Women Priests and Other Fantasies
A Book Review by Emanuel Valenza
Women Priests and Other Fantasies
by Father Vincent Miceli, S.J.
The Christopher Publishing House (1985)
407 pp., $19.95, hardback.
Available from Drama of Truth,
15 Oakland Avenue
Harrison, New York 10528
"As there were false prophets in the past history of our people, so you too will have your false teachers, who will insinuate their own disruptive views and disown the Master who purchased their freedom. They will destroy themselves very quickly; but there will be many who copy their shameful behavior and the Way of Truth will be brought into disrepute on their account" (2 Peter 21:3).
St. Peter's words—especially his opening line—call to mind Jeremiah's excoriation of the false prophets polluting Juda. Just as St. Peter warns against welcoming false prophets who "insinuate their own disruptive views and disown the Master who purchased their freedom," so Jeremiah cautions against accepting "godless prophets and priests" (23:11) who "retail visions of their own, and not what comes from the mouth of Yahweh" (23:16). St. Peter tells us that the false teachers are guilty of "shameful behavior" and that they will "destroy themselves." Similarly, Jeremiah laments that the false prophets and priests "are quick only at doing wrong and powerful only in crime" (23:10); and he adds that Yahweh "will bring disaster down on them" (23:12).
As it was in the time of Jeremiah so it is today. The number of "prophets prophesying lies, who announce their private delusions as prophetic (Jr. 23:26-27), is legion. Nefarious prophets and priests, moreover, have inundated even God's Vineyard. "I have found their wickedness even in my own house," says Yahweh (Jr. 23:11). And in general, "godlessness has spread throughout the land" (Jr. 23:15).
Notice that the false teachers who are disseminating spurious doctrines are living immoral lives, too. God cannot make His abode in those who refuse to be hearers and doers of His Word: "If anybody does not keep within the teaching of Christ but goes beyond it, he cannot have God with him: only those who keep to what He taught can have the Father and the Son with them" (2 John 9-10). And woe to those from whom God withdraws His grace; they fall prey to vice, as St. Paul explains (Romans 1:24-32). Such is the price we pay when we have "exchanged the truth of God for a lie," to quote St. Paul (Romans 1:25).
Christ said that whoever hears the Apostles and their successors, the bishops of the Catholic Church, hears Him; and whoever rejects them rejects Him and His Father (Luke 10:16). When the revealed teachings of the Church are renounced, the truth of God is exchanged for a lie. Lies lead to destruction, corruption and decay. "Catholics" who attack the doctrinal and moral teachings of the Church perform an act that is analogous to chopping off one's own head—they sever themselves from Christ and His Mystical Body, the Church, of which He is the Head. This means self-destruction because we separate ourselves from the channels of grace—the Sacraments of the Church—that Christ instituted for our sanctification. The reception of the Sacraments unites us with Christ and enables us to perform supernatural acts. "I am the vine," says Christ, "you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he shall be cast outside as the branch and wither" (John 15:5-6).
But today, so-called Catholics have severed Christ from His Church—analogous to the way the Modernists have divorced Jesus from Christ (the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith). The Catholic Church, it is said, is neither the Mystical Body of Christ, nor the possessor of His Revelation. And because the Church does not possess His Revelation, so goes the reasoning, she cannot teach, interpret and guard the Deposit of Faith. In short, we can hear Christ without hearing His Church. Adherence to the Church's doctrinal and moral teachings, therefore is not a criterion for being a Catholic—even a good one. As an example of this heretical position, let me cite Raymond Brown on Hans Küng: "I feel obliged to insist that . . . in no way would I ever impugn his stance as a dedicated Catholic" (The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, p. 35, n. 45). Because men like Raymond Brown do not believe that "he who hears you, hears Me," they jettison acceptance of the Church's doctrinal and moral teachings as a criterion for being a dedicated Catholic.
Even worse, many heretics who lambaste the Church and her revealed teachings often attribute their perfidiousness to the Holy Ghost! They are "acting under the influence of the Holy Spirit," or, they are "being open to the Spirit." Or the Holy Spirit is using them "as instruments for change."
Today the Holy Ghost can echo the words of Yahweh, who spoke through the mouth of Jeremiah:
I have heard what the prophets say who make their lying prophecies in my name. "I have had a dream," they say, "I have had a dream." How long will they retain this notion in their hearts, these prophets prophesying lies, who announce their private delusions as prophetic? . . . Let the prophet who has had a dream tell his dream as his own! And let him who receives a word from me, deliver it accurately (Jr. 23:25-27, 28).
Yes, we have false teachers who refuse to tell their dreams as their own. Yes, we have false teachers who refuse to deliver the words of Christ, as spoken through His Church, accurately. And yes, we have false teachers who lead God's "people astray with their lies and their pretensions" (Jr. 23:32).
Many of these lies, pretensions and delusions are unmasked in Fr. Vincent Miceli's Women Priests and Other Fantasies. Some are: Kung is a scholar and a dedicated Catholic; Bernard Haring is a leading Catholic moral theologian; Charles Curran is an exponent of academic freedom; Heidegger and Bultmann are in the same class as Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas; the doctrine of transubstantiation should be replaced by "transfinalization" and "transignification"; priests and religious who refuse to wear priestly and religious garb tell us nothing about themselves; liberation theology is compatible with Catholicism; and the "I can't impose my religious beliefs on others" mentality.
Consisting of previously published essays that document the theological, moral, and philosophical pandemonium characteristic of our time, Father Miceli's book brings home so well the truth of one of his favorite passages in Holy Scripture: "Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it." When we despise God and deify ourselves, all our activity comes to naught; for as Christ said, "without Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). We end up preferring our own fantasies instead of what is true and good, affirming with the witches in Macbeth that "fair is foul and foul is fair." Witness: Christianity is foul, heresy fair; giving birth is foul, murder of the unborn fair; the "sanctity of Life" position is foul, the "quality of life" one fair; purity is foul, unnatural sexual behavior is fair; to defend one's country in a just war is foul, pacifism fair; fighting totalitarianism is foul, submission fair; epistemological realism is foul, skepticism fair. Father Miceli explodes these fantasies and brings us back to reality.
An excellent example of the fantasizing that is popular among the radicals in the Church is the "Call to Action" conference held in Detroit in the mid-seventies. Sponsored by the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the nature, spirit and demands of this delegation reflect the tragic state of affairs of the Church in America today. Fr. Miceli, who participated in the conference as a representative of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy, describes it as "A Call to Revolution." His vivid description of the conference shows that not much has changed since 1976:
A movement of Catholic "Know-Nothings" was making a play for power in the Catholic Church. And their first move was to discredit their Church before the world by mounting a witch hunt against her, supposedly to uncover her injustices, her subversive political activity and her disloyalty to the ideals of her Master. In reality this witch hunt was meant to harass and weaken the entire ecclesiastical structure. These agitated Catholics revealed themselves fully at the conference. They were ignorant of Catholic dogma, morals, canon law, philosophy, culture and history. But the most dismal aspect of their ignorance was that they did not give a tinker's damn about it. Indeed they gloried in their ignorance! Their contempt for truth was demonstrated every time they tittered against papal teachings and the age-old doctrines of their Church. Their contempt for justice and moral balance was demonstrated when they demanded that the Church change her doctrines on artificial contraception, abortion, the right to national defense, the right to private property, the right of reasonable profit. Their contempt for authority—divine and human—was demonstrated when they shouted against laws reasonably restraining the use of liberty, when they rejected the divine plan for salvation, when they resented such metaphysical and physical differences as God established in the diverse vocations, sexes and services for the salvation of man" (p. 211).
In Women Priests and Other Fantasies, Father Miceli, as he does in all his works, "contends earnestly for the faith once and for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3). He "stand(s) firm, and hold(s) the teachings that (he has) learned" (2 Thes. 2:15). Thus the Father and the Son dwell in him: "If that abides in you which you have heard from the beginning, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father" (1 John 2:24).
In closing, the words of Malcolm Muggeridge, written in the Forward to Fr. Miceli's The Antichrist, are worth repeating because they are just as applicable to Women Priests and Other Fantasies:
In war it is necessary, not just to have adequate forces for attack and defense, but also to study the enemy's past and present strategy and tactics . . . . I thank God that there are priests and teachers like Father Miceli to acts as His intelligence officer and ensure that the soldiers of Christ may know who are their enemies, however camouflaged, and where are the booby-traps and ambushes, and take heart in the knowledge that, seemingly out-numbered and out-gunned as they may be, with God on their side victory at last is certain.
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