The Los Angeles Religious Education Congress: Mired in Dissent

In recent years, there has been a shocking increase in dissent against the age-old doctrines, traditions, and practices of the Church. As the promoters of progressivism seize the opportunity to push for Revolution and a recasting of the Church in their own image, Catholics in the pew are faced with confusion and even a crisis of identity. Indeed, many question what it means to be Catholic.

In response, there has been a profound and healthy reaction. People are searching for and cherishing those practices and beliefs that have always and everywhere united Catholics within the bosom of St. Peter’s Barque. This is seen in the growth of interest in the Traditional Latin Mass, Communion on the tongue and Chapel Veil use.

Both groups are growing in number and dedication, and the disagreement between the two is mounting. As has often happened throughout history, everything indicates that this will lead to a supreme conflict that will decide the future of the Church: Will She further incorporate the errors of the world until they swallow Her up? This would transform Her into something new and unrecognizable. Or will She once again triumph over the world and reaffirm the sublime and spotless form that he has always had and thus renew the face of the earth?

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Faithful Catholics are confirmed in their conviction that the latter will happen by the infallible promise of Christ that the gates of Hell will never prevail against the Church. The late Catholic leader, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, eloquently expressed this conviction when he wrote, “Amid the storms through which She passes today, [the Church] could proudly and tranquilly say: “Alios ego vidi ventos; alias prospexi animo procellas” (“I have already seen other winds, I have already beheld other storms”).¹ The Church has fought in other lands, against adversaries from among other peoples, and she will undoubtedly continue to face problems and enemies quite different from those of today until the end of time.”²

In spite of this certainty, Catholics must get involved. In face of this struggle, there is no room for complacency or inactivity because, although God will have the final victory, He desires the faithful to be its instruments. Thus it was with St. Joan of Arc and the English threat and St. Athanasius who triumphantly struggled against Arianism.

That is why the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) urges Catholics to protest the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress (REC), which for decades has been mired in dissent and thus pushed the agenda of Catholic progressivism within the Mystical Body of Christ.

Even a short perusal of this year’s program demonstrates that the speakers and proceedings at this year’s event will, once again, promote that dissent and advance its nefarious agenda, as explained below.

Promotion of Homosexual Sin and Sexual Deviancy

One of the most infamous aspects of REC events has been its promotion of homosexual sin and sexual deviancy. This year’s schedule promises to offer more of the same.

Unhappily, even the youth day will include a talk that does just this. Darius Villalobos will be presenting the lecture Celebrating Diversity Through Critical Conversations. He is Senior Project Manager for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry. In an article for the dissident organization New Ways Ministry, he spoke favorably about attending a “rainbow Mass” with his homosexual godfather.³

Fr. Chris Ponnet will be presenting a lecture that draws a parallel between Disney stories and Our Lord’s parables. Fr. Ponnet has spoken openly in favor of the homosexual lifestyle. At the 2018 REC, he spoke of our responsibility to “affirm” homosexuals in their journey as they “begin to identify with either what is normative, or from their perspective what is normative… they identify themselves in a world that is unto themselves.” In the same talk, he affirmed that some children as early as second or third grade already know that they are homosexual.⁴

Dr. Tony Alonso will deliver two talks this year. He believes that theological education must include input from other religions and homosexuals. In answer to the question of how to make such learning successful in the future, he stated, “Anything like an adequate understanding will require knowledge from multiple perspectives. The pluralism essential to our discernment requires diversities of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, faith, region, discipline, and vocation.”⁵

The notorious Fr. James Martin will be giving two talks. Fr. Martin is well known for his promotion of homosexual sin. He often does so in a sinuous way that led writer Kennedy Hall to call him “devilishly cunning.”⁶

At other times, Fr. James Martin is more direct in his approach. For example, he has said that Catholics must “reverence” homosexual unions; supported transgenderism for children; favored homosexual kissing during Holy Mass; called dissident nun (Sr. Jeannine Gramick) a “saint”; welcomed an award from the condemned group New Ways Ministry; tweeted a blasphemous depiction of Our Lady of Guadalupe brandishing a snake and stepping on an angel; written the book Building a Bridge (which undermines Catholic teaching on homosexual sin); and praised the blasphemous “rainbow rosary.”⁷

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Fr. Gregory Boyle will also be speaking. He is well known for his work reforming gang members in Los Angeles. However, his views on homosexuality and women’s ordination go directly against the teachings of Holy Mother Church.

In a 2010 video interview, Fr. Boyle was asked about California’s Proposition 8. His response included these words: “I think it’s always important to kind of say, ‘how does God see sexual orientation.’ Does God feel like that same-sex marriage could happen? I don’t think anybody who has a connection to God and God’s understanding and depth of compassion who’s gonna say no.”

In the same interview, he commented on the possibility of women’s ordination, saying, “The Vatican just said that the ordination of women is a grave sin. Have you ever met anybody who would agree with that?… It’s shameful to kind of say stuff like that because it’s not honest… The Church should say I’m frightened that women will be ordained, that’s honest to say that. But, don’t say it’s grave sin because that is nonsense.”⁸

Fr. David Dwyer will be speaking on How the Eucharist Makes Us More Compassionate. Fr. Dwyer is the executive director of the website Busted Halo.

Busted Halo posted an interview with Fr. Martin about his homosexual-affirming book, Building a Bridge.⁹ The web page also promoted the video Owning Our Faith, a short documentary that features homosexual and transgender “Catholics” celebrating their homosexuality and criticizing Church teaching. One interview claimed that the Church is discriminatory against those with homosexual inclinations because it teaches them to practice celibacy. “What the Church is saying,” he claims, “is that [if you are homosexual] you cannot live fully.” In another scene, a transgender person describes her “transition” as being “immensely spiritual.”¹⁰

Yunuen Trujillo will be addressing the REC attendees twice, once in English and once in Spanish. She is openly homosexual and a Board of Trustees member of and regular contributor to the dissident New Ways Ministry outreach.

She claims that chastity is not about refraining from sexual activity but rather about incorporating one’s sexual acts into the context of one’s life. This false notion led her to say “to people who are in a committed, life-long, same sex relationship… they are not going against God, they are not ‘sinning.’ In fact they are doing the opposite, they are HONORING THAT CHASTITY, they are HONORING THAT INTEGRATION of their sexuality with every other aspect of themselves.”¹¹

Michael O’Loughlin will also be speaking even though he serves as Executive Director of Fr. Martin’s homosexual-affirming group Outreach. He will be giving the lecture Compassionate Outreach: What the Church Can Learn From the LGBTQ Catholic Community. He is a homosexual who is “married” to another man. He wrote an article in which he outlines the struggle he and his “husband” face as they strive to feel “at home” in the Church as practicing homosexuals.¹²

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Other speakers who promote sexual deviancy include Dr. Megan McKenna, who refers to abortion rights as “individual freedom of choice” and said that laws permitting abortion are “in favor of individual rights and responsibilities”;¹³ influential leftist professor Thomas Groome, who penned a 2002 Boston Globe article promoting the ending of priestly celibacy and women’s ordination;¹⁴ and Fr. Ronald Rolheiser whose views on the “spirituality of sexuality” are Freudian. He once defined spirituality as “what we do with the fires inside of us, about how we channel our eros.” Apparently unaware of the life-giving effects of chastity, he dismally described Saint Therese of the Child Jesus as one who “slept alone on her celibate cot” and was “tormented by constant yearning.”¹⁵

Promotion of Pop Culture

Several speakers will be pushing a disrespectful mingling of Catholicism and pop culture. For example, Joe Melendrez records himself rapping the rosary and encourages others to do the same.¹⁶ In a similar vein, presenter Fr. David Michael Moses performs in a rock band with five other priests. When on stage, he breakdances and performs boisterously with the other priests, who all wear clerical dress.¹⁷

Worse yet, Alejandro Nava will be presenting the talk Saints, Superheroes and Rappers, in which he will “explore the surprising affinities between the tradition of the saints and two major figures from contemporary culture: the superhero and rapper.”

Mr. Nava is deeply steeped in liberation theology,¹⁸ which he believes is expressed in hip-hop. He describes the two as a strange mixture of hedonism and revolution that he relishes. He said, “First and foremost, hip-hop’s self-understanding and primary reason for being is festive and bacchanalian, committed to tearing the roof off this sucker, to wrecking the house. It lives and breathes for thrilling the body, moving the hips, slaying the spirit.”¹⁹

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He complains that this revolutionary verve is missing in traditional church music, saying: “Liturgical music, on the other hand, seldom achieves the same radiance, its ethereal melodies lacking the pulse necessary to light a fire in the flesh… I have known more touches of transcendence in profane music like the blues, soul, R&B, salsa, rap, and reggaeton than in church music.”²⁰

Promotion of Unorthodoxy

Speakers who dissent from Catholic doctrine and teaching will also be rampant at this year’s REC. For example, Fr. Richard Fragomeni calls into question the existence of Limbo and claims that parents anxious to get their infants baptized, for fear of them losing Heaven, are acting in a way that is not “authentically Catholic.” In a 2022 article published on The Priest website, he wrote, “In a former theological environment, infants were baptized because of the fear of early death and the peril of surviving forever in Limbo. Limbo was conceived as a place of happiness without encountering the divine. In recent theological conversations, Limbo is understood as a theory that never achieved the status of formal Church teaching. It is not even mentioned in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This motivation, therefore, is no longer authentically Catholic.”²¹ He also sacrilegiously claimed that liturgical reform must continue until the liturgy “becomes as attractive as sex.”²²

Sr. Hilda Mateo will be presenting two talks, yet she pushes a radically egalitarian version of leadership within the early Church. In a presentation she gave at the 55^th Catholic Extension Lay Volunteer Reunion, she erroneously stated, “The New Testament testifies that the early Church knew no formal distinction between Church leadership and the rest of the community.”²³

Sr. Barbara Reid, O.P., will also be speaking. She is a leading expert in so-called feminist biblical interpretation. However, her interpretation glosses over the infallibility and Divine authorship of the Scriptures. In an article in America Magazine, she explained that one of her rules for feminist interpretation is to be “aware that the books of the Bible have been written, for the most part, by men, for men, about men, and to serve men’s purposes. Accordingly, it is imperative to attend to the questions: who wrote the text, for whom, in what circumstances and with what purpose. Another step is to evaluate what the text does to those who accept it: does it reinforce domination and oppression? Or does it liberate for flourishing of life? This question must be asked again and again in each new context.”²⁴

Fr. Richard Leonard will be presenting the disrespectfully titled lecture Where the Hell Is God? based on a book he wrote with the same title. In it, he will discuss his sister’s tragic struggle to cope with becoming a quadriplegic after a car accident.

However, in an article on the book, he repeatedly calls into question Catholic doctrine on the permissive Will of God, favoring a hands-off notion of God’s providence in which God oversees the general paths of history but is not engaged in the minutia of life. He concludes this based on his refusal to accept that God can be responsible for personal suffering.

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He takes this so far as to call into question the doctrines of Original Sin and the Redemption, Itself. He wrote, “God did not need the blood of Jesus. Jesus did not just come ‘to die,’ but God used his death to announce the end to death. This is the domain of ‘offer it up’ theology: it was good enough for Jesus to suffer; it is good enough for you. While I am aware of St. Paul in Romans, St. Clement of Alexandria, St. Anselm of Canterbury and later John Calvin’s [sic] work on atonement theory and satisfaction theology, I cannot baldly accept that the perfect God of love set up for a fall in the Fall, then got so angry with us that only the grisly death of his perfect son was going to repair the breach between us.”²⁵

Liberation theologian Fr. Allan Figueroa Deck will also be speaking. He holds an erroneous position on the growing influence of Latino culture in the Catholic Church. In an interview with the National Catholic Reporter, he went so far as to say that Latino Catholics must “be bolder, to acknowledge the role they have as the principle [sic!] evangelizers… before even the bishops and priests.”²⁶

There will also be an interfaith workshop in which Rabbi Michael Lotker and Protestant minister Dr. Alexie Smith will participate. Rabbi Lotker signed an amicus brief in favor of the transgender-affirming Bostock vs. Clayton County Supreme Court Case,²⁷ and Dr. Smith is highly supportive of the progressive and liberation theology supporting Base Christian Communities.²⁸

Vatican Observatory director Br. Guy Consolmagno will also be giving a talk. He has claimed that those who believe in Creationism are adherents of a new form of paganism.²⁹

Promotion of Abuses in Prayer and Liturgy

This year’s REC includes a Taizé service that is ecumenical and shockingly in line with the Buddhist notion of prayer. Describing the event, the congress program reads: “Originating in the French town of the same name, Taizé (pronounced: tay-zay) is a prayerful form of music known for its simple, rich and meditative character. The music often is a basic melody that repeats over and over and is meant to serve as a kind of musical centering prayer.”³⁰

This repetition of a simple melody to engage in “centering prayer” is dangerous. Indeed, it consists in emptying the mind of thought and notions of self to the point of achieving a state in which the person believes that he and God are one, participating in the same nature. Tim Staples explained: “The goals of centering prayer—no intellectual activity… no concepts… no words—are Buddhist. Far from the traditional Catholic understanding of prayer as a heart-to-heart dialogue or communication of the creature with his Creator, centering prayer is focused inward, with the goal of eliminating all thoughts or even thoughts of thoughts until one reaches a state where the mind is an absolute void and there is no knowledge of self or thought at all…”³¹

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Mr. Staples cites Fr. Keating,³² who contends that centering prayer is a “journey to the true self”—where the person becomes God by emptying the soul of all rational activity, thus making the mind an absolute void.

He continues, quoting the Catechism, which states: “In the battle of prayer, we must face in ourselves and around us erroneous notions of prayer. Some people view prayer… as an effort of concentration to reach a mental void (2726).”³³

There will also be a workshop on liturgical dance given by Monica Luther and Nicole Masero. However, liturgical dance was rejected by Pope Benedict XVI in the book The Spirit of the Liturgy, which stated, “Dancing is not a form of expression for the Christian liturgy,” and later on, “None of the Christian rites includes dancing.”

Furthermore, in a 2012 Responsum ad Dubium, the Congregation for Divine Worship wrote, “The liturgical law of the Roman Rite does not foresee the use of dance or drama within the Sacred Liturgy unless particular legislation has been enacted by the Bishops’ Conference and confirmed by the Holy See. Any other practice is to be considered an abuse.”³⁴

Promotion of Racial Tension

Dr. Patrick Saint-Jean, S.J., will be presenting the same talk twice (once in English, once in Spanish) titled The Spiritual Work of Racial Justice. He is a proponent of the violent BLM movement and celebrates Haiti’s violent revolution, even glorifying the genocidal General Jean-Jacques Dessaline³⁵ who ordered the massacre of practically every white person on the island and infamously said: “We should use the skin of a white man as a parchment, his skull as an inkwell, his blood for ink, and a bayonet for a pen.”³⁶

A Call to Action

All this demonstrates that the Religious Education Congress of the Los Angeles Archdiocese continues to be mired in dissent. As in past years, this event will embolden dissenters, confuse believers and threaten the faith of countless Catholics.

In good conscience, faithful Catholics cannot remain silent but must resist this challenge to the Faith. That is why the American TFP urges you to protest the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress. You can do this by respectfully contacting Archbishop Jose Gomez and expressing your concerns about the danger to souls that this congress represents. You can do this by telephone at (213) 637–7215. Please be firm yet polite.