The Church and Mercy

The Church is a visible manifestation of God's mission of mercy for his people.  As we heard in the Gospel today (Low Sunday), Christ established the Sacrament of Confession and entrusted its administration to His apostles so that his mission of mercy might be extended throughout the world.  The Church has ever followed that commission from our Blessed Lord, calling Her children to the Sacrament of Confession and offering them God's mercy.

On the other hand, it is not mercy to confirm people in their sinfulness and errors.  In fact, that is the opposite of mercy because it leads people away from the Sacrament of Confession by promising them some other route for the forgiveness of sins or even an easing of the conscience that erodes the concept of sin completely.

From this we can see that the Church's loving extension of mercy is not a concept that began sometime in the late 1960's, and it is not something that is being exercised to a greater extent by post-conciliar popes.  Arguably, the post-conciliar popes have acted against the Church's mission of mercy by leading souls into indifferentism and a Protestant understanding of salvation.

Charity (and, by extension, mercy) requires us to counsel the ignorant and to fraternally correct the erring.  I cannot imagine any greater example of charity and mercy than that offered by my friends during my recent troubles with the faith.  Thanks to their charity, I was led back into the True Faith, and through the Church's mercy, I went to Confession.

There is nothing wrong with celebrating God's mercy as He has so graciously bestowed this gift on the Church through Her Sacraments.  But, let us be wary of those who knowingly use words without their usual meaning or who make a point of breaking with the Church's past by setting up a dichotomous relationship between the Church of today and the Church of yesterday.  The Church is Christ's Mystical Body... Christ is God... God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Low Sunday

In reviving this blog, I noticed that three years ago I wrote a post about the many names for this Sunday.  Much has changed since that post, but thanks be to God, he has allowed me the grace to see another Low Sunday and to participate in the Holy Mass and receive His precious Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in Holy Communion.  Lord, let me not waste the graces you wish to give me on this day!

Driving home from Mass today, it occurred to how timeless is the message of today's readings.  St. John tells us, in his Epistle, that Christ has overcome the world.  That is something worth considering today.  It would appear, though, that the world has conquered hearts and minds.  But, St. John says that whoever is born of God has overcome the world through our faith.  "This is the victory."

Apparently, the apostles had that same feeling of defeat that we regularly experience.  As we read in the Gospel appointed for today, they were so afraid of the Jews, their persecutors, that they hid themselves in the upper room with the doors closed.

Notice what happens next, though.  Our Lord appears to them and gives them his peace.  And then, "They were glad when they saw the Lord."  Though we might be disturbed by our seeming lack of victory in the world, we are certainly glad when we see the Lord!  But, as our Lord says in St. John's Gospel today, "Because thou hast seen Me, Thomas, thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed."

When we are troubled and lack the faith that brings gladness and manifests the victory, we usually do not have an opportunity to lock ourselves away out of fear awaiting an appearance of our Lord.  But, how excellent is our Lord?  How much does he know that His presence makes us glad?

In today's Gospel, while in the upper room, he breathes on the apostles and tells them to go about the world forgiving sins -- he has given them this gift from his own authority.  He has sent his apostles to all the world to manifest His presence in the Sacrament of Confession.

When the victory appears impossible and our fear overtakes us, we must retreat, not to the upper room, but to the Confessional, where we can be assured that the Lord will appear, giving us His peace, and making us glad.  Then, we can once again partake in the victory that overcomes the world -- our faith.

For all the difficulties we experience today, the victory has already come to those who adhere to the Roman Catholic faith.  Christ has overcome the world, and we are part of His Mystical Body through our faith.

Doctrine and Our Response

Practically speaking, it is easy to forget that the Church's doctrine is nothing other than a description of an independently existing, objective reality exterior to our own thought processes.  But, in order to understand the importance of adhering to the Church's teaching and the way that doctrine has manifested itself in the Church's historical practice, we simply must bring this idea to mind regularly.  Considering the current assault on objectivity both inside and outside the Church, opportunities should be taken to make clear the relationship of doctrine to Truth as an exact correspondence.  Otherwise, in the minds of many, doctrine becomes nothing more than the window dressing to a nicely cultivated, logical system that might be pleasant to consider but without relevance due to a lack of correlation to our usual experiences in the world.  It should be clear from the preceding posts that the inversion of this thought process is largely to blame for most of the problems in the Church and the world today as there is no "doctrine" other than our own relative, individualistic experience.

With a proper understanding of the place of doctrine, let us take the example of the liturgy and our obligations to participate therein as the starting point for our practical response to the crisis in the Church today.

The purpose of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is to offer fitting worship to God the Father in the only way we know how -- by offering "unto [His] most excellent Majesty of [His] own gifts, bestowed upon us . . ." as the Canon of the Mass says.  We know from the very beginning of the Old Testament that our obligation to God in worship is to offer the very best from the fruits that He has so graciously bestowed upon us.

It is, furthermore, clear from the Canon of the Holy Mass that two sacrifices are being offered: firstly, the representation of the Sacrifice of Our Blessed Lord at Calvary; and secondly, our personal sacrifice of our very selves, sanctified by the unification of our personal sacrifices alongside that of Our Lord, whose Mystical Body is, in fact, the Church of which we are members.

Necessarily, then, in order for the Holy Mass to be a fitting sacrifice to God the Father, sacramental validity is very important.  Without a validly ordained priest saying the proper words over the proper matter, there is no Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  Obviously, without sacramental validity, we are offering simply bread and wine, which is not the "most excellent gift."

In addition to sacramental validity, though, we must offer our own first fruits -- our most excellent worldly gifts, to use crude terms.  We should, in all instances and circumstances, seek to offer worship that is the best we can possibly muster.  And this is true both of ourselves individually and as a Church collectively.

So, is the Novus Ordo the best we can muster from our gifts?  I will assume for present purposes that there is no question about the sacramental validity of the Novus Ordo.  In fact, we are often told that we should attend the Novus Ordo even when it is suspect to fulfill our obligation to God in the First Commandment as expressed by the laws of the Church.  When bizarre things happen there or when we are scandalized by the banality of the event or when heretical hymns are sung, we are told that we should "offer it up."

Is this really the proper disposition for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass?  Should we truly participate in less than perfect worship of God and "offer up" the suffering of that experience?

Because we have an obligation to God as individuals to offer him the best worship possible, when we fail to meet that obligation, we are committing a sin.  When we deliberately place ourselves in a near occasion of sin, we are committing a sin.  Knowing what we know, then, how can we participate in the Novus Ordo Mass.  The fact that it has sacramental validity should not console us -- far from it!  The fact that our Lord is truly and substantially present should cause us to be all the more horrified and scandalized if we are in attendance!

Far be it from me, Lord, to participate in imperfect worship of you!  Far be it from me, Lord, to abuse your Glorious Condescension by being complicit in any event that takes the focus from You!

The Church's doctrine is clearly presented in the Holy Mass celebrated according to the Missal of St. Pius V.  In the Church's historical worship, the activity of the Holy Sacrifice is clearly manifested for all to understand -- in other words, it is clear that a Holy Exchange of gifts is taking place.  Further, reality is brought before our eyes when we see the lowly place of our gifts in relation to the Majesty of God.  And the Majesty of God is revealed to us in the beauty of the words and actions, as well as in the connection that we have with the communion of saints by virtue of our participating in the same worship that nourished them.

The dilemma is often presented to so-called traditionalists about whether to participate in the Novus Ordo or to attend at all, usually to meet an obligation.  Let those of us who have been given the gift of grace to see this matter clearly reject such a question.  Instead, let us ask of those who attend the Novus Ordo how it is that they are meeting their obligations toward God by attendance at such a Rite.  After all, we have an obligation to offer to God our very best and not to abuse the Blessed Sacrament, which is our greatest treasure on Earth.

We know our obligations toward God, let us act accordingly.  May our actions correspond to reality and our worship correspond to our doctrine.

Mere Aesthetics and Liturgical Preference

In my previous post, I attempted to show that there are actual doctrinal errors flourishing amongst the hierarchy and laity in the Church today.  I want to be clear that the modern crisis is not one of aesthetics in Liturgy or liturgical preference. 

Many things have been written regarding the renewal of Catholic liturgical practice by way of introduction of the Tridentine Mass in diocesan churches and the use in the Novus Ordo of more "traditional" vestments and options, such as incense or the gradual introduction of ad orientem directionality.  

With the advent of the new liturgical renewal, the crisis in the Church is often presented as one of aesthetics and preference. Typically, one might read that "Traditionalists" are battling for their preference and should be content with a Novus Ordo Mass offered in accordance with the rubrics and possibly traditional elements. This is the "say the black, do the red" mentality. 

Buying into this narrative is detrimental to the fight against the modern errors because it would require us to wage war on the Modernists' turf. They seem content, as I mentioned in the previous post, with a Church that is one option among many. It stands to reason, then, that they are equally content with the Tridentine Mass being one option among many. 

We cannot succumb to that thinking. We must move beyond aesthetics and preference so that we can refocus on the fact that practice is subject to doctrine. We must be prepared to make a firm decision to adhere to the doctrines of the Faith as manifested in the perennial and venerable practices of our Faith. When we consider the Novus Ordo as a legitimate option, we can be assured we have lost the correct focus and have surrendered to the modern, pluralistic mentality. 

Identifying the Issues

There is no real dispute that there is an immense crisis in the Catholic Church today. This crisis has been described accurately as another Passion besetting the Mystical Body of Christ. There is, I suppose, some dispute as to the nature and extent of today's crisis and whether it is different in magnitude or type from previous crises. 

I propose that today's crisis is the most serious crisis ever to have happened in the history of the Church and that this is due to the nature of the crisis itself. 

In former times, various heresies besieged the Catholic Church, sometimes gathering to their errors vast multitudes of unwitting laity and complicit bishops and priests. We are all familiar with the dark times of the Arian heresy, and we live with the aftermath of the Protestant Revolt everyday. Still, today's crisis is nothing more than an outright Modernist upheaval attacking the Church's members at every level of the hierarchy and capturing uncatechized laity in its skewed thinking without their even being aware that they have been infected. 

In a certain sense, this crisis has been presented as merely one affecting liturgical practice resulting in bizarre pseudo-Protestant rituals performed in the hollowed-out shells of formerly Catholic buildings. Assuredly, this is a hallmark of the crisis, but in a way, the focus on the liturgical revolution as the problem instead of a symptom of many larger problems has served to minimize the actual extent of the crisis wrought by the near wholesale acceptance of the Modernist heresy as the de facto intellectual framework operative in the Church for the past 50 years. 

It is the erroneous thought process of Modernism that has so successfully subjected doctrine to practice in a complete inversion of the Church's perennial methodology. Remember that Modernism itself is a way of thinking that immanates from the individual, who creates his own reality and truth, while sometimes retaining the same vocabulary as former generations. One cannot believe a Modernist because words have no objective meaning to him. And words aren't the only thing lacking objectivity as the Modernist conception of God Himself is a construction of the individual's making. Hence, Modernist liturgical practice focuses on the individual and his "experience" and feelings. So, you can see the necessity for Modernists to invert the traditional roles of doctrine and practice--to them, there is no doctrine in the way Catholics would understand the word. There is only practice, from which the individual produces whatever conceptions he might create. 

This is a concrete problem that was presumed to be codified by the recent "pastoral council" of unhappy memory. And it continues to be problematic as members of the hierarchy hope to subject Our Lord's clear teaching on marriage to modern sensibilities by, once again, elevating practice above doctrine. 

What is one to do when one recognizes, with the assistance of grace and the God-given intellect, that Modernist heretics have won the temporal victory in our times? The crisis is, after all, a crisis of Faith for everyone involved. The heretics (yes, even in the hierarchy) have lost the faith and departed from it in ways that affect us by promoting anger and dismay, among other reactions. Many priests are indoctrinated in erroneous thinking in the seminary. And those priests have arisen from the ranks of a laity that has largely lost the faith or who see our Holy Catholic Church as merely another option among many that are presented to our completely pluralistic society as equal and equivalent. Finally, the crisis of faith makes those who wish to remain faithful to the Faith of our Fathers question their standing--it calls them schismatic, traditionalist, Pelagian, Jansenist, nostalgic, and backward.

With this global view of the crisis, we can justifiably ask what are our options? What should we do? What can we do?

A New Series of Posts

(St. Michael's Roman Catholic Church in Roswell, Georgia, on Holy Thursday 2015)

Throughout the last three years, I have struggled mightily with the Faith. Ultimately, through my own fault, I lost the grace of perseverance and formally departed from the Roman Catholic Church, entering into the schismatic so-called Orthodox Church. 

The mercy of God, however is greater than my intellect, thankfully. I have now been reconciled with the Roman Catholic Church and am attempting to rest in the beautiful Truth of our Holy Faith. 

In a series of articles, I hope to shed light on my departure from the Roman Church, the reasons for my return, and the lessons I learned from my time as a formal schismatic. In so doing, I hope the light of truth will shine brightly to illumine those in need of assistance in persevering during the current, unprecedented crisis in the Church. 

On Same-Sex Marriage and Polygamy

The law should be principled. That is, it should rest on reason, a reason that reaches similar answers for similar cases. The passions should be left to politics. Much that’s wrong with American constitutional law these days is that it’s result-driven, and the results the justices want are driven by the passions in the guise of this vague, warm-fuzzy thing called “justice.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. had this to say about justice: “I hate justice, which means that I know if a man begins to talk about that, for one reason or another he is shirking thinking in legal terms.” In other words, justice, in this sense, is about what we want, not about reason.

The Court’s downfall can be dated from the 1965 case of Griswold v. Connecticut, when it created a new, hitherto unheard-of right to privacy, because the justices didn’t like the idea that states could regulate contraception. Since then, things have gone rather predictably. In the recent case of United States v. Windsor, the Court, in the person of “Catholic” Justice Anthony Kennedy, reached a principled decision in striking down section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act. Except that he didn’t. True—and this is where the principle comes in—the Federal government probably overreached by trying to define marriage. Traditionally that’s a state concern. But Kennedy didn’t leave it at that. Instead, he took the opportunity to lecture us on how bigoted the lawgivers were for discriminating against gay couple like that. Maybe and maybe not, but the lecture was gratuitous.

Second, and more seriously, Kennedy essentially ignored Article III’s “case or controversy” requirement in order to render this decision. As Justice Scalia notes, quite correctly, by the time this case got o the Supreme Court, the parties—Ms. Windsor and, effectively, Mr. Obama—were in collusion, both asking for the judgment below to be affirmed. For more than 200 years, that would have been enough for the Court to decline jurisdiction. But Kennedy was so hot to tell us how we’re homophobes that he pretty much ignored that precedent. Thus, his opinion is driven by passion, by what he wants to do, not by what the law commands.

Thus, I’m looking forward to the day when polygamists seek to overturn legal bans on polygamy. The Court, heavily influenced by Kennedy in cases such as Windsor and Lawrence v. Texas, is spouting off a whole bunch of stuff about the “right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” Marriage is no longer about the basic socio-relational building-block of society that’s geared largely, though not entirely, towards producing children. Instead, it’s based “on defining one’s own family and consecrating a union based on love,” in the words of law professor Kent Greenfield. If we’re going to be principled about this, then, we should allow polygamous, and even incestuous marriages.

I’m not kidding about this, and I’m not saying this in order to march out a parade of horribles, which is what most of the Right does when it comes to this issue. If we’re to have same-sex marriage, I genuinely, really do want us to have polygamous and polyandrous marriages.

Why?

Well, putting on my historian’s hat, I could say it’s because historically there’s a lot more basis for polygamy then there is for same-sex marriage. So, a fortiori, if same-sex marriage is OK then polygamy must be OK.

But I don’t want to do that. Instead, I want this simply because I want the law to be principled. It shows that the justices are at least trying to be reasonable and that the courts, supposedly the last bastion of reason, isn’t really governed by the passions. I don’t want the Court to say in one breath that marriage is about “defining one’s own family and consecrating a union based on love,” and then in the next breath start hemming and hawing and pretending that there are legal reasons not to allow polygamy, when it refused to even consider that possibility when it was looking at same-sex marriage,

If the Court is truly principled, then if it allows same-sex marriage, it must allow polygamy. If it does that I’ll breathe a bit more easily.

If the Court just wants to play politics based on a perverse sense of fairness—perverse because it’s based on an absurd mix of what the justices personally think is fair mixed in with a bit of who, on the left, can scream the loudest (them Mormon polygamists tend to be right-wingers, after all, which shouldn’t make a difference but which I’m betting will), and if the Court is willing to be as blatant as this, then all hope for the law and reason are lost.

If you think there really should be a difference between same-sex marriage and polygamy, I invite you to read Greenfield’s article, in which he pretty much shoots down the supposed distinctions.

Coming out of retirement

No, I haven't been on a permanent picnic in the cemetery. I've just had a lot of RL work to deal with. (For you non-gamers out there, RL="real life.")


I've had a better outlook by largely avoiding the news this past year, but I've strayed once or twice. (A shame that as a civic-minded person with a civic-minded upbringing has to quit following current events in this day and age to maintain his equilibrium.) Today I strayed into this article. I was taken by the following exchange between a Florida state legislator and a Planned Parenthood lobbyist:

The committee was considering a proposed bill to protect infants born alive during an abortion. A state legislator asked Snow what Planned Parenthood would want to happen to a baby born as a result of a botched abortion.

“We believe that any decision that's made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician,” she replied. 

Read her statement again. She apparently believes that a baby who has concededly been born may be killed, with no due process whatsoever, merely on the say-so of the woman, her family, and her physician. The government, in her view, apparently has no authority to say that such an execution would be a crime, such as--oh, I don't know--murder.

I like that. Her statement is either in utter ignorance of the Fourteenth Amendment, which I would have thought is required reading for anyone working in the area of abortion law, or in blatant disregard and utter contempt of said amendment. (Note that bit about all people who are "born" in the US being citizens, presumably citizens with rights to things such as--oh, I don't know--life.) I suppose that a competent lawyer could have countered that since the baby wasn't intended to be born or to survive, this is an impediment to the baby's personhood and that equal protection doesn't apply, but that would simply be making the worse appear the better cause. As for citizenship--well, if the Obama administration can kill American citizens in the U.S. with drone strikes, then I suppose doctors can kill American citizens in the abortion mills.

Of course, the lobbyist's statement may just have been made in ignorance, like the civics teacher in North Carolina who has apparently never heard of the First Amendment. She censored her students and screamed at them if they criticized President Obama they could be arrested. (But of course she thought it was OK to criticize Romney).

Bottom line: When you're dealing people like these, you're dealing with people who are either ignorant, or subversive, or both. And they're out to be in charge. And they elect your president.

No--She SAYS She's Catholic

( N.B. Fonts are messed up today. My apologies.)

I don't know if anyone here knows anything about journalism, but if so, I could use some help. It involves how the media misidentifies Catholics, and in so doing misrepresents that Catholic faith. Case in point: a quotation from this article, which is headlined "Catholic Melinda Gates defies the Vatican over Birth Control Funds":

Melinda Gates, billionaire philanthropist and practising Catholic, yesterday laid down the gauntlet to the Vatican by vowing to dedicate her life to improving access to contraception for women in the developing world.

My question here is how the article simply assumes that Gates is Catholic. It seems to me in many other articles the reporters hedge. For instance, “A marksman stopped the van, driven by a man who says he is a member of the English DefenceLeague,” or “Thourot,who says he is a member of the National Rifle Association, continues his support of guns,” or “The Taliban said it seized a doctor, three nurses and their driver on March 27 in Kandahar province” (my italics in all cases).

            I will here give reporters the benefit a very serious doubt (since I don’t believe that all, or even most, reporters are consciously anti-Catholic, although some most certainly are) and assume that their constant identification of Melinda Gates, Nancy Pelosi, Kathleen Sebelius, etc. as Catholic is not designed to damage or scandalize the faith. In that case, why don’t they hedge about this? Do they take Gates’s (or Pelosi’s, or whoever’s) word for it? Do they call and check to see if they’re registered at a parish? Do they at least attempt to verify it?

            The point is that, intentional or not, every time one of these dissidents (probably heretics) is unequivocally described by a third and ostensibly unbiased party as Catholic, it does damage the Catholic Church. (For the definition of Catholic, I’ll refer you to an earlier post, but the short version is that you have to be baptized, and you have to accept both the Catholic Faith and the authority of the hierarchy.  As Ludwig Ott puts it in his Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, a reference work that should be on the shelf of every theologian and canonist, “Public heretics, even those who err in good faith (material heretics), do not belong to the body of the Church, that is to the legal commonwealth of the Church” (p. 311). Of course, this refers to membership in the Church, not the label Catholic, so there may be some wiggle room here.

            So if I’m correct and Melinda Gates isn’t Catholic, yet she’s described as a Catholic, who’s at fault? If not the reporters, the only other candidates are 1) Gates herself and 2) her pastors (i.e., her parish priest, or his bishop, or the pope), since they refuse to publicly correct the record in light of the proper, doctrinally-defined understanding of membership in the Church. Three highly suspect entities: the heretic herself, or the media that does have an anti-Catholic bias, or members of a Church hierarchy infected with modernism. Take your pick, but whoever is to blame, every time this happens the Church takes another body blow because the following truth is once again obscured: You cannot be Catholic and at the same time dissent from Catholic doctrine.

Religious Liberty vs. Religious Tolerance

I have posted this in the comments over at Southern Orders, but I want to expound a bit on the last point.

Since we have all been praying for it these past few weeks... Here is the Catholic teaching on "religious liberty":

Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange:

"Liberty of religions allows us to frame an argument ad hominem, against those, that is to say, who profess liberty of religions yet harass the true Church and directly or indirectly forbid its worship. That argument ad hominem is correct, and the Catholic Church does not disdain it but rather urges it in defense of her rightful liberty. But from that it does not follow that liberty of religions, considered in itself, can be defended unconditionally by Catholics, for in itself it is absurd and wicked: truth and error cannot have the same rights."

Pope Pius XII:

"The annual celebration of this feast (of Christ the King) will remind States that magistrates and rulers are bound, just like citizens, to offer public worship to Christ and to obey Him.... For His royalty requires that the whole State be governed by the commandments of God and by Christian principles in its legislation, in the way it does justice, and also in training youth with sound doctrine and good moral discipline."

"We shall not delay here to repeat that it is a serious error to affirm that this separation [of Church and State] is licit and good in itself."

Pope St. Pius X:

"That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God..."

Pope Leo XIII:

"Justice forbids and reason itself forbids the State to be godless, or to adopt aline of action which would end in godlessness -- namely, to treat the various religions (as they call them) alike, and to bestow on them promiscuously equal rights and privileges. Since, then, the profession of one religion is necessary in the State, that religion must be professed which alone is true [that is, the Catholic religion]."

"And since the people is declared to contain within itself the spring-head of all right and of all power, it follows that the State does not consider itself bound by any kind of duty towards God. Moreover, it believes that it is not obliged to make public profession of any religion; or to inquire which of the very many religions is the true one; or to prefer one religion to all the rest... but, on the contrary, is bound to grant equal right to every creed, so that public order may not be disturbed by any particular form of religious belief.... [T]his most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice, and this in the same thing as Atheism, however it may differ from it in name."

Condemned by Pope Pius IX in his Syllabus of Errors:

CONDEMNED - Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.

CONDEMNED - The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church. 

CONDEMNED - In our day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion be acknowledged as the one State religion to the exclusion of other forms of worship.

CONDEMNED - Praise is due to certain nominally Catholic countries where the law has provided that strangers coming to live there shall enjoy the public exercise of their particular religions.

In Dignitatis Humanae, the Second Vatican Council explicitly states, "[This Council] leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ." Therefore, we know that everyone I cited above, which is taken entirely from the ordinary Magisterium of the Church (except for the bit from Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange) is binding upon Catholics.

Summary: Non-Catholic "religions" are merely tolerated where the civil consequences and potential difficulties of stamping out false religions might create a greater evil.  

Actually, say what you will, but Abp. Lefebvre makes an excellent point on this in his Open Letter to Confused Catholics while explaining why we should maintain this teaching in modernity: 

And yet in practice the Church does not prescribe blindly and intransigently regarding the expression of false religions in public. She has always said that they could be tolerated by the authorities in order to avoid a greater evil.  That is why Cardinal Ottaviani preferred the term 'religious tolerance.'

If we put ourselves in the position of a Catholic state where the religion of Christ is officially recognized, we see that this tolerance can avoid troubles which may be harmful to the whole. But in a secular society professing neutrality, the law of the Church will surely not be observed. Why, you will then ask, maintain it?

First of all, it is not a question of a human law that can be abrogated or altered. Secondly, abandoning that very principle has its consequences.

So, what are those consequences? Take a look at what Abp. Lefebvre says:

We cannot insist upon the freedom of all religious societies, within human society, without at the same time granting them moral liberty. Islam allows polygamy; Protestants--depending on the particular sect--have more or less lax positions on the indissolubility of marriage and on contraception. The criterion of good and evil is disappearing. Abortion is no longer illegal in Europe, except in Catholic Ireland. It is impossible for the Church of God to condone these abuses by affirming religious liberty.

Precisely! Is this not precisely what we have seen - an increase of abortion and contraception, divorce rates increased, indifferentism toward religion and a society tending toward Atheism. This is what the American Bishops are up against - they did it to themselves by promoting false religious liberty for the last 60 years and now they are trying to solve the problem by appealing to the very "liberty" they themselves have espoused!

Kyrie eleison