Sometimes you just want to throw up your hands. Hey, we went through it in the 60s and 70s and 80s. Send your beloved son or daughter to a typical “Catholic” college and forget about having a “Catholic” young man or woman graduate. I know I am preaching to the choir here. I mean, lesbian “witches” teaching in theology departments, as one parent told me happened to his son in a Jesuit University in New Orleans; and this was not just that University, but other “Catholic” colleges gave similar tenures to radical feminists and other subversives. But, now we’ve had a “study.”
Why were our Catholic children allowed to be corrupted in parochial schools through sex education programs? Why didn’t my good friend, the late Father Paul Wickens, receive ecclesiastical support when his bishop, of the Newark, NJ, archdiocese, told him he had to allow the Catholic school under his jurisdiction, Saint Venantius, in Orange, to teach secular sex-ed, which was practically a how-to course with illustrations? He was also ordered to use a heretical catechism, Christ Among Us. He refused. (This catechism was later condemned by Rome.) Father Wickens was relieved of his pastorship at Saint Venantius in 1983 and given a new assignment, but not to a parish. He was told to help out other clergy two days a week in Elizabeth, N.J. Around this time Father visited Saint Benedict Center. I had the privilege of serving the first Latin Mass that he had offered in about twenty years. When he returned to Jersey he continued offering the Tridentine Mass until his death.
Around the Oranges, in New Jersey, Father Wickens was known as the “hospital priest.” He was always on call, taking the place of other priests who were unable to make a sick call. He was beloved by all, and served as chaplain for the police and fire department of Orange. When he died in 2004, after a six month battle with cancer, there was a void left behind among traditional Catholics in North Jersey (and beyond). A pastor, a real Father, was gone. There would be no one comparable to fill his shoes. He did receive one blessing from Rome, which I was unaware of until this morning. By a special dispensation his faculties to hear confessions and perform marriages were restored when Rome removed (ad cautelam) all censures that had been imposed on him in the past.
So, now let’s be grateful because, at last,we have a “study.”
Catholic Culture reports: Catholic students who attend Catholic colleges and universities in the US are more likely to move away from the faith than to deepen their commitment, a new study shows. Read more here.
