The Association of United States Catholic Priests (AUSCP), a group of disaffected and heretical priests from around the country, is attempting to bring their organization into mainline Catholic publications.
In the April 2020 issue of The Priest, a publication of 108-year-old Catholic publishing house Our Sunday Visitor (OSV), The Priest published a full-page ad on page 45 of the 54-page magazine that encouraged readers to register for the AUSCP's annual assembly.
At the heart of this issue is the fact that the AUSCP is deeply involved in the promotion of modernist ideologies within the Catholic Church.
The Lepanto Institute has produced several reports on the actions and positions taken by the AUSCP, and links to some of these reports are as follows:
Writer's guidelines for both OSV and The Priest spell out that writers should not "stray from the Magisterium of the Church," so it stands to reason that ads should likewise also not include organizations that "stray from the Magisterium of the Church" as well.
But there appears to have been a shift in the ideological direction of OSV in recent years, at least as far as advertising is concerned.
In 2017, OSV denied advertising space to Church Militant, a faithful Catholic organization, giving a stark contrast to OSV's decision to provide advertising space to the AUSCP.
Michael Voris, senior executive producer for Church Militant, reacted to this double standard, stating:
Despite OSV FORMERLY being reliably orthodox, it's clear the outfit has chosen to separate from its past and go the way of fully embracing the heresy of modernism. Their obvious double standard in deciding who to accept as advertisers, is just ONE indication that the publication can no longer be considered Catholic — and likely poses a danger to a person's faith.
The advertisement run by AUSCP in The Priest is for AUSCP's 2020 Assembly, originally scheduled to be held in Baltimore in June, but now moved to an online teleconference venue due to the coronavirus pandemic. The theme of this year's AUSCP assembly is "Our Catholic Faith in the Political World," giving additional concern to OSV's decision to run the ad.
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