They Have Eyes and See Not

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Research conducted on one particular matter can lead to discoveries about related matters that were not known to the researcher at the time he began work on a project. The archival research and extensive personal interviews I conducted for my doctoral dissertation thirty years ago led me in paths that I did not expect to follow.

For example, one of the men I interviewed in February of 1976 for my doctoral dissertation, which was a study in how private interest groups can influence the course of public policy decision-making, had been a longtime confidante and protege of the then Vice President of the United States of America, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller. The man, Alton Marshall, had served as Rockefeller's secretary, the equivalent of White House Chief of Staff, for a time during the millionaire's nearly fifteen years as Governor of the State of New York before becoming the executive director of Rockefeller Center in Manhattan.

The interview I conducted with Marshall took some unexpected turns, including his very frank admission that a deal had been struck between Rockefeller and the power-broker named Robert Moses, who built many of the highways, bridges and tunnels in and around the New York City metropolitan area, to relinquish his control over a local transportation authority (Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority) in order to consolidate control of transportation matters into a state authority, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. In exchange for his agreement to persuade TBTA bondholders to approve the state take-over of their bonds Moses received an assurance that his long-held dream for a bridge to cross Long Island Sound from Oyster Bay to Rye, New York, would be included in the omnibus bill creating the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Although the deal had been long-rumored, my interview was the first confirmation that it had been made. Marshall said, frankly. "Deals are made in African tribes. They are made in the Australian bush." Pausing for a second, he reflected and said, "Sure, a deal was made."

Similarly, my research into the hiring of a pro-abortion attorney, Tanya Hernandez, to teach at the Saint John's University School Law in Jamaica, Queens, in 1995 led to torrents of information being sent to me by various people who were concerned about the the direction of my own undergraduate alma mater. Several lengthy articles based on the information I received appeared in The Wanderer. The articles got the attention of the President of Saint John's University, Father Donald Harrington, C.M. A graduate student at the university told me a few months later that Father Harrington came racing over to the office of a departmental chairman, who was once a close friend of mine and for whom I pray every day. With a copy of The Wanderer extended in his hands, Father Harrington exclaimed to the departmental chairman, "He's killing us! What are we going to do?"

To be sure, nothing changed at Saint John's University as a result of those articles, although some prominent alumni were very upset. Admitting a few exceptions here and there, nothing really changes when documented reports are written about doctrinal heterodoxy, liturgical abuses, clerical misconduct, and the miseducation of Catholics in so-called "Catholic" educational institutions. It is nevertheless important to provide a permanent record for those who follow us about the events of our times, without looking for results, entrusting all to the Immaculate Heart of Mary to be presented by her to the Throne of the Most Blessed Trinity. The efforts we make to report on the inter-related problems caused by the ethos of the Second Vatican Council can help pay back the debt we owe to God for our own sins if we remember that the Church is divinely founded and maintained--and if we remember that we must pray for the individuals who are so caught up in the revolutionary spirit of our times that they are unable to see what it is they have done and how it is wrong for souls, including their own.

Well, the research I conducted a few days ago about the Diocese of Green Bay has turned up additional material that provides some telling insights into the unwillingness and/or the inability of men who have forgotten about the Catholic past to see our situation for what it is. The Modernist revolutions of the past forty to fifty years have been so successful that many younger priests today have no personal acquaintance with--and even less knowledge of--Catholic Tradition. These men have been brainwashed in seminary and workshops and other "update" programs into believing that everything about the "preconciliar" church was dark and bleak. When pressed into explaining themselves, however, these men can only recite slogans. Faced with statistics, such as those related in Ken Jones's The Index of Leading Catholic Indicators, these men give blank stares. They cannot deal with the fact that what they believe to be a "qualitative renewal"of the Church has been a quantitative disaster for souls.

Patrick Buchanan wrote an article in 2003 and extracted the following statistics from Ken Jones's book:

	1965	Current
Priests	58,000 (doubled from 1930-1965)	45,000 (only 31,000 projected for 2020; more than half will be over 70)
New ordinations	1,575	450
Parishes without priests	1%	15%
Seminarians	49,000	4,700 (down by 90%)
Seminaries	600	200
Sisters	180,000	75,000 (aver. age: 68)
Teaching Sisters	104,000	8,200 (down by 94%)
Jesuit seminarians	3,559	389
Christians Brothers candidates	912	7
Franciscan and Redemptorist seminarians	3,379	84
Catholic high school population	700,000	386,000
Catholic elementary school population	4.5 million	below 2 million
Annulments*	338	50,000
Attendance at Mass (in 1958) Attendanance at Mass (2003)	3 out of 4 1 out of 4

Pat amplified Ken Jones's research by pulling together some statistics from various polls:

Catholics aged 18-44 who believe that the Eucharist is merely a symbolic reminder” of Jesus - 70% Lay religious teachers who believe:    • A Catholic can have an abortion and remain a good Catholic - 53%    • A Catholic may divorce and remarry - 65%    • One can be a good Catholic without attending Sunday Mass - 77%

The proto-revolutionaries within the Church and their disciples cannot face these figures honestly. They cannot face the simple fact that the devastation of the Church in her human elements is the direct result of the novelties fomented by the Second Vatican Council, especially by the Novus Ordo Missae itself. Many are the people we meet throughout our own travels in the nation who tell us that they simply quit the practice of the Faith after the new Mass was implemented in 1969, not returning until they were led to an offering of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. Their sensus Catholicus told them that it could not be that the Novus Ordo Missae and all of its ceaseless changes and permutations and attendant sacrileges represented Catholicism.

This inability of those wedded to the new order of things to realize that it is the new order of things that is responsible for empty pews and the loss of Faith among the lion's share of Catholics can be demonstrated from the following  pastor's note to parishioners of Our Lady of Lourdes Church in DePere, Wisconsin, written by Father Timothy Shillcox, O.Praem., that appeared in the parish's bulletin of Sunday, February 12, 2006:

Dear Brother and Sister of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish Family,

Last week, I touched on the concern of our "sitting on our powder keg of apathy" in terms of assessing the levels of participation in some of the significant issues of our Church life together. 113 GRACE surveys returned from Lourdes; 120 at out town hall Meetings--similar to our numbers for last year's "Weekend Mass Time Schedule" discussions. . .and for other metro-area parishes as well.

Now I don't want to get too negative, or to "preach to the choir" (since if you're reading this, you're one of the estimated 8% of total parish membership that reads the bulletin--according to national statistics!). But I can also say, not only as a pastor, but as a parishioner and your brother, that haunts me, the diminishing level of participation in church life, of which there are many tell-tale signs.

Ever since I became a pastor in 1992, I've heard it stated as the sad-but-accepted 'norm' that in any given parish, about 30% of registered members come to Mass, and about 30% of members offer financial support, an about 30% of members get involved in the volunteer sharing of time and talents for the ministries of a parish family. Maybe it's also true of civic and other organizations, but it's troubling nonetheless, isn't it?

Lat week, as a member of the Executive Committee for the Presbyteral Council of the diocese, an advisory group of priests to Bishop Zubik, I sat to help to get the agenda for the March 2nd meeting. I was glad-but-sad that the bishop had suggested at the top of the agenda, the concern over declining Mass attendance in most of our parishes of the diocese (Lourdes included).

They showed us annual data for 2001 forward. It reflected a decline in 4 years from 125,000 persons at weekend Mass in the diocese (on "count weekends") down to 108,000. This is a 16% drop!

I remember when I was out at Bay Settlement, Bishop Banks visited. He had just come from his 5-year visit with Pope John Paul II; and the pope had asked him about the percentages. At that time, he had to tell him it was about 48% of registered members, afraid that the pope would freak out and be really angry. But John Paul quipped: "Oh, really, that many?!!" (You see, in France it's about 7%; in Italy, 14%, and they talk about the "Post-Christian Era" having dawned in Europe, sad to say!)

And when someone at Holy Cross asked Bishop Banks: "Why don't you just tell people it's a 'mortal sin' to miss weekend Mass, bishop?", he replied, "If I thought that would work I would; but that doesn't compel people anymore, it seems!"

Here at Lourdes this past year, we counted 1,700 out of 5,300 persons on the annual "count weekends"' that's 32% of our members in the parish family!

This comes 40 years after Vatican II's efforts for improvements in the quality and experience of liturgy: environment, music, preaching, participation, use of the native language, revised Scripture selections, etc. So in some ways, it's mystifying.......that many have "walked away from the Table of the Eucharist"--this starvation is sad and frightening, too.

Father Shillcox closed his letter by stating that he was glad to have raised the issues included in his letter. He said that he was doing his best to "make Mass more palatable," noting that he had limited his "homily" on February 5, 2006, to three minutes and fifty seconds.

Mystifying? No, Father Shillcox, it is precisely because of the warfare made against the Faith of our fathers in the past forty years of changes in "environment, music, preaching, participation, use of the native language, revised Scripture selections, etc." that Catholics have left in droves. Pope Leo XIII noted what would happen if Americanist bishops at the end of the Nineteenth Century continued to adapt the Catholic Faith so as to make it "palatable" to Protestants and others. Quoting from the First Vatican Council in the text of his Testem Benevolentiae, Pope Leo wrote:

"By the divine and Catholic faith those things are to believed which are contained in the word of God either written or handed down, and are proposed by the Church whether in solemn decision or by the ordinary universal magisterium, to be believed as having been divinely revealed." Far be it, then, for any one to diminish or for any reason whatever to pass over anything of this divinely delivered doctrine; whosoever would do so, would rather wish to alienate Catholics from the Church than to bring over to the Church those who dissent from it. Let them return; indeed, nothing is nearer to Our heart; let all those who are wandering far from the sheepfold of Christ return; but let it not be by any other road than that which Christ has pointed out.

In other words, concessions made to Protestants and/or to the spirit of the world will result in massive defects of Catholics from the Church, which is what the devil himself wants. Although I have quoted the passage from the late Monsignor Klaus Gamber's The Reform of the Roman Liturgy in several articles in the past few years, it is worth repeating here yet again, if for no other reason than the likes of Father Shillcox, who is obviously concerned about his flock but who is blinded as to the reasons for the decimation of the Church in her human elements, might be challenged to reassess their reflexive, unthinking, uncritical support for the revolutions that have razed the "Catholic bastions" and enthroned man in the place of God:

Was all this really done because of a pastoral concern about the souls of the faithful, or did it not rather represent a radical breach with the traditional rite, to prevent the further use of traditional liturgical texts and thus to make the celebration of the "Tridentime Mass" impossible--because it no loner reflected the new spirit moving through the Church?

Indeed, it should come as no surprise to anyone that the prohibition of the traditional rite was announced at the same time as the introduction of the new liturgical texts; and that a dispensation to continue celebrating the Mass according to the traditional rite was granted only to older priests.

Obviously, the reformers wanted a completely new liturgy, a liturgy that differed from the traditional one in spirit as well as in form; and in no way a liturgy that represented what the Council Fathers had envisioned, i.e., a liturgy that would meet the pastoral needs of the faithful.

Liturgy and faith are interdependent. That is why a new rite was created, a rite that in many ways reflects the bias of the new (modernist) theology. The traditional liturgy simply could not be allowed to exist in its established form because it was permeated with the truths of the traditional faith and the ancient forms of piety. For this reason alone, much was abolished and new rites, prayers and hymns were introduced, as were the new readings from Scripture, which conveniently left out those passages that did not square with the teachings of modern theology--for example, references to a God who judges and punishes.

At the same time, the priests and the faithful are told that the new liturgy created after the Second Vatican Council is identical in essence with the liturgy that has been in use in the Catholic Church up to this point, and that the only changes introduced involved reviving some earlier liturgical forms and removing a few duplications, but above all getting rid of elements of no particular interest.

Most priests accepted these assurances about the continuity of liturgical forms of worship and accepted the new rite with the same unquestioning obedience with which they had accepted the minor ritual changes introduced by Rome from time to time in the past, changes beginning with the reform of the Divine Office and of the liturgical chant introduced by Pope St. Pius X.

Following this strategy, the groups pushing for reform were able to take advantage of and at the same time abuse the sense of obedience among the older priests, and the common good will of the majority of the faithful, while, in many cases, they themselves refused to obey.

The pastoral benefits that so many idealists had hoped the new liturgy would bring about did not materialize. Our churches emptied in spite of the new liturgy (or because of it?), and the faithful continue to fall away from the Church in droves.

Although our young people have been literally seduced in to supporting the new forms of liturgical worship, they have, in fact, become more and more alienated from the faith. They are drawn to religious sects--Christian and non-Christian ones--because fewer and fewer priests teach them the riches of our Catholic faith and the tenets of Christian morality. As for older people, the radical changes made ot the traditional liturgy have taken from them the sense of security in their religious home.

People do not respond to warnings about committing mortal sins, Bishop Banks and Bishop Zubik, because they are taught in Catholic catechetical programs and schools and colleges and universities and seminaries that there is no such thing as mortal sin. Heretical theologies, such as proportionalism (which contends that a preponderance of "good motives" can make an objectively evil act morally licit to pursue) and the fundamental option (which contends that one cannot be culpable of sin unless his "fundamental option" is not for God, a denial of the simple fact that each sin, whether venial or mortal, is a turning away from God), are taught. Catholics will never respond to warnings about committing mortal sins unless the Traditional Latin Mass is restored as normative in the life of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. For it is only the Mass of Tradition that man's sinfulness and his need to seek out God's mercy are communicated clearly and unambiguously. As I have noted several times recently, drawing the text of G.I.R.M. Warfare, Paragraph 15 of the General Instruction to the Roman Missal states very specifically that "outward penance" belongs to "another age in the history of the Church." Says who? Not Our Lord. Not His Blessed Mother. Not the saints. Says who? The Modernists, that's who.

The practitioners of novelty never learn that an abandonment of the Church's Tradition results in disaster for souls. Pope Saint Pius X noted this in Notre Charge Apostolique in 1910:

Indeed, the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they are traditionalists.

The Modernist mind cannot see this. The Modernist mind is afflicted with a blindness oft-described by the words inspired by Holy Ghost in Holy Writ:

They have mouths and speak not: they have eyes and see not. (Psalm 113: 13)

They have a mouth, but they speak not: they have eyes, but they see not. (Psalm 134: 16)

They have not known, nor understood: for their eyes are covered that they may not see, and that they may not understand with their heart. (Isaiah 44: 18)

Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of a provoking house: who have eyes to see, and see not: and ears to hear, and hear not: for they are a provoking house. (Ezechiel 12: 2)

Gilbert Keith Chesterton's observation about progessivists and conservatives in the political realm are just as pertinent to the ecclesiastical realm:

The whole world is dividing itself into progressives and conservatives. The job of the progressives is to go on making mistakes. The job of the conservatives is to prevent those mistakes from being corrected. (April 19, 1924)

There is no correcting the errors of the Second Vatican Council and the harm wrought by the Novus Ordo Missae. The authentic Tradition of the Catholic Church must be restored, whole and entire. People are flocking to places like Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Garden Grove, California, and Saint Michael's Church in DePere, Wisconsin, and Saint Athanasius Church in Vienna, Virginia, and the chapels of the Society of Saint Pius X because they are sick and tired of novelty and experimentation. They want to worship God as He Himself taught the Apostles to worship Him before He Ascended to the Father's right hand in glory on Ascension thursday. No amount of chancery browbeating and intimidation will stop them from defending themselves and their children from a doctrinal and liturgical environment that departs from the Faith of our fathers and enshrines the errors of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the Church. The revolutionaries and the conservatives may have the institutional structures. The Catholic Faith is possessed in its entirety by those who have sought it out in the catacombs, those who are willing to run the risk of all sorts of unjust and illicit sanctions to worship as Catholics have always worshiped and to believe as Catholics have always believed.

A boy collapsed at Saint John Bosco's Oratory had a terrible vision as the mystically gifted priest was offering Holy Mass one Sunday. As recounted in Stories of Don Bosco, written by Peter Lappin:

When Don Bosco said Mass the following Sunday, the Burzios were present. Suddenly a loud cry was heard in the church, followed by the sound of a body falling. Young Burzio had fainted! They carried him to the sacristy where he remained for the rest of the Mass. As soon as Mass was over, Don Bosco rushed to his side.

"What happened, Burzio?" he asked.

"At the moment of the elevation," Burzio explained, "I saw the Host shedding blood and I heard a voice cry out: 'This is a figure of how Our Lord will be treated in these parts by bad Catholics!'"

The boy died an hour later, fulfilling one of Saint John Bosco's prophetic dreams.

Our Lord has been treated as described in young Burzio's vision. He is treated with contempt. The Tradition He gave the Apostles to hand down to us has been trampled underfoot. Why is it so difficult to admit that errors have been made and to return to that which produced saints such as John Bosco and Dominic Savio, the Immemorial Mass of Tradition?

Father Lawrence C. Smith put Bishop Zubik's and Father Shillcox's complaints about declining Mass attendance in context by providing me with the following quotation and its English translation:

Stultum est queri de adversis, ubi culpa est tua. -- Publilius Syrus (85-43BC)

It is stupid to complain about misfortune that is your own fault.

As always, we fly unto Our Lady, the Help of Christians. God has known from all eternity that the events we are experiencing at present would take place. He wants us to stand with His Blessed Mother at the foot of the Holy Cross as He is crucified mystically at the hands of those who hold ecclesiastical authority. He wants us to make reparation for our own sins, which have contributed mightily to the state of the Church and the world, and to offer our acts of penance to Him through Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. We must pray every day that we are given the grace to see and then given the mouths to speak nothing other than that which was seen and believed and spoken by Catholics consistently until the events of 1958 and thereafter.

We keep vigil until some pope actually consecrates Russia to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart and thus ushers in the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, that era in which the errors of the recent past will be forgotten and the glories of Christendom restored during a certain period of peace. We keep vigil in prayer and penance and fasting, trusting that Our Lady will use everything we give her as her consecrated slaves.

Our Lady, Help of Christians, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

The Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, pray for us.

Pope Saint Gregory the Great, pray for us.

Saint John Bosco, pray for us.

Saint Dominic Savio, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Saint John Mary Vianney, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius V, pray for us.

Pope Saint Pius X, pray for us.

Blessed Pauline Jaricot, pray for us.

Blessed Jacinta, pray for us.

Blessed Francisco, pray for us.

Sister Lucia, pray for us.