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Fleischhauer
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In his column in the
daily paper Il Giornale, Allan, a victim of Vatican II mess,
gave several reasons, prominent among which is “Because
this Church is weak vis-à-vis Islam”. He writes:
“What more than anything else drove me away from the Church
is its religious relativism, in particular the legitimization of
Islam as true religion, of Allah as true God, of Muhammad as true prophet, of
the Koran as sacred text, of mosques as places of worship. It is genuine
suicidal madness that John Paul II went so far as to kiss the Koran on May 14,
1999, Benedict XVI put his hand on the Koran praying toward Mecca in the Blue
Mosque in Istanbul on November 30, 2006, while Francis I began by extolling the
Muslims “who worship one, living and merciful God.” On the contrary I am
convinced that, while respecting Muslims who, like all people, possess the
inalienable rights to life, dignity and freedom, Islam is an inherently violent
ideology, as it has historically been conflictual inside and belligerent
outside. Even more I am increasingly convinced that Europe will eventually be
submitted to Islam, as has already happened from the seventh century to the
other two sides of the Mediterranean, if it does not have the vision and the
courage to denounce the incompatibility of Islam with our civilization
and the fundamental rights of the person, if it does not ban the Koran for
apology of hatred, violence and death against non-Muslims, if it does not
condemn Sharia law as a crime against humanity in that it preaches and
practises the violation of the sanctity of everyone’s life, the equal dignity
of men and women, and religious freedom, and finally, if it does not block the
spread of mosques.”
Now, once again, comes German journalist Jan Fleischhauer (another non-Catholic), instructing today’s nominal, faithless, and indeed stupid, “Catholics”,
who eat and drink while Francis the wolf is busy ravaging the Church:
“If I am not mistaken, then, the
Catholic Church is right now repeating the mistake of the Protestants. At its
peak stands a man who shows a strange disdain for everything gradually grown
and rootedly traditional and who enjoys surprising the Church people with
thrown-down follies and jokes.
“...One could, if one wishes, see
in [Pope] Francis the perfecter of a development which started with the Second
Vatican Council. The first blow was taken against the liturgy between 1962 and
1965 – not accidentally a decade in which everywhere in the world the
iconoclasts leaped greatly forward.
“...Where they also took it
especially seriously with the change of times, the clergymen themselves dragged
the altars into the fields and chopped the Saints’ statues into pieces. For
those without faith, these things might appear to be minor things, but, of course,
it is not. Whoever has once assisted at a Mass in the old Tridentine Rite knows
what the Church has lost when she succumbed to the 68-rush [cultural revolution
of the 1960s].”
A
Non-Catholic German Warns Against Protestantization of Catholicism
In the wake of a recent critical overview of the four years of Pope Francis’ papacy as
presented by the German Catholic journalist Matthias Matussek, another German
journalist (who is not a Catholic) has now raised his voice of resistance with
respect to Pope Francis. We speak here about Jan Fleischhauer, who is an editor
of the influential secular weekly magazine Der Spiegel, and who, in
2009, wrote a book about his change of conviction away from a leftist to a more conservative viewpoint.
On 17 April, Fleischhauer published a column in Der Spiegel which is entitled “Self-Secularization:
The Sponti-Pope [i.e., the spontaneous LeftiePope] ” (“Selbstsäkularisierung:
Der Sponti-Papst”). With its subtitle, the author already indicates what he
criticizes the current pontiff for:
"Among
Church critics, Pope Francis is much appreciated due to his pandering to the
zeitgeist. Unfortunately, he thereby repeats the mistakes which the evangelical
church has already committed."
Fleischhauer himself knows what he
is speaking of here, because he himself was for many years a member of the
Evangelical Church in Germany – mainly for political reasons. However, he later
left the Protestant church and now describes himself only as a conservative.
But he now also shows some admiration for the unmodernized Catholic Church when
he writes:
"The
only Church which one can take seriously is the Catholic Church. I know that
this sentence is for many readers an imposition, and I am also sorry that, of
all years, I have to write this sentence in the Luther Year [of 2017]."
Especially because he has seen
some of the gravely defective adaptations of the Protestant church to the zeitgeist of
his time, Fleischhauer now regrets that Pope Francis is now leading the
Catholic Church into a similar ethos and direction. First, he describes his own
admiration for the Catholic Church when he says that
"Everything
that critics bemoan about the Catholic Church – the Marian devotion, the cult
of the Saints, the priesthood, the liturgy – is what, in my eyes, speaks for
Catholicism. In addition, of course, to the length of time: an institution
which is 2,000 years old has to be taken more seriously than one, let’s say,
that is only 500 years old. Whoever was there first as Church, clearly has,
when one deals with the last questions, the first position. Everything that [innovatively]
comes later is, up to a certain point, heresy."
When speaking about his own final
leaving of the Evangelical Church in Germany – at the moment of his own
analogous change of political views – Fleischhauer explains just how
weak the spiritual roots of Protestantism actually are:
"Since
the spiritual roots of Protestantism are thin, there is little that holds one
back if one changes one’s worldview. A church in which not even the very
existence of Heaven and Hell is binding becomes – for everyone who could only
be kept in [the church] with the help of faith – a lost cause."
It is here that Fleischhauer sees
that Pope Francis is now committing a comparably grave mistake:
"If
I am not mistaken, then, the Catholic Church is right now repeating the mistake
of the Protestants. At its peak stands a man who shows a strange disdain for
everything gradually grown and rootedly traditional and who enjoys surprising
the Church people with thrown-down follies and jokes."
The German journalist then makes
the explicit reference to Matthias Matussek’s own recent “fulminating text” and
says that the Catholic Matussek “understands much about the importance of Dogma
as a dam against the relativizations of the zeitgeist.”
Fleischhauer places Matussek next to the German author Martin Mosebach,
“another great Catholic reactionary.”
It seems that Fleischhauer
understands more about what has happened to the Catholic Church since the
Second Vatican Council than many Catholics of today, as he attempts to explain:
"One
could, if one wishes, see in [Pope] Francis the perfecter of a development
which started with the Second Vatican Council. The first blow was taken against
the liturgy between 1962 and 1965 – not accidentally a decade in which
everywhere in the world the iconoclasts leaped greatly forward."
Here we Catholics are being
rightly instructed by a German journalist as to how the Catholic Church removed
“important elements of the centuries-old rite” because “she wanted to adapt to
the zeitgeist”: “Priests no longer stood before the altar, but behind
it, like behind a moderator’s table of the “Tagesthemen” [a German TV
news show].” He also mentions here the thorough removal of the Latin language
and the dubious permission of Communion in the hand. Piercingly, Fleischhauer
adds:
"Where
they also took it especially seriously with the change of times, the clergymen
themselves dragged the altars into the fields and chopped the Saints’ statues
into pieces. For those without faith, these things might appear to be minor
things, but, of course, it is not. Whoever has once assisted at a Mass in the
old Tridentine Rite knows what the Church has lost when she succumbed to the
68-rush [cultural revolution of the 1960s]."
Fleischhauer makes a prediction
for the future of the Catholic Church, namely: if she follows the road the
Protestants have taken, she will lose Church members and, consequently, will
then consider adapting even more so to the zeitgeist in order to be purportedly
more attractive. In the end, says the German journalist, the Catholic Church
will have the same dilemma as the Protestants: “If the Church dissolves that
which differentiates her from those other secular offers professing to give
life a meaning – why then is the church still needed?” It is in this context
that Fleischhauer sees the growth of Islam in the world which seems to move
into the vacuum and to “fulfill spiritual needs better than the Christian
competitor.”
This article written by Jan
Fleischhauer is an uplifting as well as sobering event. It shows to us how
elements of truth will always find their way into the minds of honest people.
We have seemingly come to a point where modern man is becoming tired of the
pervasive relativism – and its accompanying ideologies – for, they do not
correspond to reality. Man has a thirst for the true, the trustworthy binding,
and the beautiful. The modern world has mostly produced ugliness, loneliness
and a lack of love.
Is it not time for all of us –
inside and outside the Catholic Church – to make an effort to free ourselves
cooperatively, to come out from under the “rubble” and thereby to find the way
back to the deeper sources of trust and joy which can only be found in and
through Jesus Christ Our Savior – and in His Sacramental Church?
—Onepeterfive.com
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