For Those With The Eyes To See
by
Thomas A. Droleskey
Lacking the very principle of unity, the Chair of Saint Peter, to bind us together in truth as Catholics, the divisions of the present moment will continue no matter the best efforts of Catholics to act as latter day Rodney Kings pleading for everyone to "get along." No, the so-called traditional movement can never be "united" when there is an unwillingness to recognize error and then to correct it.
Although I am attempting to write a book on Americanism that will discuss in some detail the ways in which the American bishops sought to water down the Faith as much as was possible in the decades prior to the "Second" Vatican Council, time must be taken away from this project yet again in order to make a final effort to explain points that were made recently in Just Another Day In The Rubber Room of Traditionalism and Not Under Any Circumstances). And we are just thirteen days away from the time that the false "pontiff," Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, arrives in his native Germany for another effort to deconstruct the Faith into a plaything of his Modernist predilections that come to us by way of his beloved "new theology" (and even though I have written ad nauseam about the false "pontiff," there are times when it is useful to do so as I am very conscious that there might be some new reader who happens upon this site within the Providence of God who is open to looking for a few answers to his questions). That trip will certainly take more time away from my book project.
It is never pleasant to write about divisions within the microscopically small world that is sedevacantism. These divisions do not go away simply because people do not want to discuss them. They are a source of grave scandal to our fellow Catholics, most of whom think that we are schismatic and disloyal and in jeopardy of losing our immortal souls for refusing to follow and obey the "pope."
The current conflict between Father Markus Ramolla, the pastor Saint Albert the Great Roman Catholic Church in Fairfield, Ohio, and Bishop Mark A. Pivarunas, the Superior-General of the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen, could have been avoided entirely if His Excellency had been open to listening to concerns that were brought to his attention privately rather than reacting in an angry spirit of defensiveness and denial, striking out at his critics in the process, seemingly unable to accept simple points of comparison that had been made to him. His Excellency's Final response to Fr. Markus Ramolla, dated September 8, 2011, needs, therefore, only a few brief words to amplify what has been written before on this tragic matter.
Bishop Francis Slupski and Bishop Paul Petko
1) The one and only reason that I mentioned the record of Bishop Francis Schuckardt was to illustrate that even though the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen (CMRI) has worked hard to rehabilitate its reputation, some in the sedevacantist clergy do not believe that they can ever be rehabilitated because of what they call their "corrupt" beginnings, refusing to have any association with them. It is thus ironic that Bishop Pivarunas, having worked with Father Denis Chicoine, to force the ouster of Bishop Schuckardt in 1984, still stands ostracized and rejected by other sedevacantist clergy while at the same time ostracizing Bishop Francis Slupski for having made the serious mistakes that are well-known, mistakes for which he has apologized, including in the sermon that he gave at the Mass of Episcopal Consecration of Bishop Paul Petko on March 11, 2011.
2) It is furthermore the case that the Society of Saint Pius V and many anti-sedevacantist traditionalists reject the clergy whose "orders come in whole or in part from the episcopal lineage of Archbishop Pierre Martin Ngo Dinh Thuc" because of the mistakes that the archbishop had made and for which he had apologized. None of that has meant anything to those who believe that the Thuc-line is invalid or, at the very least, "dirty," to use the words of a Society of Saint Pius V priest who spoke to us in 2006 at the same time we were in contact with Bishop Pivarunas. Although Bishop Pivarunas is free to associate with whomever he wants, the only point that I have made to him privately and that I have made publicly is that Bishop Slupski, who works very hard for souls in northern Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa, should be given the same opportunity as has been afforded the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen. I thought that this point was very clear. I was, quite evidently, mistaken.
3) Bishop Pivarunas persists in condemning Bishop Slupski for what the latter has admitted was a grave mistake, that is, the attempted consecration of Ryan Scott (aka Ryan St. Anne). Bishop Slupski is not alone in having erred on the matter of Ryan Scott. Equally culpable were the late Abbot Leonard Giardina, O.S.B., who recommended Scott to Bishop Robert F. McKenna, O.P., for conditional ordination priesthood even though Scott's public record was well-known to him and in spite of the fact that that Scott provided no sacramental paperwork, including a baptismal certificate, necessary for ordination. Bishop Slupski's side of how the consecration of Ryan Scott took place despite his own misgivings has been spelled out in my letters to Bishop Pivarunas with details that have not been divulged publicly. As this is a matter of dispute, especially since I was informed by Bishop McKenna's webmaster on Friday, September 9, 2011, that His Excellency stands by the statement referenced by Bishop Pivarunas, he is thus duty bound to speak to his brother in Christ the High Priest and his brother bishop, Francis Slupski, who was ordained to the priesthood for the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer in Poland in 1961. And it is because Father Bernard Hall has not spoken with Bishop Slupski that he has reserved judgment on the matter. To persist in presenting one side of this story without getting the other from Bishop Slupski himself in order to make an assessment of the facts is simply not in accord with the binding precepts of the Eighth Commandment.
4) Bishop Pivarunas explained to me in a telephone conversation in March of 2010 that he would have to know Father Paul Petko for ten years in order to get to know him in order to conditionally ordain him to the priesthood, saying now that he had to determine whether he had a true vocation. Here's a simple review of several inconsistences: (a) Bishop Pivarunas offered to conditionally ordain Father Paul Sretenovic, sight unseen, at Mount Saint Michael's in Spokane, Washington, in late-October of 2006 before Father Sretenovic changed his mind. There was no talk of seeing whether Father Sretenovic had a vocation as there is now concerning Bishop Petko, who had wanted to be a priest from the time that he was in school and had been in seminary for twelve years, including four with the Society of Saint Pius X, before teaching in Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary for the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP). He had been functioning as a priest, albeit one invalidly ordained, in parishes that operated within the diocesan structures of the conciliar church for the FSSP. If Bishop Petko had to wait ten years in order to determine whether he had a vocation, why was this waiting period not imposed upon Father Michael Oswalt, who had far less training than he had? It makes no sense.
5) Bishop Pivarunas has not once done Bishop Petko the courtesy of telephoning him to have a conversation about recent events. He has sent him a letter to tell him that he cannot have anything to do with him as long as he continued associating with Bishop Slupski. Why not a phone call to air out differences? Bishop Petko is a priest to every core of his being.
6) Those who have read Bishop Pivarunas's September 8, 2011, can see that he cited Dr. Rama Coomaraswamy as an expert who endorsed "brain death as true death." Although I have dealt with the medical industry's manufactured myth of "brain death" before and will do so briefly at the end of this article, it is ironic to note here that Dr. Coomaraswamy, who was instrumental in convincing The Nine to accept the sedevacantist thesis when he taught for the Society of Saint Pius X, was ordained to the priesthood in 1999 by Bishop Jose Ramon Lopez-Gaston even though he was married, taking a vow of marital continence along with his wife. Father Coomaraswamy later worked with Bishop McKenna, who we love with all of our Catholic hearts, on exorcism cases. Is Bishop McKenna to be shunned for working with a married priest?
7) With all of the demands for apologies and retractions that are made in the infinitesimally small world of sedevacantism, it is truly astounding that men who have made mistakes shake their fingers and cast stones aplenty at others who have made similar mistakes.
Indeed, one traditional bishop accepted the claim made by Father John Starace that he, Father Starace, had been ordained by a true bishop, Dante Bernini of Albano, Italy, on September 23, 1973 [click here to view his ordination certificate]. The traditional bishop permitted him to function as a priest for a while (staging Mass, hearing confessions) at a chapel in Hudson, New York, before it was discovered that Starace's "bishop," Dante Bernini, had been installed in the conciliar rite of episcopal consecration on December 8, 1971. This traditional bishop was furious at the individual who had discovered the information. Furious. He sent all manner of terrible communications via facsimile transmission to shoot the messenger who had brought him the bad news that he and his associate had made a terrible mistake by accepting Father Starace's word without checking the facts or demanding to see his paperwork. The bishop, who prides himself on his public reputation and is very prickly when criticized, had to conditionally ordain Father Starace in that Hudson, New York, chapel on August 26, 1998, as witnessed by several people.
This bishop never made any public apology for this or informed the people at the chapel that he had made such a mistake in judgment.
Bishop Pivarunas knows who this bishop is.
He consecrated him on November 30, 1993, at Saint Gertrude the Great Church in Sharonville, Ohio.
His name is Bishop Daniel L. Dolan.
The name of the associate who had also accepted Father Starace's credentials based on his representations without any sacramental paperwork was Father Anthony Cekada, an expert adviser in matters of deportation (see Stalinists Always Claim to Want Peace and Removing All Doubt) and moral theology (see The execution of Theresa Marie Schiavo).
Although some might claim that Bishop Dolan wanted to avoid public scandal, a priestly ordination is a matter of the public record, and the public record, which is more easy to research now than it was in 1998, is what it is. Bishop Dolan was very angry at the messenger for pointing out his error, and that is what mattered more than anything else. He has no right to complain about the mistakes of Bishops McKenna and Slupski, as he did to us on many occasions in years gone by, when he made one of his own in this regard.
Bishop Pivarunas has never called upon Bishop Dolan to apologize for his mistake or has criticized him for making it.
No, "unity" is too important for this. Except, of course, when it isn't, and it is important now to make Bishop Slupski and any bishop or priest associated with him pay mightily for mistakes that he regrets and that he has expressed apologies for publicly.
No effort is being made here to minimize the serious problems that Bishop Slupski has caused for himself by his bad judgments. Not at all. A multiplicity of wrongs never makes for a single right. Of course.
The only point that I have attempted to make is that Bishop Slupski works hard for souls, and he can no more tell men he has ordained ill-advisedly to cease functioning than can Bishop Pivarunas tell the sisters who left the CMRI to stop functioning as consecrated religious. Everyone makes mistakes, including those who work full-time to protect their reputations from the slightest blemish. Bishop Slupski knows that he is "damaged goods," humbly continuing to serve souls despite this fact.
When all is said and done, however, this is all a smokescreen for the more substantive issues, ones concerning eternal and bodily life and death, that are at the heart of this sad turn of events.
Mater Dei Seminary
Neither Father Markus Ramolla or this writer has published anything about the food being served at Mater Dei Seminary. This is not a matter that I have addressed as, having been in two different seminaries with hundreds of seminarians, I can attest that institutional food is, at least as a rule, horrific. I have tried to explain in my letters to Bishop Pivarunas that seminarians and students complain. Yes, they should be more mortified. Fine. God does give us length of days to correct our ways. Some of us are still learning to mortify our senses (has anyone read There Is No Shortcut to Cure This Condition: A Catholic Man's Lifelong Battle of the Bulge?). Bishop Pivarunas has raised an emotional red herring that has not been an issue raised on this site or by Father Ramolla. (I well remember the terrible hamburgers, grilled cheese sandwiches made with Velveeta cheese spread, pizzas made on cardboard with ketchup and American cheese that were served at Oyster Bay High School from 1965-1969 when I was there. I survived. So do seminarians even though they might complain.) All of this having been noted, there has been nothing published on this site about this silly issue that has nothing to do with anything that has been raised concerning the program at Mater Dei Seminary or the positions of the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen. Why raise this issue when it has not been raised by the two people named in the Bishop's letter of September 8, 2011?
There are substantive deficiencies in the academic program at Mater Dei Seminary, and it is only with reluctance that I link to a new site, Mater Dei-CMRI Watch, whose existence was made known to me last week, doing so only because Bishop Pivarunas continues to assert all is well with his program. It is not, and it is not only the dismissed seminarians who have been eyewitnesses to these problems and who have discussed them openly. His Excellency cannot claim that the problems documented on the new site do not exist. And I can assure readers of this site that the teachers at Saint Athanasius Seminary know how to spell the word "philosophy" and that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is present with His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in each and every particle, no matter how small, of the Sacred Species.
Bishop Pivarunas has accused critics of the seminary of engaging in calumny. Calumny is asserting something that one knows to be false. Detraction consists of revealing a true fault or sin of another unnecessarily. None of this has occurred.
Bishop Pivarunas has accused Father Markus Ramolla of being deceitful even though one of his own priests has written to say that, on the basis of his own knowledge, he knew that this was not the case. He did not address this accusation in what he calls his last response. Bishop Pivarunas did, however, repeat accusations made against a seminarian who was disparaged by a priest in Europe who is closely associated with Bishop Daniel Dolan, who is not a disinterested party when it comes to existence of Saint Albert the Great Roman Catholic Church or of Saint Athanasius Seminary. I suppose that allegations of calumny and detraction work just one way. This is nothing other than situation ethics as employed in a sanctimonious manner.
Une Fois Encore (Once Again), Words Really Matter
Bishop Pivarunas protests that the restriction of the gift proper to Holy Matrimony to a woman's monthly periods of infertility has been called by any number of names, including "natural family planning." His Excellency is wrong.
No Catholic pope or bishop ever referred to the concept of "family planning," natural or otherwise. As I have explained repeatedly in the past seven weeks now, there is no such thing as "natural family planning" as this phrase refers to an ideology whose roots are to be found in the personality view of marriage that was condemned by Pope Pius XII in his October 29, 1951 Address to Italian Midwives. Once again, my good and few readers, here is the origin of the phrase "natural family planning:"
From the quotes of Rev. Daly and Rev. Rice cited at
the beginning of this chapter, we can obtain a clearer understanding of
the anti-child nature of so-called “family planning.” But where did the
term “natural family planning” (NFP) originate? And how did it become
part of the Catholic lexicon on marriage and family life?
As far as this writer can determine (from an NFP
source present at the scene of the crime), credit for the term “natural
family planning” or “NFP” goes to a pro-abort bureaucrat by the name of
Dr. Philip Corfman, who made the suggestion at one of the grant-seeking
expeditions of NFP leaders at the Agency for International Development
(USAID) within the State Department in the early 1970s.
By adopting the “language of the enemy,” the NFP
Movement also adopted the anti-baby ideology of the enemy. This was its
first grave error. The second was to begin to feed from the government’s
anti-life Title X trough. And the third and final error was to
cooperate with compulsory programs of population control, but this was
still some time in the future. (25) (Randy Engel, The McHugh Chronicles.)
Words matter. The Catholic Church has never taught nor can she ever teach anything called "natural family planning."
Bishop Pivarunas insists that he teaches what Holy Mother Church teaches on the exclusive use of the marital gift in a woman's monthly periods of infertility. This is a matter of dispute and interpretation that relies upon a publication prepared by the Family Life Bureau of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, the forerunner of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops/United States Catholic Conference (that is now called the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops). This is what I wrote in Forty-Three Years After Humanae Vitae about that publication:
One book that attempted to explicate Pope Pius XII's Address to Midwives on the Nature of Their Profession was Toward Happiness and Holiness in Marriage,
which had been published in 1955 by the Family Life Bureau, which was
in existence between 1929 and 1974 as part of the then named National
Catholic Welfare Conference (that became, by successive turns, the
National Conference of Catholic Bishops/United States Catholic
Conference--N.C.C.B/U.S.C.C.-- and then the United States Conference of
Catholic Bishops, U.S.C.C.B), as part of its marriage preparation course
for engaged couples. This book treated of the conditions outlined by
Pope Pius XII in his October 29, 1951, Address to Midwives on the Nature
of Their Profession from pages eighty to eighty-five in what could be construed as a somewhat liberally expansive view as to their
applicability in the cases of "social" and "economic" reasons for using
rhythm method licitly. Interestingly, however, the book also provided a
detailed description, found in pages sixty-five to sixty-seven of its
text, of the various approaches to the rhythm method then in use,
thereby covering the biological aspect first and the moral aspect later.
The successor of the Family Life Bureau is known today as
the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities of the United States Conference
of Catholic Bishops, which promotes the unrestricted use of "natural
family planning" with eager enthusiasm.
Some theologians in the United States of America, including Fathers John C. Ford, S.J., and Gerald Kelly, S.J., whose book on Contemporary Moral Theology(Volume I) has been cited by Bishop Pivarunas as an authoritative source for the true teaching on rhythm, believed in the unrestricted use of rhythm. Although they could not write in such a manner directly while Pope Pius XII was alive, they sought to do what they could to interpret the exceptions noted by Pope Pius XII in his 1951 Address to Midwives on the Nature of Their Profession in the most liberal, expansive manner possible. Even though those exceptions were called wide and generous by Pope Pius XII in 1958, they were still exceptions nevertheless, not the norm. And young people who have been raised in a culture where "family planning" is the norm will come to think that they fall into one exception or another, thereby perverting and distorting the ends of marriage.
This is what I wrote in Not Under Any Circumstances a week ago today:
It was never the mind of Pope Pius XII that engaged couples
be given instruction in various natural methods of avoiding the
conception of children, although, as demonstrated in Planting Seeds of Revolutionary Change, there were theologians in the 1950s who believed that the indiscriminate, unrestricted
practice of rhythm was morally justified. The Catholic Church does not
teach this. The Catholic Church cannot do this. Those seeking to defend
or minimize this use of words must, therefore, use the same illogic that
"resist but recognize" Catholics attempt to bring to bear when seeking
to defend or minimize Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict's abuse of words ("Well,
he really didn't mean to deny the Resurrection or the Ascension. He doesn't really mean to violate the First Commandment when he esteems the symbols of false
religions and claims that adherents of those sects can "build" the
"better" world"). It is thus as irresponsible and indefensible for
Catholics who accept the true state of Holy Mother Church to try to
indemnify, that is, to hold harmless, sedevacantist clergy who fall into
serious mistakes of speech and thought as it is for those in the
"resist but recognize" camp to try to clothe their emperor in the mantle
of Catholicism.
While Bishop Pivarunas has given his assurances to
several people that he does teach what the Church teaches, there is
evidence that a very liberal interpretation of that teaching prevails in
at least some CMRI venues.
To wit, my wife Sharon informs me that she, a pagan
at the time who was taking instructions in the Faith, was rather
repulsed to hear married women talking openly after Holy Mass now and
again about what they called "Natural Family Planning" methods as they
spoke in the most immodest terms imaginable about matters of personal
privacy that must never be uttered publicly. Would Louis and Zelie
Martin have spoken this way after Holy Mass? Would the Cure of Ars,
Saint John Mary Vianney, or Padre Pio have countenanced such talk? If
the teaching of Pope Pius XII is being adhered to within the CMRI, there
must be a number of couples who fall within the grave circumstances
that he outlined in his October 29, 1951, Address to Midwives on the
Nature of Their Profession, to say nothing of speaking publicly in a
manner that is unbecoming to the Holy Purity and, in the case of women,
demeaning of the true feminine bearing with which they are to comport
themselves after the model of true femininity, Our Lady herself.
This all stems from the misuse of language and a
refusal to see that there is a disconnect between saying one rejects the
legitimacy of the conciliar "popes" while one practices what
they teach and adopts their very revolutionary language that was itself
shaped by the anti-life, anti-family forces of population control at
work in the world-at-large. What's the point of rejecting the legitimacy
of the conciliar "popes" and the conciliar church if one believes and
speaks as do the conciliar revolutionaries? The Novus Ordo revolution is all about making concessions to the world. How can it be
that way in any sedevacantist venue on matters of marriage and family or
on maters of modesty of dress and decency of speech?
Consider once again the wisdom contained in the late Monsignor George A. Kelley's The Catholic Marriage Manual:
If the necessary conditions
are not met in a particular case, would a couple commit sin in
practicing periodic continence? And if it is sinful, how serious is
the sin? Writing in The American Ecclesiastical Review, Father Goodwine has answered:
"If any one of the required conditions (that the parties be
willing to abstain, that they be able to abstain without proximate
danger of serious sin, and that they have a justifying reason) is not
met, recourse to periodic continence will be sinful.
"In certain cases it may even be seriously sinful,"For instance,
if the first condition is not verified and the practice of periodic
continence is insisted on by the partner against the reasonable
objections of the other, a sin of injustice would be committed. In
such circumstances one partner would be unjustly depriving the other
of his right to the marriage act during the fertile periods. So also,
if the second condition is not met and the practice of periodic
continence becomes a proximate occasion of sins against chastity,
there would be serious sin. The otherwise permissible practice of
periodic continence becomes seriously wrong when it leads to grave
danger of other mortal sins. Similarly there would be serious sin if
the practice involves a proximate danger of divorce or breakup of
the marriage, or of other sins against the obligations of married life."
Large families the Christian ideal: Pope Pius XII has described large families as "those blessed by God, beloved by the
Church and considered by it as one of its most precious treasures."
In an address to the Association of Large Families of Rome and
Italy, His Holiness restated a truth that is sometimes forgotten that
"faith in God supplies parents with the strength necessary to face
the sacrifices and renunciations required for the rearing of
children; Christian principles guide and lighten the difficult task
of education; the Christian spirit of love watches over the family's
order and tranquillity while it dispenses, almost drawing upon nature
itself, the intimate family joys common to parents, children and
brothers. . . . "But God also visits large families with His
providence, to which the parents, especially poor ones, give an open
testimony by placing in it their entire trust when human efforts
are not sufficient. It is a trust well founded, and not in vain . . .
God does not deny the means to live to those He calls to life."
In this connection, the following comments by Father Goodwine should be carefully considered.
"There is a tendency to limit the discussion of periodic continence to questions of strict morality, to
concentrate almost exclusively on right and wrong, to attempt to
draw the line between what may and what may not be done without
committing sin," Father Goodwine states. "All too often such
discussions lose sight of the Christian ideal of family life. Hardly
ever do we hear any mention of the ideal of parenthood or of
family life as the ideal type of married life.
"God instituted marriage as the means for the propagation
of the race. The fruitful marriage, therefore, and not the sterile
marriage, is the marriage that falls in best with God's plan. Having
children is the primary goal of marriage. The family, therefore,
consisting of father, mother and children is the ideal for the
Christian.
"There is something amiss when a couple wishes to marry, yet
does not want to have any children; or determines to postpone having
children for one, two or more years; or intends to have only three or
four or six children but no more. A priest friend of mine likens
such people to a young man seeking ordination to the priesthood who
makes the stipulation that he will never have to say Mass, administer
the sacraments, preach, or take duty. Such a young man would
be seeking to avoid the very purposes for which men are ordained to
the priesthood. So, too, the married couple who, without sufficient
reason, seek to avoid children, fail to fulfill their purpose in
life. Even
the couple who has a sufficient reason for practicing rhythm can
be counseled to do more than is required by duty; to strive
deliberately and consciously after the ideal.
"The present Holy Father has said: It is one of the fundamental
demands of right moral order that a sincere inner acceptance of the
office and duties (of parenthood) correspond to the use of conjugal
rights.' There must then be a willingness on the part of married
persons and on the part of couples entering marriage to 'serve'
motherhood and fatherhood a willingness to become parents. Perhaps
more attention should be paid to what Dr. John Kane, of Notre Dame,
calls the 'almost unanimous conclusion' of sociological studies on
marital happiness: 'Happiness in marriage is not associated with the
presence or absence of children in the family, but with a strong desire to have children. (Text as found in Monsignor George Kelly, The Catholic Marriage Manual, Random House, 1958, pp.58- 60.)
Monsignor Kelly put it very concisely in this short paragraph:
Holy Father's statement on rhythm: Who may practice the
rhythm method? A clear answer was given by Pope Pius XII in 1951 in
an address to the Italian Catholic Union of Midwives. His Holiness
pointed out that married couples are obliged to procreate and to help
conserve the human race. In the Pontiffs words: "Matrimony obliges
to a state of life which, while carrying with it certain rights, also
imposes a fulfillment of positive work connected with that state of
life." This means that rhythm is not to be used
indiscriminately. The small-family or no-family state of mind is not
necessarily good simply because contraceptives are not used. (Monsignor George A. Kelly, The Catholic Marriage Manual, published by Random House in 1958, pp. 55-56.)
There is much testimony that has come to me from various people in the laity concerning their own experiences of being given liberal, expansive views on the applicability of has been called "natural family planning" uniformly by priests in the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen. These reports are numerous and they are unanimous in the testimony that they give concerning the truly liberal nature of the interpretation of the exceptions contained within Pope Pius XII's Address to Midwives on the Nature of Their Profession. "Natural Family Planning"? There is no such thing as "natural family planning" as that is an outgrowth of the inversion of the ends of marriage as found in Giovanni Montini/Paul VI's Humanae Vitae, July 25, 1968, and is alien to the Catholic faith.
As a friend of mine wrote the following to me after having heard from a priest friend on this series of articles:
A priest friend of mind remarked that after
readings this series, he was stunned once again by how far Catholics have
strayed from the true meaning of marriage and parenthood. So indeed your major
points have hit home. I think we can ask ourselves, if Catholic marriages are
more happy and secure, if there are less divorces [annulments] since “rhythm”/
NFP have been “made available” to Catholics. The answer is
obviously no by every measurement…. It’s time to return to the true
Catholic approach for marriage and family , and NFP is NOT it. Let those who
have ears hear.
The best that can be claimed in defense of the CMRI's liberal interpretation of the Catholic Church's teaching on rhythm is that they are being faithful to the spirit of the American bishops and theologians of the 1950s, some of whom lived long enough to endorse and then promote "natural family planning" after the issuance of Humanae Vitae by Paul VI. There were other interpretations in the 1950s, including those offered by Monsignor George Kelly in The Catholic Marriage Manual and Father Goodwine in the American Ecclesiastical Review. No one defects from the Catholic Faith or is unworthy of being ordained to the priesthood because he adheres to those more restrictive interpretations that some of us know are in perfect accord with the true teaching of Holy Mother Church, and Bishop Pivarunas has no foundation whatsoever to assert that the CMRI's position is the authoritatively Catholic one that must be held lest one be considered as not adhering to Church teaching. It is not. Nothing can be said in defense of the sloppy, careless, thoughtless use of the ideological slogan "Natural Family Planning" so uniformly and so insistently through the CMRI.
Bishop Pivarunas doth protest too much.
Not In Dispute At All
Although some have not up until now wanted to believe that Bishop Pivarunas believes that the medical industry's manufactured myth of "brain death" that was invented to make us money-making instruments whose body members can be used for their own profit-making schemes and draconian experiments to violate the totality of the human body and living human beings are vivisectioned, His Excellency provides all of the proof in his letter that is needed that he believes that this monstrous myth is possible. He cites his own brother, Dr. Anthony Pivarunas, and the late Dr. Rama Coomaraswamy as his experts in this field, dismissing the expertise of Dr. Paul Byrne by saying that he belongs to a "small minority" within the medical community.
This is curious as His Excellency told us in Wednesday, October 3, 2008, as we were driving him from Omaha, Nebraska, to Persia, Iowa, to visit the convent of the sisters who work with him at Mater Dei Academy and at Mary Immaculate Catholic Church, that it "is always important to study both sides of an issue thoroughly" when we got into a discussion about marijuana, which I saw many of my high school classmates become addicted to over the course of time (and, no, I have never used, tried, smoked, inhaled or had anything to do with this drug other than abhor it). He was not endorsing the use of marijuana, only explaining that we should study the work of those who do support its decriminalization, providing me with books on this subject. If the decriminalization of marijuana is important to study (and I do not think that it is), what about matters of life and death? Can an expert who has studied the myth of "brain death" for thirty years and published peer-reviewed journal articles on the subject be dismissed so cavalierly as Bishop Pivarunas and others, including Bishop Donald Sanborn, have done when I have asked them to meet with him?
Perhaps it would be good to remind Bishop Pivarunas that sedevacantism is believed in by an almost invisible fraction of Catholics in the world today.
Perhaps it would be good to remind Bishop Pivarunas that the majority of the people gathered below Pontius Pilate's porch in Jerusalem on Good Friday, being motivated in large measure by our own sins, cried out for Barabbas to be released rather than Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Perhaps it would be good to remind Bishop Pivarunas that a majority of the world's bishops became Arians, leaving only a handful of faithful Catholic bishops to fight Arianism and to defend the the Faith.
Perhaps it would be good to remind Bishop Pivarunas that all but one of the one hundred bishops in England at the time that King Henry VIII took this grand Catholic country out of the Faith in 1534 remained faithful, Saint John Fisher?
What does the majority have to do with anything?
God is a majority of One, and He has spoken clearly: "Thou shalt not kill." The only way to transplant body members from one person to another is for those members to vivisection out of a living human being as the members of a corpse are useless.
This is what Dr. Byrne, the foremost expert on this subject in the world who is a voice crying in the wilderness, wrote to me on this matter last week:
Pope Pius XII was giving moral guidance about Corneal transplantation and Respect for the Dead when he spoke on May 14, 1956. He did lay out moral guidance about tissue transplantation from a dead body. The quotation distinguishes between members and tissues. When it is the individual person who is contemplated, members are parts. [Parts, by the way, is the language of the modern organ transplantation industry. The body is a warehouse of parts.] The teaching is that a member exists for the organism. A member can be excised for the sake of the organism.
However, a member that is vital to the organism, a person, cannot be excised for the sake of another organism, a different person, on the basis that it is better for humanity that Fred’s life be prolonged, but for this to occur Harvey must have his heart excised for Fred. To get Harvey’s heart, it must be beating with circulation and respiration. After the heart is excised, Harvey is dead.
Pope Pius XII stated, “In their physical being individuals are not in any way dependent on one another or on humanity. Direct evidence and common sense show the falsity of any contrary assertion.”
His Holiness continued, “On this account the total organism which is humanity has no right to impose on individuals demands in the domain of physical being on the grounds of any natural right of the ‘whole’ to dispose of the parts. The excision of a particular organ would be an example of direct interference, not only in the sphere of the individual’s action, but also and chiefly in that of his being, on the part of a ‘whole’ which is purely functional, ‘humanity,’ ‘society,’ ‘the State,’ in which the individual is incorporated only as a functional member and as regards action.”
[Here His Holiness is distinguishing between humanity, the State, society and the individual human person (biological language is organism). Still more modern language for justification o transplantation is based on solidarity, not totality.]
Pope Pius XII continued later in the same Allocution with, “public authorities have a duty to supervise their enforcement and above all to take care that a ‘corpse’ shall not be considered as such until death has been sufficiently proved.”
I add Pope Pius XII would have no reason to consider “sufficiently proved death” to be anything other than mors vera, and that procedures to extract organs and tissues could not begin until post mortem.” I ask, who in their right mind of common sense would consider someone with a beating heart, circulation and respiration as a cadaver. [I use the Latin, but the English is the same.] A living body changes to a dead body at mors vera. Cadaver, corpse, and dead body are identical and equivalent. [“Brain death” is different.]
Life is difficult enough at times without someone writing that I was “telling a moral theologian he is wrong or ignorant about the matter of his expertise.” I don’t need such things being written about my writing. I call it unfair and disrespectful, not that I, a lowly neonatologist, deserves any respect.
An organ does not need to be transplanted unless it is a vital organ. (The gall bladder is not a vital organ.)
Attached is our article in JAMA [Journal of American Medical Association] that is one/fourth of what we sent for publication and they limited us to 20 references. They did allow the reference to Pope Pius XII, which is the same reference that the Harvard Committee used, but we used the moral teaching of Pope Pius XII
I hope this helps. I know so little compared to Pope Pius XII, but he was giving moral instruction at the time about the future action of stealing organs. This is an example of how the Pope can know what to write at the present and how it can be guidance for the future. (And yes, I know Pope Pius XII did not use stealing. But our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. We don’t belong to ourself. And if we are going to give away a vital organ post mortem, it cannot be pre-mortem. Because when it is an unpaired vital organ that is given away it must be pre-mortem; mors vera is imposed. In plain English, the providee of the organ is killed.
Others have said that I say the providee, commonly called a donor, is murdered. According to teaching of God, it is murder; but according to the civil law, it is not murder and it is not killing, but I say it is legal killing.
Thank you, God and [name of correspondent] for helping me to get to the word “providee.” Donor is not the correct word. To donate a heart, using full and explicit information, is suicide. We cannot donate what would kill ourself. Yet it is legalized killing. (Please read Dr. Byrne's article, Brain Death: An Opposing View as published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.)
Dr. Paul Byrne has taken apart the section of Bishop Pivarunas's "final response" piece by painstaking piece (yes, this is the link to Dr. Byrne's refutation). There is little need for me to respond to his false assertions and his reliance upon people who have not published on this matter. Dr. Byrne has done so. Only a few comments will be offered here as the issues were framed very clearly in Not Under Any Circumstances.
Bishop Pivarunas says that the CMRI does not oppose or condemn "brain death" or "organ transplants," thus making it possible for those to attend their chapels to become instruments in the possible future dismemberment of themselves and their relatives. This is a mockery of truth. No matter his pastoral zeal, anyone who can simply scoff at the evidence about the origins of "brain death" and how it has resulted in the killing of countless thousands upon thousands of innocent human beings does not belong anywhere near a seminary classroom as he is a most unreliable teacher of moral theology, and that applies to anyone and everyone in the sedevacantist clergy without exception. (For example, Father Anthony Cekada's effort to justify the execution of Mrs. Theresa Marie Schindler-Schiavo by means of dehydration and starvation was refuted masterfully by the Society of Saint Pius V's Father William Jenkins, who has had Dr. Byrne as a guest speaker at Immaculate Conception Church in Norwood, Ohio. Please see The execution of Theresa Marie Schiavo.)
If we need a true pope to condemn "brain death," why don't we need a true pope to tell us that the conciliar "popes" have not been popes (which is what I believed was necessary during my resist but recognize years as I came to suspect that the conciliar "popes" were not valid)?
If we need a true pope to condemn "brain death," why don't we need a true pope to tell us that the conciliar rites of episcopal consecration and priestly ordination are invalid?
If we need a true pope to condemn "brain death," how can Bishop Pivarunas contend definitively that the conciliar rites of episcopal consecration and priestly ordination are invalid, thus making necessary the de novo rather than the sub conditione ordination of Father Michael Oswalt to the priesthood on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, June 29, 2011?
If we need a true pope to condemn "brain death," how can we pronounce on the legitimacy of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service?
"Brain death" has morphed into "cardiac death" in order to lower the bar for the killing of living human beings. "Cardiac" death is now giving way in its turn to "terms of valid
informed consent under the limited conditions of devastating neurologic
injury." (New England Journal of Medicine: 'Brain Death' is not Death.)
Kill human beings at the beginning of life, kill them at the end of life. That many "pro-life" physicians have been duped into accepting this myth should not come as a surprise as most Catholics in the world have been duped into accepting the belief that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is a true pope, and it is only because he is not a true pope that I do not run yelling and screaming away from the madness of superficiality and worldliness that prevails in so many sedevacantist circles.
Bishop Pivarunas has said that he is concerned that Bishop Slupski will continue to make mistakes in the future. Each of us will make mistakes until the day we die. We do, however, seem to have an assurance from Bishop Pivarunas that he will continue to persist to his mistaken belief that "brain death" is possible and that the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen will continue to take "no stand" in opposition to or in support of this myth of the medical industry that results in the carving up of living human beings. And that is the worst mistake of all.
Final Observations
We had the privilege of meeting twice with Dr. Paul Byrne on the weekend of September 3 and 4 when he was in the Cincinnati area for a visit with his eighty-nine year-old sister (he is seventy-eight years of age). He is a fount of Catholic truth and of medical facts.
Dr. Byrne noted to us that our hearts are meant to reflect the love and the mercy of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and of the Immaculate Heart of Mary out of Which It was formed.
To vivisection the heart of a living human being out of his body is to rip out the very symbol of the love of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus that inflamed the hearts of such saints as Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque and Saint Philip Neri, whose ribs were broken by how his heart had swollen when he was before the Most Blessed Sacrament, Wherein the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus beats, in prayer.
The devil knows this, which is why he seeks to fill our hearts with impurities and worldliness. Failing that, of course, the devil has used his minions to rip out the hearts of human beings. This is what the Aztecs did prior to the Spanish conquest of Mexico and the subsequent apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe to remind the Spanish colonists and conquistadores that the Indians were human beings to be treated with the compassion of the Most Sacred Heart of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. And this is what the Iroquois Indians did to Saint John de Brebeuf, S.J., in what is now Auriesville, New York, on March 16, 1649, as they cut out his heart, which was aflame with love for Christ the King an His Catholic Church, and ate it in the hopes of gaining courage.
Our hearts belong to us. No one else. Human beings must die without a heart. And it is only the heartless who can justify the killing of innocent human beings by hiding by the fig leaf provided them by the medical industry's manufactured myth of brain death." Why load down the Immaculate Heart of Mary with such sorrows?
Once again, this is all a chastisement from God for our sins.
My efforts here have not been to convince anyone who does not want to be convinced of these matters. It has been based solely to acquit my duties before God as I see them to be and to help those souls who are open to considering the information that I have provided to them. No matter what anyone else may write from hereon out on this subject, I am returning to other work that has been interrupted long enough by this madness.
May we continue to pray for each other in this time of apostasy and betrayal, remembering always to offer up everything we have, do and suffer to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary in reparation for our sins and those of the whole world.
Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!
Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now ?
Viva Cristo Rey!
