A recent opinion piece in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel highlights the methodology of a rather effective postconciliar outreach initiative — one that could aptly be called the “scandal ministry.” The mission of this ministry apparently is to destroy the Catholic Church from the inside by sowing confusion in one soul at a time.
You won’t find the scandal ministry listed on your diocesan website, of course, but the evidence for it is irrefutable. Church Militant regulars need only read the opening paragraph of Anne Curley’s opinion piece “How the Catholic Church Finally Drove Me Away” to understand.
“As a cradle Catholic whose values were shaped by 12 years of Catholic education and 60-plus years of Mass attendance,” writes Curley, “I feel great gratitude for the countless caring sisters, priests and Catholic laypeople who have guided and inspired me through much of my life.”
Twelve years of so-called Catholic education and guidance from countless sisters, priests and other laypeople? Say no more. That any of us with similar backgrounds still even bother to call ourselves Catholic is miraculous. But what drove Curley from the Church was not the psychobabble of nouvelle théologie (“new theology”), the soul-sucking inanity of modern-day liturgy or the sacraments enfeebled by postconciliar reforms. Nor was it even, as she writes, “the clergy sex abuse scandal, the ban on women priests, the treatment of homosexuality as a disorder [or] the rules on birth control.” What drove her away from the Catholic Church was authentic Catholicism itself.
As Curley attests, “The recently released policy of the archdiocese of Milwaukee on how to treat transgender individuals has made it impossible for me, in good conscience, to call myself a Catholic.”
You see, in a rare moment of orthodox Catholicity last January, the archdiocese of Milwaukee issued its “Catechesis and Policy on Questions Concerning Gender Theory.” Even though it rings with Catholic truth, Curley calls it “a stunningly harsh new directive from the archdiocese covering Catholic parishes, organizations and institutions.”
She observes:
In no uncertain terms, it spells out how all employees, volunteers and vendors at these institutions are to treat transgender individuals. Among other dictates, it includes, “Recognize only a person’s biological sex,” “No person may designate a ‘preferred pronoun’ in speech or in writing” and “All persons are to follow the dress code or uniform that accords with their biological sex.”
In other words, the archdiocese asks that people working in Catholic institutions should respect natural law and Catholic dogma, at least as regards the whole transgender thing. Well, this was just too much for Ms. Curley, as she confirms: “So it’s with real sadness that I’ve joined the throng who have left the Church.”
In her closing paragraphs, however, she unwittingly reveals the actual reason she left the Faith. “The fact that society is becoming more accepting of differences in our identities — race, sexual orientation and gender expression being prime examples — strikes me as part of God’s unfolding plan to enable each of us to achieve our full potential.”
She quickly adds, “I am not an expert on it, but I think it’s safe to say the subject of gender identity is complex, nuanced and not a good candidate for rigid rules.”
Curley then indicts Catholic leaders, who resist ever-increasing attempts to erode the Faith:
What I know for sure is that my Catholic education taught me Jesus identified with those whom the rule-makers rejected. I learned that He reserved His harshest criticism for religious leaders who piled heavy burdens on others. Thanks to my Catholic formation, I know that to be Christian means to uplift the dignity of others, especially those who most need uplifting.
The real reason Anne Curley and, likely, the throng she mentions have left the Church is because decades of de-formation have made them allergic to authentic Catholicism and its radical resistance to the neo-pagan drift of contemporary society. It’s out of fashion, and, to minds rewired by modernism, there is no greater sin than to be out of fashion.
For the record:
The fact that society is more accepting of this or that trend is entirely irrelevant to the unchanging truth of Catholic dogma; Jesus Christ founded the Church not to adapt to the chaos of our fallen world, but to shepherd souls through it to eternal life
To equate race with sexual orientation and “gender expression” is all the rage these days, but utterly fallacious — race is biological; sexual preferences beyond the reproductive paradigm are the result of some form of trauma and/or other temporal influences, but are not from God
Facilitating “God’s unfolding plan to enable each of us to achieve our full potential” is and always has been the mission of the Catholic Church, but the Church understands that “our full potential” is, by God’s grace, to become saints worthy of salvation: It’s not to have sex with whomever or whatever we want, whenever we want (by the way, extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, or “outside the Church, there is no salvation,” can be translated into Church of Nice speak as “outside the Church, you cannot achieve your full potential”
It is indeed “safe to say the subject of gender identity is complex, nuanced and not a good candidate for rigid rules” — this is because the contemporary concept of “gender identity” is a complete and utter fiction in full contradiction to natural law and Catholic anthropology
It’s too broad of a statement to claim “Jesus identified with those whom the rule-makers rejected”; Jesus actually identified with those rejected by the false rule-makers: hypocritical Pharisees and scribes who were “teaching doctrines and commandments of men” (but Jesus did not identify with those who were opposed to the true rule-makers such as Moses, the prophets and, ultimately, God the Almighty Father)
It’s a bit misdirected to say of Christ, “He reserved His harshest criticism for religious leaders who piled heavy burdens on others”: Christ condemned the hypocrisy of scribes and Pharisees who said one thing and did another, but He was not criticizing God the Father or the Jewish religion for issuing moral commandments that seemed just too doggone hard for people to follow
Even her expression of gratitude contains a subtle-yet-inherent error: “Thanks to my Catholic formation, I know that to be Christian means to uplift the dignity of others, especially those who most need uplifting”; it’s true that human dignity comes from being made by God in His image and likeness, but sin functions as a renunciation of that image and likeness, so there is no dignity in sin or in affirming others in their sin
Needless to say, Catholics should know all this, particularly “professional Catholics” like Anne Curley, whose bio at the bottom of her article states:
Anne Curley formerly served as a member of the Milwaukee Archdiocesan Catholic Schools Commission; a director of the Catholic Community Foundation, Pius XI High School and Mount Mary University; cofounder of the Favre Forum for Catholic professionals; and parish council president at St. Mary’s Visitation Parish in Elm Grove. In 2017, she established the Ignatian Volunteer Corps tutoring program, which currently provides 77 tutors to more than 200 students at four archdiocesan schools.
Sounds impressive. So how is it one so “immersed” and “active” in her Faith can be so staggeringly ignorant about that Faith — and to the extent that she seeks out a high-profile opportunity to showcase her ignorance for the entire greater Milwaukee community?
You guessed it: the scandal ministry.
Curley, like millions and millions of other cradle Catholics and converts, has been systematically miseducated and misled by 12 years of “Catholic” education, by 60-plus years of Mass attendance and by the guidance she received from countless sisters, priests and Catholic laypeople. Likewise, most of those who misled her did so without realizing it — having been systematically miseducated and misled themselves.
This is the stratagem of this pervasive scandal ministry, in place now for generations: sabotaging the transmission of the Faith in Catholic churches, seminaries, schools, hospitals, charitable organizations, and media outlets; rendering the vast majority of Catholics ignorant of the substance, truth and beauty of actual Catholic teaching. And this programming has been extremely effective.
In those rare instances wherein scandalized Catholics do happen to witness Catholic intransigence in the face of cultural vicissitudes, the only explanation they can muster is that the Church is not being obedient to transcendent, objective Truth, i.e., God; but instead is being ignorant, arrogant and bigoted. Believing themselves, therefore, to be of sound moral character, apostates proudly declare, “It is impossible for me, in good conscience, to call myself a Catholic” — and thus, additional souls are lost.
The question becomes, why would anyone implement such a diabolical curriculum? We actually all know why. We’ve even been warned about it for nearly two centuries. Enemies of Catholicism can’t establish a Freemasonic worldwide church obedient to the State while there remains a thriving worldwide Church obedient to God. The Catholic Church must, therefore, be destroyed.
And the enemies of Christ learned long ago that their only hope of achieving this destruction is to corrupt the Church stealthily from within.
More than 160 years ago, the author of “The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita” gave us this insight into the planned war of deception: “Let the clergy march under your [the Carbonari] banner in the belief always that they march under the banner of the Apostolic keys.”
This is in accord with these prophetic words in Zacharias 13:7: “Strike the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered.” In other words, corrupt the teachers and the students will stray. Many of those stray students — like Anne Curley — unknowingly became errant teachers themselves. They perpetuated the “ministry,” in turn, by leading many more souls off the narrow path and onto the broad way that leads to destruction.
Nancy Pelosi
This self-perpetuating ministry of falsification explains the root cause of Curley’s embarrassing opinion piece. It also explains how Joe Biden can call himself a devout Catholic while keeping a straight face. It likewise explains Nancy Pelosi’s schizophrenic discourse on how she’s more Catholic than the Church in her support for the murder of children. It further explains the demographic collapse of the Church; the foibles of this pontificate; the accelerating ascent of atheism, neo-paganism and Satanism all over the world, as well as the imminent enslavement of humanity by godless “do-gooders.”
From Hell’s point of view, the scandal ministry has been exquisitely successful. Let’s pray for the courage to call it out and fight it wherever and whenever we encounter it. Let’s pray for its destruction. Let’s pray for the undoing of all the damage it has done. Finally, let’s pray for the awakening and conversion of its ministers.
They were included in Our Lord’s admonition in Matthew 18:6: “He that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea.”