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We may want to start with chapter 2 of the book. It is avaiable at the website as a sample of the book. As time permits, I will post other information about the book.

Eight Challenges to James Likoudis

[and other Neo-Catholics]

by THOMAS E. WOODS, JR., Ph.D.

reprinted with kind permission from The Remnant Catholic Fortnightly

Eight Challenges to James Likoudis

Since book reviews allow the reviewer simply to ignore difficult arguments, I propose to James Likoudis (and to anyone who wishes to take me up on it) that - if he really believes our arguments are really so easy to dispense with - he directly answer the following [eight] of them, which would make much more interesting reading than his fairly predictable review.

Most of the following is drawn from the pages of The Great Faade. These are not necessarily the toughest challenges from the book by any means, but they are the ones that can be described most briefly.

1. Cardinal Walter Kasper, the John Paul II appointee who heads the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, openly admits that conciliar and post-conciliar ecumenism amounts to a rupture with the past, and says that Pope Pius XI's "ecumenism of return" (by which non-Catholics are expected to return to unity with the Catholic Church by becoming Catholics) "no longer applies after Vatican II." "Today," he says, "we no longer understand ecumenism in the sense of a return, by which the others would 'be converted' and return to being 'catholics.' This was expressly abandoned by Vatican II." On another occasion, he explained: "The old concept of the ecumenism of return has today been replaced by that of a common journey which directs Christians toward the goal of ecclesial communion understood as unity in reconciled diversity."

Challenge: Defend this.

2. Number 2 is related to number 1. This head of a pontifical council, appointed to that position and named a cardinal by Pope John Paul II, cites Vatican II in support of his position that conversion is not the goal of ecumenism.

Challenge: Since John Paul II is committed to the systematic implementation of Vatican II, why would he appoint a man to head the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity unless he shared Vatican II's outlook? Might Cardinal Kasper's view, in fact, actually be the one promoted by Vatican II? If not, how could a man of Kasper's background and education make such an elementary error in conciliar interpretation, and why has John Paul not corrected him? Are the texts of the Council completely blameless in all of this? Are traditionalists doing damage to the Church by demanding answers to these questions, or is Cardinal Kasper doing damage to the Church by abandoning Catholic teaching?

3. The Fraternity of St. Peter is a society of pontifical right established in 1988 for priests who wished to offer the traditional Latin Mass. No one questions the doctrinal orthodoxy of its priests. Yet two and a half years ago they had two perfectly orthodox seminary rectors removed and their election of their superior overturned by the Vatican.

Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos promised in June 2000 "that the papal Commission [Ecclesia Dei] will be more present, from now on, in the seminaries and the other houses of the Fraternity, and will watch attentively for their good behavior. It may also happen that the Ecclesia Dei Commission will intervene again, should it become necessary."

Did the Vatican "watch attentively" over the past forty years for "good behavior" at all the Novus Ordo seminaries that were becoming infested with homosexuals, whose criminal acts are currently bringing ruin and disgrace to diocese after diocese throughout the world? Meanwhile, the Jesuits and the Dominicans, whose orders have become sewers of heresy and scandal, have been left alone.

Challenge: Explain these priorities.

4. Active in dioceses throughout the world, the "neo-Catechumenal Way," a Judaized, semi-gnostic, intra-ecclesial
sect, conducts private, closed-door Saturday night "liturgies" which have been dispensed from all compliance with even the absurdly liberalized liturgical laws of the Novus Ordo. The neo-liturgy of this sect has no Offertory, and the congregation dances the horah around the altar-table before consuming a Host the size and consistency of a personal pan pizza, which tends to crumble and leave fragments all over the floor. The sect's lay founders, Kiko Arguello and Carmen Hernandez, who exhibit a shocking familiarity with the Pope, have concocted a neo-catechism in which the movement's adherents are trained to varying levels of gnostic initiation into the thinking of Kiko and Carmen. This "catechism" is rife with heterodoxy, including the proposition that the Church went astray after the eighth century and became obscured by an accretion of unnecessary customs and structures - precisely what the Protestants say -until its essence was freed again by Vatican II. The sect is armed with a letter of commendation from the Pope himself -which is, sad to say, quite authentic.

The Pope has repeatedly praised this "ecclesial movement" as one of the "fruits of Vatican II."

Challenge: Defend this. Or, alternatively, provide persuasive grounds for believing that any pre-conciliar pope would have viewed this organization with anything other than horrified disbelief.

5. The constant teaching of the Church is that the New Covenant supersedes the Old, but Cardinal Walter Kasper, speaking in his capacity as the papally appointed President of the Pontifical Council for Religious Relations with the Jews, declared that "the old theory of substitution is gone since the Second Vatican Council. For us Christians today the covenant with the Jewish people is a living heritage, a living reality. Therefore, the Church believes that Judaism, i.e. the faithful response of the Jewish people to God's irrevocable covenant, is salvific for them, because God is faithful to his promises."

On Christmas night 1998, John Cardinal O'Connor appeared on Nightline along with a young Catholic man who was converting to Judaism. Asked if the young man had Cardinal O'Connor's blessing, His Eminence replied: "Oh yes. Oh yes. He doesn't need it, but he has my blessing, if we're going to call it such, because that's what the Church teaches. I would be keenly disappointed if there are Christians, and most particularly Catholics, who watch this at Christmas time and have animosity towards Stephen, towards what has happened. If they want to have animosity, I'd rather they have it toward me. If they want to consider me wrong, that's fine. But I think that he is happy in his choice. I think that his mother is peaceful in his choice, and I think God is smiling on the whole thing."

In late 2001, the Pontifical Biblical Commission released a book entitled The Jewish People and the Holy Scriptures in the Christian Bible, according to which the Jews' continued wait for the Messiah is validated and justified by the Old Testament. According to papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls, speaking at a Vatican press conference, "It means it would be wrong for a Catholic to wait for the Messiah, but not for a Jew."

The Good Friday liturgy was altered in 1974 in such a way that the previous prayer's supplication that the Jews be converted to Christ was almost completely obscured.

The recent statement of the American bishops disavowing any missionary intent toward the Jews, and which was never corrected by Rome, hardly needs mentioning.

Challenge A: Show how any of this conforms to traditional Catholic teaching.

Challenge B: Who is damaging the Church: the traditionalists stunned at these examples of cowardice and infidelity, or these churchmen themselves, who in effect withhold the means of salvation from an entire group of people, and who thereby alienate huge numbers of conservative Protestants who know apostasy when they see it?

6. Roger Cardinal Mahony, Archbishop of Los Angeles - the largest archdiocese in the United States - is a scandal in himself. His "vocations" office weeds out potentially sane candidates by asking their position on the ordination of women and making their decision on that basis. (Hint: they're in favor.) He is almost immeasurably more sympathetic to homosexual Catholics than he is to those who want to attend the traditional Mass. He spent nearly $200 million on a "cathedral" that constitutes an outright assault on the Catholic faith, and he has all but repudiated transubstantiation in a pastoral letter on the liturgy. He is deeply implicated in covering up for and promoting sexual deviants and criminals.

Challenge: Why is such a man not rebuked in any way - and, to the contrary, greeted with a warm letter of papal esteem on the occasion of the opening of his alleged cathedral (also praised by the Pope)? Before answering that "collegiality" and ecclesiastical decentralization must be observed, be prepared to explain why the mere procedural norm of collegiality is more important than the countless souls who will almost certainly be lost as a direct result of Cardinal Mahony's tenure.

7. Garry Wills, now a well-known dissenter, in his recent book Why I Am a Catholic, has almost nothing kind to say about the Church, but he positively adores the Second Vatican Council. For that matter, so do all "progressives."

Challenge: Why is that?

8. Why do James Likoudis and CUF remain silent about all of these scandals, thereby allowing them to continue taking their course, but accuse traditionalists of "damaging the Church" for simply pointing out what is going on? This is a great challenge.

Here, from another list, is a reply to The Wanderer article.
Dear Mr. Gutierrez,

Your response to The Great Facade is absolutely pitiful. Your first three paragraphs are about the only thing worth taking the time to read since you do a good job paraphrasing what the book is all about. But then you go on the attack, and what a weak attack it is.

"Verbal Sorcery"?

You begin right off the bat by demonizing Mr. Ferrara and Mr. Woods. Where is the charity in these words? I find your word selection done in very poor taste. Your first paragraph following those demeaning words is invective nonsense. How about saving us the laundry list of your diatribe such as:

"lacking in intellectual soundness and honesty," "is not clear or logical," and "manipulative and rhetorical."

Hmm...sometimes I wonder if you wrote these words after reading your own article. Sorry, I don't mean to lower myself to your level, but I get angry when I see people lacking intellectual integrity in their arguments. After you have obviously let some steam off, you then move into this long diatribe into the term "neo-Catholic." Okay, I am reading and reading this article and all I am getting out of it is your constant use of the word "rhetoric." In just the first 5 paragraphs under "Verbal Sorcery," you use this term 14 times! Please give it a rest. As much as I would like the use the terms, "diatribe" and "nonsense" over and over again in my description of your article, I try to expand my vocabulary. Let me give you some advise: saying something over and over and over again will not make it magically come true and become a fact.

After wearing the word "rhetoric" would (even though you do use it on 6 more occasions), you finally open up the book and give us page numbers to look at. Let me now take a few things and comment on them:
"Meanwhile, the authors completely ignore terms like "tradition," "novelty," "Magisterium," "authority," "doctrine," "dogma," etc. These are all terms with specific theological meanings, and all terms which have been lost on the authors."
Actually Mr. Ferrara and Mr. Woods use these terms on a multitude of occasions. Maybe since you were so focused on the one term, "neo-Catholic," you lost sight on everything else in the book. For example, in chapter 2 alone, the use of the word, "Tradition" is used on 46 separate occasions; "Novelty" is used 9 times; "Magisterium" 9 times; "authority" 12 times, "doctrine" 35 times, and "dogma" 4 times. Your above comment is without merit.

I find the authors' definitions and terms very precise, for example, on page 12, it is very clear what the authors mean by the term "traditionalist": "a traditionalist is nothingmore or less than a Catholic who continues to worship as Catholics had always worshipped and to believe as Catholics had always believed until approximately 1965, when, in the name of Vatican II, the Church began to undergo a series of unprecedented "reforms" that altered virtually every aspect of ecclesial life." How much clearer can they make it on where they are positioning themselves? Do you have problem at all with the above statement, especially since you seem to ignore it in your article? Is this what Traditional Catholics are about or is it not?

You move back a few pages and begin to attack the Introduction of the book. In case you have forgotten, Introductions are to give the reader a general idea of what to expect, not explain in detail any ideas. I find it rather foolhardy to attack Introductions when you have nearly 400 other pages where you can be discussing. Let's stick with the meat-and-potatoes of the book.

You continue:
On page 19 the authors write, "A neo-Catholic, then, is someone who more or less lives according to the neo-Catholic idea." And what is the "neo-Catholic idea"? The authors tell us that the "focus of this book is the idea of neo-Catholicism." This "neo-Catholic idea can be illustrated with the objective statements and actions of particular individuals who are part of this new constituency of the Church."
And then you go on talking about "circular arguments." For the next 4 or five paragraphs, you refuse to recognize where Mr. Ferrara and Mr. Woods make it very clear on what "neo-Catholicism" is all about on page 19: "The neo-Catholic will maintain that every single one of the postconciliar novelties - including such things as altar girls - must be accepted and defended as legitimate 'developments' of Catholic Tradition, even though they are utterly without precedent in the history of the Church....The neo-Catholic, therefore, recognizes no real qualitative distinction between the Pope's doctrinal teaching and his legislation, commands, administration or public ecclesiastical policy." I think the problem is that The Wanderer has been caught with their pants down when they were quoted on page 19 when it exposed the position of theirs in The Pope, the Council and the Mass in their misconstrued idea of what Church authority pertains to.

Under your section, A Logical Answer, you continue to banter on concerning the term, neo-Catholic, and refusing to focus on the real issues at hand. The attempt to pit Mr. Davies against Mr. Ferrara is a bit of a reach. Mr. Ferrara cleared up any misconceptions in The Remnant article you mention, and it is too bad you can't see the truth in what he states. One question I have, are you discounting the words of Mr. George Sim Johnston, who is put on a high pedestal in The Wanderer circles? It is rather funny how you are quick to dismiss any quotes coming from your camp when used by Mr. Ferrara against your own position. May I suggest another article for your benefit: ourworld.compuserve.com/H...ulkins.htm

You continue:
When the authors write on page 240 that the "postconciliar program of innovation tends materially to oppose the perennial teaching of the Church in a number of areas," what do they imply but that the faith toward which neo-Catholic fidelity is directed is materially heretical?
On a number occasions throughout the book, this question has been raised and there is plenty of evidence that it is possible. Are you denying the possibility that a Pope or anyone inside the postconciliar establishment can fall into material heresy? That is what the authors are trying to get at, but it is really beside the point for, if you did continue reading the paragraph you quoted, the position of the authors is made very clear: "The postconciliar novelties have not been imposed upon the universal Church as matters of Catholic doctrine and belief, so that the indefectibility of the Church has not been implicated in the new teachings and practices. The conciliar Popes are valid Popes."

Then you move on to quote from page 250 concerning whether the authors take the position that neo-Catholics are a "kind of liberal." It's funny how you ignore the FACT that it was Mr. George Sim Johnston who pointed this out, and Mr. Ferrara and Mr. Woods only transmitted what has already been said. Sometime I understand how hard it is to have to argue around quotes made by your fellow "neo-Catholics."

You end your article with pure unsubstantiated emotional jargon: "Clear? Reasonable? Logical? Nonsense! The Great Faade is a farce. It is caught up with a term that is quintessentially manipulative. The term is meaningful only to those who do not actually desire to deal with the arguments of the Holy Father and Cardinal Ratzinger. It is a term that is designed to win weaker minds. It is an invention that ought to be abandoned entirely by the traditionalists."

Please stop trying to ignore the fact that the term was invented by the people in your own camp. Is it the fault of true Traditional Catholics that we have adopted a word which fits perfectly? Your article really is full of nothing. You end on the attack mode with such phrases as "deception," "twist words," "play games," "dishonest debate," and "abandon the Ferrawood argument altogether." Not once did you respond to anything of substance inside The Great Facade. As a matter of fact, this article of yours only confirms everything said in the book concerning neo-Catholics. I hope your next article on this series has something worth debating about, or better yet, maybe you will abandon this idea before you find yourself in with the rest of The Wanderer which has lost this debate the minute they abandoned Tradition.

I expect that Mr. Ferrara and Mr. Woods will be adding their own comments in due time and I will pray for you that you understand what a slippery slope you are traveling on. God Bless.

In Nomine Jesu et Maria,

Darian Fisher