A Plea for Intolerance! Fulton Sheen Destroys Tolerance

11/21/22 • 29 min

A Plea for Intolerance
Venerable Fulton J. Sheen
"America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance. It is not. It is suffering from tolerance: tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so much overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded. The man who can make up his mind in an orderly way, as a man might make up his bed, is called a bigot; but a man who cannot make up his mind, any more than he can make up for lost time, is called tolerant and broadminded. A bigoted man is one who refuses to accept a reason for anything; a broadminded man is one who will accept anything for a reason—providing it is not a good reason. It is true that there is a demand for precision, exactness, and definiteness, but it is only for precision in scientific measurement, not in logic. The breakdown that has produced this unnatural broadmindedness is mental, not moral. The evidence for this statement is threefold: the tendency to settle issues not by arguments but by words, the unqualified willingness to accept the authority of anyone on the subject of religion, and, lastly, the love of novelty.
Voltaire boasted that if he could find but ten wicked words a day he could crush the “infamy” of Christianity. He found the ten words daily, and even a daily dozen, but he never found an argument, and so the words went the way of all words and the thing, Christianity, survived. Today, no one advances even a poor argument to prove that there is no God, but they are legion who think they have sealed up the heavens when they used the word “anthropomorphism.” This word is just a sample of the catalogue of names which serve as the excuse for those who are too lazy to think. One moment’s reflection would tell them that one can no more get rid of God by calling Him “anthropomorphic” than he can get rid of a sore throat by calling it “streptococci.” As regards the use of the term “anthropomorphism,” I cannot see that its use in theology is less justified than the use in physics of the term “organism,” which the new physicists are so fond of employing. Certain words like “reactionary” or “medieval” are tagged on the Catholic Church and used with that same disrespect with which a man may sneer at a woman’s age. Mothers do not cease to be mothers because their sons grow up, and the Mother Church of the Christian world, which began not in Boston but in Jerusalem, is not to be dispossessed of her glorious title simply because her sons leave home. Some day they may be glad to return and their return will be the truest “homecoming” the world has ever seen.
Not only does the substitution of words for argument betray the existence of this false tolerance, but also the readiness of many minds to accept as an authority in any field an individual who becomes a famous authority in one particular field. The assumption behind journalistic religion is that because a man is clever in inventing automobiles, he is thereby clever in treating the relationship between Buddhism and Christianity; that a professor who is an authority on the mathematical interpretation of atomic phenomena is thereby an authority on the interpretation of marriage; and that am an who knows something about illumination can throw light on the subject of immortality, or perhaps even put out the lights on immortality. There is a limit to the transfer of training, and no one who paints beautiful pictures with his right hand can, in a day and at the suggestion of a reporter, paint an equally good one with his left hand..."
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Previous Episode

Filial Love and Devotion to the Papacy

“I still recall the catechism lessons in which the Papacy was explained to me, its divine institution, its powers, its mission. My heart of a child (I was about nine years old) was filled with admiration, with rapture, with enthusiasm: I had found the ideal to which I would dedicate my whole life. From then to now, my love for this ideal has only grown. And I pray to Our Lady that she ever increase it in me, until my dying breath. I desire that the last act of my intellect may be an act of faith in the Papacy; that my last act of love may be an act of love for the Papacy. Thus, in fact, I would die in the peace of the elect, well united to Mary my Mother, and through her to Jesus, my God, my King and my excellent Redeemer.”
https://www.pliniocorreadeoliveira.info/UKCR_0601_credo_ecclesiam.htm
The bond of obedience to the successor of Peter, which we will never break, which we venerate in the most profound depths of our soul and to which we tribute our highest love, this bond we kiss at the very moment in which, overwhelmed with sorrow, we affirm our position. And on our knees, respectfully looking to the figure of H.H the Pope Paul VI, we express all our fidelity to the Papacy.
In this filial act we say to the Pastor of Pastors: Our soul is yours, our life is yours. Order us to do whatever you desire. Only do not order us to do nothing in face of the attacking red wolf. To this, our conscience is opposed.
-Declaration of Resistance to the Vatican Ostpolitik
It is well known that Pope Pius IX, who later became a great Pope, was liberal in the first phase of his pontificate. There were no liberal errors in his documents, but he adopted a series of very liberal attitudes.
At that time, Italy was divided into many small kingdoms, principates and free cities that made up the colorful, picturesque, efficient and stable Italy that we admire. The revolutionaries, however, had a plan to unify Italy and destroy those organic cells. They supported the liberal Pope and used to shout in the streets Viva Pio IX! as a rallying cry for the anarquists, socialists, members of the Mafia and Camorra, and others affiliated to the sect of Mazzini [the leader of the Carbonari, an Italian Masonry]. The cry - Viva Pio IX! - became therefore a symbol of the liberal and Masonic campaign to unify Italy by combating those organic small thrones.
https://traditioninaction.org/SOD/j234sd_ChairPeter_01_18.html
without a tribute of filial devotion and unrestricted obedience to the “sweet Christ on earth,” the pillar and infallible foundation of the Truth....
“Where the Church is, there is Christ; where Peter is, there is the Church”. It is then to the Holy Father that we direct our love, our enthusiasm, our dedication....
We have not the slightest doubt in our heart about any of the theses that constitute this work. Nevertheless, we subject them unrestrictedly to the judgment of the Vicar of Christ and are disposed to renounce immediately any one of them if it depart even slightly from the teaching of the Holy Church, our Mother, the Ark of Salvation, and the Gate of Heaven.
-RCR
St. Leo the Great, who reigned as Pope from 440 to 461, was one of the greatest Popes of History. He fought against numerous heresies that agitated the Church, principally against the Manicheans and Pelagians. In 452 he faced Attila and convinced the scourge of God and his Huns not to attack Rome and to leave Italy. He was also able to thwart the destruction of Rome by Genseric three years later.
https://traditioninaction.org/SOD/j016sdSt.LeoGreat4-11

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Next Episode

Is the Pius XII Turkey Indult Real?

Short Answer? No.
"Follow-Up on the Thanksgiving Indult, by Sharon Kabel
GREGORY DIPIPPO
Our thanks once again to Sharon Kabel for sharing her research with NLM, this time following up on her November article on the day-after-Thanksgiving indult for eating meat.
In November of last year, I shared a provocative hypothesis: thanks to the discovery of new evidence, it was possible for the first time to confirm that the long-rumored American “Turkey Indult” directly from the Pope did in fact occur, although not quite the way we thought.
Participants in the “Turkey Indult” conversation generally fall into three camps:
● No, the Turkey Indult did not happen; it has been conflated with diocesan permissions for indults.
● Yes, Pope Pius XII did issue a Turkey Indult in 1958 that remained applicable beyond 1958.
● You’re still talking about this?
My position was a fourth way: The papally-issued Turkey Indult happened in 1958 only, and was likely issued by Pope St. John XXIII, not Pius XII. And yes, we are still talking about it, thank you. (For brevity’s sake, I will refer to the event in question as the Turkey Indult throughout the article.)"
https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2021/02/follow-up-on-thanksgiving-indult-by.html#.Y31VZprMKUk
"On the Mythical Pius XII Thanksgiving Indult: Guest Article by Sharon Kabel
GREGORY DIPIPPO
We are grateful once again to Sharon Kabel for sharing her research with us, this time on the so-called Thanksgiving indult ascribed to Pope Pius XII.
Every year around Thanksgiving, a flurry of social media posts make the rounds in traditional Catholic circles, concerning a mysterious “Turkey Indult” from the 1950s. They all follow the same essential pattern: an assertion that it is widely known that Pius XII granted an indult to Catholics in the United States to dispense them from the obligation to abstain from meat on the Friday after Thanksgiving."
https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2020/11/on-mythical-pius-xii-thanksgiving.html#.Y31VZprMKUk
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