In Old News . . .

Old Call to Action to break with Catholic Church

There's a big freaking surprise. Not sure how I missed this one when it happened.

In January, ex-Jesuit Robert Blair Kaiser, co-president of TakeBackOurChurch.org, formally announced the American Catholic Council, “aimed at creating a new kind of Church, both Catholic and American.” The proposal for such a council goes back to the summer 2007 newsletter of the Association for the Rights of Catholic in the Church – ARCC.

Ok. That's no big deal. This group of heretics and schismatics really broke away a long time ago. The article here isn't particularly well-written as it tends to discuss more of the roots of this situation and the related groups making up the schism, rather than details of the schism itself. Given that this is just manifesting what was already reality, I understand taking this angle. I just wish it was expressed more clearly.

Here's the best part, though.

Being American and therefore, presumably, holding democratic ideals as a cultural birthright, this new, American Catholic “church” would elect its bishops and write a constitution for itself “that carefully puts aside the Rome-based secretive, half-vast, culturally-conditioned legalisms codified in canon law in return for the kind of servant Church envisioned at Vatican II.”

Kaiser and Miller say there will be nothing schismatic about creating an American Catholic Church, modeled after all on “the Maronites, the Melchites, the Byzantines, the Copts and sixteen other autochthonous churches in the Middle East that are loyal to the pope, but glory in their own governance, their own married cl ergy, and their own liturgies.”

I'm sure Karl and our other Eastern brethren love being compared to these jokers. Personally, I'm wondering where they are getting their "loyal to the Pope" part. Maybe it's somewhere else in the article:

None of the autochthonous churches they mention, however, comes with the “ordination” of women and the rejection of diverse Church teachings on a broad range of issues such as contraception, marriage, and homosexuality, etc., which have been part of Call to Action’s platform for decades. And an open letter from Leonard Swidler, one of the people behind the American Catholic Council, suggests that the 1976 Call to Action–Liberty and Justice for All – seeking these changes – be used as the resource document for the ACC.

Or maybe not. In fact, despite committing themselves to "radical inclusivity," something utterly abhorred by the Eastern Rite Churches, there are certain folks that the schismatics have deemed undesirable, namely, anyone who is actually Catholic,

This qualification decision was made to ensure that groups committed to a pre-Vatican II restoration of a clerical, hierarchical Church or who rejected the roles and responsibilities of all baptized did not attempt to co-opt or abort the Council. We realized that the importance of Vatican II was often lost on Catholics born after the 1950s—but we decided that we could articulate the principles of Vat ican II without focusing on the Vatican Council itself.

"Principles of Vatican II without focusing on the Vatican Council itself." How interesting. Yet another admission that justifying heresy is a lot easier if you just make stuff up about VII, rather than reading what it actually says.