HOW AN AMERICANIST/MODERNIST CONTINUED
TO UNDERMINE CATHOLIC TEACHING

The author of "Pilgrim Church: A Popular History of Catholic Christianity" (Revised & Expanded; Twenty-Third Publications, 1989) that continues to circulate in Catholic parishes is Fr. William J. Bausch, who may be remembered by veterans of the sex education battles of the 1970s for his book "A Boy's Sex Life" when he was director of Cana Conferences for the Diocese of Trenton, N.J.

In that work, the reader was confronted by the graphic manner in which the author wrote about sexual intercourse and his sanctioning of both masturbation and contraceptive birth control. Regarding the latter, [he stated that] married couples "do not sin. Contraception for them is building their love... to strengthen their initial commitment."

As a member of the diocesan Family Life Bureau, he approved the notorious "Becoming a Person" Program, which was a travesty of Catholic moral education and an egregious assault on parental rights.

On Pilgrim Church's back cover, one reads that Fr. Bausch "has written extensively on Church and parish life, including 8 books published by Twenty- Third Publications (Mystic, CT) and is known as a widely known and respected workshop leader." For many years (1973-1995), he served as pastor of a New Jersey parish.

Pilgrim Church sports favorable blurbs by such noted liberal elitists as James Hennessy, SJ, and John Tracy Ellis, who register agreement that Bausch's book is "popular religious history at its best."

The book's bibliography is weighted with liberal writers, including such dissenters as Eugene Kennedy and Richard McBrien. Footnotes also evidence reliance on the prejudiced views of a host of other liberal writers, including lapsed Catholics. The website for Twenty-Third Publications indicates that Bausch's Pilgrim Church is still for sale, albeit with clearance pricing.

Many of the judgments on persons and subjects treated in this work are questionable or outright erroneous in attempting to trace the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church. For example, the author insinuates, as have Eastern dissidents, that the "filioque" addition to the Latin text of the Creed (accepted, in fact, by many Western councils) was an "alteration expressly forbidden by the [ecumenical] councils of the Church" (p. 175)!

He conflates the explicit denial of the Pope's supreme teaching authority in the Church by a 12th-century separated Eastern bishop with the earlier ninth century patriarch of Constantinople Photius (responsible for "the disaster of the Photian schism"), but who did not deny that the Pope possessed a universal jurisdiction in the Church and the necessity of communion with Rome (p. 177).

One is astonished to read the author stating that:

"the [1870] definition of the pope's infallibility is linked to that of the church's infallibility, which has never been defined."

Why, the very definition of papal infallibility in Pastor Aeternus of Vatican I made it clear that the Roman Pontiff possesses "the infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed the Church to be endowed in defining the doctrine concerning faith and morals."

Moreover, how could the Church's infallibility (immunity from doctrinal error) have always been believed by the faithful IF Christ Himself had not so specifically taught ("defined") it in declaring:

1. His Church built on the Rock of Peter and the Gates of Hell never able to prevail against it (cf. Matt. 16:18-19)?
2. And with St. Paul referring to "the Church of the Living God, the Pillar and Ground of the Truth" (1 Tim. 3:15)?

Quite unfair is the charge that the great Council of Florence (1439) which labored to bring about the Reunion of the Byzantine Greco-Slav Church was guilty of "moral blackmail" (p. 179).

For 400 years, Fr. Bausch claims:

"the Catholic Church taught [with St. Robert Bellarmine] that there was only one true church, the church Jesus built on the rock of Peter (Matt. 16:18)" (p. 377). Apparently, this is no longer true as the Vatican allegedly came to realize: "that the church of Christ is broader than the Roman Catholic church. (in contrast to Lumen Gentium, n. 8)"
(p. 380)

This is, of course, a total distortion of the ecclesiological teaching of Vatican II, and the source of the false ecumenism that no longer seeks the conversion of separated brethren to "the one true religion [which] continues to exist in the Catholic and Apostolic Church" (see Declaration on Religious Liberty, n. 1).

Incidentally, it is not surprising that conservative Catholics with their "narrow theology" do not come off well in Fr. Bausch's book, nor do some of the Popes who disagreed with liberal progressivists seeking to impose dangerous agendas on the Church. Thus, St. Pius X:

"who became pope in 1903 [condemning a host of Modernist errors] was politically naive, superstitious, narrow-minded, and totally aligned in philosophy with his conservative curia".
(p. 350)

In Pilgrim Church Fr. Bausch remained a dissenter from Humanae Vitae and clearly encouraged others in that dissent. Thus we read:

"Paul VI bequeathed to the Church a sensitivity to the personal conscience of the faithful and a trust to the action of the Holy Spirit in their lives. And just as well, for a sizeable majority of Catholics have rejected the conclusions of Humanae Vitae. In 1971 [three years after the encyclical] Catholics said by 58-31 percent that a good Catholic could ignore the pope's condemnation of artificial birth control.

"In the 1997 CPA study, 73 percent said that Catholics should be allowed to practice artificial means of birth control; eight in ten Catholics under fifty took this position. Some observers believe that Humanae Vitae has been responsible for declining church attendance, and it is clearly a major factor cited by unchurched Catholics.

"But the size of the Catholic population has grown since 1968, and the decline in Mass attendance has been stable for a decade. It is not likely that people are turning away from the church today because of the birth control issue; more likely, they reject the Church's teaching, and practice birth control as a matter of conscience, and go to church or not for other reasons".
(pp. 373-374)

The above represents the kind of intellectual betrayal and, flooding the faithful with the moral poison of relativism that has been engaged in by dissident priests, and which has resulted in the present malaise in the Church where millions have turned their back on the saving truths of Jesus Christ. Such heterodox instruction in the Church has only served to obscure the connection between relativism and the moral and social consequences of widespread contraception, including the atrocity of abortion.

As Fr. Bausch's Pilgrim Church shows, Catholic faith and morals continue to be undermined by catechetical and religious literature revealing a bias and hostility against the orthodox Catholicism defended by the Magisterium of Holy Church.

In my previous article "Fr. William J. Bausch: His Chickens Come to Roost" (The Wanderer, August 15, 2005), I noted that Twenty-Third Publications had no difficulty in helping to spread Fr. Bausch's views among Catholics, including:

• his advocating a "new face" for the Church — one that no longer has a "collective mentality of subservience to Rome."
• His "new face" for the Church would reveal, as previously noted, blatant opposition to Humanae Vitae,
• a tolerance for sexual sin (especially via sex education programs in Catholic schools);
• optional celibacy for priests;
• ordination of women priests;
• and welcoming homosexuals to the priesthood since "gay priests" can also be "caring, competent servants."
• His sympathy toward the "gay subculture" was indicated by his endorsement of the "gay rights movement."

Twenty-Third Publications has spread Fr. Bausch's errors, such as:

• his denial that bishops succeed to the place of the Apostles,
• and that there is no cultic priesthood in the New Testament as the early Christians rejected the notion of priesthood and sacrifice completely!

All the above represents the kind of corruption of Catholic teachings that has festered in the "culture of dissent" which has grievously harmed the unity of the Church in the United States and in other Western countries.

There is one saving grace in Pilgrim Church; It does not bear an Imprimatur or a Nihil Obstat.

 

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