Priest and Ex-Priest Confuse Catholics: Vortex

Fr. Thomas Rosica

In today's (Nov. 2) episode of the Vortex (embedded below), Michael Voris explains just how far astray a Canadian priest, Fr. Thomas Rosica, has gone in interviewing defrocked ex-priest Gregory Baum on his TV show. In the process, he says a lot of things that bear repeating, or contemplating.  (The full script is here; a related article is here; and here is a 2005 article on Gregory Baum, who "has done more to help destroy the Church in Canada than any other person"; and here’s a recent LifeSiteNews article on the same interview Voris discusses here.)

Voris explains:

[I] n addition to having an excommunicated priest as his guest without ever informing the audience of that little fact, [Fr. Rosica] publically praises his guest, Gregory Baum, for his love of the Church and Christ…

…From high atop his perch over a rapidly declining and shrinking Church in Canada (think the crow’s nest on the Titanic) Fr. Rosica not only confuses the faithful by praising and lauding a former priest who thinks homosexual marriage is okay, birth control is fine, and the good Lord knows what else, he lashes out at faithful Catholics – the orthodox crowd – as he opens up a line of discussion with his excommunicate buddy…

Here is inserted a clip of the show, wherein Fr. Rosica says,

In the midst of great theological search [of Vatican II], was a deep and profound joy…and John XXIII invited that. And it’s interesting that many of those who are on the front lines, the crusaders, of the orthodoxy today – I would call it a pseudo orthodoxy – are among the most unhappy and sad and angry that I’ve ever met.

Voris responds:

Well, Fr. Rosica, first of all, we may not be all jolly and kumbaya at the destruction that you and your ilk have helped promote, but whatever may be said of the orthodox crowd, you cannot say that we are excommunicated – like that former priest sitting across from you in the interview. Better to be grumpy and upset with grace, than blissfully promoting evil and be excommunicated.

And by the way, in case it has never occurred to you, the reason one finds such anger – and it’s righteous anger – among so many faithful Catholics, is in REACTION to the damage that has been done to their loved ones in this life and quite possibly for eternity in the next, precisely because of the writings and lack of faithfulness on the part of men you are praising.

My sentiments exactly! I’ve been called “bitter” and “angry”, too. Well…yeah! There is some weakness to that – a failure to trust God completely that His Church will prevail, for instance, and a failure to remember to rejoice at all times in our salvation  – but there’s also, as Voris says, some righteous anger. Jesus did, after all, turn over the tables of the moneychangers in the temple!

Gregory Baum

It’s hard not to be angry when one stops to think about what has happened to our Catholic identity in the half-century since Vatican II commenced. And it’s hard not to be a bit disillusioned when one comes to find out that there was an intentionality to some of those detrimental changes, and that the intentions were fulfilled in what we see happening in the Church today. The fact that a priest like Gregory Baum could be praised by another priest who is ostensibly in “good standing” with the Church is ludicrous, but it is precisely an outcome of some of the wishy-washy language in and intentional misinterpretation of part of the documents of Vatican II.

Michael Voris concludes:

At this very moment, Gregory Baum is outside the community of the Church, unable to faithfully receive the sacraments – most especially the Body and Blood of Our Blessed Lord. Shouldn’t Fr. Rosica’s first and only concern be for the soul of this nearly 90 year man? Shouldn’t he be assisting him in coming back into the faith not taking a stroll down memory lane of his time at the Second Vatican Council? His time at the Second Vatican Council won’t mean a thing if he loses salvation.

And see, here is the difference, at the end of the day, between Orthodox Catholics and all the rest: Orthodox Catholics take Jesus and the Apostles at their word when they say there is a Hell and you can go there. All the non-Orthodox Catholics seem to want to dent, sidestep, downplay or ignore that.

What on earth do they think the role of the Church is in the first place? So keep calling us names and poking fun and accusing us of lacking joy as we look over the devastated vineyard…and we’ll just keep on keeping on.

Here’s the Vortex episode: