Psychology, sexology, and the deadened sense of sin

An unpopular truth

[Reprinted from Issues & Views July 1, 2002]

Ever since the 1960s, the Roman Catholic hierarchy has tried to make taboo the notion that changes imposed on the Church, as a consequence of the Vatican II Council, paved the way for religious confusion and turmoil. Protestants, who were sympathetic supporters of the Church, looked on in bewilderment, as religious garb was disposed of, fasting days eliminated, and other traditions were minimized. Some of us wondered where Catholics thought all these innovations would lead.

Sometimes, Church leaders even ostracized their own prelates and other devout Catholics, who held to the traditional disciplines of the Church and warned of the inevitable negatives that greater secularization would bring. In "The roots of the Catholics' scandal" (Orange County Register, 6/9/02), Steven Greenhut describes some of the destruction to the Church wrought by misguided clergy and by clever secularists who knew exactly what path they were on and the nature of the goals they were working to achieve. Here are excerpts:

Vatican II perhaps did not mean to unleash a torrent of theological liberalism, but the council coincided with enormous political and social distortions within American society during the 1960s, according to some analysts. Many people flocked to the church in the hopes that they could "save" it from its "outmoded" teachings that treat sex outside of marriage, homosexual behavior, birth control and abortion as sins. These liberal insiders sought to replace the traditional mass with highly simplified and experimental versions. An emphasis on holiness shifted to a focus on worldly relevance. The zeal for evangelization was transformed into a zeal for political change, through the Social Gospel and even liberation theology (promoting "justice" through communist revolution). . . .

The "spirit of Vatican II" became a truncheon used by liberals to pursue the reforms they had always sought. Those who clung to traditions in many seminaries were ridiculed, excluded and persecuted. As a result traditional men who cherished their vows were cast aside in favor of candidates who espoused the new doctrines. Standards became lax, and we see the fruits of the new crop of priests who imbibed dissident teachings and permissive attitudes rather than the words and outlook of the church fathers.

In a new book, Goodbye! Good Men: How Catholic Seminaries Turned Away Two Generations of Vocations From the Priesthood, investigative reporter Michael Rose details how many seminaries conducted witch hunts against "orthodox" men, or sent them to psychological counseling, where they were branded as too rigid to be accepted as priests. Some seminaries became dominated by homosexuals. The church doesn't ban people with homosexual orientations from being priests, provided that they are celibate. But it's clear, according to Rose and recent news reports about the matter, that celibacy was not always practiced, and that an aggressive gay subculture emerged within the seminary system. . . .

The sex-abuse scandal, Rose concluded, is the result of the replacement of the "self-sacrifice" model the church followed for centuries with the "self-fulfillment" model based on modern psychology rather than Scripture. Some of the seminaries and dioceses have been cleaned up, but the endemic liberalism is still evident throughout the Roman Catholic Church in America.

James Likoudis, writing for Catholics United for the Faith, tells of the Catholic school administrators, who eagerly conformed Catholic teachings to those of the "sexologists":

There is unavoidable irony in any assessment of the ravages perpetrated by today's permissive society. For 30 years were we not told by the sexologists of the Therapeutic State and their sex education minions in the schools that sex education was the antidote for sexual misbehavior in society and the guarantor of happy marriage and family life? Have not the sex educators so busy in the Church with their workshops, seminars, conferences and programs for priests and religious assured all and sundry that only wholesome attitudes on human sexuality would result?

Never mind, of course, the years of protest of laity in regards to the dissenting theologians and catechists teaching such workshops, seminars, and programs, and being "wined and dined" on the human sexuality circuit while subverting "Humanae Vitae" and revising Catholic sexual morality to conform to the "spirit of the world". Never mind the "Classroom Sex Instruction" programs with their graphic, explicit and erotic information introduced into Catholic schools. Never mind the anguish of Catholic parents objecting to their schools promoting Situation Ethics, Values Clarification, Fundamental Option, and other variations of "moral decision-making" malforming the consciences of Catholic youth and deadening the sense of sin. . . .

All these human sexuality programs introduced into Catholic schools (and fostering the moral corruption of those exposed to them) received the plaudits of liberal priests, religious, laity (even Bishops) who could not help be influenced by an accompanying "theological view of sexuality" discontinuous with Catholic Tradition. Many Catholic educators revealed themselves oblivious to the growing complaint of parents that offensive sex education programs in their schools constituted a specific form of child abuse and child molestation. With the spirit of impurity unleashed in the once-hallowed classrooms of Catholic schools by the followers of dissenting moral theologians and the catechetical devotees of Kinsey, Masters and Johnson, and SIECUS' Mary Calderone and Lester Kirkendall, it was to be expected that millions of Catholics would adopt permissive attitudes regarding masturbation, fornication, contraception, abortion, homosexuality, and pornography.

Awash in a secular sea of moral permissiveness abetted by too many of its own theologians, seminary professors, catechists, journalists, and "professional" sex educators, it is not surprising that the Church in North America should be afflicted with the scandal of homosexuality and paedophilia among priests vulnerable to the misunderstanding of sexuality common to dissenters. Moreover, a dangerous androgynous view of human sexuality has been tragically spread by the promoters of "Classroom Sex Instruction" in Catholic schools. Such instruction has been a particularly effective vehicle for modernity's assault on the Church's sexual morality.

Below are the warning words of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, in a 1966 letter to Cardinal Ottaviani. Archbishop Lefebvre, who served on a Church commission at Vatican II, vehemently fought the liberalizing factions that finally won out, and was ex-communicated in 1988 for his defiant opposition to papal mandates. The letter was in response to a request from the Cardinal. According to Archbishop Lefebvre, in his book I Accuse the Council!, "A year after the Council, the faith of many Catholics was so unsettled that Cardinal Ottaviani asked every bishop in the world and all Superiors General of orders and congregations to reply to an enquiry on the dangers which threatened certain fundamental truths of our faith." Here is a brief excerpt from the Archbishop's letter:

I believe it my duty to put before you fully and clearly what is evident from my conversations with numerous bishops, priests and laymen in Europe and in Africa and which emerges also from what I have read in English and French territories.

I would willingly follow the order of the truths listed in your letter, but I venture to say that the present evil appears to be much more serious than the denial or calling in question of some truth of our faith. In these times it shows itself in an extreme confusion of ideas, in the breaking up of the Church's institutions, religious foundations, seminaries, Catholic schools--in short, of what has been the permanent support of the Church.

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