A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Once, Judas, of course, this is at the beginning of the last or during the last supper. Once Judas had left the room, the cynical, our lord said, now is the son of man glorified, and god is glorified in him. If god has been glorified in him, god will, in turn, glorify him in himself and will glorify him soon. My children, I am not to be with you much longer.
I give you a new commandment. Love one another as I have loved you. Such as my love has been for you, so must your love be for one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, that you have love one for another. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord.
This text is also taken from Saint John chapter 12. As I said at the beginning of this mass, today we hear so much about love, love, love. Everything is justified by love, whatever it is. And you hear practically nothing about Christ and god's qualities of justice, of understanding. The whole of revelation's involved.
And so pay it so the text that I have taken this morning is also from Saint John chapter 12. It goes this way. You've heard it. It's very familiar. Our lord is speaking, and he says, I have come into the world to be its light, to be its light, to show us the way.
Whoever rejects me and does not accept my words has already been judged. You don't see that on Easter Christmas cards. And yet that's exact I mean, this is plain common sense, you know. When people talk all this business about love, just ask them, what do you mean by it? What does it mean?
And so I'm speaking this morning about a god who exists, who sent his son into this world, who became a human being, and who left us a deposit of faith. He didn't let leave us 10 suggestions in the form of those what we used to call 10 commandments. He did not cast out the old law. He said not a jot or a tittle of that law is going to be thrown out. Our lord said it.
And our lord time and again, of course, he is the son of god, and, of course, And could anything and what I read this morning, this text that our lord says, I am the light of the world. In other words, to show I and, of course, the whole text, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And then our lord in this text this morning says, unless you hear my words and keep them, you have already been judged. You've judged yourself. See, we forget that, and that's just so true today.
Did any of you see the McLaughlin show last night or the Donahue show that we the morning before? We're living in a troubled age, folks. We are living in a crises age. And as adults, as we like to think of ourselves as mature human beings, we ought to know what the score is, what is going on around us, not to live in a cocoon, but to live in the the real world. And the real world is not Christ's world at at all at all.
And yet remember, our lord said, I am come to be the light of the world. And if you don't listen to my words, you have already been judged. And there's no question about the text. The the however you translate it any way you want, it comes out the same. Now last Saturday, Catholic University had its graduation on the steps of the Basilica Of The National Shrine Of The Immaculate Conception.
Now when I get into this, you know, everything just comes at me. But I never will forget. Remember, the campus of Catholic University, on one side of it, you have the National Shrine Of The Immaculate Conception. On the other side is the library. They face each other right across the campus.
When doctor Walton came as as the first lay president of Catholic I was talking with him one day and I said, what do you think makes a a school Catholic? What do you think makes Catholic University Catholic? Because I was wondering where it was. And that was that was before '71. He stood up and pointed to the shrine.
Now that's a building, but you see buildings give you a message. That shrine tells you something, but what does it tell you? The Shrine Of The Immaculate Conception. What in the world are you talking about? Immaculate conception.
Of whom or what and how? But that's the best answer he could give. I I haven't found a better one. The day that Kennedy was murdered without anybody saying anything, I was on the 3rd Floor, and I I could see the whole campus, and the students just converged on the Shrine Of The Immaculate Conception. Nobody said anything.
No bells were rung or anything. Now so we had a commencement last Saturday at Catholic u, about 1,400 graduates. It was put in the New York Times for last Sunday. Father Malloy, Edward Malloy, president of Notre Dame, gave the main address of the day. His message, according to the New York Times, was give your have your faith and turn it into service.
Turn your faith into service. Let's forget the service part. And the thought struck me right away, what faith? What faith? Because right at Notre Dame, you have two great theologians.
You know, the chief probably the most notable in The United States, father McBride and father McCormick. Both of them openly dissent. Both of them openly are no friends of the holy see and the holy father. You know that. So he says, turn your faith into service.
But the question is, what faith? 1,400 graduates, a whole great crowd of people filling the whole campus. What faith? Well, now those 1,400, certainly, a great number are non Catholics. But it's a fair assumption, isn't it, to assume that maybe more than a majority are Catholics?
I don't know the numbers, but let us say about 50% are Catholics. Well, you'll say, well, we certainly have a consensus there. They're all Catholics, and everybody knows what it is to be a Catholic today. Do you? Do you?
Today? Is if you say, what what does it mean to be a cat what is the Catholic faith today that I I'm supposed to turn into action? Do you think you're likely to get a a a something along the same sort of an answer from the Catholic graduates of Catholic U last Saturday? I'll give you odds better than anything that preached us yesterday on that. You won't.
And you say, you're talking through your hat. Well, listen. Just listen. The latest issue of crisis has an the latest issue just came out. I just got it.
It's the April issue. They're a little behind. There's an article in there by James Hitchcock. Doctor James Hitchcock. Now he's a layman, professor at Saint Louis University, and is a very reputable historian.
James Hitchcock. And the title of the article is hijacking hijacking Vatican two. Here's how it begins. In The United this part I'm quoting. In The United States Of America, as apparently in most other Western countries now listen.
The governing word for post conciliar Catholicism is confusion. Confusion. And, boy, you can't you can't exaggerate it. He goes on to say now this is not a direct quotation. I've changed a few verbs.
The governing theme has been freedom. You'll recognize this if you've been in the least bit with it. The the governing theme is freedom, but not in the Christian sense of freedom, but as the systematic loosening of all moral restraint and institutional restraints as well. Any restraints on individual behavior. How often I have heard on my good ship, Mag and Pie, young high school students coming from Catholic high schools.
What is their standard of morality? Do what's comfortable. How about that? Do what's comfortable. It has spread not merely through secular organs or by lonely, like Charlie Kern, defiant voices, but through the official Catholic press, officially sponsored lectures and conferences, the pulpit, and the Catholic school system from kindergarten through graduate school.
American Catholic descent, centered as it is primarily on matters of sex, offers people within the church a kind of bribe, a kind of bribe to reject official teaching of the church. See, there's no question about what the church teaches. Anybody, it says, available. No problem. Married couples can practice birth control, and they do, and get divorced as they do.
The divorce rate of Catholics is about the same as non Catholics in The United States. They can engage in sexual relations and possibly marry religious. That came out some years ago in Holland. Both homosexuals and unmarried heterosexuals can engage in untrammeled sexual activity without guilt. We must be compassionate.
We must love one another. Descent from orthodoxy, descent from traditional doctrine, not long after the council moved to the center of American Catholicism, cafeteria Catholicism was born. That's a pretty sorry, but that's not an exaggeration at all. Believe me. While I was incarcerated, I spent eight weeks looking into this, and this is no exaggeration.
If you think it is, then take a few dollars and buy Monsignor Michael Rand's book, catechism. He calls it catechetics and controversies. It's available at galleries. Catechisms and controversies. He gives you page and number and names, names of all that I've said, all of them.
And this could be been made made worse. Now Monsignor Ren's book is good. It gives you a picture. The forward by cardinal O'Connor is very because he back he more than backs up Monsignor Wren. But I don't wanna emphasize the negative this morning.
I've started out that way, but we're not gonna end up that way. Cardinal O'Connor, in the four words of the book, of course, confirms and reaffirms because he he's on the battlefront, believe me, he and cardinal Law of Boston. What Monsignor Wren pictures what the situation is. But then the good cardinal ends his forward something like this. He says that in the very near future, the catechism for the universal church will come out.
The catechism for the universal church. And he says, we hope and pray that this will give us a new understanding of the truths of faith that Christ has entrusted to his church. They're his words. The truths of faith that Christ has entrusted to his church. And here is the nub of the whole problem.
Is there such a deposit of faith? The dissenters, the liberals, the progressives say no. We have a continuing revelation. We get the where do we get the truths we live by? Not from the not from what we call the bible, certainly not from what we call the church headed by the pope, certainly not from a council like Trent.
The liberals just see fire when you talk about Trent and catechisms. Oh, no. You get it from the ongoing life of the people of god. What in the world that means I and how it works. Who knows?
Now I'm not exaggerating. If you think I'm exaggerating, challenge me. Get Wren's book and read it. And if you don't wanna do that, get the latest edition of crisis and and and read that article by Hitchcock. The hijacking of Vatican two.
So I don't want you to think I am fighting windmills of my own creation. I'm no I'm no Don Quixote by no means. Anybody knows me knows I'm not that. I've been called Aristotle, but never Don Quixote. Now I wanna talk to you this morning about that catechism and the fight that has gone on for nearly a hundred years because it goes back not to Vatican Two, but to Vatican One in the late nineteenth century.
When you see, after Trent, 15 in the sixteenth century, after the Council of Trent, the Council of Trent authorized a catechism. And that book that came out in 1588 became the core, the center, the heart of Catholic doctrine. That is now let's get it straight. That is the doctrine that the church with with its infallible word has accepted and preached as the word of god. As the word of god, not the word of a handful of theologians over in Georgetown or New York or any other place.
And that catechism as the core of Catholic worship I mean, Catholic doctrine, there had it it was the great norm until the present time. Now when Vatican II came into existence, 1962 to '65, already, already, we had a strong liberal movement, part of the deconstructionism, going back to of positivism in the church. I've talked this over with Monsignor Rand. He doesn't mention it in his book, but he says it's absolutely right. The church is simply going through what our society in general is.
It's the deconstructionism succeeding Wittgenstein's logical positivism. Now the council of Trent I mean, the the second Vatican council, there were some of the bishops there who definitely wanted a catechism because already this the liberals were were challenging Trent and the doctrines of Trent. But we had all the new learning, the new psychology, the new pedagogy, the new anthropology, the new everything. And the the most verboten word was catechism. Now when I use the word catechism, need I explain we're not talking about question and answers or the Baltimore catechism catechism number two.
Catechism simply means to teach, to taught, the doctrine. So Vatican two would have nothing to do with a with a catechism. Now what but everybody admitted the need even in in 1962 and certainly in '65. Now I can only give you the what's happened. I want to just run down what has happened since Vatican two.
Because people will say, why hasn't the church spoken? Let me give you the the church, the Catholic church has spoken. There is no doubt where the Catholic church stands on all these questions of capital punishment, where it stands on abortion, where it stands on birth control, where it stands on the social philosophy, what is a living wage. There is no question about it if people want the Catholic truth. But you see, most people don't want the Catholic truth.
They they don't wanna hear it. I I give them the text, they won't even read it. Now let me just run down the line. After Vatican two, the this is what Rome has done. That is the official teaching of the Catholic church.
1968, just three years after the council, Paul the sixth issued this is an extraordinary document. He issued what he called the creed of the people of God. And why would he issue such a thing when have a we say the creed at every mass? Because the creed was being attacked and rejected. That's why.
Now that's in 1968. 1971, here we had a book that was six years in preparation and was called the general catechetical directory. That was a book that was supposed to give the kernel of Catholic doctrine. How many in this congregation have even seen the book, much less heard about it? I hope some of you have.
But it certainly wasn't used in our catechism classes. And yet that was the it took six years to produce it, and it was practically ignored in The United States Of America by the catechetical establishment. 1979, our present holy father issued a 40 page statement on teaching the catechism. Very handsomely ignored. Few people have ever even seen it.
1989. Now here we come. Now notice, we're talking now about 1989 when at the an extraordinary meeting of the bishops of the world, the senate of bishops, cardinal law of Boston stood up and in the face of a situation which nobody could deny. This is '85. They could not deny the dissent.
They could not deny the confusion in the Catholic church. They could not deny the rejection of the holy father's authority. They could not deny any of that, and they did not know what to do about it except to do what a lot of them didn't want to do, and that was to authorize a catechism. That is a compendium of Catholic truth that would be the core of what it meant to be a Catholic and would be the heart and core of what you would say or call Catholicism. That was in 1980.
And the cardinal laws motion was almost unanimously accepted by all the other bishops of that extraordinary synod. They offered their recommendation to the holy father, John Paul, and he moved with almost lightning speed because he was well aware of the situation to have this catechism produced. That was in '95. Now in 1989, a provisional a provisional text was circulated to bishops. The world's more than 3,000 bishops all over the world got their copy.
Now what was the reaction in this country to what I would call the head of the liberal establishment? The Woodstock Center the theological center centered in Georgetown. Within weeks, this document was subsocrato to the bishops. That group had a copy of the provisional catechism before some of the bishops got it. Now how did they get it?
I don't know. They got it. They had a symposium all prepared to negate the catechism. To negate it. Well, you it was in the press.
The Washington Post had it. I'm just reminding you of it because I'm sure you read the post cover to cover. That's the reception the provisional text got. Now that provisional text was sent to over 3,000 bishops. And Monsignor Wren has told me that the finished document is now resting on the holy father's desk.
That is the catechism for the universal church that was authorized by the synod and authorized by Rome in 1985. All the bishops of the world had an opportunity of returning the text with their comments, their criticisms, and so on. And that that text, which is now, Wren says, is finished and is on the holy father's destiny. That's what he his very words. It's ready to be promulgated.
What will how will it be received? I'll tell you how it's going to be received. It's gonna be received like all these other documents. The liberal establishment will will publish their own little booklets, their own symposia, and it'll all be done to negate the traditional doctrine, the orthodox doctrine of the holy Roman Catholic church. That's what'll happen.
It's already happened. I'm not a prophet. And yet it's our hope. As colonel O'Connor closes that forward to Wren's book, catechisms and controversies, let us hope and pray that this catechism catechism will enhance our understanding of the truths that god has entrusted to his church. That's our hope, and that hope is not Pollyannish.
I want you to recall, in the light of everything I've said, some of it is very unpleasant and is not very inspiring. Far from it. And yet there is inspiration there. Notice that don't worry about it too much. The the Catholic church survived the sixteenth century.
It survived the reformation. It got stronger. And I I say we're going through something worse. And and the church will survive because you know why I believe that? Because the son of god said so.
It's that simple. In Saint Matthew, the very closing paragraph of Saint Matthew's gospel, we have our lord speaking to his disciples just before his ascension into heaven. And he says, going therefore, teach ye all nations, baptizing them. Teach them everything that I have commanded you. Notice, not what the people of God in 1992 say.
Teach them everything that I have commanded you. That's the deposit of Catholic doctrine of faith. And behold, I'm with you all days, even to the end of the world. Take Christ at his word. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit.
Amen.