"Fr. Tom Euteneuer, author and head of Human Life International (HLI) told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) that he stands with the pope and unconditionally condemns the actions of police as “a massive violation of confidentiality” of victims who had confided in Church authorities, and a “brutal police action” against the Church.
At the same time, however, he pointed to the years of public antagonism by Belgium’s Catholic leadership to the Church’s sexual moral teaching that furnished the heavily secularist government with the excuse needed for the attack.
“How is it possible,” Fr. Euteneuer said, “to see this as anything but retribution for the sins of a church that has for the past four decades been in a state of continuous public dissent?”
The raids were denounced by Pope Benedict XVI who decried the “surprising and deplorable manner in which searches were carried out.” Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s Cardinal Secretary of State, launched a formal protest to the Belgian ambassador to the Holy See saying, “there are not precedents - not even under the old Communist regimes” for such treatment of the Church by secular authorities.
Fr. Euteneuer said that, “God sometimes allows the actions of pagans to punish and correct the abuses of His beloved people. Whatever the interpretation of the aggressive action of the police, let’s just take it as a wake-up call for a return to orthodoxy and fidelity to Christ.”
Life Site News
I would like to suggest to the Vatican that it's time to stop playing legal games and quit dancing around the issue. The Church, through its representatives, has participated in evil, not just through the abuse problems but also in the political realm, abandoning the teachings of Christ for the madness of Marx.
The core teachings of the Church cannot be destroyed because they are protected by God himself. That doesn't mean that Priests, Bishops and Popes can't go off the reservation and distort the truth handed on to them. They can and they have.
God will not allow this to stand and it appears the time of reckoning may be at hand. The Church will survive, but it will be reduced in size and power, humbled before God and rebuilt to faithfully hand on the truths entrusted to it.
My guess is that this will happen with incredible speed. I think that to the extent that the Church fights this it will damage the faith of many because its struggles will be turned against it in the media. I really don't think that the Church leadership, for all their intelligence and sophistication, have the slightest idea of how to use the new media to their advantage, unlike their enemies, and it will be used to great effect against them.
I think that the best course of action is for the Church to be completely honest, open, humble and Christ-like in all its actions from this point on. It can't win the P.R. battle if it tries to play by the rules of the world. It has to allow God to protect it; not the attorneys.
Dark times are approaching. Pray for wisdom so that you may not stray from the truth. Assume everything you see, read or hear is a lie or distortion. Don't trust anything or anyone except those very few things you have seen proven. Stay with Peter and the Church. Focus on the Bible and the truth. Find those teachings that never change, that are held sacrosanct from the ebb and flow of history. Truth is not malleable. It comes from God and is part of God and God does not change. You'll recognize it if you'll only listen because it is written on our hearts. But we have to be open to hear it and that requires prayer and humility.
Begin to pull back from the world as much as possible. Try to let your life follow what God wants, not the dreams and hopes you've cherished and nourished for so long. We must decrease to allow God to increase. It's our only hope.
These are truly "the times that try mens souls", but this time we're playing for keeps. The choices we make from this point on will have eternal consequences, not just for the individual but for all those that surround him. We are part of a body and injury to one part will affect the others. We're not in this alone.
Below you'll find a reply to one of my posts yesterday from my friend Ioannes at Commentarius de Prognosticis discussing the real, Old Testament dimensions of our current situation. He seems to be eerily in agreement with the assessment of Father Euteneuer in the article at the beginning of this post :
"I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand the Catholic Church brought this sad state of affairs on itself with failing to act decisively in cases of sexual abuse, immorality, heresy and apostasy among its own clerical members, so God in His infinite wisdom allows the State to intevene.
On the other hand I dislike the idea of the Church being beholden to the State. But when the Church screws up, then God sends His King Sennacherib and King Nebuchadnezzer to exact His will. For and because of their sins, Israel was deported into Assyria, and Judah into Babylon. If this happened to those people who were chosen by God as a birthright, then how much more so we who have (as St. Paul explains) been grafted as branches onto the vine that is Christ? Romans 11:18-24:
...If you do boast, consider that you do not support the root; the root supports you. Indeed you will say, "Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in." That is so. They were broken off because of unbelief, but you are there because of faith. So do not become haughty, but stand in awe. For if God did not spare the natural branches, (perhaps) he will not spare you either. See, then, the kindness and severity of God: severity toward those who fell, but God's kindness to you, provided you remain in his kindness; otherwise you too will be cut off. And they also, if they do not remain in unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated one, how much more will they who belong to it by nature be grafted back into their own olive tree.
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Sometimes God uses Caesar's sword as a pruning fork. It ain't a'gonna be pretty."
We are going to see history made in the near future; the kind that ends up in holy books for future generations to read about. Prepare yourself spiritually, physically and mentally. And think about worst case, not best. Many of us may be asked to die for our beliefs as martyrs to the truth. Are we ready for this? Without God, we won't be.
Pray, pray, pray.
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Thank you, Catawissa.
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