Penumbras and Emanations on the Role of the Holy Ghost - Lyle J. Arnold, Jr. @ Tradition In Action.org

Consequences of Vatican II

Penumbras and Emanations
on the Role of the Holy Ghost

Lyle J. Arnold, Jr.

In 1961 an executive of Planned Parenthood, together with a physician, opened a birth control clinic in New Haven, Connecticut. The law in that State prohibited "any drug, medical article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception" (1). Shortly after opening the clinic, the executive and the doctor were arrested, tried, convicted and fined. In 1965 this case (Griswold vs. Connecticut) was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. In a landmark decision, the Court decided that the Connecticut law was unconstitutional because it violated the right to privacy.

Justice Harlan's minority opinion on abortion
opened the door to making it legal

When Planned Parenthood opened the clinic in 1961, a previous attempt had been made to get the U.S. Supreme Court to hear Griswold vs. Connecticut. The majority of judges refused, but Justice John Marshall Harlan, one of the minority who wanted the case adjudicated, "filed one of the most cited dissenting opinions in Supreme Court History" (2).

In his report Harlan stated that the prohibition of contraceptives was an "invasion of privacy," and it was upon this fulcrum that, four years later, the Court decided against the Connecticut law. While there is no language in the U.S. Constitution about privacy, Harlan argued that because the 5th and 14th Amendments in the Bill or Rights guarantee due process when deprived of "life, liberty, or property," that liberty extended to preventing births. Harlan's opinion, in fact, meant that the language of a law doesn't count. Liberty is guaranteed to citizens, and this means that by making a broad interpretation you can create law.

So, in the Griswold case, the judges opted for this method to step aside from their duty to interpret law, and instead created it. But they went further than Harlan. The majority opinion in that case was written by Justice William O. Douglas. In adopting Harlan's line, he stated that "specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance"(3).

A penumbra is an astronomical term describing the partial shadow in an eclipse of the edge of a sunspot. It is another way to describe something unclear or uncertain. `Emanation' is a scientific term for gas made from radioactive decay – it also means “an emission" (4). With penumbras and emanations in the law, secular Progressivism was on a roll. It set the stage for the 1973 decision in Roe vs. Wade, making abortions legal because of a right to privacy.

Karl Rahner's "interpretation" of the Holy Spirit opened the way for the Catholic Charismatic movement

Is there any possible analogy between these precedents and the Revolution in the Church?

By parodying notions of penumbras and emanations into the U.S. Constitution, our ladies and their doctors have legally killed 80 million babies since 1973. In the Church millions of souls have been killed by the emanations of progressivist "gas," and by the penumbras of unclear Church teachings about the role of the Holy Ghost.

An idea of the Holy Spirit entirely at odds with Catholic teaching has permeated the Hierarchy, priests, religious and laity of New Church. Karl Rahner, called "the most influential theologian at Vatican II" (5), had a tremendous effect on post-Conciliar developments, especially in ecumenism and the purported influence of the Holy Spirit in all religions. He held “that the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the Catholic Church is not superior to its guidance to the individual layperson" (6). This notion completely contradicts the Catholic truth, that "predominantly in the New Testament the Holy Spirit is conceived as communicated, not to the individual soul, but to the Mystical Body which He energizes and organizes, the Church of Christ" (7).

Many have exchanged the real Holy Ghost for a phantasmagoria born of wishful subjectivism. Cardinal Suenens was once heard bawling out the words at gallom huc, which a bystander translated as, "Jesus loves us all" (8). Taken in by false prophets who experience the Holy Spirit, legions of once-Catholic lay persons have come to believe that they have the same experience.

Above, a Catholic "Holy Ghost Miracle Revival"

Charismatic Catholicism is mainstream in New Church. By 2003 it was operating in 230 countries with some 120 million members (9). By means of penumbras and emanations coming from the real teaching about the Holy Ghost, and by skewing those teachings, the subjective notion now exists that the Holy Ghost communicates, willy-nilly, directly, to anyone and everyone. With this false teaching firmly in place, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity has become obfuscated.

Behold the punishment inflicted by such penumbras and emanations regarding the Holy Ghost. St. Paul warned us about requiring signs: For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom (1 Cor. 1: 22). The arrogant presumption that God the Holy Ghost is our personal chum is tantamount to "requiring signs."

1. Grilswold v. Connecticut, Wikipedia.
2. Ibid.
3. Mark R. Levin, "Death From Privacy," National Review, March 14, 2005 (excerpt from "Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America")
4. Ibid.
5. Robert C. McCarthy, A Critical Examination of the Theology of Karl Rahner, Carthay Ventures, POB 888, Buchanan Dam, TX 78609, p. 1
6. Ibid, p. 3.
7. R.A. Knox, The Belief of Catholics, Sheed & Ward, NY, 1940, pp. 153.
8. Malachi Martin, Catholicism Overturned, Triumph Communications, Toronto, Canada, 2003, p 40.
9. Charismatic Catholicism, Wikipedia.
10. Nicholas Gruner, Letter of February 11, 2007, Constable, NY.

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Posted September 7, 2007

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