Architects of the Fatherless Church

by Christopher A. Ferrara

        In a ground-breaking article in The Irish Post of February 15, 2002, ("Feminised Catholicism could mean end of Church") the redoubtable Catholic journalist Kieron Wood describes how "The Catholic Church in Ireland faces the worst crisis in its history. The scandal of clerical sexual abuse has compounded the catastrophic decline in vocations to the priesthood. All but one of the diocesan seminaries have closed and a generation of religious illiterates is being produced by the current catechetical programme. The pews are emptying more rapidly than ever before. In some Dublin parishes, Sunday Mass attendance has fallen to well below 10 per cent."

        Wood goes on to discuss the "solution" to this crisis as proposed by the very same ecclesiastical incompetents who caused it. According to the new Co-adjutor Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, who is expected to take over from Cardinal Desmond Connell as head of the Dublin archdiocese, the "solution" to the total loss of priestly vocations and the catastrophic decline in Mass attendance is — one can scarcely believe the utter fatuity of such prelates — a greater role for women in the Church.

        Wood notes that "Martin’s intentions were soon realised. At his liturgical reception in Dublin’s Pro-Cathedral the following day, almost all the liturgical tasks - except celebrating Mass - were carried out by women. The lectors, the cantor, many of the servers and all those bringing up the gifts were female. Indeed, it seemed as if there was no place for men in Martin’s Church, except presiding at the altar."

        And Martin the Feminist has no intention of heeding the letters of protest he received from Catholics who pleaded with him to "stop running after the fashionable trend of talking about women in the Church." Are you kidding? Martin’s middle name is "fashionable."

        So, Martin the Feminist will press ahead with the latest suicidal "reform" of what is left of the Catholic Church in Ireland. "New structures for evangelisation must reflect on the position of women in the Church … I am acutely aware of the expectations of so many women in the Church today, of their impatience and at times of their anger at promises not being fulfilled." Oh, the poor things. They’re just so angry. I can just see Martin the Feminist wringing his hands in anguish over what to do, what to do, to make all of those angry women happy. Yes, placating angry women — that’s the business of the modern Catholic prelate. That and ordaining homosexuals to the priesthood — for, after all, "gay" priests have a way with angry women.

        Wood here notes the obvious: "The question is whether the appointment of women to a handful of senior jobs will win back those who no longer practise their faith - and whether the future of the Catholic Church depends on wooing women." Of course it won’t, and of course it doesn’t.

        What would restore the Church in Ireland and elsewhere is the presence of more father figures in the sacred priesthood to lead the flock toward sanctity. Wood cites a fascinating Swiss study which found "that in families where the father was a regular churchgoer and the mother was non-practising, 44 per cent of the children eventually became regular churchgoers. But if the father was non-practising - even if the mother went to church regularly - only 2 per cent of their children would become regular worshippers, while more than 60 per cent of the children would never attend church."

        Wood notes that in commenting on these data, even Anglican vicar Robbie Low was forced to admit: "You cannot buck the biology of the created order. A father’s influence, from the determination of a child’s sex by the implantation of his seed to the funerary rites surrounding his passing, is out of all proportion to his allotted - and severely diminished - role in western liberal society. We are ministering in Churches that accepted fatherlessness as a norm - and even an ideal. Emasculated liturgy, gender-free Bibles and a fatherless flock are increasingly on offer. In response, these Churches’ decline has, unsurprisingly, accelerated."

        As Low concludes, quite rightly: "The Churches are losing men and, if the Swiss figures are correct, are therefore losing children. You cannot feminise the Church and keep the men - and you cannot keep the children if you do not keep the men."

        But what even an Anglican minister can see is bad for the health of any organization that calls itself a Christian church is now being prescribed as just the thing for the Catholic Church by Archbishop Martin and the legions of like-minded liberal prelates who now infest the Catholic hierarchy throughout the world. As a result, the ruinous feminization of the Catholic Church is hardly confined to Ireland. As Wood points out: "The picture is not far different in the United States. According to a survey by pollster George Barna, 43 per cent of American men attended church in 1992. Within four years, that had dropped to 28 per cent. Jesuit priest Fr. Patrick Arnold said: ‘It is not at all unusual to find a female-to-male ratio of two to one, or three to one. I have seen ratios in parish churches as high as seven to one.’"

        Even more stunning is the conclusion of "feminist theologian" Rosemary Radford, as reported by Wood: "Wherever western Christianity has spread, the Church has become feminised. The only religions today with practising male majorities are eastern Orthodoxy, Islam, Orthodox Judaism and eastern creeds such as Buddhism."

        Wood even goes so far as to show that the destructive influence of ecclesial feminism reaches to the very top of the Catholic hierarchy: "According to some observers, feminism has permeated the very highest echelons of the Church." Here Wood cites American writer Leon Podles, author of The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity. Podles observes that "In attempting to demonstrate to the feminists the importance of women in the Catholic Church, the current Pope, for all his excellencies and orthodoxy, has undermined the role of men in the Church. He talks about mutual subordination, but has never mentioned the father as the head of the family. Western Christianity has become part of the feminine world from which men feel they must distance themselves to attain masculinity. That is why men stay away from church, especially when they see that the men involved in church tend to be less masculine."

        Indeed, as Wood points out, John Paul II’s introduction of "altar girls" has ironically set up a major obstacle to the goal of Christian unity that has been the watchword of his pontificate: "One of the most far-reaching attempts to placate feminist critics in recent years has been the introduction of altar girls. But analysts observe that the custom of females in the sanctuary has no precedent in Catholic liturgical history, and has driven a wedge between the Catholic Church and its closest ecumenical partners, the Orthodox Churches, which remain firm in their opposition to feminist influence."

        Podles, in the most devastating observation of all those collected by Wood in this very important article, concludes that: "By driving men away from the Church, this feminisation has undermined Christian fatherhood. A man cannot be a Christian father unless he is a Christian first, and even fatherhood has been undermined in the Churches."

        How could the Catholic Church have been so devastated within the short span of only 40 years? The answer lies in the Third Secret of Fatima, which was supposed to have been revealed in 1960, when the process of ecclesial auto-demolition began.

        Surely the Third Secret predicted the awful handiwork of the architects of the increasingly fatherless Church of Vatican II. And woe to anyone who would defend this disaster in the name of a false "obedience" to the authorities who have caused it. No, they who have feminised the Church and debased Her sacred liturgy to please the world must be opposed, by all lawful means, and the Church restored to Her proper order: a hierarchy of father figures, configured to Christ the King, who teach, govern and sanctify His Holy Church.