6; 1 Cor 9:16.