Always Read with your Critical Thinking Scan in the On Position!

Just because a man wears a roman collar
doesn't mean he's telling the truth.

I picked up a book of Easter season daily readings written in 1980 and I'd say it shows all the
evidence of post Vatican II...mmm...for want of a better word...confusion. Today, for Friday of the 2nd week of Easter I read this:

...we have the assurance -- if a work is of God, it cannot be destroyed. To fight it is to fight against God....And as we look about us at people who have survived heroic tests of endurance or at institutions that have continued to exist over the centuries, we ought to be convinced that such expressions are godly. Otherwise, they would have died a long time ago. There are many such institutions which deserve much more respect than we often give them. They must have proven not only that they are from  God but also that their motivation is divinely inspired.

My antennae went up. Let's see. The Protestant revolution is over 500 years old. Was it "divinely inspired?" Islam is much older still. Was the Battle of Lepanto that prevented the Turks from overrunning Europe a war between two "divinely inspired institutions?" The Mormon Church is over two centuries old. Was it "divinely inspired?" Remember Christ's parable about the tares and wheat. Good and evil will co-exist until the end. Clearly God does not inspire the tares to thrive; but, because of free will, He allows them.

I didn't know anything about Fr. Carroll Stuhlmueller, C.P. when I started the book. As soon as I read this nonsense I did a search. Stuhlmueller, who died in 1994, was a professor with the Catholic Theological Union of Chicago, no bastion of orthodoxy. He was also affiliated with the Catholic Biblical Association of America whose website gets a big red stoplight from Catholic Culture. He supported the women's ordination movement and other post Vatican II dissent groups and was on the steering committee of the first Women's Ordination Conference. Many articles posted on the womenpriest.org website carry his byline.

I can't say I'm surprised. The book was published by Paulist Press which has a long record of putting out bad books by dissenters and pro-abortion cheerleaders. Guess where this book is going -- right into the circular file. As I used to tell my sons when they were attending a less than orthodox Catholic high school. "Just because someone is wearing a roman collar doesn't mean he's telling you the truth." Don't waste your time reading bad Catholic books. Check out Fr. John Hardon's Catholic Lifetime Reading Plan and Fr. James Schall's website on Another Sort of Learning.  These two priests can be trusted, unlike Fr. Stuhlmueller. Always read with a critical eye.

Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom, pray for us.