The Remnant has reprinted an article from Time magazine in 1968 on the state of the church 38 years ago. As frustrating as the situation in the Church is in 2006, with the acceptance, even the institutionalization, of dissent and the appointment of bishops who have more in common with the angry, foolish young Catholic priests and laymen of 1968 than with the Bishops of that era, we should be thankful that the chaos and the rate of decline we saw in that era has not continued. The liberals have had their heyday, and they've risen to power, but at least now they're starting to die off, and those who remain seem as fearful of a counterrevolution as the hierarchy was then of a revolution.
And we'll give them a counterrevolution, now, won't we!
The TIME article in 1968 presents Pope Paul VI as a disenchanted liberal, which certainly was not evident to me during the following years of the late 1960s and 1970s. With a few exceptions such as Humanae Vitae, the liberals ran wild in the Church during the papacy of Paul VI.
ReplyDeletePaul VI died on Sunday, August 6, 1978, the summer our family visited southern California. On that Sunday morning, we decided to drive to Mass at the historic mission of San Juan Capistrano. I had read in a traditional periodical that the old Latin Mass was still being offered there and I looked forward to this Mass with great anticipation.
We arrived to find the sanctuary mostly devastated and a Novus Ordo Mass being offered. I remember very well the great feeling of betrayal that descended on me that morning.
I did something I have regretted and never done since. I prayed hard that the persons responsible for this devastation (and I thought of Pope Paul VI) be justly punished by God for allowing these sacrilegious crimes. [Conveniently neglecting to remember my own unsavory sins!]
We returned to our campground and then went to Disneyland for the day. The next morning, the headline of the Los Angeles newspaper read, "Pope Paul VI Dead." He had died on the day of my terrible prayer. That scared me into never, NEVER praying for God to punish anyone! Jesus, please have mercy on ALL of us.