WSJ: FREE OUR CHURCHES...

Enjoy this obvious but much needed piece from the Wall Street Journal...

"I have seen and heard enough. We must get rid of everything ugly and stupid from our churches, most of it visited upon them since the great iconoclasm of the 1960s. What’s needed is genuine art that stirs the imagination and pleases the eye, that entices the soul with beauty before a single word of a sermon is uttered."

READ MORE

TREADING WATER

Ai adai, dear readers,

please pardon the silence of the past few weeks.  This has been a time of prayer, reflection, and self-examination. Previously, I published posts regarding the problem of reliance on Pope Francis for defense of the Faith. Now, the issues are so great that they transcend the man and have prompted a material (though not yet formal) schism in the Church.

Things will only get worse.

In the meantime, remember that faithfulness to Christ means faithfulness to the Tradition, especially the sacraments. Pop-alatry (or Papolatry, if you prefer) is not the answer. Obedience to the Pope is paramount, to be sure, but when the Pope preaches heresy, then perhaps we must stand firm until he recovers his senses, if not his faith.

Until then, read all you can and prepare for the 100th Anniversary of our Lady of Fatima's miracle of the sun.

1P5: LIBERATION THEOLOGIAN BOFF PRAISES FRANCIS FOR HIS HERESY

This just in from the excellent 1 Peter 5:

Liberation theologian Leonardo Boff, who delights in reducing the Gospel to a Marxist-Catholic revolution--to what must be assumed is the delight of Pope Francis based on the "South American worldview" so lovingly asserted by the National Catholic Reporter, among others--gives us an insight into what the Pope has on his mind.

Click the article to see the article:

It's no wonder Kiko gets bolder and bolder. 

A NEW YEAR'S VISIT FROM POPE ST PIUS X

(Posted by Glaucon Jr)

Now that I’m back from my little retreat with the Greek Fathers, I thought I might bring along a warm, New Year’s greeting from Pope St Pius X whose words are the bookends for my little adventure. In his seminal encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, the holy man of God warned about Catholic modernists and the resulting destruction of the Faith that we see bearing its most bitter fruit that is the Neocatechumenal Way. It's almost like he has spoken to us straight from Heaven with Kiko and Carmen in mind (bold and underline mine):

THE DEADLY AMBIGUITY OF VATICAN II

In my final post of KIKO’S DEFORMED VIEW: A PRIEST-LESS CHURCH, I made note of what is almost everywhere called the radical break between the pre- and post-Vatican 2 Church (also called the hermeneutic of rupture). I made the comment that if there is radical rupture, it is caused by vague language intended for understandability but resulting in theological confusion and liturgical chaos. Indeed, the language of theology, of liturgy, and of the Church, is very specific, very technical, and very precise. It must be so. Often enough, souls really do hang in the balance.

[And if there IS a rupture of doctrine between pre- and post-conciliar Church, then Magisterium is broken, and infallibility is off the board. In other words, we as Roman Catholics are SOL.]

So with a mind of living up to his name, a reader has asked for a clear example of any Vatican 2 document that is vague so perhaps we can be convinced that I’m not making all of this up.  So here you go.

KIKO'S DEFORMED VISION (FINALE): A PRIEST-LESS CHURCH

The contents of this post are solely the opinions of myself and do not reflect JungleWatch or anyone else, but only myself. Any error or misstatement is my responsibility alone. 

Kiko Arguello, my hands-down fave for cult leader

By now, we all know that the NCW has built itself into a parallel church, but even more to the point, a competitor church with a competitor Christ. We have discussed not only the grievous heresies espoused by them, but also their guiding principle: that the Church is all about Man, and that the Incarnation has absolutely nothing to do with the reconciliation of God with Man. There is only community, and all of the last 1700 years of Church aren't worth anything now that Kiko's here. 

From there, it’s not a big stretch to convince those caught in Kiko’s web that they are special, that they have some secret, original teaching. This, combined with the equating of the NCW with the One True Church, means for a member to consider leaving them, or even disagreeing or questioning in any way, is abandonment of Christ. 

Then of course the Diana posts screen shots of Popes JP2 and Benedict XVI to justify the NCW position, even though we can show that there's NO WAY either JP2 or B16 knew NCW theology beyond surface stuff (CDF never ever approved it). The NCW also loves winding up with quotes from Pope Francis, who in speaking off-the-cuff betrays serious theological problems. In other words, Francis may well be materially in heresy (it's not up to me to say he is formally so, since I am not competent as a layman). They aren't Magisterial statement, but Kiko relies on the assuming of Magisterium to bolster his position, credibility, and power.

Just take a quick look at THE LIST and you’ll see there’s absolutely nothing Catholic about the NCW—and it’s not even a complete list.

All that's left is to see why the bishops let the NCW and other like them get away with all of this demonic, soul-crushing stupidity? In other words, how can bishops like Apuron and Hon and Filoni rally behind any group who espouses such great heresies?  Are they that galactically stupid, or is there something else there?

1P5: If Your Faith is Endangered by Francis...

This just in. Very well said and definitely worth a read.

http://www.onepeterfive.com/faith-endangered-francis/

KIKO'S DEFORMED VISION, PT 5/6: THE FRANCIS PROBLEM

(Posted by Glaucon Jr)

[NOTE: Because of the very serious nature of the subject matter, I’ve extended this from being Part 5 to Parts 5&6. This is done to make it not so overwhelming as well as to make sure I’m not misunderstood and accused on heresy or schism. Any errors or misstatements in this or any article on adintrad.blogspot.com is my own fault and in no way a reflection of the opinions on JungleWatch.]

This is the part of the series on the Kiko’s theology that I have dreaded having to write. It’s subject to being confusing or seeming to contradict Magisterium in some way. Anyone who knows me or has read what I post knows that I am always aware of this, and when there’s any hint of “tension,” I’ll always err on the side of “Well, the Church has spoken…”

So here’s the problem: we have clearly demonstrated that there are profound problems in Kiko’s theology, and this flows out into everything the NCW touches. Yet, Rome still seems to tolerate it, if not give the impression of welcoming it. How is this possible? Is Rome tolerating heresy, or has Catholic theology changed such that the Magisterium now reverses itself?*1

TO HON AND THE PRIESTS: THE SACRILEGES ARE ON YOUR HEADS!

Clown mass: Just another sacrilege encouraged by a bishop

To Archbishop Hon and all the priests of Guam: 

We at JungleWatch have done all the work for all of you in the clerical state on island. Thanks to the great work of Chuck White, LaPaz, and others, we've gathered up the evidence and left for you a trail that a child could follow in the dark. You have only to take a few seconds to see that not only are core beliefs of the NCW heretical and their liturgical practices sacrilegious, but on some points even blasphemous. So busy you hadn't heard about it? Well, let's catch you up. 

THE BLACKLIST

If Diana's blog had a family crest

Ok, I'm pretty much ready to wrap up this five-part series on the NCW, its paradosephobic bad theology, its broken Christology, and its natural terminus in pride and injustice. It's long work for you to read and digest, but it's important that we know what we're up against. 

In other words, there's a big steaming pile of Kiko we've stepped in, and right now if feels like we're not getting our shoes clean for a while.

But one thing has been bothering me, so I thought I'd put it out there for your consideration.

FOLLOW-UP: PIUS, PRIDE, EVIL, AND THE GOOD

In KIKO'S DEFORMED VISION, PT 4: PRIDE DISGUISED, we finally addressed the problem of pride as the evil fruit  (among a whole vine of evils, in particular injustice) flowing from Kiko's theology and practice. 

And that's why we must be clear on what we mean by the evil fruit of the NCW. 

KIKO'S DEFORMED VISION PT 4: PRIDE DISGUISED

NOTE: This post is guaranteed to get some readers upset. It's not my intention to inflame passions, but rather to help us all understand the fruits that flow out of Kiko's Passion-less theology. Any issues or problems contained herein are my fault and should not be attributed to Jungle Watch.

I take no delight in writing this post at all, and in truth, I dread writing Part 5, which is well underway. Now to business:

By now, we all know that the NCW has built itself into a parallel church, but even more to the point, a competitor church with a competitor Christ. We have discussed not only the grievous heresies espoused by them, but also their guiding principle: that the Church is all about Man, and that the Incarnation has absolutely nothing to do with the reconciliation of God with Man. There is only community.

From there, it’s not a big stretch to convince those caught in Kiko’s web that they are special, that they have some secret, original teaching. This, combined with the equating of the NCW with the One True Church, means for a member to consider leaving them, or even disagreeing or questioning in any way, is abandonment of Christ.

So we finally arrive at the two most frightening facets of the NCW--their real spiritual fruits, and the support they receive from bishops. I say frightening because even while writing this, I literally got a shudder thinking about how demonic all of this is. I don’t say demonic for effect. I say it because that is in fact what it is, for it is the spirit of Antichrist at work (1 John 2:18-19).

CAN YOU SMELL THE LOVE?

(Posted by Glaucon Jr)

Ever since I began writing posts dealing with the Neocatechumenal Way, I have in faith and in charity been compelling to become immersed in their theology. I knew there was grave error present if only from the de facto liturgical schism on Guam as well as the shockingly prideful statements of the superiority of NCW member faith over “traditional Catholics” whom they regard as quasi-Catholics, half-pagan and wholly immature in everything Christ.

So we had to get into the nitty-gritty, and man, this is nasty, pungent stuff!

KIKO'S DEFORMED VISION, PT 3: THE SECRET OF THE GOSPEL

In Part 1, we talked about how Kiko’s vision of the Church reduces the Incarnation of the God-Man to the means to creating a community only. In Part 2, we saw what this means for the Church as a whole and how the entirety of the Catholic Tradition would be (and should be, he says) destroyed for the sake of some “new pastoral” needed because of the complete failure of Christianity thus far (except the early Church, of course).

So now we turn to Part 3 to see exactly what holds NCW-catechized Catholics in its jaws.

THE LITURGICAL SCHISM OF NCW

(Posted by Glaucon Jr)

Over the last week, two articles have been posted talking about the underlying problem of the NCW:--its ecclesiology, its theology of the Church--and three other articles are to follow. But in all our discussion about why there’s no room to dialogue with the NCW and the inevitable moral collapse of its adherents, one thing must stated again and again until it finally sinks in on everyone:

The Eucharist is the source of our Faith (whether by “Eucharist” you mean the Real Presence or the rite that makes it so, it really makes no difference). All our unity, all reconciliation, everything that Hon says he wants for the Church on Guam, all that makes us the Body of Christ—all of this flows from the Eucharist. The Eucharist isn’t derived from the Church; it’s the other way around.

And THAT’S what makes the NCW outside the Faith. Regardless of bad theology or mis-readings of Scripture or some quasi-approval by Rome (that’s not really approval) or whatever else you can think of, regardless of all of that,  in the end—and most visibly and scandalously—the NCW has in its practices broken liturgical communion with the universal Church. Perhaps they are better evangelizers; that’s a topic for later, but even if that is true:  since when did evangelization ever necessitate breaking communion with the Church? Since when does better outreach, better works of mercy ever stop flowing from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass? The answer is never. And that’s precisely what’s been done by the NCW. 

And that’s why the fight goes on.

And make no mistake: this is a fight born of love, and a fight seeking reconciliation—reconciliation of Eucharistic schismatics with the universal and timeless Body of Christ. That’s real love of neighbor. And that’s a love worth fighting for.

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."

---

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

KIKO'S DEFORMED VISION PT 1: KIKO'S CHURCH

[NOTE: We begin our short series on the specific causes of the spiritual crisis that flows from Kiko Arguello's theology--as of now, 4 parts are planned, then 1 conclusion. This first piece was longer than I liked and is divided into two parts.  Please remember that we are dealing with a diabolic assault on the Church, and the foundations are subtle. We must all be informed if we are to be prepared, prayerful, and penitential. Besides, the NCW hates anything requiring linear thinking, so if the length bothers them, all the better. ]

Many many thanks esp to Chuck White, LaPaz, and Tim Rohr for their very fruitful legwork on this.

Now since we've opened the discussion to what's really wrong with the NCW, let's start with how I was wrong on a recent post: there is in fact NO room for dialogue with them. They aren't capable of it any more than a Chia-pet is. I somehow doubt that you could even talk about the weather because they'll say Tim Rohr is the mastermind behind some plot that blames Hon for rain in Maina but when it was sunny in Ylig. Either that, or my talk about the weather is indicative of my poor education in meteorology but if only I had heard Kiko's catechesis on weather, I would know what I'm talking about better that some stupid Weather Channel.  

It’s rather like arguing arithmetic with a 4 year old who thinks 2+2=22. A child doesn’t know any better, but in stubbornness and desire to prove they know, they won’t take instruction because they don’t know the “structure” or the “logic” of what’s going on. In the same way, we can’t talk, or dialogue, or come to an agreement (or even a disagreement) with NCW because although we have a common faith, we don’t have a common term, a common language of faith, that we can agree on.

HERESY AND ITS CAUSE

Anyway, in light of this, I must say that all this talk about the Eucharist and altars has brought out a profoundly ugly self-isolation on the part of the NCW on their blog. Rather than say, “Yes, we agree on thus-and-so, but not this other thing,” it has become a cacophony of declarations that Chuck doesn’t know Church teaching, Fr John Hardon (of blessed memory) didn’t know Church teaching, I’m guessing Cardinal Arinze neither, and presumably neither did Bishop Sheen, Aquinas, or Garigou-Legrange. In other words, only Kiko devotees do, and the rest of us are all heretics.

And yet, the whole thing is problematic since most of us aren’t considering what’s really meant by heresy.

CCC 2089 defines heresy as “the obstinate, post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic [universal] faith” or an obstinate doubt about that same truth. In other words,

1) you have to know that a particular truth is taught,

2) that that truth is required (e.g. we must believe in the Immaculate Conception, but we are not bound to believe that Our Lady appeared at Fatima), and

3) you must stubbornly refuse to accept it in light of these other factors.

More important for us, it is the considered opinion of the Fathers and the Doctors of the Church that the cause of heresy is, on the whole, an excessive attention to one particular part of dogma to the detriment of some other. Arianism is an apt example. Arius gave so much emphasis to the humanity of Christ that he flatly refused His divinity, saying instead that Christ was the first and highest creation rather than being co-eternal with the Father in the Blessed Trinity. 

Likewise, Monophysites so emphasized His divinity that for them, the human nature of Christ wound up being annihilated by the divine nature—almost as an extreme reaction to Arius.

As men and women of the 21^st Century, it’s easy to think of this as a difference of opinion, or even simply as "heresy = false." But heresy always—ALWAYS—leads to moral destruction in general and mortal sin, even sacrilege and satanic blasphemy. Always.

So, inordinate latching onto one dogma to the exclusion and detriment of another, and then grave sin necessarily flowing from it. This is crucial for what we’re talking about, so hold on to that for a minute. We’ll be coming back to it.

Now anyone who’s been paying the least bit of attention knows that Chuck, Tim, and others have called out the bad theology of the NCW for a long time. Yet, every time one of the NCW spokesmen tries to defend their bad teaching, they use the Catechism in a way that’s, well, exasperating. It’s not that they’re right, and we know they aren’t right. It’s that when confronted with the Truth, they absolutely refuse to admit they got anything wrong. Then they condemn you for not being on their side and therefore against the Church and therefore Christ.

So the good news about all this back-and-forth is that many people are strengthened in their Catholic faith, and many now know the Faith better because of this fight for Christ. We understand why it’s so important to know it. 

The bad news is that those who need it the most—those well-meaning souls whose minds are darkened by bad teaching—are completely resistant to anything that does not come from higher up their spiritually predatory food chain.

All kidding aside: I do mock and tease, but these are/were Catholics who have fallen away somehow. So that’s really the issue for me: what is it that drives these otherwise normal, intelligent people to go somewhere between brainwashed and lost? They love the Lord--of that I have no doubt, and they desire to be faithful as they understand faithfulness to be. But heresy guts that and renders it a darkness because in heresy, we inevitably are lead into graver errors and sin (see part 3).

 Now let’s be very clear on something: God in His infinite mercy quite often uses bad things like heresy to draw men to him, to bring them to conversion. That said, once they come to the Lord, they absolutely must step away from that bad teaching. It inevitably leads to tragedy if they don’t. Specifically, if a convert persists in that heresy and its fallout, the death of the virtues is sure to follow, and grievous sin will take hold.

So I’m not saying that NCW members are in mortal sin—far from it. Individual Catholic Christians aren’t our issue here. It’s that the entire world-view, the presupposition within which they were catechized, will necessarily lead to a lose of faith, hope, and/or love (more on that soon). That’s why it is IMPERATIVE that we reach out in charity to them to help bring them to the fullness  of the Faith, all the while rejoicing in their return to the Lord.

But since they haven't come to that fullness, what holds them there? Once we know what drive and captures these poor souls, we can detail in later posts the three great seeds of destruction being cast by this very pernicious sower who ensnared them.

But we don't need to search too far for an answer. I think we’ve found it, and our source for that answer is none other than:  Kiko Arguello himself.

THE KEY TO KIKO’S WORLDVIEW

Kiko provides for us the lens through which all NCW members see the world, and this lens is the source of all of our issues with them. It is the basis for all the theological excesses that inspire not only heresy but also a joyful wielding of false teaching like a little boy who’s found his dad’s gun.

So how do we discover it when they won’t tell us, or probably don’t know themselves?

Now I admit: getting ahold of the first few volumes of Kiko’s (and Carmen’s) Catechetical Directory was a bit difficult, and impossible for the last 6 or so volumes. As in cannot be obtained impossible if you’re los de afuera (more on that in part two). So we have to pick what we can from the initial volumes, as Chuck has patiently been working on to get a sense of what’s going on. We have to be systematic, and piece together the sense of Kiko's system based on the evidence. So jumping in to better understand Kiko’s way, I began reading.

But there in black and white on the pages covering the initial catechesis, Kiko reveals what is the core of the problem:

To recap his line of thought, we can therefore say:

• Christ was sent by the Father to destroy the barriers that divide men from one other and to form a community.
• This community is the Church.
• These barriers are insurmountable because we are too broken as men to do it—only God can.
• Thus, Christ comes into the world and dies and rises again so that we may be the Church in communion with one another, with all those barriers gone.
• The great barrier that is at the heart of these divisions between men is fear of death.
• All refusal to love (not turning the other cheek, not suffering persecution, not suffering for other) comes from fear of death.
• Fear of death comes from the experience of sin.
• By Christ breaking death, all this leading to barriers between men are null and we can be comunidad.

It’s a beautiful sentiment, and that’s what lulls you; but beautiful sentiments quite often make for terrible consequences, and this is one of those times. There’s a fatal flaw to this that’s inescapable. It’s that Kiko says Christ came to earth for the express purpose of reconciling us to each other; Kiko never once says we must be reconciled to God. Nowhere. At all. 

This is Kiko’s initial catechesis to bring men to Christ. Even when he mentions sin, he never once mentions that we have fallen away from God in our sin. Really? Our sickness and blindness in life is attributable to barriers between men, and vice versa?

This is because Kiko doesn’t believe in all that stuff about reconciliation to God. There’s no need for reconciliation with God because God has no need of it or us, and sin does not hurt him anyway. Our sins don't matter to God in the end. So for Kiko, the Church as the Body of Christ is fundamentally a horizontal  church—it’s a community of individual believers, a community of love that has overcome the barriers to love between ourselves.

But what about sin? That’s just the experience of death at the deepest level, he says. That’s all it is? 

But the wages of sin are death—death comes because of sin, and therefore the experience of each of these cannot be reversed either. Experience of death is the cause of sin is a complete reversal. Kiko explains this by saying that man has "experienced death because he ate from the tree, which is a symbol of sin" (Day 3). The experience of sin causes division, to be sure--that's what sin does.

But these divisions among men flow from what the effects of sin are, so that matters. What Kiko really is hitting on is that sin causes a division in us—also true. But that’s all it is. It’s death and brokenness and barriers to be overcome. It has nothing whatever to do with the very real and deliberate break of the soul from God, the throwing up of the barrier of pride. Sin, for him, is a word that connotes the opposite of love, in myself and with others; it’s reduced to that. God factors nowhere into it.

In other words, all sin is solipsistic--a sort of "it's all about me" hermeneutic, magnified a billion time over into an "it's all about us" church, when in fact it's all about the Blessed Trinity, from whom the we and us and them and I are derived.

And in the end, even at its most generalized, Kiko is saying that all sin only has an impact on the horizontal level, the social level. Unless you nuance this out beyond the boundaries of coherence, you can’t make this theology work. Ever.

THE PROBLEM WITH HIS WORLDVIEW

I’m not trying to get theological or disputational, but rather to make a point: Kiko’s theology of Church—his ecclesiology—is one centered on us that, yes, is formed by Christ and imbibed by the Holy Spirit, but it’s a community that has overcome the barriers between men only, and does nothing whatever to do with reconciliation with God. The Church is a community of individual believers, not a true Body of Christ. It’s not a body that suffers with and for Him. Kiko’s church is one where the Passion is nothing but a pit-stop to the Resurrection, and the Resurrection only for the sake of the comunidad. The Crucifixion is reduced to an unfortunate episode where believers should never tarry lest they slide into some perverse refusal of the Resurrection and its triumph.

In other words, and aside from all other issues, the fundamental problem is that by seeing church in this way, Kiko completely undoes the meaning of the Incarnation and the act of Redemption (which is why people like Zoltan are so praising of Luther, who’s doctrine of salvation they agree with).

With this view, this lens through which Kiko sees the world and the church in it, there is no need for priests, only presbyters; no altars, only banquet tables; no stained glass, only Kiko’s  icons; no chant, only Kiko’s songs; no theology, just Kiko's Catechetical Directory; no organs, just guitars and tambourines; no penance, just acceptance; no Crucified God-Man, just Resurrected Lord.

In technical language, Kiko is making a radical separation of the transcendent God from the immanent Church (because it's fundamentally horizontal)—the tragic flaw of all non-Christian belief. But the Church has always taught that the transcendent God makes Himself truly immanent in the Church, the Eucharist, etc in a very real and literal way, and not just spiritualized; likewise, the immanent Church becomes truly transcendent because it actually is the Mystical Body of Christ, not just comunidad, and is Church Militant, Church Suffering, and Church Triumphant--a Church that lives and dies as her Lord did, a Bride who seeks to one day be crucified with Her Lord that the great Marriage Feast at the Eschaton may at last be fulfilled in its perfection. 

And if you understand the coming of the Son of God into the world for the redemption and reconciling of Man to God, and from that the reconciliation of man to man, then you are accused of being only quasi-catechized, if not a paganized, Christian, according to Kiko.

Like me (Kiko says), you dear readers are holding on to little more than superstitious practices, or to be a bit kinder and to borrow from Aquinas, the rest of us are guilty of vain observance, just as if we sacrificed a goat at Passover because the ancient Israelites did it. [NOTE: vain observance is a phrase Aquinas uses, not Kiko, so don’t attribute the phrase to him].

Even so, that’s the equivalent of what we are being accused of. Kiko/Pius/Diana’s term is “natural religiosity," which we will unpack in a post soon, since she/they are talking more about it.

Ultimately, the NCW truly believe that ours is a childish, immature faith. St Francis of Assisi had an immature faith. Padre Pio's had an immature faith. The Cure of Ars had an immature faith. Dear God, what presumption! What pride! For they believe that since they received Kiko's teaching, they are the most fully Catholic, then theirs is the only mature faith. All else is childishness.

Such is their view of the Church, and except for a formal sense, I'm not sure Kiko really thinks we are part of it.

And where does the real destruction come in? We'll see on Tuesday in PT 2: THE LENS IN ACTION. 

Virgo Potens, ora pro nobis