Mel Gibson: $5 Mil to Fringe Church (FOX attacks "antiquated Catholic ideology")

FOX ^ | Friday, February 20, 2004 | By Roger Friedman

[olde north church]

I stopped going to Mass when I saw a woman, a teenage girl do a "guest spot" on the altar reading from the bible. Actually, stop isn't the proper term, I got up and walked out never to come back again.
I didn't leave the Catholic Church, the new liberal agenda Catholic Church left me.
The only woman that belongs on an altar is for sacrifice in a bad, horror movie.

[hobbes1]

The only woman that belongs on an altar is for sacrifice in a bad, horror movie.

Amen.

[Maximilian]

The only woman that belongs on an altar is for sacrifice in a bad, horror movie.

LOL. But there's truth in the humor. The liberal poofters in the Catholic Church are trying to lead the Church down the same road as the liberal poofters over in the Episcopal church, ordaining lesbians and so forth.

[Samizdat]

Three cheers and thanks to Mel Gibson. I always did like him but now more than ever.

[ultima ratio]

The acceptance or rejection of Vatican II is immaterial to the status of any individual Catholic. The Council taught nothing binding by dogmatic decree. The declaration on the Jews, moreover, was nothing new. The council merely repeated what had been said countless times by popes and councils throughout the Church's history. The Council of Trent, for instance, also made it clear that the Jews were not collectively responsible for Jesus' death. But critics of the Gibson film like to think this means Jewish leadership 2000 years ago had nothing to do with Jesus' death--which is altogether false historically. Friedman is confused on this and needs to be set straight.

[ultima ratio]

"No one in the Catholic Church is empowered to build his own chapels or separate himself from the Pope"

But one can understand why in a crisis some do when the Pope and his bishops are dangerous to the faith.

[harbingr]

'You need a dog. You'd be a much happier and nicer person.'

(hmmm...so,..what's Your excuse?)

[ultima ratio]

"It is not common among mainline Catholics to reject Vatican II. Those who do reject it likely number less than 5% of active Catholics"

Your statistic is nuts. Millions of Catholics rejected Vatican II by voting with their feet and walking out of the Church altogether.

[Alberta's Child]

No one in the Catholic Church is empowered to build his own chapels or separate himself from the Pope, which Gibson has done.

If I lived in the diocese of Los Angeles and had the werewithal to do so, I'd build a chapel and pay a priest to come say Mass for me, too. It's utterly ironic that a chapel that isn't recognized by a Catholic diocese dominated by flaming homosexuals is somehow "out of the mainstream," isn't it?

The term "mainstream" ought to scare the daylights out of sincere Christians these days, considering Christ's admonition about the "narrow gate" to eternal life.

[O.C. - Old Cracker]

Technically, Gibson's church is "fringe," since it is not in union with the Los Angeles archdiocese and is outside the Catholic mainstream.

Okay, but you and I both know that when the "fringe" label is applied to something, especially in a religious conversation, it is media speak for nuts-o and looney.

[Cicero]

I too would like to see some kind of solid evidence, beyond the clearly ignorant and uninformed author of this Fox News piece, that Gibson's chapel is associated with the Society of Pius X.

The Pope has said that Catholics have the right to petition their bishops for an indult to celebrate the so-called Tridentine Mass in their dioceses, or the Novus Ordo in Latin. And the Vatican has indicated that ordinarily bishops should routinely give such permissions unless they have good reasons to deny them.

The Church has always recognized the right of wealthy people to have private chapels, provided that they clear it with the bishop and follow the proper forms. It may not seem fair or democratic, but there it is. Noble and wealthy households in England and Europe frequently had their own chapels, and probably still do. Vide "Brideshead Revisited."

My aunt, with permission from the Archbishop of Boston, set aside a former bedroom in her house as a chapel. It was duly consecrated. From time to time priests who were friends of hers celebrated Mass there in the house, and there was no odor of schism in it. One priest who frequently visited was on Cardinal Law's staff.

I understand that Mel Gibson's father may or not be a sedevacantist and a bit of a nutcase. But I have seen no definite evidence that Mel Gibson is. Is his chapel authorized by his diocesan ordinary? Has the bishop forbidden him to use the chapel? If he had, I imagine the news media would eagerly have seized the opportunity to tell us. I suspect that the bishop may not LIKE what Mel is doing, but if he has given his permission, or refrained from forbidding it, that would suffice.

[SJackson]

Arnold’s dad was a Nazi. He was a policeman, and took no part in the persecution of civilians.

Hunter is a classic antisemite and holocaust denier who has made his views known publicly for years. He should be condemned.

[ultima ratio]

The "fortress mentality" you decry was actually a refuge from the world's corruption. Now the Church is as worldly as the secular culture, thanks to Vatican II--and just as corrupt.

[yankeedame]

I am not one of those religious "nuts" but I am truly believing that the Book of Revelations is in the final process

Oh, pa-shaw! Over the past 2000+ years has there ever been a generation who didn't believe their's was the "end of days"? The late 19th c. Brits were sure that Gibbon's "Decline and Fall..." applied to them.

So instead of Revelation, may I suggest Ecclesiastes 3:1-8? ("To everything there is a season...")

[Alberta's Child]

St. Athanasius was excommunicated by Pope Liberius in 352 AD, and yet look which one was canonized.

[SJackson]

I disagree. It's one thing to deny that the Holocaust happened. That's holocaust denial. It's quite another thing to question the "6 million" figure that is often quoted. I'm more concerned with historical fact than "offending" people.

Hutton says it didn't happen, that engineering the Holocaust was technically infeasable, and that 6 million Jews simply moved from Poland to Brooklyn and LA, or his alternate version they went to Israel, emigration being the source of the Holohoax, in Hutton's opinion. His firmly held opinions should be condemned, not minimized.

[ultima ratio]

"An SSPX Mass is valid, though it is illicit to attend one, when an Indult or Novus Ordo Mass is available."

Wrong. Here is what Msgr. Perle of Ecclesia Dei has stated in a letter of January 18, 2003: "In the strict sense you may fulfill your Sunday obligation by attending a Mass celebrated by a priest of the Society of St. Pius X...If your intention is simply to participate in a Mass according to the 1962 Missal for the sake of devotion, this would not be a sin."

Nothing about indult Masses or anything else. It's a matter of the individual's personal devotion. One reason behind this letter is the private acknowledgement--however grudgingly acted upon--that the SSPX is not in schism and is not a separate church or religious sect, that it is an internal institution of the Church herself. You need to get up to snuff on this.

[Cicero]

I take it I agree with you on this. Frankly, I don't think it makes an awful lot of difference whether 6,000,000 or 5,500,000 Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. To say that it never happened, or to minimize its significance, is another matter.

I also don't see why it detracts from the significance of the Holocaust to point out that maybe 4,000,000 Catholic Poles were killed in the same camps, purely because they were Catholic and Polish, or that between them Hitler and Stalin managed to kill more than 50,000,000 people in war or prison camps by the time the war was over. The Holocaust was still staggeringly evil, and it detracts nothing from it to say, as Mel Gibson evidently did to Peggy Noonan, that it was not the only evil committed in those days.

[yankeedame]

The "fortress mentality" you decry was actually a refuge from the world's corruption. Now the Church is as worldly as the secular culture, thanks to Vatican II--and just as corrupt.

Amen!! The Church went from being timeless to being "modern".