KIKO'S DEFORMED VISION PT 2: THE LENS IN ACTION

Jesus saith: "I'm ok you're ok, and that's ok!"

[For those good people with the humility to admit they don’t know or don’t remember the word kerygma that bandied about by NCW incessantly, here’s a link to help that distinguishes between kerygma and didache--and that goes to the heart of a whole new set of problems with NCW, as we'll see in part 3. That's what happens when proud people learn a foreign word: they think they're fluent and ready to teach it.]

In Part 1: KIKO’S CHURCH, we talked about what heresy really is (since it’s a lot more than just bad theology) and about how it always comes from an overemphasis of one dogma to the detriment of another. In the case of the NCW, it’s the profound “eclipsing” of the vertical by the horizontal (as one commentator put it so well). In other words, NCW emphasis on the Church as comunidad so overwhelms everything that reconciliation with God is rendered moot, and that sets the stage for any number of heresies and evils in the Church.

For NCW, we who understand and hold fast to the reality that Christ came first to restore us to the Father—and that from this ALL else flows—are nothing more than childish in our faith, the barely catechized, even called by Kiko as basically fallen away since we have returned “to the sacrificial and priestly  ideas of paganism,”[i] and in one sneering tid-bit, refers to those few who attend Mass regularly as nothing more than "worship consumers," since we treat Mass as something to be consumed like iPhones and McDonald's. And if we are so corrupted, then so is the Tradition that corrupts us; and these are inseparable if we be Catholic.

Let's continue…

THE CONSEQUENCES FOR THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH

This contempt for the Tradition is why Kiko mentions in the same passage about our "priestly ideas" that when building a church, the builders erect scaffolding, but when the building is complete, then the scaffolding comes down. He specifically is speaking about how Judaism is the scaffolding for Christianity, but then Kiko turns it around to say that the Church as we know it is scaffolding too--in fact, a our historical church is a repudiation of the kerygma.

For him, since the last 1700 years of the practice of the Catholic faith is just scaffolding, that means everything else has no value except for getting us to the present. Like real scaffolding, it bears the spilled paint, the cigarette burns, the worker injuries, and the vandalism, while the church building itself is immaculate; so get rid of it. None of it means anything more than as means to an end: the Church of today in all its chaos. 

More to the point, the Church before was flawed, or at least incomplete, until after Vatican II. And now, all we do and say as non-NCW Catholics is just vanity because it’s hanging onto scaffolding instead of celebrating Kiko's deformed Church of the Passion-less Resurrection.

Like restorationist Protestants, Kiko holds that while the early Church held fast to the kerygma (which they tend to confuse with actual teaching, or didache), all that purity of Faith was lost in about 313 when Christianity became legalized with the Edict of Milan and began to transform and organize society instead of simply being persecuted. The next 1700 years were nothing more than aberrations, politics, and the importing of paganism into the faith. It is only later--witht the birth of the NCW--that the true Faith is restored.

It is almost as if Kiko seeks to finally reunite Protestants and Catholics under the banner of the NCW, with Kiko himself as the great bridge-builder. This deformed theology of the Church is the heart of Kiko’s Protestant Catholicism—a modern Puritanism—and it’s the point from which ALL OTHER NCW HERESIES FLOW! 

Think of it: Christ did not need to reconcile us to the Father, they say, only each to each other. And even now, the Church has no need of her sufferings and persecutions, her monasticism and mendicants, her art and culture, her civilization. These are only corruptions and idols. For them, it is faithless Religion. For them, we are a history-less church. 

Moving forward past the death of Christendom into the most evil period in human history that has likewise spit on the Tradition and the wisdom of the past, all that can be foreseen is persecution for the Church. And yet for Kiko’s followers, the only persecution comes from traditional Catholics holding onto paganism and their childish, incomplete Catholicism.

But what’s the appeal of Kiko’s teaching then? The appeal comes in that there’s enough of the Truth in it to convince, enough in Scripture quotations to illustrate it, enough eclectic borrowings from Desert Fathers and papal exhortations, enough Curial maneuvering to justify whatever they’d like.

So with this lens in mind, it's far easier to see how literally EVERYTHING they say about the Faith is filtered through this hermeneutic, even things seemingly unrelated.

Why should a woman continue to let herself be battered by her husband? Because by submitting to it, her love converts him and overcomes this separation. To object is to reject the Gospel and therefore Christ.

Why should a parent let her children be physically, emotionally, or sexually abused? Because by making them submit to it, their love converts the abuser and overcomes this separation. To seek the most basic protections of human dignity is to reject the Gospel and therefore Christ.

Why should all your money be given away, even stolen, quite willingly? Because by submitting to it, your love converts the thief and overcomes this separation. To call to justice is to reject the Gospel and therefore Christ.

Why should you keep silent about being molested and raped by your parish priest 40 years ago? Because by submitting, your love overcomes the division. To even ask for closure and an apology is to be hard-hearted and unforgiving, so then you are rejecting the Gospel and therefore Christ.

So in light of this Kiko’s demand for a horizontal church, his demand for comunidad that doesn’t require any penance or restitution, everything else starts to make way more sense.

FROM DEFORMED CHURCH TO DEFORMED FAITH (GUAM STYLE)

The Gospel ethic (to borrow a phrase) is profound; turn the other cheek is tremendous, indeed authentically heroic, and we should all strive to be so. But that requires the grace that perfects human nature to do that. To assume that human beings can be coached or bullied into it denies both grace, common sense, and a basic understanding of the human condition, catechized or not.

The NCW standard for such "radical love" (as Zoltan and others call it) is Jesus Himself. I agree. That is Divine Love in action. But Divine Love is also prudent, just, suitable in quantity and quality for the recipient, and strong in its humility yet humble in its strength. But the NCW isn't really talking about the radical love of God at all. What they assert is simply a WWJD on masochistic crystal meth.

True love, real radical love, is the Holy Spirit Himself, who heals not by human action or direction but of His own accord, manifested through the sacraments, Man, and in whatever wayLove knows is best. The Holy Spirit gives us the humility to lay down one's life in the supreme act of participation in the sufferings of Christ, the supreme human acceptance of Divine Love in this life. Zoltan's idea of radical love seems to be telling people to get over it, and if like LaPaz they were damaged by the NCW, then they should just forgive and move on. The Church has ALWAYS made clear that the Sermon on the Mount was not "Summons to be Mutilated." The Zoltans of the world are contemptuous of anything but.

That's the love of Christ in action, huh? Way to go, Zoltan. Between you having the compassion of a fungus and the mockery of any claims of victims of sexual abuse by priests, it's a wonder all the pedophiles and abusers haven't signed up for NCW in droves.

Demanding through catechetical pressure to submit to suffering in every circumstance or else you are betraying Christ is not the Holy Spirit; it's a satanic spiritual bondage that mocks the very kenosis, the "emptying out," of Christ in the Incarnation.

St Paul declares: “Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, for the sake of His body, the Church” (Colossians 1:24). All our sufferings, persecutions, everything are perfected by the sufferings of Christ, and our sufferings--small as they are--participate in His sufferings, that we may participate in His divine life in ourselves and in the Church: Militant, Suffering, and Triumphant. Such is penance, prayer, and the great Holy Sacrifice of the Mass on the Altar.

Our sufferings aren’t just expressions of “radical love” that mirror Christ, but rather they are transformed by He who is Radical Love (really--is there any other kind of true love?). They are actual participations in Christ and His work of redemption and reconciliation of Man—all men—to God, and from that to each other.

If we cast off all of that heritage of Divine Love that infuses our whole lives and culture, and then seek to absolutize a Church of comunidad, then we cast off the Tradition. We cast off any claim that Christ is with us always. We are like the poor lost Protestants who declare that the Church consists only of Apostolic times, and then after a long break, everything after 1517. Likewise with Kiko, only it’s the Early Church and everything after Vatican II. All else is scaffolding, worthy only to be burned down to the ground.

So THAT, my friends, is ultimately the reason why you can’t talk to NCW people about any of this. If you do, you are trying to catch the wind in a net. Everything you say, any quote from Aquinas or Augustine or Pope Leo XIII—anything after 313 and before 1963—even demonstrating 100 times over from the Catechism that you are right only proves to them that we are only quasi-catechized and don't know anything and not worthy of the name Catholic. Because they are the real Catholics.

This lens of theirs that says all of Christianity is horizontal pretty much brackets out the vertical, at least in any meaningful sense of the word. And that is why they have no space for Eucharist adoration. That's why Marian devotion is an obstacle to Christ. That is why they argue from the Catechism in a way completely detached from the overall meaning of the text, the relation of one paragraph to another, and plain ol' common sense.

To refine the point: with their view of the Church and its eclipsing of the relationship between God and man, their whole understanding of how to understand the Catechism, the sacraments, and everything else, if fundamentally altered. This is why simple doctrinal statements from us are met with dismissal, and their statements make absolutely no sense in light of the rest of the Catechism, in light of history, or in light of reason.

THAT is how they can use the Catechism to teach the opposite of the Catechism, all with a straight face, and actually mean it. It's not irony, it's not dissimulation. It's just some bizarre Kiko theological schizophrenia--a great fracturing of the intellect, where this lens of horizontal church becomes an ideology that crushes all Truth and Goodness and Beauty into a predetermined, sentimental, incoherent theology of the masses—a theology that worships poverty of spirit for its own sake and casts off Christian culture as oxymoronic. In other words, whatever God Kiko is a prophet for, that God is certainly not Jesus Christ.

How do I know? The Tradition. Something that he and his followers and paid-for bishops are working tear down as not only scaffolding, but now detrimental to the True Faith (as if such a thing were possible).

THAT is why, like the Pharisees before, the NCW hurls every vile epithet at us and says we speak for the devil. They will absolutely swear to you that we hate Christ and His Church. One poor tortured soul on Guam even declares that we seek to lynch NCW members and to see blood run in the streets (no, I’m not kidding).

That’s fine: they did it to Jesus too. He’s the one guiding us to help save His church in our small, insignificant ways. Kiko sought to begin a new age of evangelization, but his solution to save the Church is to cut out Her brain so the heart may beat faster. So now,  all of us are called by Him to save Holy Mother Church, and He guides each of us according to our gifts. Grace builds on nature, and that's an encouraging thought.

And if you need proof that there is no common ground between us on any of this--if you need proof that all dialogue with the NCW is utter folly, you’ll have it very shortly, I assure you. You only have to wait for it. They will wail and gnash their teeth at their persecution on these pages, when even now, they still control the archdiocese.

But there's still that nagging question:  just how does all of Kiko’s teaching and worldview keep a hold on individual NCW members? NCW calls itself a post-baptismal itinerary of catechesis, so it only targets (presumably) fallen away Catholics. But once they convert, why do they always insist that NCW saved them, and not Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church? Why are they so bound to Kiko? There’s an easy answer to that, as we shall see.

Up next: KIKO’S DEFORMED VISION, PT3: SECRET AND MYSTERY

May the grace of our Crucified Lord be with you all!

ADDENDUM: for those wondering how such bad teaching from the NCW could make it through the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and get approval from Rome, read Chuck's piece, and we'll be covering a facet of it here too in Part 5.

But the answer is simpler than you think. Here's a hint: "Cardinal Hon."

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[i] Guidelines for Teams of Catechists for the Phase of Conversion p 324.