Canadian Church self-unplugging proceeds apace

This is a sad thing.

Salt + Light Television as been called Canada’s lower-octane ETWN. This recent interview with ex-priest and stout defender of dissent Gregory Baum brought back memories of my time at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax.

Unhappy ones.

Baum came to the University to give a public talk that I covered as an eager beaver (and mush-minded liberal) college reporter. Some memories jump out at you. I nervously stood up during the Q&A to question the great man about why the Catholic Church continued to exclude women from the priesthood. His rambling answer began with, “Well, Jesus was a feminist,” and ended with a recommendation to be patient because womenpriests [tm] were an inevitable feature of the future. (The only bigger figure to descend on Halifax in those days was Hans Kung, whose monotone, sleepy delivery almost put me — an erstwhile fan — into a deep slumber.)

Back to the interview. Host Father Tom Rosica, the CEO of Salt + Light Television and a Consultor for the Pontifical Council on Social Communications, unfortunately gives the appearance of sitting at the feet of a master, and lets him unspool with shiny-eyed appreciation. The very decision to green light the interview is hard to understand. For Professor Baum publically advocates for so-called same-sex marriage, was a leading voice of the Catholic Left that squelched the message of Humanae Vitae and has said and written countless things against the teachings of the Catholic Church on matters sexual. He was a leading influence behind the Winnipeg Statement of September, 1968, which effectively gave Canadian Catholics a loop-hole excuse to contracept. (Some of the background is in my book Sex Au Naturel.) And yet Baum is introduced like this: “I’ve certainly admired very much your theology, your writings but also your love of the Church, your love of Christ, and you helped to keep alive not only the spirit of the Second Vatican council, but also the authentic teaching of the Council.”

Really?

Baum does look and sound remarkably spry and healthy for a man almost 90. But a Canadian priest six years his senior, Monsignor Vincent Foy, deftly, if trenchantly, summarizes Baum’s dismal record of contempt for Catholic teaching.

The interview is a time-warpy snapshot of the leftist ecclesiastical fantasies of the 1960s. It’s all there: Vatican II was better than Pentecost; old is bad, new is good; Joseph Ratzinger altered some of his views as he matured (bad), but used to be more progressive (good); orthodoxy is bad, “theological inquiry” is good; obedience to the Church is fear in disguise, doubting and “struggling” is good. I stopped counting after 10 the number of times Baum trundled out the magic word dialogue.

You can see Father Rosica trying to rehabilitate his old friend, gently steering the interview back in hopes of finding some continuity between Baum’s obvious dissent and some semblance of respect for the Pope. But Baum doesn’t budge. Stuck in the heady days of The Nineteen Sixties and their promise of Never Was and Still Ain’t.

Yes, the moral and theological confusion generated by such an interview is a source of scandal. But really, the whole thing strikes one as so irrelevant. Young people today aren’t fighting the battles waged in the pages of the National catholic Reporter (small c mine). Liberal Catholicism is a spent project. The aging hippie culture that still clumps along simply can’t compete with the fire and ice of a Blessed John Paul II or a Benedict XVI, whose standard is high and teaching is clear. Which is another reason why brave shepherds attract willing sheep, convert and cradle alike.

Side bar prayer request: Dear God, please inspire a Canadian bishop to stand up and say what’s wrong with giving dissent a national platform on a Catholic broadcast. Amen.

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Welcome to the official blog of author Patrick Coffin, host of Catholic Answers Live, voted the 2012 Best Catholic Radio Show in America by About.com. Big fat caveat: the opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Catholic Answers apostolate or any of its partners or affiliates.

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St. Jerome's University sponsored talks by dissidents: http://www.sju.ca/search/node/gregory%20baum

On Gregory Baum - Msgr Foy responds to recent Catholic media fawning over dissident Gregory Baum

by Monsignor Vincent Foy

Editor’s Note: This article was received unsolicited from famous Canadian priest, canon lawyer, former head of the Toronto archdiosecan marriage tribunal and outspoken defender of the Church’s moral teachings, Msgr. Vincent Foy. Recent laudatory, uncritical quoting of Canada’s leading dissident former priest, Gregory Baum, in Canadian Catholic media, spurred the Msgr. to write this article and send it to LifeSiteNews. LSN gladly publishes articles from this great, now 96-year-old priest scholar, still writing in defense of the Catholic Church’s moral teachings.

The intention of this article is to protect the faithful from being deceived.

Recently there has been a flurry of references to Gregory Baum, all of them laudatory. An article by Gregory Baum entitled “Vatican II - The Church in dialogue” appeared in the January-February issue if the Scarboro Missions magazine. This article is riddled with false doctrine.

None of these references make mention of the theological errors of Gregory Baum, yet he has done more than any person to harm the Church in Canada in my opinion. His Marxist background and activities are described in detail in a four-page bulletin “Herald of Freedom” April 6, 1974. It is entitled “Rev. Gregory Baum - Canada’s Marxist Pope.” In 1996, in a failed attempt to prevent his talk at the Newman Centre of the University of Toronto, I compiled a fourteen-page list of some of his errors entitled “Notes on Gregory Baum.”

It would take a large book to list and describe the errors and misconduct of Gregory Baum. Here I mention a few of them; there are many others.

Contraception

A focal point of Baum’s efforts was in opposition to the teaching of the Church against contraception. In 1964, Herder and Herder published the book “Contraception and Holiness.” It was presented as a “balanced perceptive declaration of Christian dissent”. Among the contributors were three professors of St. Michael’s College in Toronto: Gregory Baum O.S.A., Stanley Kutz C.S.B. (an admitted homosexual who later left the priesthood) and Leslie Dewart, an atheist. An article reporting an interview with Gregory Baum was printed in the Toronto Globe and Mail of April 9, 1966. It was entitled “Catholics May Use Contraceptives Now.” A year later Baum said that even if the Pope came out against contraception his decision would be irrelevant (Globe and Mail, 1967). 

After the Pope’s encyclical Humanae Vitae reiterated the Church’s condemnation of contraception in 1968, Baum was like a whirling dervish in his hyperactivity against the encyclical. He spoke in Canada and in the United States. On August 1, 1968, the Globe and Mail had a feature article by him “Catholics May Follow their Conscience”. In the August 23 issue of the US Catholic Weekly Commonweal magazine, there was his article “The Right to Dissent”. The September issue of the Homiletic and Pastoral Review carried his “The New Encyclical on Contraception” where he attacked the Pope for going against the experience of vast numbers of Catholics and the witness of other Christian churches.

Homosexuality

Gregory Baum openly advocated same-sex “marriage”. In Commonweal for February 15, 1974, he wrote an article on homosexuality in which he declared that Catholic teaching on homosexuality would change and embrace homosexuality within a few years. Homosexual activists used this article as a handout for almost two decades throughout North America. In speaking to Dignity and other homosexual groups, he encouraged them to remain in the Church but to work for a change in the Church’s teaching.

Devotion to Mary

In the early sixties, I attended a dinner at Osgoode Hall under the auspices of the Catholic Lawyers Guild. Gregory Baum spoke on the exaggerated “Cultus” of Mary in the Catholic Church. He stated that there was no evidence of devotion to Mary before the fourth century. At the time, I had been reading a section of the book “Mariology” edited by Juniper Carol, O.F.M. on the “The Origins of Marian Cult”. It gave numerous examples of devotion to Mary in the first three centuries. Mary herself proclaims in the Magnificat (Luke 1: 46-55): “All generations will call me blessed.” Baum discouraged recitation of the Rosary.

Dissent and Rejection of Authority

Msgr. George Kelly wrote in “The Battle for the American Church” pp. 448-9: “Gregory Baum argued that Rome’s grip on the Church can be loosened by careful violation of law. In Baum’s view freedom from Rome’s law can be obtained by seizing it in the knowledge that violations will go unpunished.”

The Priesthood

I conducted about twenty of the first priest-laicization processes for the Archdiocese of Toronto. A number of priests said that they were encouraged to leave the priesthood by Gregory Baum. He promoted the concept of a temporary or “existential” priesthood. In an article printed in the Toronto Star of April 23, 1966, Baum stated that he was not alarmed at the large numbers of priests and religious departing from their vocations. He said “By assigning the laity a higher place in the Christian Church, the whole matter of the role of the clergy has to be re-thought.”

A Report to the Archbishop

I was pastor of St. John’s Church on Kingston Rd in Toronto in 1966. In the parish there was a convent of Notre Dame Sisters. I received a phone call from the Superior of the Notre Dame Sisters, who was in Ottawa. She told me that one of the younger Sisters, studying at St. Michael’s College, was obliged by Gregory Baum to attend a weekend retreat near Orangeville. This was before the mitigation of Friday abstinence. Meat was served on Friday evening. “The Sister said ‘Fr. Baum, this is Friday and you are serving meat’. He replied ‘Sister, here I am Pope. Eat your meat!’ In the course of the weekend, he encouraged immoral familiarities between male and female religious. You must report this to Archbishop Pocock”. I suggested that she report this to the Apostolic Delegate in Ottawa. “No,” she replied “Sister is in your parish and you should report it”.

The next day I made a report on the matter to Archbishop Pocock. He threw up his hands and said “What can I do?” I said he could suspend Baum. He did nothing and allowed Baum to continue teaching at St. Michael’s College for another nine years.

Suspension and Excommunication

When the Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics was issued by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on December 29, 1975, Gregory Baum criticized it severely. He said “The concept of sex only within marriage was no longer adequate. Even if marriage is the ideal, this does not mean there is no responsible context of sexual relations for mature single people, the widowed and the divorced.” In response, Archbishop Pocock suspended Baum from hearing confessions.

In the issue for January 14, 1978, the Catholic Register reported that “Gregory Baum, noted Canadian theologian and outspoken critic of the Church, married a former nun in a private ceremony recently in Montreal… the bride is Shirley Flynn, who left her religious order about fifteen years ago.” According to Canon 2388 of the Code of Canon Law in force at that time, Gregory Baum was automatically excommunicated.

It is difficult to understand why articles by Baum should continue to appear in Catholic periodicals; why he should be praised in others; why he should be invited to speak in Catholic institutions such as St. Paul’s University in Ottawa and why this arch-heretic should be highly praised in an interview given him recently by a Catholic priest currently posted on a website.

More articles by Msgr. Foy:

The betrayal of homosexuals

Canada’s Greatest Defender of Humanae Vitae Calls on Bishops to Reject Dissenting Document

Tragedy at Winnipeg