The schedule for the 2005 Call to Action national conference, to be held this November, is almost a parody of liberal and heterodox Catholicism. The seminar titles are hilarious, using terms like “theo-fascism” and “Earth Spirit” and “goddess” and “theological captivity” and so on.
The plenary address will be given by Fr. Richard McBrien and will be an assessment of the pontificate of Benedict XVI. Do you think McBrien will find it to be a positive and refreshing springtime of the Church under the leadership of our new pope? Yeah, right.
I also notice a number of names familiar from the Scandals of the past few years, including Leonard Swidler, one of the founding members of Voice of the Faithful, and David Clohessy and Barbara Blaine, the leaders of SNAP, the abuse victims group.
As I’ve said before, all these groups are connected in one way or another.
By the by, I noticed that every seminar and event has a person’s name attached, except for one. For the seminar “Faith-sharing Communities for the Next Generation” the presenter is listed as “Next Generation CTA Leaders.” Is that because they have yet to identify the next generation? Is it because CTA and its ilk is overwhelmingly populated by aging, gray-haired Baby Boomers whose outdated philosophical outlook is dying?
Yes, the usual suspects: Schenk, McBrien, Fox, Cozzens, Curran, Kilikevice (the Dancing Dominican) etc.
And the usual agendas 1:42:04
2005-07-23 01:42:04
The next generation looks significantly different. The next generation of promoters of something not quite Catholic will be the people promoting “mysticism,” particularly mysticism of the syncretistic variety.
We all know about the dissenters of CTA, et.al. now. This new incarnation is going to broadside American Catholics.
Mysticism can encompass a tremendous variety of seers, all the way from something authentic like a Padre Pio to Madame Future and her crystals. Sorting it all out is going to be a task for a theologian of the most orthodox variety and the most pure conscience. It’s going to make the shenanigans of the CTAers up to this point look like merely a warm-up, IMHO.
That EarthSpirit that CTA includes is just the first salvo.
I guess that JP2’s strategy of leaving the heretics in place until they die out. rather than cutting off their heads, is finally beginning to pay off.
However, the damage that they have done to the liturgy and the Faith will take more than a generation to repair. The average Catholic still believes that Communion in the hand, divorce and remarriage, abortion, artificial contraception and all sorts of liturgical abuses connected to the NO are just fine.
I still remember a piece done one “60 Minutes” about ten years ago on Call to Action. There was Roger Mohoney, a disgraced Prince of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, clapping like hell and jerking himself around at a “Mass” at a Call to Action Conference in LA.
God please bless us that the present Pope will start to chop heads off.
As you note, Dom, there are lots of tired old horses that have trotted around the track once too many times at this conference. If they still drag out Reuther, Fox and McBrien, then they are getting closer to the call to judgement not action. Let them dust off their Pete Seeger records and enjoy the goddess circles.
If Arius had these guys on his team, his heresy would have wilted before it even started.
I think the syncretistic stuff will certainly go on because it doesn’t demand any internal examination of one’s soul or conscience….
What is more alarming is why people don’t want to examine their consciences………
The next century will be about manipulating biology and culture to produce a homogenous human condition, controlled in terms of outcome—ie. cloning, medical extension of life, transplants, using fetuses for parts, etc.
At the same time, the next century will also be about money and security. Probably the rich will get richer and the poor poorer, but the rich will pay huge prices for the security and homogeneity of their lives….
In the next century, I think the Catholic way of life will be illegal—normal family life with one’s own natural children, believing and acting on natural law, etc. Catholics are going to take a tremendous beating over this….
I think the time will come when we’ll get arrested or at least sanctioned for not accepting cloned parts, medicines made from dead children, etc.
BTW, the Vatican recently released an article on this very topic—about the use of vaccines made from aborted children—in wide use in the USA. A link is below.
http://www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=58781
Carrie, there was also a recent link about the inroads new age is making into Catholicism…It was in Zenit’s July 18 issue. Sort of a late observation, I’d say though.