Fr. Jerry Pokorsky: Going the Wrong Way with Studied Ambiguity
Founder’s Quote
August 12, 2022
Poisoning Puerto Rico, by Kristine Christlieb
August 12, 2022
Archbishop Paglia depicted in the painting he commissioned.
By Fr. Jerry Pokorsky, Catholic Culture, Aug 11, 2022
In the 1944 movie classic, Going My Way, young Father Charles “Chuck” O’Malley (Bing Crosby) is an unconventional “progressive.” He is assigned to replace the stodgy Father Fitzgibbons (Barry Fitzgerald). In one scene, the priest-crooner teaches a young female runaway to sing in the privacy of his rectory office. The moviemakers ensure that we know the sweet young thing is 18 years old: the age of consent. The film is morally subversive. The wholesome popularity of the movie provides ambiguity and plausible deniability to disguise the sexual tension between a young woman and a young priest.
Sexual revolutionaries often use ambiguities to advance their agendas. In 1986, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger identified ambiguity as a tool of the homosexual agenda:
A careful examination of their public statements and the activities they promote reveals a studied ambiguity by which they [those promoting a change to the Church’s teaching on homosexuality] attempt to mislead the pastors and the faithful. For example, they may present the teaching of the Magisterium, but only as if it were an optional source for the formation of one’s conscience. Its specific authority is not recognized. Some of these groups will use the word ‘Catholic’ to describe either the organization or its intended members, yet they do not defend and promote the teaching of the Magisterium; indeed, they even openly attack it. While their members may claim a desire to conform their lives to the teaching of Jesus, in fact they abandon the teaching of his Church. …
Fr. Jerry Pokorsky is a priest of the Diocese of Arlington who has also served as a financial administrator in the Diocese of Lincoln. …