Catholic Review of: Signs of the Times

Fr. Richard W. Gilsdorf (1930–2005) was a priest’s priest, a pastor, spiritual counselor, scholar, and lecturer. He was one of the first to grasp the crisis that gripped the Church after the Council. With insight and tact, he exposed dissent and stood as a kind crusader for Catholic truth as contained in Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium."

So writes Fr. Kenneth Baker, S.J., editor of Homiletic & Pastoral Review, in one of the impressive testimonials found in The Signs of the Times. His testimony is borne out by the collection of articles found in this book. While other priests were enraptured by a bogus "spirit of Vatican II," it did not take long for Fr. Gilsdorf to realize dissent from the entire spectrum of Catholic teachings had spread throughout the Church in North America. Further, it became clear to him that the priesthood itself was under direct attack from neomodernists teaching in prestigious Catholic universities and colleges.

A Scripture scholar himself, he was incensed by those demythologizers of the written Word of God who dared to question the truth and historicity of the Gospels, who placed invented sayings "into the mouth of Jesus," or who used scissors and paste to "reconstruct" Scripture. He saw the work of dissenting theologians as constituting "a de facto apostasy from the faith with a broad diffusion of historical and practical atheism and a loss of fundamental values."

While others were awed by the latest heretics framing their own brands of ideology, Fr. Gilsdorf subjected the erroneous teachings of the Dutch catechism and the teachings of leading dissenters such as Karl Rahner, S.J., Richard McBrien, Andrew Greeley, and Charles E. Curran to serious criticism. With the rejection of Humanae Vitae, the deposit of faith itself had become clearly endangered by the spokesmen for secularism, moral relativism, and doctrinal revisionism.

He also saw early the Petrine primacy of the pope come under subtle attack by the proponents of a false collegiality and a democratic conciliarism intent on weakening the authority of the visible head of the Catholic Church. In matters of the historic Christian faith, he observed, it is the successor of Peter’s teaching charism that serves as "the supreme test" of orthodoxy. He was scandalized to see "many priests completely alienated from the Pope, and, indeed, from the supernatural. . . . Theirs is a cruel and sterile parody of the Church, an anti-Church, limited to this world and caged in dialectical materialism."

Fr. Gilsdorf loved his fellow priests and felt deeply how so many of them had been subjected to "wave after wave of deleterious fads, poorly considered suggestions, stubborn precedents, and innovations with corrosive effects, all of which emanate from ‘experts’ who do their damage and then, all too frequently, decamp." He wept with his fellow priests over the parish churches that had become "centers of entertainment rather than of divine worship." In a blockbuster article, "The Plight of the Papist Priest," published in the December 1981 issue of Homiletic & Pastoral Review, he revealed the agony of good priests who saw entire diocesan structures captured by dissenters or their sympathizers. The article received an extraordinary and favorable response from priests nationwide. To give further encouragement and direction to priests troubled by the state of the Church, Fr. Gilsdorf helped form the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy and contributed to its fine newsletter.

In another striking article, "The Agenda of the NFPC," he expressed his alarm at the spread of the National Federation of Priests’ Councils, with its liberal and modernist ideology, and warned his fellow priests against an organization that showed itself "incompatible" with papal teachings for the renewal of the Church.

Fr. Gilsdorf was a humble but brilliant scholar who not only analyzed the "signs of the times," but also engaged in superb commentaries on Catholic doctrine. The divinity of Christ, the Mass as sacrifice, Christ in the Eucharist, the Church as communio, the papacy, devotion to Our Lady, the Sacrament of Penance, priestly celibacy, and priestly identity (which Fr. Gilsdorf understood so well as involving not a "career" or "profession," but a "consecration"), all these are covered in this extensive volume. Readers will find, above all, spiritual inspiration in these writings of a courageous country pastor.

Fr. Gilsdorf was a valiant priest. Though plagued with illness the last 10 years of his life, he never failed to engage in the spiritual and intellectual struggle to defend Catholic truth. He was also a great friend and supporter of Catholics United for the Faith. The Signs of the Times recreates the period (1965–2002) in which both priests and laity suffered from direct attacks on the deposit of faith, a doctrineless catechesis, and widespread defection from the faith.

This is a wonderful book to place in the hands of adults seeking to understand the tumultuous happenings of the postconciliar period. It is also is an excellent book to give to seminarians and other young people, who will not fail to profit from the unswerving fidelity of a "priest’s priest" to His Lord and Savior.

- James Likoudis (from Lay Witness magazine. www.cuf.org)

You can purchase this title here.