Serious Catholics have come to trust blogs and websites – and not the church elite – because they deliver the real goods: the spiritual heritage of the Church, a heritage that most priests won’t touch: The encyclicals, the Fathers, the Doctors, the Councils, and the razor-sharp insights of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose philosophy is essential in properly understanding Church teaching. When Magisterial Catholics are challenged on what they say, they prove with authority. What they say does not rest on their opinion, but on the doctrine of the universal Church....
...The Church’s efforts to convert souls and to ultimately establish the culture of life will always be undermined by the culture of dissent that is permitted to flourish in the chanceries, in the seminaries, in the offices of pastoral animators and in official church publications. As the Bible says, the prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. When the elites contradict divine precepts, they’re not being righteous. Their prayer for a growing church and the right to life will be hampered by their own spiritual alienation. If the Church wants to grow, it must stop treating the Word of God as if it’s tentatively true. It must embrace it, and then live by it, and act like the salvation of souls is at stake. So long as it does not take its primary job seriously – that of Guardian of Truth – it will never be able to come out of its spiritual crisis. And Catholics who want the meat of true faith will continue to ignore them as credible sources of Catholic doctrine.
(h/t SoCon Or Bust)
