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the reproach of Christ

Conservative Catholics are slowly abandoning the Faith

Posted on 29 August 2018

The topic of wifely obedience used to be one in which conservative Catholics held the traditional
view. A wife should be subordinate, obedience, and submissive to her husband. This is not the
worldly version of each of those words, but the Christian version. Still, the husband is the leader of
the family, and in the marriage, he is the head of his wife. Therefore, he does have a leadership
role even just between the two of them, and then of course if there are children, he leads the
whole family. And this inequality of roles, not of persons, would have been the case even if
mankind had not fallen (as St. Thomas teaches).

This difference in roles within marriage is the clear teaching of Sacred Scripture and Sacred
Tradition, of the Saints and of the Magisterium (e.g. Casti Connubii). And conservative Catholics
used to maintain this teaching, in contradiction to liberals.

But as the last few decades have passed, popular conservative Catholic leaders have slowly moved
the goalpost of conservatism toward the liberal end of the filed. They have gradually accepted one
error after another, errors formerly found only among liberals: justifying contraception in various
ways, undermining Church teaching on intrinsically evil acts, justifying grave sexual sins, and
accepting one teaching of sinful secular society after another.

This process has occurred for a number of reasons. First, priests and theologians have not taken
their proper roles in teaching the faithful. Corruption among theologians is rampant. Many of these
theologians have been accepted by conservatives, perhaps because they reached out to the faithful
in popular books, in talks, and on the internet, or perhaps because they impressed the faithful with
personality and charisma, rather than with sound theology. Conservative Catholics began to choose
for themselves teachers who would justify grave sin.

Theology of the body is partly to blame for this process of decay. By mentioning the term “theology
of the body” and the name “John Paul II”, conservatives are able to reject the traditional teaching
of the Church, without any theological argument. The true theology of the body of Pope Saint John
Paul II is one theological and philosophical argument after another. The false version, promoted by
every ignorant Catholic who was willing to abandon truth in order to obtain fame, merely asserts
one error after another. The only argument is the phrase “theology of the body” and the name of
the holy Pope. In this way, they are like the Nicolaitans, who asserted grave errors on sexual ethics
by using the name of one of the first deacons, Nicolas.

Theology of the body should teach the basic principles of ethics, should teach sexual ethics, and
should defend the teaching of the Church on wifely submission and many other related topics of
marriage and family. But it does not. Rather, it has become a vehicle to transport grave errors from
sinful secular society into the conservative wing of the Church.

Gradually, the conservative teachers with the most prominence became those with the least
faithfulness, but the most personal appeal. And they have been leading the faithful astray for many

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years. Then Pope Francis was elected. Before his election, conservative Catholics had already
usurped the Magisterium, believing the majority opinion within the conservative Catholic
subculture, rather than Church teaching. And so, when a liberal Pope was elected, they quickly
became his opposition. Why should they obey him, or learn from him, when they are a
magisterium unto themselves?

But God is putting conservative Catholics to the test, to see if they really are as faithful as they
claim. They are not. They have no love for truth. They have chosen for themselves teachers of
grave error. They have promoted a distorted version of Catholicism via the internet. They do not
even bother presenting a theological argument for any of their positions. Instead, they simply
explain what the supposedly correct point of view is, and their listeners accept it without regard for
Tradition, Scripture, Magisterium.

Scripture itself has been abandoned by conservatives. They explain away or ignore whatever they
dislike in the Bible. They no longer accept the dogma of total inspiration and total inerrancy. They
have become a Bible unto themselves.

A case in point is found in a recent post by Dr. Ed Peters — one of very many examples of
abandoning Church teaching and substituting one’s own ideas. There, he rejects the dogma of
direct and immediate primacy of jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff over each and all the faithful. He
claims that the Pope can teach, by his own authority, infallibly — but not non-infallibly. Supposedly,
when the Pope wishes to teach a non-infallible teaching, he is unable unless the Bishops also teach
the same idea. Since Popes usually do not teach infallibly, this permits Peters to reject any teaching
of any Pope he dislikes, with few exceptions. It is an utter rebellion against papal authority. And his
article on the subject is a public declaration of heresy and schism.

What happened next? Nothing. Robert Fastiggi objected to Peters’ position. So did I. I could not
find anyone else who even noticed this extreme heresy and this public schismatic act. Conservative
Catholics like Peters, since he hits conservative talking points, from time to time, in his blog. And
that is all they care about. “Tell us what we want to hear, and we will pretend you are holy, wise,
and faithful.” That is their attitude.

Jimmy Akin is another example of this problem. Over the years, he has taught abject heresy on
transubstantiation, confessing in kind and number, salvation, intrinsically evil acts, contraception,
baptism, along with many lesser errors. His writings in Catholicism are highly incompetent. He has
nothing more than a high school diploma and some time in a Protestant seminary. But he
entertains, and he hits the conservative talking points.

And there are other examples, of course. Any Catholic who tells conservatives what they wish to
hear quickly rises to prominence. And by this process of sinful conservatives choosing unfaithful
teachers, they have gradually rejected dogma, doctrine, and sound theology.

It has reached the point where popular conservative Catholic leaders can openly teach heresy and
openly commit schism, with no backlash from their conservative readers and listeners. They can’t
distinguish heresy from doctrine, or they don’t care to distinguish the one from the other.

Ronald L. Conte Jr.

Roman Catholic theologian

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