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Among the Ruins: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Catholic Church
This critical review of the Roman Catholic Church since the pivotal changes initiated in the 1960s by Vatican II paints a disturbing picture of decline and corruption. Dr. Paul L. Williams, a self-professed Tridentine or traditionalist Catholic, traces the various factors that have caused the Church to suffer cataclysmic losses in all aspects of its life and worship in recent decades. Williams illustrates the decline with telling statistics showing the stark difference between the robust number of clergy members, parishes, schools, and active church-going Catholics in 1965 versus the comparatively paltry number today. The author is highly critical of Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis for steering the church so far away from its traditional teachings and for a lack of oversight that allowed corruption to fester. Symptomatic of this failure of leadership are the recent pedophilia scandals, the ongoing financial corruption, a gay prostitution ring inside the Vatican, and criminal investigations of connections between the Holy See and organized crime.This unflinching critique from a devoted, lifelong Catholic is a wakeup call to all Catholics to restore their church to its former levels of moral leadership and influence.
- GenresHistory
366 pages, Hardcover
Published August 15, 2017
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June 7, 2024
A JOURNALISTIC OVERVIEW OF “ALL THAT’S WRONG” IN RECENT CATHOLIC HISTORY
Journalist Paul L. Williams wrote in the ‘Apologia’ of this 2017 book, “Among the ruins of my childhood faith, I have written this book. Striving for objectivity, I have included endnotes to document my every claim. But every story is told from the point of view of its author. And this story contains evidence of my outrage at Holy Mother Church and the abandonment of all that is sacred, as well as a good measure of my rue over what has been relinquished and forever lost.”
In the first chapter, he notes, “Prior to Vatican II, Catholics remained cocooned in a place where time stood still… Catholics were assured that the church would always remain the same… Of course, it was all illusionary. Changes---significant changes---had crept into the church over the ages… Catholic[s] were blissfully ill-informed of such developments, primarily because history had been periodically raided and ransacked by Catholic apologists to support the premise that nothing in the Roman Church really had changed…” (Pg. 21)
He suggests, “Testimony also surfaced that the list of Catholic Masons included Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI, the popes who had presided over the sessions of Vatican II… Most Catholic apologists dismiss the allegation that John XXIII and Paul VI were members of the Masonic lodges as a baseless conspiracy theory. But support for this contention was provided by Virgilio Guido, the former head of the Italian Grand Orient… along with the findings of investigative reporters…’ (Pg. 44-45)
Of the liturgical changes following Vatican II, he asserts, “The decline in attendance at weekly Mass, and all other phases of Catholic life and worship, can be traced to the institution of the liturgical changes at the close of Vatican II.” (Pg. 68)
After the death of John XXIII, he states, “Giovanni Battista Montini was the CIA’s anointed candidate for the papacy… In compliance with the CIA’s wishes, [Cardinal] Spellman gained support for Montini from the other American cardinals… Proof of the rigging was later discovered by Roland Flamini. The Time correspondence uncovered tell-tale evidence that the CIA were able to confirm Montini’s election before the puff of white smoke emanated from the Sistine Chapel and expressed their enormous pleasure that the conclave had proceeded in accordance with their plan.” (Pg. 71-73)
Of Paul VI’s issuing of the encyclical ‘Humanae Vitae,’ he comments, “By issuing this encyclical, the Holy Father remained blithely unaware that the council had ushered in a new age of moral subjectivism that no papal pronouncement could banish from the sanctified realm of the church.” (Pg. 111)
He points out, “A study published by the Archdiocese of New York showed that attendance at Sunday Mass … fell by 23 percent from 1959 to 1970… and 38 percent of the Catholics polled said they ‘never’ or ‘practically never’ went to confession, as opposed to 18 percent a decade earlier… From 1963 to 1968, a total of 7,137 priests asked to be dispensed from the obligation of the priesthood; 5,652 of these requests were granted… From 1965 to 1970, religious sisters in record numbers abandoned their habits and left their convents to appear in blouses and blue jeans in rallies, marches, and sit-ins for a host of social causes… Other religious sisters became involved in the women’s liberation movement and shunned any semblance of adherence to the rule of episcopal cloister… From 1965 to 1980, the number of religious sisters in American diminished from 179,954 to 126,517 By 2014, only 48,546 were left---of that number, the average age was 65.” (Pg. 116-120)
He states, “On March 16, 1978, Aldo Moro, Italy’s prime minister was kidnapped… As soon as the crime occurred, the military secret service placed the blame on the Red Brigades, a Communist terror organization… On May 9, 1978, Moro’s body riddled with bullets, was found in the trunk of a red Renault… Fr. Felix Morlion, a Belgian priest… established, with funding from the CIA, the Pro Deo University… He also reportedly became a recruiter of terrorists and assassins… Fr. Antonio Mennini, a Vatican official, served as the intermediary between Moro and his family during the time of the captivity… And the Vatican, to this day, continues to shield Moro’s confessor from ever having to testify in state hearings concerning the prime minister’s abduction and death… Why would the Vatican seek the murder of Moro?... The Holy See… should receive an annual stipend from the Italian government, since the Vatican was an international attraction that brought millions of tourists with their vacation money to Rome.” (Pg. 142-144)
He observes, “Another rumored member of the Vatican’s gay subculture was Joseph Ratzinger… In an article for the Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan wrote, ‘[Ratzinger’s] gayness is almost wince-inducing…’
Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine monk and well-known sociologist, said, ‘I have asked a number of Roman clerics and members of the Roman press corps if they think the pope is gay… every one was convinced that Pope Benedict XVI is gay.’” (Pg. 173)
He suggests, “Despite Opus Dei’s espousal of an intransigent obedience to Catholic doctrine, the movement violates a cardinal tenet of canon law by remaining a ‘secret society,’ like Freemasonry. Opus Dei does not publish its membership list, and members … are forbidden to reveal their adherence to the movement without the express permission of their superiors.” (Pg. 215)
He points out, “As financial scandal gave way to more financial scandal within the Vatican, reports of theft and embezzlement by prelates began to mount throughout the United States… Michael Ryan, a federal law enforcement official … calculated that $90 million in funds are embezzled every year from the Sunday collection at US Catholic churches… Theft by priests was not limited to pilfering the collection plates but extended to embezzlement from parochial schools, Catholic charities, and various religious orders.” (Pg. 231, 234)
He asserts, “During the summer of 1999, John Paul II decided that heaven was not a real place… Seven days later, he came to the conclusion the hell also was not an empirical terrain… The pope was on a roll. On August 4, he announced that purgatory also was not real.” (Pg. 260)
More statistics: “By 1996, the moral decline in Italy, where Catholics number 95 percent of the populace, became so dire that John Paul II called upon volunteers to go from door to door in an effort to persuade people to ‘return to church.’ The effort was a complete failure. By 2000, less than 25 percent of Italian Catholics mad an appearance at Sunday Mass… the magnificent churches and cathedrals in France… were visited almost entirely by tourists, since less than 8 percent of the country’s Catholics opted to sit through the liturgy once a month... and the overwhelming majority consisted of poorly educated, rural women… Throughout Europe, the church has lost more than 1.5 million members since the close of Vatican II. And every year the situation continued to worsen… the outlook for the future of Catholics was not even sunny in Mexico, where the number of worshippers in recent years fell from 96 percent to 82 percent.” (Pg. 265-266)
He ends with an Epilogue of attending a Saturday 5:00 evening Mass: “The congregants could wit through the liturgy and still have time for dinner and a movie… Those in attendance were casually dressed… the church was mostly empty and the few who occupied the pews were old and gray and full of sleep. No one was kneeling and saying the Rosary… The priest entered from the rear of the church behind four ladies in white gowns… [and] two female lectors in attire that seemed to be snatched from the wardrobe of Hillary Clinton… Following the Kyrie Eleison and the Gloria, which had been stripped of their Greek and Latin majesty… The homily… was mercifully short… the congregation was called upon to sing a hymn .. that no one could sing, not even the song leader… the communicants lined up to receive the sacred elements with all the reverence of customers headed to a checkout counter at the local Wal-Mart… How had it come to this?... when the majestic Mass that inspired many of the world’s greatest thinkers, artists, and composer, transformed into a religious travesty… Many [congregants] had come in search of some hint of transcendence… a sense of spiritual belonging… What was lost could never be recaptured… It was time to leave.” (Pg. 275-277)
This is a difficult book to assess. On the one hand, Williams does a remarkable journalistic task of mentioning virtually every “noteworthy” event in recent Catholic history. On the other hand, one has to retreat to the footnotes at the back of the book to identify many of his sources (such as David Yallop, author of ‘In God’s Name: An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I”), and he quotes critics in full, without ever giving ‘the other side’ a hearing. On the one hand, Williams (who once wrote books such as “Everything You Wanted to know about the Catholic Church”) seems almost like a sedevacantist who dearly misses the Latin Mass, while on the other hand he seems like a skeptic rejoicing in the ‘outing’ of the sexual abuse scandals. This book will be of great interest to skeptics, but probably of little interest to any but the most disillusioned Catholics and ex-Catholics.
Journalist Paul L. Williams wrote in the ‘Apologia’ of this 2017 book, “Among the ruins of my childhood faith, I have written this book. Striving for objectivity, I have included endnotes to document my every claim. But every story is told from the point of view of its author. And this story contains evidence of my outrage at Holy Mother Church and the abandonment of all that is sacred, as well as a good measure of my rue over what has been relinquished and forever lost.”
In the first chapter, he notes, “Prior to Vatican II, Catholics remained cocooned in a place where time stood still… Catholics were assured that the church would always remain the same… Of course, it was all illusionary. Changes---significant changes---had crept into the church over the ages… Catholic[s] were blissfully ill-informed of such developments, primarily because history had been periodically raided and ransacked by Catholic apologists to support the premise that nothing in the Roman Church really had changed…” (Pg. 21)
He suggests, “Testimony also surfaced that the list of Catholic Masons included Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI, the popes who had presided over the sessions of Vatican II… Most Catholic apologists dismiss the allegation that John XXIII and Paul VI were members of the Masonic lodges as a baseless conspiracy theory. But support for this contention was provided by Virgilio Guido, the former head of the Italian Grand Orient… along with the findings of investigative reporters…’ (Pg. 44-45)
Of the liturgical changes following Vatican II, he asserts, “The decline in attendance at weekly Mass, and all other phases of Catholic life and worship, can be traced to the institution of the liturgical changes at the close of Vatican II.” (Pg. 68)
After the death of John XXIII, he states, “Giovanni Battista Montini was the CIA’s anointed candidate for the papacy… In compliance with the CIA’s wishes, [Cardinal] Spellman gained support for Montini from the other American cardinals… Proof of the rigging was later discovered by Roland Flamini. The Time correspondence uncovered tell-tale evidence that the CIA were able to confirm Montini’s election before the puff of white smoke emanated from the Sistine Chapel and expressed their enormous pleasure that the conclave had proceeded in accordance with their plan.” (Pg. 71-73)
Of Paul VI’s issuing of the encyclical ‘Humanae Vitae,’ he comments, “By issuing this encyclical, the Holy Father remained blithely unaware that the council had ushered in a new age of moral subjectivism that no papal pronouncement could banish from the sanctified realm of the church.” (Pg. 111)
He points out, “A study published by the Archdiocese of New York showed that attendance at Sunday Mass … fell by 23 percent from 1959 to 1970… and 38 percent of the Catholics polled said they ‘never’ or ‘practically never’ went to confession, as opposed to 18 percent a decade earlier… From 1963 to 1968, a total of 7,137 priests asked to be dispensed from the obligation of the priesthood; 5,652 of these requests were granted… From 1965 to 1970, religious sisters in record numbers abandoned their habits and left their convents to appear in blouses and blue jeans in rallies, marches, and sit-ins for a host of social causes… Other religious sisters became involved in the women’s liberation movement and shunned any semblance of adherence to the rule of episcopal cloister… From 1965 to 1980, the number of religious sisters in American diminished from 179,954 to 126,517 By 2014, only 48,546 were left---of that number, the average age was 65.” (Pg. 116-120)
He states, “On March 16, 1978, Aldo Moro, Italy’s prime minister was kidnapped… As soon as the crime occurred, the military secret service placed the blame on the Red Brigades, a Communist terror organization… On May 9, 1978, Moro’s body riddled with bullets, was found in the trunk of a red Renault… Fr. Felix Morlion, a Belgian priest… established, with funding from the CIA, the Pro Deo University… He also reportedly became a recruiter of terrorists and assassins… Fr. Antonio Mennini, a Vatican official, served as the intermediary between Moro and his family during the time of the captivity… And the Vatican, to this day, continues to shield Moro’s confessor from ever having to testify in state hearings concerning the prime minister’s abduction and death… Why would the Vatican seek the murder of Moro?... The Holy See… should receive an annual stipend from the Italian government, since the Vatican was an international attraction that brought millions of tourists with their vacation money to Rome.” (Pg. 142-144)
He observes, “Another rumored member of the Vatican’s gay subculture was Joseph Ratzinger… In an article for the Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan wrote, ‘[Ratzinger’s] gayness is almost wince-inducing…’
Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine monk and well-known sociologist, said, ‘I have asked a number of Roman clerics and members of the Roman press corps if they think the pope is gay… every one was convinced that Pope Benedict XVI is gay.’” (Pg. 173)
He suggests, “Despite Opus Dei’s espousal of an intransigent obedience to Catholic doctrine, the movement violates a cardinal tenet of canon law by remaining a ‘secret society,’ like Freemasonry. Opus Dei does not publish its membership list, and members … are forbidden to reveal their adherence to the movement without the express permission of their superiors.” (Pg. 215)
He points out, “As financial scandal gave way to more financial scandal within the Vatican, reports of theft and embezzlement by prelates began to mount throughout the United States… Michael Ryan, a federal law enforcement official … calculated that $90 million in funds are embezzled every year from the Sunday collection at US Catholic churches… Theft by priests was not limited to pilfering the collection plates but extended to embezzlement from parochial schools, Catholic charities, and various religious orders.” (Pg. 231, 234)
He asserts, “During the summer of 1999, John Paul II decided that heaven was not a real place… Seven days later, he came to the conclusion the hell also was not an empirical terrain… The pope was on a roll. On August 4, he announced that purgatory also was not real.” (Pg. 260)
More statistics: “By 1996, the moral decline in Italy, where Catholics number 95 percent of the populace, became so dire that John Paul II called upon volunteers to go from door to door in an effort to persuade people to ‘return to church.’ The effort was a complete failure. By 2000, less than 25 percent of Italian Catholics mad an appearance at Sunday Mass… the magnificent churches and cathedrals in France… were visited almost entirely by tourists, since less than 8 percent of the country’s Catholics opted to sit through the liturgy once a month... and the overwhelming majority consisted of poorly educated, rural women… Throughout Europe, the church has lost more than 1.5 million members since the close of Vatican II. And every year the situation continued to worsen… the outlook for the future of Catholics was not even sunny in Mexico, where the number of worshippers in recent years fell from 96 percent to 82 percent.” (Pg. 265-266)
He ends with an Epilogue of attending a Saturday 5:00 evening Mass: “The congregants could wit through the liturgy and still have time for dinner and a movie… Those in attendance were casually dressed… the church was mostly empty and the few who occupied the pews were old and gray and full of sleep. No one was kneeling and saying the Rosary… The priest entered from the rear of the church behind four ladies in white gowns… [and] two female lectors in attire that seemed to be snatched from the wardrobe of Hillary Clinton… Following the Kyrie Eleison and the Gloria, which had been stripped of their Greek and Latin majesty… The homily… was mercifully short… the congregation was called upon to sing a hymn .. that no one could sing, not even the song leader… the communicants lined up to receive the sacred elements with all the reverence of customers headed to a checkout counter at the local Wal-Mart… How had it come to this?... when the majestic Mass that inspired many of the world’s greatest thinkers, artists, and composer, transformed into a religious travesty… Many [congregants] had come in search of some hint of transcendence… a sense of spiritual belonging… What was lost could never be recaptured… It was time to leave.” (Pg. 275-277)
This is a difficult book to assess. On the one hand, Williams does a remarkable journalistic task of mentioning virtually every “noteworthy” event in recent Catholic history. On the other hand, one has to retreat to the footnotes at the back of the book to identify many of his sources (such as David Yallop, author of ‘In God’s Name: An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I”), and he quotes critics in full, without ever giving ‘the other side’ a hearing. On the one hand, Williams (who once wrote books such as “Everything You Wanted to know about the Catholic Church”) seems almost like a sedevacantist who dearly misses the Latin Mass, while on the other hand he seems like a skeptic rejoicing in the ‘outing’ of the sexual abuse scandals. This book will be of great interest to skeptics, but probably of little interest to any but the most disillusioned Catholics and ex-Catholics.
December 9, 2017
Mostly bunk. Everybody knows the Vatican has had some financial and sexual scandals. But to blame all of that on plots involving the Freemasons, Mafia, CIA, and Columbian drug lords, and to claim that the Vatican was involved even in kidnapping and murdering Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, challenges the credulity of all but the most diehard of conspiracy theory addicts.
Author Paul L. Williams blames the troubles of the church not only on his extensive cast of variously organized villains, but also on alleged changes of doctrine, of which he distinguishes two sorts: abandonment of the prohibition of usury, due to the Church's entry into banking, and doctrinal and liturgical changes emerging from the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II). The problems with his theses are that he doesn't check the "facts" of his conspiracy theories, and he doesn't understand the doctrines of usury or the teaching of Vatican II.
NO CRITICAL SENSE
The astonishing claims in this book are "supported" by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of notes. But quantity of references cannot make up for deficiency of quality. Some citations refer to internet sources such as blogs and forums, where the authority, competence, and sometimes even the identity of the poster are unknown. A large proportion of the references go to tertiary sources — often to books of a sensationalist character, to judge from their titles.
Regardless of the intrinsic quality of his sources, an author has a responsibility to examine the evidence with a critical eye. But instead of weighing the evidence, pro et contra, like a careful historian, this author gives credence to almost every vicious rumor. I am not greatly surprised to learn that the author is facing a libel suit from McMaster University. Because of its reckless disregard for evaluating the evidence, I have put this book on my Goodreads "Fiction" bookshelf.
DOCTRINAL CHANGES?
Usury
The Church has traditionally taught that usury (the charging of interest on a loan) is unjust. Williams claims that the Vatican's acquisition of Banca di Roma (around 1929) "represented a crucial theological development within Roman Catholicism. The Holy See was now engaged in the practice of usury — abandoning a doctrine that it had professed throughout the ages." (p. 32) But here he is clearly confusing practice with doctrine. The claim of the Catholic Church to infallibility extends to doctrine concerning faith and morals, not practice; and practice does not change doctrine. Assuming the Vatican violated the Church's own law concerning usury, that would not constitute a change of the law or doctrine. Even if a pope were to commit armed robbery or murder — as perhaps some of the notoriously evil Renaissance popes have done — that would not mean that the Church began teaching that murder and robbery are morally okay.
Williams cites one book and two articles on the development of the doctrine of usury. I looked at the articles. The article by John T. Noonan [1] is thought-provoking, but stops short of concluding there has been any doctrinal change concerning usury; it merely says that almost no one takes the doctrine seriously any more. The other, by Jay W. Richards [2], offers a reasoned and very plausible defense of the idea that the moral teaching on usury, without changing essentially, has changed in its application, due to changing economic conditions. In fact, anyone even slightly acquainted with economics and finance understands that money today is mostly not coins and bills, but numbers in bank accounts: the nature of money really has changed. Williams fails to engage intellectually with either of these writers; he simply brushes them off as "Catholic apologists."
Whether the change in the nature of money is sufficient to justify interest on loans is a question too complicated to settle here, but I will just mention one other article (not cited in the book), Thomas Storck's "Is Usury Still a Sin?" [3], which provides historical background and considers the practical questions about how we should act today.
[1] John T. Noonan, Jr., "Development in Moral Doctrine" (PDF), Theological Studies 54 (1993), pp. 662-677.
[2] Jay W. Richards, "Did the Church Change Its Doctrine on Usury?", Crisis Magazine, Dec. 18, 2014.
[3] Thomas Storck, "Is Usury Still a Sin?", The Distributist Review, January 30, 2012.
Vatican II and Paul VI
Williams's discussion of the teachings of Vatican II is so flawed that I will become sick if I try to point out the errors in detail. Therefore I will limit myself to one observation. On pages 80–82, he quotes two passages from one of the Council documents, Lumen gentium, and then proceeds to interpret them in a way that twists their obvious meaning into the opposite sense. The quoted passage plainly states that the bishops exercise their teaching authority only in union with and by the consent of the pope; Williams, bizarrely, makes it sound like it means that the Pope is a mere figurehead.
Pope Paul VI reigned during the second part of the council, and Williams not only claims that he was a wimp who let the Council get out of control and then cried about it, but even accuses him of practicing homosexuality. Neither charge makes any sense.
Since the bishops can teach only by the consent of the Pope, Paul could have refused to sign and promulgate any document produced by the Council. It's my understanding that the popes (John XXIII and Paul VI) did not even allow the Council to consider the question of birth control. This topic was given to a commission, which produced a majority of 60/64 report recommending approval of contraception. However, Paul instead sided with the minority of the commission and issued the encyclical Humanae vitae, reiterating the Church's traditional teaching that contraception is contrary to the will of God. Some wimp!
If Pope Paul were a homosexual, he should have said that contraception is a good thing — because when you say that you can use contraception to separate reproduction from sex, it's going only a little farther to say you can also separate it from reproduction by joining male with male, or female with female. (Not only St. Thomas Aquinas but also Aristotle recognized contraceptive sex as well as homosexual acts to be varieties of "unnatural vice.") What idiocy!
CONCLUSION
According to the book jacket, the author is "a self-professed Tridentine or traditionalist Catholic." But if the world were as full of conspiracy as the book itself implies, its author would have to be some kind of wolf dressed up in Tridentine wool, an agent of the Freemasons, Communists, Nazis, CIA, KGB, or some other evil organization. I do not say he is a wolf, though. I do not accept the conclusion of that argument — because I do not accept the premise. Neither should anyone else.
There are probably some truths in Among the Ruins, since the most plausible lies are those that contain a grain of verity; but the labor of disentangling them from pervasive falsehood is difficult and probably not worthwhile. So, caveat lector — read with caution!
Better yet, don't read it at all. The best way to deal with irresponsible rumor mongering is not to listen. For my part, I am stopping about in the middle, and will return the book to the public library without reading the rest of its trashy pages. If I owned the book, I would like to just burn it.
Author Paul L. Williams blames the troubles of the church not only on his extensive cast of variously organized villains, but also on alleged changes of doctrine, of which he distinguishes two sorts: abandonment of the prohibition of usury, due to the Church's entry into banking, and doctrinal and liturgical changes emerging from the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II). The problems with his theses are that he doesn't check the "facts" of his conspiracy theories, and he doesn't understand the doctrines of usury or the teaching of Vatican II.
NO CRITICAL SENSE
The astonishing claims in this book are "supported" by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of notes. But quantity of references cannot make up for deficiency of quality. Some citations refer to internet sources such as blogs and forums, where the authority, competence, and sometimes even the identity of the poster are unknown. A large proportion of the references go to tertiary sources — often to books of a sensationalist character, to judge from their titles.
Regardless of the intrinsic quality of his sources, an author has a responsibility to examine the evidence with a critical eye. But instead of weighing the evidence, pro et contra, like a careful historian, this author gives credence to almost every vicious rumor. I am not greatly surprised to learn that the author is facing a libel suit from McMaster University. Because of its reckless disregard for evaluating the evidence, I have put this book on my Goodreads "Fiction" bookshelf.
DOCTRINAL CHANGES?
Usury
The Church has traditionally taught that usury (the charging of interest on a loan) is unjust. Williams claims that the Vatican's acquisition of Banca di Roma (around 1929) "represented a crucial theological development within Roman Catholicism. The Holy See was now engaged in the practice of usury — abandoning a doctrine that it had professed throughout the ages." (p. 32) But here he is clearly confusing practice with doctrine. The claim of the Catholic Church to infallibility extends to doctrine concerning faith and morals, not practice; and practice does not change doctrine. Assuming the Vatican violated the Church's own law concerning usury, that would not constitute a change of the law or doctrine. Even if a pope were to commit armed robbery or murder — as perhaps some of the notoriously evil Renaissance popes have done — that would not mean that the Church began teaching that murder and robbery are morally okay.
Williams cites one book and two articles on the development of the doctrine of usury. I looked at the articles. The article by John T. Noonan [1] is thought-provoking, but stops short of concluding there has been any doctrinal change concerning usury; it merely says that almost no one takes the doctrine seriously any more. The other, by Jay W. Richards [2], offers a reasoned and very plausible defense of the idea that the moral teaching on usury, without changing essentially, has changed in its application, due to changing economic conditions. In fact, anyone even slightly acquainted with economics and finance understands that money today is mostly not coins and bills, but numbers in bank accounts: the nature of money really has changed. Williams fails to engage intellectually with either of these writers; he simply brushes them off as "Catholic apologists."
Whether the change in the nature of money is sufficient to justify interest on loans is a question too complicated to settle here, but I will just mention one other article (not cited in the book), Thomas Storck's "Is Usury Still a Sin?" [3], which provides historical background and considers the practical questions about how we should act today.
[1] John T. Noonan, Jr., "Development in Moral Doctrine" (PDF), Theological Studies 54 (1993), pp. 662-677.
[2] Jay W. Richards, "Did the Church Change Its Doctrine on Usury?", Crisis Magazine, Dec. 18, 2014.
[3] Thomas Storck, "Is Usury Still a Sin?", The Distributist Review, January 30, 2012.
Vatican II and Paul VI
Williams's discussion of the teachings of Vatican II is so flawed that I will become sick if I try to point out the errors in detail. Therefore I will limit myself to one observation. On pages 80–82, he quotes two passages from one of the Council documents, Lumen gentium, and then proceeds to interpret them in a way that twists their obvious meaning into the opposite sense. The quoted passage plainly states that the bishops exercise their teaching authority only in union with and by the consent of the pope; Williams, bizarrely, makes it sound like it means that the Pope is a mere figurehead.
Pope Paul VI reigned during the second part of the council, and Williams not only claims that he was a wimp who let the Council get out of control and then cried about it, but even accuses him of practicing homosexuality. Neither charge makes any sense.
Since the bishops can teach only by the consent of the Pope, Paul could have refused to sign and promulgate any document produced by the Council. It's my understanding that the popes (John XXIII and Paul VI) did not even allow the Council to consider the question of birth control. This topic was given to a commission, which produced a majority of 60/64 report recommending approval of contraception. However, Paul instead sided with the minority of the commission and issued the encyclical Humanae vitae, reiterating the Church's traditional teaching that contraception is contrary to the will of God. Some wimp!
If Pope Paul were a homosexual, he should have said that contraception is a good thing — because when you say that you can use contraception to separate reproduction from sex, it's going only a little farther to say you can also separate it from reproduction by joining male with male, or female with female. (Not only St. Thomas Aquinas but also Aristotle recognized contraceptive sex as well as homosexual acts to be varieties of "unnatural vice.") What idiocy!
CONCLUSION
According to the book jacket, the author is "a self-professed Tridentine or traditionalist Catholic." But if the world were as full of conspiracy as the book itself implies, its author would have to be some kind of wolf dressed up in Tridentine wool, an agent of the Freemasons, Communists, Nazis, CIA, KGB, or some other evil organization. I do not say he is a wolf, though. I do not accept the conclusion of that argument — because I do not accept the premise. Neither should anyone else.
There are probably some truths in Among the Ruins, since the most plausible lies are those that contain a grain of verity; but the labor of disentangling them from pervasive falsehood is difficult and probably not worthwhile. So, caveat lector — read with caution!
Better yet, don't read it at all. The best way to deal with irresponsible rumor mongering is not to listen. For my part, I am stopping about in the middle, and will return the book to the public library without reading the rest of its trashy pages. If I owned the book, I would like to just burn it.
November 4, 2021
I really wanted to not like this book but the author makes some great points. I think a lot of the development of Vatican II was good but there are undeniable disasters from it. The author is at his best when he is exploring the links between the CIA and the Vatican, as well as clearly spelling out the massive doctrinal changes the Church has gone through (I think they're good, the author does not). A lot of his allegations seem to be speculation but it's good not to trust those in power. I'd cautiously recommend this book lol.
October 9, 2017
Enlightening and sometimes chilling history of the past 50-60 years of the Catholic Church and what this author believes caused the current crises in the church. Covers a large amount of territory including some things I had only heard of but never investigated in detail. A real eye opener.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews