Outnumbered and Outdated: 100 Sexual Revolutionaries Schooled by 500 Catholic Academics!


Torch of The Faith News on Thursday 22 September 2016 - 18:12:00 | by admin

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(Fr.) Johannes Nicolaas Maria Wijngaards will celebrate his 81st birthday next week. As with big collars, lava lamps and glam rock, the arguments in the rebellious Wijngaards Statement are just so 1970's.

Antichrists in the Academy

Bl. Cardinal John Henry Newman once reflected: ''It is a miserable time when a man's Catholic profession is no voucher for his orthodoxy, and when a teacher of religion may be within the Church's pale, yet external to her truth.''

This quote came to mind when I heard that the infamous Wijngaards Institute was launching another - one hesitates to say ''fresh'' - attack on Catholic moral teaching. What makes this latest attack particularly troubling is that it is being done with the support of three powerful United Nations agencies.

Signed by around 100 dissenting ''theologians'' and other non-Catholics (see what I did there!), the release of the Wijngaards Statement is sponsored by the influential and cash-rich UN Population Fund, UN Women and UN Aids.

Welcome to the New World Order folks!

Worse still, the document calls for ''new'' teachings in the Church to be developed democratically by a team of ''experts''.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that this proposal for such ''experts'' includes a related call for the Church to change its teachings on contraception, masturbation, homosexual relationships and IVF.

Diabolical Disorientation
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Our Lady of Fatima warned that most souls go to Hell because of the sins of the flesh. The signatories to the Wijngaards Statement need to be reminded of this grave warning. Urgently!

Clearly, the teachings of Our Lord Jesus Christ, two millennia of Magisterial authority, the natural moral law and the warnings of Our Lady of Fatima mean little to this self-appointed team of ''experts''.

The hubris which makes grown adults think they can convince faithful Catholics to abandon Christ and the successors of His Apostles for a ''democratic team of experts'' can only be understood in relation to the problems of pride, sin and spiritual warfare. You might also want to factor in globalization and high-finance to that equation.

One of the characteristics of the Wijngaards Statement is that it claims to be rooted in reasoned scholarship.

Aside from the fact that it actually ignores about four decades' worth of serious scholarship - work that has developed a logically and theologically consistent defence of the Church's traditional ethical and moral teachings - the statement itself can be critiqued as a clear example of the misuse of human reason. 

This is evidenced right from the outset by the fact that it rejects both the natural moral law and the Magisterial nature of traditional Church teaching.

Let's consider this for a moment.

Any orthodox Catholic should be able to tell you that the more one is converted to God and the life of virtue through grace, then the further one is able to live freely in, and for, the good, the beautiful and the true.

Grace builds on nature and, as nature is restored in Christ, the intellect receives light, and the will is given strength to grow in holiness.

This is the difficult road to Heaven.

On the other hand, the further one slides into the acceptance and practice of sin, then the more one's intellect becomes darkened and the further one's will is weakened.

As one's spiritual state declines from venial sin into mortal sin, and becomes habituated in that dark way of existing, then one's perceptions of reality become gradually inverted. At a certain point, that which is good, beautiful and true is no longer recognised as such. Instead that which is bad, ugly and false becomes normative.

This is the easy slide to Hell.

Anyone who is really honest with themselves and with God will be able to recognise these contrasting patterns at work in their own life history.

This discussion of the darkening of the intellect through sin finds an illustrative echo in Joseph Pearce's discussion of Hamlet, in his book Through Shakespeare's Eyes - Seeing the Catholic Presence in the Plays.

During an exploration of King Claudius' actions in Acts 3 and 4, Pearce reflects: ''It is a common enough psychological twist to find that one unwilling to repent begins to justify the sin by believing that it is in fact not sinful. It is the switch from an uncomfortable objective reality to a comfortable subjective substitute ''reality''. The King will not live virtuously, so he makes a virtue out of his vice in an act of self-justification. He has passed from what is to what seems to be.''

God gave us the gift of human reason in order to find Him, accept His revelation and go deeper into the truth. If we reject God and His revelation, then our intellect becomes dark indeed.

And so, we have the spectacle of many ''educated'' people using their ''learning'' to attack the very Church which has so often paid for them to live and study in the first place. Instead of using their learning to defend God's truth and moral laws, they use it to defend their own rejection of that truth and morality.

It is beyond sad that Fr. John Wijngaards ''resigned'' from his priestly ministry in 1998, in order to protest against the Church's Magisterium for the supposed cause of women's ordination.

He thus chose to support this theological impossibility rather than offer the most august Sacrifice of the Mass in persona Christi. And so, everyone lost out! Please God, he will have a change of heart during the remainder of his life. 

500 Faithful Academics Affirm Traditional Moral Teachings
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In light of all that has been expressed above, it was refreshing to read that the 100 signatories to the Wijngaards Statement were outnumbered by a ratio of 5:1, when 500 faithful Catholic academics signed a constrasting document entitled, Affirmation of the Catholic Church's Teaching on the Gift of Sexuality.

Game, Set and Match!

In addition to exposing the outdated theological and anthropological errors at the heart of the Wijngaards Statement, the orthodox affirmation by the 500 faithful scholars concludes: ''We, the undersigned Catholic scholars, hold that the Church's teaching on contraception is true and defencible on the basis of Scripture and reason. We hold that Catholic teaching respects the true dignity of the human person and is conducive to happiness.''

A Few Good Men

It was especially encouraging for us to spot a few names that we knew among the list of signatories to the faithful affirmation of Church teaching.

I've already described here how I was taught at Steubenville, a decade ago, by Dr. Scott Hahn and Dr. Michael G. Sirilla. It is great to see that their names are on the list of those defending the true teachings of the Church.

As we've also said previously, Dr. Sirilla has already stuck his neck on the line by being one of ''The 45'' who wrote the letter to Pope Francis about Amoris Laetitia. May God bless him and his family for his fidelity. 

Fr. Dan Pattee TOR

Among other familiar signatories to the Affirmation of the Church's Teaching on the Gift of Sexuality is Fr. Dan Pattee TOR.
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Fr. Dan and I outside Steubenville's Christ the King Chapel on the day I graduated with an MA from Franciscan University of Steubenville in June 2006. I had clearly been having a few too many of the ''Mrs. Freshley's Honeybuns'' whilst studying for my final comprehensive exams... Those splendid cinnamon buns are another of the great things I miss about America!

I studied St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, the Analogy of Being, metaphysics and critiques of relativism in Fr. Dan's classes at Franciscan University of Steubenville.

As I wrote in my end of year review in 2006, ''Fr. Dan is the best teacher I have ever had. Period.'' Being immersed into the study of St. Thomas and the Analogy of Being has been one of the most positively influential experiences of my whole life. It was a key time of healing, ongoing conversion and growth for my soul.

I was blessed to meet up again with Fr. Dan during the 2009 Catechetical Conference in Rome, when I was working for the Maryvale Institute.

Dr. Andrew Beards
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When I was at Ushaw Seminary in the late 1990's, there was a good and orthodox layman on the daytime staff called Dr. Andrew Beards. Within the general atmosphere of dissent, sacrilege and the persecution of orthodox students that prevailed in those dark times, Dr. Beards stood out as a friendly and sympathetic influence.

To the orthodox students, he was known simply as ''Beardsie''. He would often keep us going with his outstanding sense of humour, a word of encouragement or a jokey note pushed under one's door. It was through Andrew's influence and invitation that a group of us began to sneak off on Saturday mornings to the Traditional Latin Mass offered by Fr. Michael Brown in Newcastle.

Perhaps Andrew's personality and support can best be summed up by the fact that, even though he was a married layman and father, he was known to the students as ''Beardsie... the best priest on the staff!''

I was very blessed to work with Andrew, and to share the odd pint of Guinness with him, at the Maryvale Institute in the Midlands several years ago. With other good folks from there, he is now working at the excellent School of the Annunciation in Devon as the Academic Director.

As well as his reliance on grace, one of Andrew's greatest qualities is his almost Chestertonian love for enemies. It is highly likely that, as well as signing the affirmation of Church teaching, he will be quietly praying his Rosary in the chapel for those who have so openly opposed the Church's true teachings. As Jesus said of Nathanael in John 1:47: ''In him, there is no guile!'' 

Dr. Petroc Willey
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I first met Petroc around 2002, when I was working as a PR/Education Officer for a national pro-life charity here in England. He came up to Merseyside to do a talk for us on the Church's authentic teachings on contraception.

I took a huge chance by inviting along a group of women from the local government who I knew were giving out condoms and so forth to kids in local schools. I wanted them to hear the truth from someone of Petroc's calibre. I also invited several religion teachers from ''Catholic'' schools who were very supportive of these women and of the concept of them giving condoms out in their schools.

I wanted all of these people to have a chance to hear the truth explained calmly and clearly to them.

It is a measure of Petroc's humility and his ability to articulate the truth in love that everyone listened to what he had to say. It is also telling that one of the dissenting teachers came up to me at the end of the session and said that the style and content of Petroc's presentation had made him question himself and the ideas he had held up to that day.

That teacher said that he was going to go away and do some serious thinking about his beliefs and approach. Please God, he did!

I next met Petroc most unexpectedly in America in 2004. I had had to resign from my pro-life job on conscience because, lamentably, the team had begun to compromise on the matters of non-directive Rogerian counselling, condoms, ''safe sex'' and other related issues.

Angie and I had just arrived in Steubenville to commence my two years of study there, when Petroc suddenly knocked at the door of our digs! We did not know it until then, but he was a speaker at the annual catechetical conference held on the university campus each summer. It was nice for us to see such a friendly and familiar face when we were some 4,000 miles from home on the other side of the Atlantic!

Petroc came into our lives again in 2009 when we were working for him at the Maryvale Institute in the British Midlands.

Due to the unexpected twists and turns of life, Petroc is now himself living and working at Steubenville as a Professor of Theology.

We give thanks to God that these good people, and all of the 500 souls who signed up to the Affirmation of the Church's Teaching on Human Sexuality, have made such a clear stance in defence of Christ's Truth.

With all the confusion arising from Amoris Laetitia, we pray that they will be given the grace to continue to defend the Faith so clearly and publicly in the times ahead.

Where are the Hierarchy?
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As with the courageous stand being made by Christopher Ferrara, Michael Matt and John Vennari, this latest initiative has been a largely lay-led phenomenon.

This again highlights the strange and continuing silence from the hierarchy in the face of the widespread subversion of the Church and her moral teachings.

Being that the Wijngaards Statement has the financial and intellectual support of key UN agencies, and given the growing awareness of George Soros' influence on Francis' Vatican, it is to be hoped that the cardinals and bishops will find their voices soon.

For all our sakes.

In the meantime, and awaiting such clarity from the hierarchy, the dissenters who signed up to the Wijngaards Statement's support for masturbation, contraception, homosexual activity and IVF, need to be reminded that they should not approach for Holy Communion until they have sincerely repented, received sacramental absolution and publicly recanted their support for these things.

They need to do this urgently for the good of their immortal souls and to prevent others from being led into confusion, error and sin.      


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