Thursday, May 17, 2007
HERESY ON THE RIGHT
I have said before that while the heresy on the left is plain for all to see, the heresy on the right is more sinister and diabolical and better formulated to lead faithful Catholics astray.
Fr. Martin Lucia is a case in point.
What do you commonly assume when you see promotion of Eucharistic Adoration? If you are like me, you assume orthodoxy...traditional Roman Catholicism. Fr. Martin Lucia has written a book titled ROSARY MEDITATIONS FROM MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTTA, subtitled LOVING JESUS WITH THE HEART OF MARY - EUCHARISTIC MEDITATIONS ON THE 15 MYSTERIES OF THE ROSARY. It is being offered for sale by MyCatholicStore.com. Fr. Lucia's is quoted at the Cardinal Kung Foundation website where his December 1995 article "Let the Son Shine Out" by Rev. Martin Lucia, Director of Apostolate for Perpetual adoration can be read. He opens the paper by talking about Bishop Sheen. But all is not what it seems.
At the Rick A. Ross Institute website another side of Fr. Martin Lucia is offered for consideration. There you can read about the Apostolic Formation Center for Christian Renew-All, an organization within the Roman Catholic Diocese of Norwich. This organization practiced what they termed the "Divine Intimacy of the Holy Seed", which according to the Journal Inquirer at the Rick Ross website was "a perversion of the Catholic belief that a Christian can attain 'divine intimacy' with the savior." Put in plain language, this amounted to homosexual acts practiced for spiritual reasons. According to the article:
Two priests and more than a half-dozen former members of the organization say they were told personally by practicing members and by other priests associated with the group that participating in the homosexual ring was the ultimate sacrifice. Those who balked were told to "pray for light," they add.
Fr. Lucia's involvement with the center is explained in another article at the Rick Ross website titled "Apostolics cause Catholics to pull videotape". According to this second article:
A firm specializing in Catholic educational materials has halted production and distribution of a videocassette after learning that two priests appearing on the tape had been key members of a Somers group that was banned last year from the Norwich diocese.
A sp0kesman for the company said the discovery of the roles of the Rev. Martin Lucia and the Rev. Donald Higgins in the Apostolic Formation Center for Christian Renew-All also had led to the closing of a religious organization the priests had set up in Lyndhurst, N.J.
Both actions apparently came at a high cost to a New Jersey man who spent almost $750,000 on the tapes and the priests' organization to promote "perpetual adoration," the practice in some Catholic churches of having parishioners maintain a round-the-clock vigil in front of the Blessed Sacrament--the consecrated communion wafer that Catholics believe to be the body and blood of Christ. ...
...Norwich Bishop Daniel P. Reilly last June banned the organization which by then had changed its name to the Mary Queen of Apostles Formation Center, from his diocese.
Reilly acted after receiving dozens of complaints from ex-members that the center distorted Catholic doctrine and had become a destructive cult, with a minority of its followers believing the Second Coming of Christ would be in Somers.
The bishop also had been told that Legere, who died in 1978, and some men in his inner group of advisers had engaged in a homosexual ritual called the "Divine Intimacy of the Holy Seed," which Legere claimed was a way of "sharing" Christ.
The presence of Higgins and Lucia in the center gave Legere's sometimes bizarre teaching an aura of legitimacy, according to ex-members, who say the priests helped to foster the notion that Legere was divine and supported his often apocalyptic teaching. ...
Legere kicked Lucia, who had been one of his closest spiritual advisers, out of the apostolate in 1978 after an apparent falling out.
Within a year Lucia was promoting perpetual adoration.
There was a cloistered nun involved as well--a seer who "played a key role" in the center which was subsequently run by Charles A. Shattuck, Jr. and renamed Our Lady of Grace Formation Center, according to another article at the Rick Ross website. The nun was said to have the ability to bi-locate.
The EWTN website has posted the "Pastoral Letter by Bishop Daniel P. Reilly Concerning the Apostolic Formation Center" which Bishop Reilly had read in "many of the Catholic Churches in this area". The letter makes clear that Bishop Reilly withdrew "the privilege of priest and Blessed Sacrament from the Center." Bishop Reilly also "informed the Bishops of seventeen other dioceses where branches of the Center were said to exist that the Center had been closed at my initiative."
Thanks to Susanna for the links in this story. She tells me she has been following it for years, and that the story doesn't stop here, but progresses to the Philippines and to the mystical events surrounding the seer Julia Kim and the Eucharist that supposedly turned to flesh in her mouth.
As invariably happens when heresy of this sort is covered up with the intention to protect the laity from scandal, the scandal simply deepens, and the laity end up facing a worse situation in the end than they would have had to endure when the scandal was first discovered.
Only the light of day can rescue us from the perversion and heresy in our midst. Only when all of the apostasy within has been exposed will we have the hope of healing.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
