VOL. 2 - Phoenix Source Distributors

History is repeating itself. The ecclesiastical Pharisees protect the financial foundations--taxexempt
brothers protecting each other. They shed tears over racism, but will not breathe even a sigh
for the causes to which are traced the origins of poverty.
How far these clergymen have departed from their apostolic predecessors is beyond assessment.
It constitutes a new image for the bishops in a day when the Christ-image of the apostles is being
totally abandoned.
To firm my observations as to what has happened in America under the leadership of our present
bishops, read an exceptional Roman release which appeared in the
New York Times and Detroit Free Press (Saturday, May 13, 1972). It was publicized worldwide
because its author and the journal in which it first appeared are above the ordinary. The article is
reproduced here below:
"ROME--a Vatican weekly said this week that the Roman Catholic Church in the
United States was being shaken by a "tremendous earthquake" and seemed on the verge of
collapse, but it voiced the hope that it would be saved by its "silent majority".
The publication L'Osservatore Della Domenica said that almost daily "some new
disaster" was befalling the Church in America--priests deserting their ministry, nuns
abandoning their convent, theologians looking for secular jobs, parochial schools closing.
The weekly lamented that Roman Catholic writers and publications in the United States
were criticizing their church "with a masochistic furor that has few precedents in the
history not only of the Church but also of any society".
THE AUTHOR OF THE article, the Rev. Father Battista Mondin, wrote that during a recent visit
to the United States several persons told him the Catholic Church would be "totally wiped out"
within the next 20 years. [H: Well?? Now harken up, readers; if this was truly the CHURCH
OF GOD OR OF THE LIVING CHRIST--do you think there would be ANYTHING THAT
COULD WIPE IT OUT? WHEN YOU LIVE THE LIE--YOU NOTE THAT YOU DO NOT
SURVIVE--PERIOD, AND QUITE SIMPLE TO UNDERSTAND. THE TRUE BODY OF
GOD WILL NOT BE WIPED OUT, GOOD BUDDIES.]
Father Mondin is an Italian priest who works in the central administrative body of the Roman
Catholic Church.
L'Osservatore Della Domenica has no official Church status, although its articles often
reflect the thinking of influential churchmen. Its editor, Federico Alessandrini, a layman
who is also the official Vatican press spokesman, said that Father Mondin was "well
qualified".
The Italian priest gave three reasons for disarray in the American Church--excessive discussion
and criticisms in the wake of the Ecumenical Council Vatican II (1962-65), infiltration of
secularism into Roman Catholic thought in America and ethnic inferiority complexes.
THE WRITER explained that the secular fallacy consisted in regarding anything connected with
an after life as irrelevant and the conviction that the church was significant only in that it was able to
help counter war, hunger, racial conflicts and other social ills.
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