Remember to wear your pro-life T-shirts Tuesday, as it is the first day of pro-life T-shirt week.
And with the Development and Peace and Fisichella affairs again in the news, these quotes from 1973 remains ever current. And given they were by Dietrich von Hildebrand, a philosopher very highly regarded by three popes, they take on special significance…
“One of the most horrifying and widespread diseases in the Church today is the lethargy of the guardians of the Faith of the Church.
I am thinking [here] of the … numerous bishops … who make no use whatever of their authority when it comes to intervening against heretical theologians or priests, or against blasphemous performances of public worship. …
But it is most especially infuriating when certain bishops who themselves show this lethargy toward heretics, assume a rigorously authoritarian attitude towards those believers who are fighting for orthodoxy, and who are thus doing what the bishops ought to be doing themselves! …
The drivel of the heretics, both priests and laymen, is tolerated; the bishops tacitly acquiesce to the poisoning of the faithful.
But they want to silence the faithful believers who take up the cause of orthodoxy, the very people who should by all rights be the joy of the bishops’ hearts, their consolation, a source of strength for overcoming their own lethargy.
Instead, these people are regarded as disturbers of the peace. …
The insult to God which is embodied in heresy is often not as tangible and irritating for them as a public act of rebellion against their authority.”
Thanks to our friends at RealCatholicTV for the tip. See the video in which the quotes are given.
John-Henry Westen
Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief