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ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI
Spent the afternoon after Mass and lunch translating this interview with Cardinal Caffarra...
CARDINAL CAFFARRA:
‘Only a blind man would deny that
there is great confusion in the Church’
‘The division among bishops is the reason for the letter we sent the pope, and not its effect.
Insults and threats of canonical sanctions are unworthy reactions’
Exclusive interview
By Matteo Matzuzzi
Translated from
January 14, 2017
BOLOGNA – “I think many things must be clarified. Our letter on the DUBIA was the result of long reflection, months of it, and of discussion among us. For myself, it also meant much prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. We were aware that the step we were taking was a most serious matter.”
Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, Archbishop emeritus of Bologna, moral theologian and first president of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family, made this clear before a long conversation with Il Foglio on the now-famous FOUR CARDINALS’ letter sent to Pope Francis for clarifications regarding Amoris Laetitia and the debate – not always courteous nor elegant – that it has unleashed in the Vatican and outside.
“We had two concerns. The first was not to scandalize the faithful in their faith. The second was that no one, believer or not, would find in our letter anything that would even remotely sound the least bit like any lack of respect for the pope. Thus, the final text was the result of several reviews- revisions, omissions, corrections.”
With these premises, the cardinal went into the subject matter of the letter.
“What urged us to do it? One was a general structural consideration, the other contingent and conjunctural. Let us start with the first.
We cardinals have the serious duty to advise the pope in the governance of the Church. It is a duty – and duty obliges.
The contingency, on the other hand, is the fact – which only a blind man would deny – that there is great confusion and uncertainty in the Church as a result of some paragraphs in AL.
In the months since it was published, what has happened is that on fundamental questions concerning the sacraments of matrimony, penance and the Eucharist, and concerning Christian life in general, some bishops have been saying A, others say the contrary of A, but it’s all about interpreting the same text. This is a fact that is undeniable. But texts are stubborn, as David Hume said.
The way out of this ‘conflict of interpretations’ is a recourse to fundamental theological criteria, using which it would be possible to show reasonably that AL does not contradict Familiaris consortio. Personally in public encounters with laymen and priests, I have always followed this way...
We soon realized that this epistemological way was inadequate. The conflict between interpretations could not be resolved that way. So there was only one way to deal with it head-on: to ask the author of the text being interpreted what was the right interpretation. There was no other way. Consequently, there was the problem – how do we address the pope on such a matter? So we chose a way that is very traditional in the Church: presenting our questions in the form of dubia.
Why? Because it is a way whereby, if the Holy Father in his judgment wished to reply, he would not need to do so in long elaborate responses. He simply has to answer Yes or No. He could then ask, as popes often do, probati auctores [recognized experts] or the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to issue a supplemental declaration explaining his Yes or No answers. It seemed to us the simplest way to go”.
The other question we asked ourselves was whether to do this in private or publicly. We argued it out and agreed that it would be construed as a lack of respect if we did this in public from the beginning. And so, we chose to do it privately. We decided to go public only when we were reasonably sure that the Holy Father was not going to answer as at all.
This was one of the major points for discussion, with various arguments pro and con. Recently, Cardinal Mueller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said that publication of the letter was wrong.
But we interpreted the pope’s silence as an authorization to continue with the public discussion. Besides, the problem profoundly concerns both the magisterium of bishops (which, we must remember, they exercise not because the pope has delegated them, but by virtue of the sacrament [of Holy Orders] which they received), and the life of the faithful. Both the bishops and the faithful have a right to be told [what is being taught in AL].
Indeed, many priests and laymen had been saying: “In a situation like this, you cardinals have the obligation to intervene with the Holy Father. Otherwise, what are you here for if you do not help the pope out in such serious matters?” [For one, this pope did and does not think he needed or needs the help of anyone with AL once it was published.]
The scandal among the faithful had started to widen, and we would seem to have been like the dogs who fail to bark which the prophet speaks of (Is 56,10): "All the sentinels of Israel are blind, they are without knowledge. They are all mute dogs,
unable to bark - dreaming, reclining, loving their sleep."
So this is what was behind those two pages of our letter.
And yet, the polemics over AL continued quite publicly, with criticisms against the Four Cardinals from their fellow bishops, or from bishops of the Curia.
Some persons continue to say that we are disobeying the pope’s magisterium. That is false and calumnious. We wrote the pope precisely because we do not wish to be disobedient.
I would be obedient to the pope’s teaching if I knew what he is teaching about the faith and Christian life. But that is precisely the problem: that in fundamental things, we do not understand well exactly what he is teaching, as we see in the conflicting interpretations of Al, even among bishops.
We want to be obedient to the teaching of the pope, but his teaching should be clear. None of us wished to ‘oblige’ the Holy Father to reply – in the letter, we refer to his ‘sovereign judgment’.
All we did was to simply and respectfully ask five questions.
The accusation that we wish to divide the Church do not deserve attention. The division that already exists in the Church was the reason for our letter, not the effect. What is unworthy in the Church, especially in this context, are insults and even threats of canonical sanction.”
The Premise to the letter notes “a serious disorientation of many faithful and a great confusion regarding questions that are of great importance in the life of the Church. What specifically is this confusion and disorientation?
I received a letter from a parish priest that is a perfect picture of what is happening. He wrote: "In spiritual direction and in giving confessions, I no longer know what to say. To the penitent who tells me, ‘I live with full conjugal rights with a divorced woman, and now, I would like to receive communion’, I propose a course to follow in order to correct his situation. But he stops me and says, ‘Look, the pope has said I can do that without having to live in continence’.
I can no longer deal with this. The Church can ask anything of me, just not to betray my conscience. And my conscience objects to a supposed papal teaching to allow communion to those who live as husband and wife although they are not married.” So he writes.
The situation of many pastors of souls – especially parish priests – is this: On their shoulders they must bear a weight that they are not able to deal with [And not supposed to! They have more than enough problems as it is!]It is this I am thinking of when I speak about a great disorientation. That is with respect to parish priests.
But many of the faithful are even more disoriented. We are talking about matters that are not secondary. We are not just talking of keeping or breaking abstinence. It is about matters that are most serious for the life of the Church and for the eternal salvation of souls. Which we must never forget: The supreme law in the Church is the salvation of souls. Not other concerns. Jesus founded his Church so that the faithful may achieve eternal life, and have it in abundance.
The division Cardinal Caffarra refers to originated above all in the interpretation of paragraphs 300-305 in AL Chapter 8. Many, including bishops, find in these the confirmation of a turning-point for the Church that is not just pastoral but also doctrinal. But others maintain that everything in AL accords with and is in continuity with pre-Bergoglio Magisterium. How does one exit from such an equivocation?
“I would make two very important premises. To think of pastoral practice which is not founded on and rooted in doctrine means to found and root pastoral practice on arbitrariness.
We cardinals have the serious duty to advise the pope on governing the Church. It is a duty, and duty obliges. [But it seems to me, in JMB’s mind, that when he needs their advice, he will ask for it. For now, he is formally advised only by his Crown Council of nine cardinals, and a few non-redhatted ‘grey eminences’ surrounding him at Casa Santa Marta’ His failure to respond to the DUBIA and his earlier non-acknowledgment even of online appeals from cardinals, bishops, theologians and faithful show he does not appreciate unsolicited advice or opinions at all, much less listen!] A Church that pays little attention to doctrine is not a more pastoral Church, but a more ignorant Church.
The Truth we speak about is not formal truth, but a Truth that leads to eternal salvation – verita salutaris (saving truth), in theological terms. Let me explain.
There is formal truth. For example, I want to know if the longest river in the world is the Amazon or the Nile. It is the Amazon – and this is formal truth. Formal in this sense means that this factual knowledge has nothing to do with my own situation, with whether I am free or not.
But there are truths that I call existential. If it is true, as Socrates taught, that it is better to suffer an injustice than to commit it, I am expressing a truth that affects my freedom to act differently if the opposite were true.
When the Church speaks truth, it is speaking of the second type, which if obeyed freely, generates true life. When I hear it said that there has only been a pastoral change and not doctrinal, then
- either one thinks that the commandment prohibiting adultery is a purely positivist law that can be changed (and I think no person who thinks straight could possibly think this), or
- it means saying that, yes, a triangle generally has three sides, but it is possible to build one with four sides, i.e., I would be saying something absurd.
Our medieval thinkers had a saying: “Theoria sine praxis, currus sine axi; praxis sine theoria, caecus in via”. (Theory without practice is like a chariot without an axle. Practice without theory is to proceed blindly.)
The second premise made by Cardinal Caffarra has to do with
the great theme of the evolution of doctrine, which has always accompanied Christian thinking. We know it was synthesized splendidly by Blessed John Henry Newman.
If there is one point that is most clear, it is that there can be no evolution where there is contradiction. If I say that ‘s’ is ‘p', and then say that ‘s’ is not ‘p’, the second statement does not develop the first but contradicts it.
Already, Aristotle taught rightly that to enunciate a universal affirmative proposition (e.g., every case of adultery is not right) and at the same time to enunciate a specific negative proposition having the same subject and predicate (e.g., some cases of adultery are not wrong), one is not making an exception to the first but contradicting it.
Ultimately, if I wanted to define the logic of Christian life, I would use a statement by Kierkegaard, who said: “To be always moving but remaining firm on the same point”.
The problem we have is to see whether Paragraphs 300-305 of AL with footnote 351 contradict or not the magisterium of previous popes who spoke on the same question. According to many bishops, they d ocontradict previous magisterium. According to many others, it is not a contradiction but a development. That is why we want the Pope to answer this himself.
Thus we come to the point that has been most contested and that dominated the discussions in the recent two ‘family synods’: the possibility of allowing civilly remarried divorcees to receive the Eucharist. Which is not explicitly allowed in AL, but in the judgment of many is implicit in the document but is nothing more than an evolution from No. 84 of John Paul II’s Familiaris consortio.
The core of the problem is this: Can the Eucharistic minister (usually a priest) give the Eucharist to a person who lives more uxorio [in a husband-and-wife sexual relationship] with a woman or a man who is not his wife or her husband, and yet has no intention of living in continence? The answer can only be Yes or No.
Yet no one questions the fact that Familiaris consortio, Sacramentun caritatis, the Code of Canon Law and the Catechism of the Catholic Church all say NO. And it is a No that is valid until the concerned faithful decide to give up living as husband-and-wife [in a relationship considered adulterous by the Church].
Does AL teach that, given certain precise circumstances and after following a certain course, the concerned faithful can receive communion without committing themselves to sexual continence?
There are bishops who have said Yes, they can. Which means that by simple logic, one would then have to teach that adultery in itself and of itself is not always a sin, and that is not pertinent to cite ignorance or error regarding the indissolubility of marriage - an error that is, unfortunately, quite widespread.
This is an interpretative, not an orientative, stand. It may be used as a way to discern the imputability of actions already done, but it cannot be a principle for acts that have yet to be done. The priest has the duty to enlighten the ignorant and to correct the errant. [What if, as in the most outrageous consequences and justifications of AL’s dubious propositions, it is priests, bishops, cardinal and the pope himself who need to be enlightened and corrected?]
In fact, the novelty that AL has brought to the question is calling on pastors of souls not to be content with simply saying No (but not being content does not thereby mean saying Yes), but to take the person by the hand and to help him grow to the point where he understands that he is in a condition that disqualifies him from receiving Communion unless he stops having sexual relations that only a husband and wife should have with each other. But not that the priest should help the adulterous couple along the way by giving them communion unconditionally. It is in this regard that Footnote 351 is ambiguous.
If, for instance, I tell a confessee that he cannot continue having sexual relations with his partner who is not his spouse in the eyes of the Church, but that meanwhile, because he has suffered so much, he could receive communion, if he limits himself to having relations once a week instead of three [AL does not even imply any such 'token sacrifice’ which, as the Maltese bishops have said, would be ‘humanly impossible’], it makes no sense. And by doing that, I am not being merciful towards the confessee.
Because to put an end to habitual bad conduct – a habitus, theologians would say – requires a determined resolve not to further carry on such conduct. But between giving up what is wrong and starting to do what is good, one needs to make a choice, even if one has to prepare for it a long time. For some time, Augustine tells us, he prayed, “Lord, make me chaste, but not just yet”.
Going over the DUBIA, one gets the impression that more than Familiaris consortio, it is John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis splendor that is at stake. Is that right?
Yes. We face here what Veritatis splendor teaches. This document, published August 6, 1993, is highly doctrinal, as St. John Paul II intended it to be, to the point that – an exceptional case till then for encyclicals – it was addressed only to the bishops, who are directly responsible for the faith that their flock must believe and live by (cfr No.5). And the pope advises them to be vigilant about the doctrines condemned or taught in the encyclical itself – the first so that they may not be spread among Christians, the second so that they may be taught to Christians (cfr No. 116).
One of the fundamental teachings of the document is that there are acts which can be dishonest, for and in themselves - independent of the circumstances in which they are committed and the intention that the person may have in committing such acts. And that to deny this fact can mean denying any sense to martyrdom (cfr No s. 90-94).
Indeed, every martyr could have said, “But I found myself in a certain situation where I was no longer obliged to the serious duty to profess my faith or to affirm the intangibility of a moral good”. Think of the difficulties that Thomas More’s wife presented to him when he was already in prison: “You have a duty to your family, to your children”.
So it is not merely about faith. Even if I use only correct reasoning, I see that in failing to resist acts that are intrinsically dishonest, then I deny that there is a limit beyond which the powerful in this world cannot and should not go. Socrates was the first person in the West to understand this.
Therefore, the matter is serious, one in which there can be no uncertainty. That is why we decided to ask the pope to be clear about the DUBIA, because there are bishops who appear to reject the basic fact [of intrinsically evil acts] by citing AL. But adultery has always been listed among the acts that are intrinsically evil. We only have to read what Jesus said about it, what St. Paul said, and the commandments given by God to Moses.
So is there any room today for these so-called ‘intrinsically evil acts’? Or is it not time to look on the other side of the scale, to the fact that everything can be forgiven by God?
Watch out! There is great confusion about this as well. All sins and intrinsically dishonest choices we make can be forgiven. So ‘intrinsically dishonest’ does not mean ‘unforgivable’.
Nonetheless, Jesus did not just tell the adulterous woman: “Neither do I condemn you!”, but he added, “Go and sin no more!” (Jn 8,10).
St. Thomas, taking inspiration from St. Augustine, said a very beautiful thing when he commented: “Jesus could have said, “Go and do as you please – you will always be sure I will forgive you. Despite your sins, I will free you from the torments of hell.” But the Lord, who does not like sin, condemns it, saying, “Go and sin no more!” And thus, the Lord shows how tender he is in his mercy and just in his Truth” (cfr Comm on John 1139). [I bet this is something JMB's Aquinas experts chose to ignore and that, perhaps, JMB himself may never have known! It makes trash of his faux-mercy ideas.]
We are truly – and not only in a manner of speaking – free in the eyes of the Lord. Therefore, the Lord will not cast his forgiveness blindly. There should be a mysterious marriage between the infinite mercy of God and the free will of man, who must convert himself if he wishes to be forgiven.
We asked Cardinal Caffarra if confusion does not also result from the conivction, so rooted in many pastors, that individual conscience is a faculty whereby one decides autonomously what is good and what is bad, and that ultimately, the decision rests with is individual conscience.
I think this is the most important point of all. It is the point at which we intersect with the load-bearing pillar of modernity. Let us begin by clarifying the language.
Conscience does not decide because it is an act of reason. Decision is a free action, resulting from one’s will. Conscience is a judgment in which the subject of the proposition expressed is the choice that I am about to make or have already made, and the predicate is the moral quality of that choice. It is therefore a judgment, not a decision.
Of course, every reasonable judgment is exercised on the basis of criteria, otherwise it is not a judgment. Criteria are therefore the basis on which I affirm what I affirm or deny what I deny. On this point, a passage from Blessed Rosmini’s Tract on Moral Conscience: “There is a light which is in man, and there is a light which is man. The light which is in man is the law of Truth and grace. The light which is man himself is right conscience, because man becomes light when he takes part in the light of the law of Truth through conscience which is a confirmation of that light”.
Now, in the face of this idea of moral conscience, we have the idea that sets up one’s own subjectivity as the unappealable tribunal that decides whether one’s choices have been good or bad. For me, this is a decisive confrontation between the Church’s view of life (which comes from divine Revelation), and modernity’s idea of conscience.
Blessed John Henry Newman saw this most lucidly. In his famous letter to the Duke of Norfolk, he wrote: “Conscience is Christ’s aboriginal vicar. A prophet in its information, a monarch in its order,s apriest in its blessing and in its anathemas. For the great world of philosophy these days, these words are nothing but vain and sterile verbosities, devoid of any concrete significance. In our time, there is a dogged wat. I might call it a conspiracy, against the rights of conscience”. Later, he adds that “In the name of conscience, true conscience is destroyed’.
That is why among the five DUBIA, number 5 is the most important: Paragraph 303 in AL is not clear. It seems – and I repeat, it seems – to admit the possibility that conscience (which is not invincibly erroneous, as the Church has always held) can express true judgment against what the Church teaches to be in accordance with divine Revelation. That is why we placed this particular dubium before the pope.
Newman said that "if the pope speaks against conscience in the true sense of the word, then he would be committing suicide, digging his own grave under his feet”. So, this is a matter of devastating gravity if individual judgment is elevated to be the ultimate criterion of moral truth.
I would never tell anyone, “Always follow what your conscience tells you”, without immediately adding, “Love the truth and seek it, seek what is good”. Otherwise, you would put into his hands the weapon that is most destructive of his humanity.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/01/2017 20:02] |
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| 16/01/2017 06:25 |
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Assorted reflections on Luther, failed utopias,
Kennedy and anti-Catholicism in 1960s USA,
the collapse of the church in Bavaria under Cardinal Marx,
and 320 million radical Muslims who believe
all infidels must be exterminated
From his February 2017 column VIVAIO for
 =
Translated from
January 14, 2017
I happened to see the latest issue of the magazine in which Bolaffi (the oldest and largest philatelic business) reports the stamps to be issued this year. I see the page dedicated to the stamps from Vatican City State which announces an issue 'which is astounding' to use the words of the writer of the article: nothing less than a Holy See stamp celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. Obviously, the image on the stamp is that of Martin Luther.
If the laymen at Bolaffi are 'astounded', it cannot be otherwise for Catholics who know how Papa Bergoglio made it a point to fly to Sweden (where, among others, the forced introduction of Lutheranism in the 16th century, for purely economic reasons, namely, for the state to acquire the properties of the Catholic Church, was brutally anti-popular and created many martyrs) to honor the 'courage' of that
friar who dared to challenge the Church and break away to set up his own Church. So, we Catholics should not be surprised at all about the stamp.
But, about Francis's 'brother Martin', I have found a brief incomplete list of the expressions which that 'meritorious reformer' used in his writings to refer to the Roman Pontiff:
Pig. Anti-Christ. Fleecer of his own flock. Diffuser of bloodshed. Wolf. Dog. Perverter of Holy Scripture. Wicked and perverse blasphemer. Adversary of Christ. Christ-deformer. Crucifier of Christ. Devil. Satan. Sacrilegious. Ignorant. Author of every impiety. Master of frauds and impostures. Scoundrel. Lowlife. Prostitute's snout. [???] Pestiferous. Corrupt... And the litany can go on and on. [One sees JMB learned his lessons well from 'brother Martin' and even improved on him in devising and improvising his 'little book of insults' for Catholics he would not wish to be part of the church of Bergoglio!]
It is important to note that with this cascade of insults and abusiveness, Luther, as he himself said, did not mean them only for the hated pontiffs in his time, but anyone, past, present or future, who had occupied or would occupy the Chair of Peter.
Yet, in Sweden, Francis was received with ostentatious enthusiasm by the top leaders of whatever is left - not very many - of the Lutheran community there. A community that has never retracted any of the insults hurled by Luther against the popes.
So, there was great hypocrisy on the part of those who consider Luther as a messenger of God, whose only word is not only to be taken seriously but to be venerated.
What truth could there be in festivities made for a pope by the followers of someone who could not find enough offensive words to insult the popes?
And how much authentic Christianity could there be in these festivities as if nothing bad had ever happened in the Church because of Luther, and yet, for Christ, hypocrisy is one of the worst sins?
Back to Luther. Many times he said this: "Reason is directly opposed to faith, therefore it must be abandoned. In every believer, it must be killed and buried." Thus, apologetics was prohibited and considered blasphemous insofar as it tried to reconcile reason and faith.
This was the ironic reply of a Catholic who had converted from Protestantism, Jacques Maritain: "Thus Luther gave mankind a great liberation. He liberated us all from intelligence and reflection. He liberated us from that tiring, incessant need to think, especially, from thinking with logic".
When I took my exams from the classic lyceum [secondary school] I attended, and while waiting to be enrolled in a university, I answered a newspaper ad and got a positive answer. So for a couple of months, I went to the Venice Lido, not as a tourist, but as an assistant to the concierge of a hotel which catered to the cinema crowd, and was always overcrowded during the city's annual film festival, therefore additional help was needed. I was taken on because I could manage some other languages besides Italian, which was necessary for the job since almost all the guests were foreigners,
Among the first things the concierge taught me was to ask hotel guests arriving there for the first time: 'Are you vegetarian?" If yes, "Strictly vegetarian?", which would mean the 'vegan' diet, as it is called these days. This was to be transmitted to the hotel kitchen, since the hotel had its own restaurant.
I was surprised by the number of Yes answers I got, since for us Italians, vegetarianism seemed bizarre, and its more radical form, the 'vegan', was quite unknown so that we didn't even know what it was called.
I noted that, especially with those who were 'strictly vegetarian', i.e., the Jacobins of nutrition, there were some Englishmen, but most of them were from Germany and the Scandinavian nations. Namely, from the lands which had been Lutheran for centuries and still are, at least officially.
Since at the time I was far from any religious concerns, I did not realize the paradox then. Only later would I discover the maledictions loosed by Luther against the monastic life which he had lived for many years [as an Augustinian friar].
Among the things that made him most indignant was that which in monastic language is called 'penances' - fasting, and especially, a vegetarian diet which was, unfortunately for him, the daily diet for Augustinians of strict observance. Once he took off his cassock, he called abstention from meat 'inhuman', not just for monks but for everyone else.
As soon as he had the power to create a new church, one of his first steps was to cancel the Lenten schedule of fasting and abstinence from meat on Fridays. So, just as he married a nun in order, in his own words "to defy the devil who invented chastity and imposed it on priests through his instrument, the Roman pope", he only ate wurstel and roasts as if there were no tomorrow, and on Holy Week, he asked to be served only large steaks. [Perhaps that's the reason why he came to be afflicted by chronic constipation which in turn inspired an obsession with crap. Hmm, does that remind you somehow of someone???]
So, is it not curious that vegetarianism was born and became virtually a mass phenomenon in the lands where to eat meat always was, if not a precept, then at least a religious exhortation? Nations which also rediscovered fasting not just for health but also for esthetic reasons - that fasting so hated by Martin Luther.
Speaking of Germans, I find in Friedrich Hoelderlin - a poet, not a theologian, and a Protestant, not a Catholic - a surprising reflection: "The imprint of the divine is in the Catholic Eucharist which contains the Maximum (God himself) in a minimum, the negligible weight of the consecrated host".
Another poet, Charles Peguy, French, wrote at the start of the last century but already anticipating the times: "Modernism, with its obsession for dialog, would have us pretend that we have no beliefs in order not to offend anyone who is not a believer". [He predicted political correctness a century ahead!]
And an American who wrote in French, a convert from Protestantism to Catholicism, Julien Green, wrote to an agnostic: "You ask for miracles. But is not your indifference to religion a miracle, for you are indifferent to what is decisive for your life and for your eternal life?"
For a couple of months, the US presidential elections have been an obsession for us in Italy. The media cannot seem to talk of anything else. I was reminded of 1961 (I had just turned 20 and so, I was an aware witness) when the first 'Catholic' President entered the White House. 'Catholic', in quotes, but officially he was Catholic, even if, while leaving the judgment to God, from what we could see during his brief time in office, Kennedy's Catholicism was hardly evident in his private life nor in his acts of governance.
Among other things, the 'pink legend' created about him by his tragic death, had airbrushed out of his biography one decision of his which cost much blood and tears, and eventually, humiliation for the United States. People forget that in fact, it was Kennedy's decision that started the Vietnam War which would become the first defeat ever for United States armed forces.
But it is also forgotten that the Vietnam war, as bloody as it was senseless, was ended by that Richard Nixon about whom the media had constructed a black legend.
But to go back to the 1961 elections. The fact that candidate Kennedy was a Catholic unleashed a reaction of impressive violence, in which the Americans showed that their 'tolerance' did not include anyone baptized in the Roman Catholic Church.
There was a wave of hatred, and much money was invested by American magnates to make sure that 'their' America would not be other than Protestant. Millions of booklets and pamphlets to defame Catholicism, millions of letters sent to individual voters, thousands of radio and TV spots.
The hysteria was such that a Rev. Harvey Springer (a Protestant pastor famous for his newspaper columns and was called 'God's cowboy from the Rocky Mountains') publicly called for Catholics to be expelled from the United States which had, after all, been founded by the Pilgrim Fathers, who were apostles of the Reformation.
So it is curious that despite these premises, Kennedy later became very popular. But this was because of the media, for whom a young and good-looking President, with a big smile worthy of Hollywood, with a beautiful wife and attractive young children, and an administration that was labelled the New Frontier (a slogan that titillated nationalistic pride), was pure manna.
But the hostility from Protestant fundamentalists remained. Millions of hypotheses have been advanced about Kennedy;s assassination in Dallas but strangely, few have spoken of any 'religious' reason, although this was considered by the secret services to be among those most deserving of investigation. Namely, a homicidal initiative by Protestant fanatics who could not 'stand' a Papist in the White House.
A small reminder for those who were not alive in the 1970s, perhaps the worst years, insofar as it was attempted - obviously with disastrous results - to put into practice the theories of the Revolution of 1968. Because it confirmed what realists have always said: Those who want to create paradise on earth always end up provoking hell.
Those years were also the heyday of Franco Basaglia, the psychiatrist whose name came to mean anathema to thousands of Italian families though at the time, he was acclaimed as the ne plus ultra of social progressivism. He certainly acted in good faith! Based on his experience as a psychiatrist with the inmates of mental hospitals, he noted, quite rightly, that things had to change about these institutions. At the time, whoever was not communist was labelled a fascist.
But this psychiatrist was truly Communist. Among other things, he was among the intellectuals who signed the infamous appeal published in L'Espresso which led to the assassination of Policeman Calabresi - a repugnant document which was a death sentence for that policeman, a man who had lived a Christian life of conviction and consistency.
Basaglia in those years elaborated a totally theoretical method based on the slogan, "Society can make you crazy, but society - anti-capitalist society - can heal you". Imprisoned by the extremism which brought him the applause of intellectuals and politicians, he ended up preaching that madness does not exist, that there had always and only been people who, if treated with the right social behavior, would turn out to be 'normal'. Or even that normalcy itself does not exist, either.
In the political climate of the time, this all led in 1978 to a law abolishing all mental institutions,thus laying the burden for the care of mental health patients, including all those sent home from the institutions that had been abolished, on their families.
Basaglia and his allies preached that a mental institution was equivalent to life imprisonment, from which everyone should be liberated. In practice, of course, patients were discharged at the expense of their families, since the 'support structures' projected by the law either did not materialize at all, or those that did came with great delay and lacked enough competent and committed personnel.
It was the usual failure of utopias even when it was claimed they were being realized. If I bring it up now, it's because among my clippings, I found an article by Basaglia from 1978, the year his law was approved. The 'democratic' psychiatrist wrote: "In China, the overwhelming majority of so-called insane people are healed politically, with the thought of Mao Tse-tung, which they were made to read, or had it read to them. A solution that may seem simplistic to a Westerner but which has a great advantage that must be acknowledged: which is to treat the mentally ill liked everybody else, since the Chinese government runs an enormous politico-pedagogical system focused on the education of its people".
No comment, obviously.
Munich, Germany - an archdiocese with almost two million baptized Catholics. Seminarians in 1979: 390. Seminarians in 2015: 0. Yes, 0. Not even one.
The office of diocesan statistics - the Church in Germany is as rich in money and in organizations as it is poor in spirituality and orthodoxy - published a document comparing 1959 (the year John XIII announced he was convoking Vatican II) and 2015. The comparison is impressively pitiful.
- Priests: 7000 then vs 2015.
- Churches: 3139 vs 1200.
- Self-declared Catholics (in 1959, Bavaria was considered a historical bulwark of the faith) 99.8% of the population, therefore, almost everyone. In 2015, 48%.
The document informs is that half of the churches that are still open and active today will close within the next five years.
The comment of the diocesan Curia: "If this downward trend continues at the same rate, the survival of the diocese can be guaranteed only for another ten years". Ecclesia fuit! (There was once a church!)
The diocese has been led for the past 10 years by that Cardinal Reinhard Marx who is listed among the progressivist bishops and in 2013 was named by the new pope to the council of cardinals who were to advise him in the governance of the universal Church [and who was also later named Chairman of the new Council for the Economy]. We are not so stupid as to ignore that the pre-agony status of the church in Munich is very much in the context of the crisis we know in the Church.
But in all sincerity, we must ask what 'advice' could possibly come for a 'renewal' of the universal Church from a cardinal diocesan archbishop who, after ten years in place, now has not a single seminarian, and who himself announces the imminent disappearance of his diocese? [NB: At the time Jospeh Ratzinger was named Archbishop of Munich in 1977, it was the second largest diocese in Europe, after Milan.]
Among my notes from recent readings,I find a small text from Joseph de Maistre which I think worthy of reflection: "If Jesus Christ were not God, then Mohammed would be considered the greatest apostle and benefactor of the human race, because he tore mankind away from its idolatry of idols, bringing mankind the purity of the one God announced by the Jews but which only Islam would have been able to spread on every continent".
Who knows if those Westerners who are against Christianity realize that to bring it down means to elevate to the highest level the religion of which Mohammed was the prophet and founder and which now terrorizes the world?
Finally, in conclusion, and apropos: I am looking at the forecasts of the American agency most cited in religious sociology (Pew), and this is the situation:
- There are now 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, and constantly increasing.
- At least 20 percent of them are considered radical, who read the words of the Quran literally with its exhortations for Muslims to exterminate all infidels.
This means there are some 320 million potential 'terrorists' as we would call them but who would consider themselves 'glorious martyrs'.
So I say with some selfishness that there are good reasons today to be happy one is old and to lament the future of our young people who will be part of the umma, the worldwide Muslim community.
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The Maltese directive makes
answering the ‘dubia’ urgent
Some observations in the wake of this weekend’s developments.
by Edward N. Peters
January 15, 2017
When a highly placed Italian prelate declares that “only a blind man cannot see” that confusion is the ecclesiastical order of the day, and that such confusion has as its fundamental source Pope Francis’ Amoris laetitia, matters have reached crisis level.
[With all due respect to Dr. Peters, matters have been at a genuine crisis level in the Church for some time now - in terms of splitting the Church along the line that delimits orthodoxy and the bimillennial Tradition of the Church from open heterodoxy and technically-not-yet-heresy on fundamental doctrine. But if you want to set a date for this crisis erupting full-blown, then yes, you have to count from the publication of AL, which wins hands-down and unchallenged as the most divisive papal document there ever has been. In comparison, the storm over Humanae Vitae was minor in comparison (since everyone who believes artificial contraception is a right and a quick convenient fix had been doing it anyway and would go on doing it), and the hostility to Summorum Pontificum a weak blip in the widescreen view of all those comfortably ensconced in the undemanding protestant-clone world of Novus Ordo liturgy.]
Catholics who have not followed the intense three-year debate over (among other things) admitting to holy Communion divorced-and-remarried Catholics who are living as married persons should stop reading this post and go get caught up on current events. But for those sufficiently aware of the doctrinal and disciplinary issues at stake I offer some observations in the wake of this weekend’s developments.
The bishops of Malta, by declaring that divorced-and-remarried Catholics who are living as if they were married “cannot be precluded from participating in … the Eucharist” have done grave violence to the unbroken and unanimous ecclesiastical tradition barring such Catholics from reception of holy Communion without — and let me stress this, without — doing violence to the actual text of Francis’s Amoris laetitia. That, folks, is the central problem.
AL does not — again, let me repeat, does not — declare ministers of holy Communion bound to give the sacrament to divorced-and-remarried Catholics living as if married. Francis's phrasing in several key passages of is (I have argued) malleable enough to allow bishops such as Chaput and Sample to reiterate the traditional Eucharistic discipline or, as the Buenos Aires bishops did, simply to pass ambiguous criteria down to local pastors to sort as best they can.
[But Church teaching should not be malleable or flexible to suit anyone's purpose: it always ought to be firm and clear, in which, as the Lord says "Let your Yes mean Yes, and your No mean No". Why does everyone other than the authors of the FIVE DUBIA and their unconditional supporters seem to give Bergoglio a pass on this? To do so is not being objective, it is having a big inexplicable blind spot. The calculated equivocation of AL - and therefore, its fundamental dishonesty - is its primary underlying problem.]
But precisely because key passages of Amoris are also flexible enough to allow bishops to do as the Maltese have done and require Church ministers to distribute the Eucharist to Catholics who engage in “public and permanent adultery” (CCC 2384) — not to mention conferring absolution on penitents who express no purpose of amendment in regard to such conduct — all this, without doing violence to the actual text of Amoris, one cannot but agree with Cdl. Caffarra and others that this hitherto unimaginable sacramental disunity is rooted directly in Amoris laetitia.
This ability of AL simultaneously to sustain orthodox, non-committal, and heterodox interpretations in matters of the gravest ecclesiastical import is exactly why the Four Cardinal’s dubia so urgently need answering — if not by Francis himself (and no one can force Francis’s hand) then at least by Francis’s right-hand man in matters of faith and morals, Cdl Muller of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to whom the dubia was also (few seem to have noticed) addressed.
[Not exactly. He was copy-furnished the letter to the pope, not sent a separate letter. The Four Cardinals know Vatican protocol well enough to have known that sending Mueller the letter in his own right as CDF Prefect would have been useless - precisely because Mueller cannot say anything to them as CDF Prefect without the approval of the pope. In other words, the Four Cardinals (three of whom were co-authors with Mueller of the pre-2014 Synod Five Cardinals' Book) were doing Mueller a good turn by sparing him the embarrassment of having to answer a letter of DUBIA directly addressed to him, while still acknowledging that the DUBIA are properly within the competence of the CDF to address. As it is, he chose to cop out on them, substantially (AL is perfectly A-OK and does not call forth any DUBIA) and procedurally (the Four Cardinals ought not to have made their letter public).
Of course, the stakes involved in the DUBIA jumped dramatically over the weekend, not simply by the Maltese bishops making plain what sort of sacramental abuses Amoris could tolerate within its terms, but by the decision, taken at who-knows-what level, to publish the Maltese document in L’Osservatore Romano, that “instrument for spreading the teachings of the successor of Peter".
Obviously the pope is not the editor of L’OR and it is possible that the decision to publish the Maltese document took Francis unawares. But insofar as L’OR is unquestionably the pope’s newspaper, people will be watching to see whether, directly or indirectly, there will appear some ‘distancing’ between Francis and the Maltese approach to sacraments for divorced-and-remarried Catholics. [You think??? From your pen to God's ear!]
I pray there does appear such papal distancing; I pray that the Maltese bishops repent of their failure to “exercise vigilance so that abuses do not creep into ecclesiastical discipline especially regarding …the celebration of the sacraments” (Canon 392 § 2); and I pray that the teachings of Christ and his Church penetrate our minds and hearts more deeply.
And I fervently pray to the Most Holy Trinity - more than I have every prayed for anything for myself, and with every invocation to God that I make throughout the day - that the Holy Spirit may overcome whatever 'Spirit' this pope has been listening to, enlighten him accordingly so that he may truly be a worthy Vicar of Christ on earth and the leader of the Roman Catholic Church he was elected to be. Through the intercession of Our Lady of Fatima, Mother of Perpetual Help - Mary, under all her titles as Mother of God, all the saints known and unknown, and the host of heavenly angels. Amen.
Canonist Peters followed up with an analysis of the latest pitiful attempt by Bergoglio apologist Austin Ivereigh to 'defend' AL - which appears to be, at best, yet another blatant act of dishonesty on the part of the Bergoglian Bergoglites, the same DISHONESTY that characterizes their lord and master's habitual misrepresentation of Scriptures, including Jesus's own words, to falsely support his personal agenda as pope...
Discussing law with people
who don’t know what it actually says
Austen Ivereigh's misrepresentation of the law illustrates why the AL debate is becoming,
to use Ivereigh’s term, so infuriating for defenders of ecclesiastical tradition.
by Edward N. Peters
January 16, 2017
Austen Ivereigh, in a Crux essay that adds little of substance to what has been said over and over again in regard to Amoris laetitia, fatally misquotes the central canon at issue in the Amoris debate.
His misrepresentation of the law illustrates better than anything I could say here about why the Amoris debate is becoming, to use Ivereigh’s term, so infuriating for defenders of ecclesiastical tradition. The ‘pro-Amoris’ wing simply does not know, or care, what the law in question actually says. Ivereigh writes:
Amoris never questions either Canon 915, which demands that Communion be withheld from those who “obstinately persevere in grave sin,”, nor the following canon, that people conscious of grave sin should not present themselves to receive Communion… But while Amoris is very clear about not wanting to create new norms or laws, it is also very clear about fostering a new attitude.
First, Amoris never “questions” Canon 915 because it never mentions Canon 915!, but much more importantly — and crucially for his essay —Ivereigh misquotes the text of Canon 915 in regard to the central issue here.
Canon 915 does NOT say that holy Communion must be withheld from those who “obstinately persevere in grave sin”, it says that holy Communion must be withheld from those who “obstinately persevere in manifest grave sin”. The difference, as has been explained copiously, is night and day.
Canon 915, controlling a minister’s decision to give holy Communion to a would-be communicant, is not, not, not, about reading communicants’ personal consciences (as if ministers could do that anyway). It is about assessing a would-be communicants’ public behavior (such as their having entered civil marriage subsequent to divorce).
Thus, virtually all of the Amoris discussions about individual assessments of conscience or, as the Maltese bishops put it, about “being at peace with God” (points that might figure in the application of Canon 916), is irrelevant to the operation of Canon 915, the modern canon resting on ancient roots that prevents ministers from giving holy Communion to Catholics in these circumstances.
[Apropos, having been a news editor in the first quarter-century of my working life, it is incumbent upon the editors of Crux to fact-check what their contributors allege. Ivereign is no canonist, however 'copiously' he may have written about the life of the Church. Nor is John Allen. So someone ought to have checked out what exactly Canon 915 says before Crux went ahead and published yet another article from their already most prolific contributor based on his dogged and repeatedly limp defenses of AL. Or, at the very least, publish a disclaimer to the effect that, in the absence of fact-checking (which every editorial desk ought to do these days becausde the Internet makes it so easy to do), Crux does not vouch for the accuracy of all the facts presented by their contributors.]
But it’s impossible to discuss the implications of the legal qualifier “manifest” in Canon 915 if public figures such as Ivereigh don’t even admit the word is there.
Misrepresenting the plain text of canon law on the central point at issue in the Amoris debate is not, I suggest, how should one go “about fostering a new attitude” toward law.
P.S. I followed the link to something Andrea Gagliarducci mentions in passing in his latest Monday Vatican column - in which he says,
In fact, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith already responded some years ago to a similar question [about communion for unqualified RCDs] coming from a French priest, made public some time ago on the official Vatican website.
The link was to LifeSite News of November 14, 2014, picking up in turn from Rorate caeli on that day - not long after the first Bergoglian 'family synod'- (therefore not some years ago, as Gagliarducci claims) - which, in turn, picked up from an article by the renowned Abbe Claude Barthe in L'Homme Nouveau... I am ashamed to say I completely missed this article at the time (the 'big news' then having been Cardinal Burke's dismissal from the Roman Curia and appointment to be Patron of the Knights of Malta).
by Abbe Claude Barthe
Translated for Rorate caeli by Fr. Paul McDonald from
L'HOMME NOUVEAU
November 12, 2014
The question of the situation of Catholics who are divorced and civilly remarried was especially discussed at the extraordinary assembly of the Synod on the theme, "The pastoral challenges of the family in the context of the evangelization," that ended in Rome on October 18.
A text of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in response to a question sent by a priest, has just added, on a specific point concerning the pastoral work related to these persons, an important element, that is particularly clarifying in the general disturbance of the spirits.
This response has the advantage of putting forward the problems related to the Eucharistic communion of the remarried divorced. It in fact settles what must be the attitude of priests who work in the ministry of reconciliation for those same remarried divorcees.
Therefore, we publish here the full text here, respecting its format:
[Responsum] To the Question of a French Priest: “Can a confessor grant absolution to a penitent who, having been religiously married, has contracted a second union following divorce?”
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith responded on October 22, 2014:
“We cannot exclude a priori the remarried divorced faithful from a penitential process that would lead to a sacramental reconciliation with God and, therefore, also to Eucharistic communion.
Pope John Paul II, in the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio (n. 84) envisaged such a possibility and detailed its conditions: ‘Reconciliation in the sacrament of Penance which would open the way to the Eucharist, can only be granted to those who, repenting of having broken the sign of the Covenant and of fidelity to Christ, are sincerely ready to undertake a way of life that is no longer in contradiction to the indissolubility of marriage.
This means, in practice, that when, for serious reasons, such as for example the children’s upbringing, a man and a woman cannot satisfy the obligation to separate, they ‘take on themselves the duty to live in complete continence, that is, by abstinence from the acts proper to married couples’.’ (cf. also Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis, n. 29)
The penitential process to be undertaken must take into consideration the following elements:
1 – Verify the validity of the religious marriage in the respect of truth, all the while avoiding giving the impression of a kind of ‘Catholic divorce’.
2 – See eventually if the persons, with the aid of grace, can separate from their new partners and reconcile with those from whom they had separated.
3 – Invite remarried divorced persons who, for serious reasons (for instance, children), cannot separate from their partner to live as ‘brother and sister’.
In any event, absolution cannot be granted if not under the condition of being assured of true contrition, that is, ‘a sorrow of mind, and a detestation for sin committed, with the purpose of not sinning for the future’ (Council of Trent, Doctrine on the Sacrament of Penance, c. 4).
In this line, a remarried divorcee cannot be validly absolved if he does not take the firm resolution of not ‘sinning for the future’ and therefore of abstaining from the acts proper to spouses, by doing in this sense all that is within his power.”
Luis F. Ladaria, SJ
Titular Archbishop of Thibica,
Secretary
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
L'Homme Nouveau's article continues with Fr. Barthe's comment on the responsum:
The Congregation does not just quote n. 84 of Familaris Consortio. It details with realism the concrete steps the minister of the Sacrament of Penance, the confessor , must take in exploring the case.
It is important to note that the Congregation, in the framework of the question submitted, does not give a complete treatment as to how the minister might exhort and convince, in regard to the holiness of marriage, the continuing existence of the marriage despite the civil union that has been adulterously contracted, the mutual responsibilities of the separated but true spouses, the scandal given, the graces of the sacrament that continue to be given to the spouses, etc.
The Responsum touches upon and regulates only the questions the Confessor must address, listening to what the penitent avows, to know if he may concretely absolve, in the name of Christ, in virtue of his sacramental ministry, and, under what conditions he may do so.
Even if, in the context of the diffusion and the discussion of heterodox theses, the Responsum gives the impression of being "rigid", in reality it opts for the greatest kindness possible towards the sinner, realistically taking into account the sinful situation created by the institution of a new union after the divorce, and seeking prudently to draw the sinner out of that situation, without "quenching the smoldering wick."
One may say that Congregation places itself, according to the tradition of the Holy See, in the framework of the Roman school of theology, that of Saint Alphonsus Liguori, who combated the French rigorists.
The Response therefore details the different steps or markers that the confessor will rapidly explore in the tribunal of penance:
The possible future finding of the invalidity of the sacramental marriage which could set everything right. In some cases the apparent possibility of that invalidity would appear with evidence, and this would lead to a deepened investigation. Even so, the Congregation makes sure to clarify that the questions must not scandalize, in giving the impression that this is all just "Catholic divorce".
Above all the confessor will try to find out if the penitent thinks that a reconciliation between the two spouses is thinkable and possible. Because, according to St. Augustine: "God does not command you to do impossible things, rather, in commanding he invites you to do what you can, and to ask for what you cannot."
The Council of Trent adds, glossing St. Paul, "and God helps you and makes you able" (Dz 1536) [1]. The Responsum translates this as, "with the help of grace". Let us add that there can be children of the sacramental union deeply hurt by the separation of their parents.
In any case, only serious reasons can justify staying together in the adulterous union created by the second civil union or other cohabitation. They would include the presence of children of the second union, but also the advanced age of the couple, and the risks of rupturing a cohabitation which is now only a friendship.
In any case the penitent must make the firm resolution to live with his or her new partner as "brother and sister". This supposes on the part of the penitent to be able to put into action such an arrangement, which will seem possible and plausible to the confessor, thus demanding the deferral of sacramental absolution for a future confession.
This supposes for the penitent and his or her second partner, to take the measures and make the resolutions necessary for living virtuously, despite what the moralists call "the occasion of sin". Experience proves that it is not impossible.
But only a proportionate reason (the education of children) authorizes staying in the danger of sinning. Otherwise, the Congregation goes right to the point, without treating the question of scandal, or of how such an apparently adulterous couple can be seen approaching the sacraments.
The conclusion of the Responsum is particularly interesting. In effect it regulates the particular case of the absolution given to a divorcee who has contracted a new union with respect to the general principle concerning the integrity of the sacrament of Penance, and by way of the consequence of the legitimacy of the absolution that the minister of the sacrament grants.
The "acts of the penitent" are necessary: contrition, avowal of one's sins, and the satisfaction or "penance", and especially the kind of contrition required by divine law for the remission of sins. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith quotes from the Council of Trent (Dz 1676): so that his sin be remitted, the penitent must be animated, with respect to the evil he has committed, with a sorrow of soul and a detestation of this sin and the resolution to not sin in the future.
Since AL was published last April, the discussion about it has become so frenetic - not a day goes by without a new significant development or commentary about it - that even the most inveterate followers of the debate tend to focus only on the latest wrinkle on the AL landscape (at the moment, it is Maltagate).
I find it strange that no one up to now - not even Cardinal Mueller, or the Four Cardinals themselves, for that matter - has cited this unconditional 2014 RESPONSUM from the CDF to the central practical DUBIUM about AL. Of course, it is pre-AL, but whether AL has changed doctrine or not, this RESPONSUM remains valid, should it not? However, the pope certainly cannot say that at all in honesty, and Mueller cannot say it now because it will definitely be construed as insubordination and rank disobedience to the pope.
Oh what a tangled web Bergoglio has woven around himself once he had set out to deceive! In AL, he and his writers affirmed heterodoxies violating the moral truths of the faith - no, make that MORAL TRUTH on general - that are really heresies casuistically formulated so that they cannot be technically called heresies by canon law definition.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/01/2017 17:00] |
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January 16, 2017 headlines
Sorry, I thought I had posted this last night...
Canon212.com
PewSitter
Here's that story on yet another flagrant dishonesty in AL, not to mention among the persons primarily responsible for it... And what is surprising about it the story is that it was published by CRUX, a virtual house organ for the Bergoglio Pontificate... Mons. Fernandez offers a brief non-answer.
Ethicist questions Mons. Fernandez's role in AL
Widely thought to be its chief ghostwriter, the Argentine bishop plagiarized himself
by plugging in passages from his earlier writings without the appropriate footnote,
thereby directly attributing his own thought and words to the pope he serves
by Michael Pakaluk
SPECIAL TO CRUX
January 15, 2017
Editor’s note: In this essay, Professor Michael Pakaluk of the Catholic University of America examines the role of Argentine Archbishop Victor Fernandez, a theological adviser to Pope Francis, in Amoris Laetitia, the pontiff’s document on the family. Crux invited Fernandez to respond, and his comments appear at the bottom of the article.
The most important footnote in Amoris Laetitia may not be, as many suppose, one dealing with access to the sacraments for Catholics in “irregular” situations. Instead, it may be a footnote that’s not actually in the document but which should be, since one of the sentences in Amoris is lifted nearly verbatim from an essay published in 1995 in a Buenos Aires theological journal.
The sentence, from the notorious chapter 8, is this:
“Saint Thomas Aquinas himself recognized that someone may possess grace and charity, yet not be able to exercise any one of the virtues well; in other words, although someone may possess all the infused moral virtues, he does not clearly manifest the existence of one of them, because the outward practice of that virtue is rendered difficult: ‘Certain saints are said not to possess certain virtues, in so far as they experience difficulty in the acts of those virtues, even though they have the habits of all the virtues.’” [Cf. Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 65, art. 3 ad 2 and ad 3].
One must see the Spanish to see the plagiarism clearly. In Spanish, the Amoris sentence is this:
Ya santo Tomás de Aquino reconocía que alguien puede tener la gracia y la caridad, pero no poder ejercitar bien alguna de las virtudes, de manera que aunque posea todas las virtudes morales infusas, no manifiesta con claridad la existencia de alguna de ellas, porque el obrar exterior de esa virtud está dificultado: ‘Se dice que algunos santos no tienen algunas virtudes, en cuanto experimentan dificultad en sus actos, aunque tengan los hábitos de todas las virtudes.’”
And the corresponding sentence from that 1995 theological journal is this:
De hecho santo Tomas reconocia que alguien puede tener la gracia y la caridad pero no ejercitar bien alguna de las virtudes “propter aliquas dispositiones contrarias” (Summa Th., I-IIae., 65, 3, ad 2), de manera que alguien puede tener todas las virtudes pero no manifestar claramente la posesion de alguna de ellas porque el obrar exterior de esa virtud esta dificultado por disposiciones contrarias: “Se dice que algunos santos no tienen algunas virtudes en cuanto tienen dificultades en los actos de esas virtudes, aunque tengan los habitos de todas” (Ibid, ad 3).”
And here is the footnote that should be there, but isn’t:
“Victor M. Fernandez, Romanos 9-11 : gracia y predestinación, Teologia, vol 32, issue 65, 1995, pp. 5-49, at 24. Cf. Victor M. Fernandez, La dimensión trinitaria de la moral II: profundización del aspecto ético a la luz de “Deus caritas est”, Teologia, vol 43, issue 89, 133-163 at 157. Evangelii Gaudium 171.”
One must add the bit about Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation on the joy of the Gospel, because the same sentence was used there too without attribution, and one must also refer to another article by Fernandez, with yet another version of the sentence.
Naturally, I use the term “plagiarism” in its material, not formal sense.
You and I will suspect that Fernandez, now an archbishop and close friend of the pope and said to be the ghostwriter of Laudato Si, was also the ghostwriter of Amoris chapter 8 and parts at least of Evangelii Gaudium. In the sentence cited above, he was simply helping himself to his own, earlier writings.
But materially, for an author to present the words of another as his own words is still plagiarism, and Pope Francis, not Victor Fernandez, is the author of Amoris and Evangelii Gaudium.
In fact, the use in Amoris of material from Fernandez’s earlier writings is more pervasive than a single missing footnote. At one stage, an entire section of the document is largely lifted from a 2001 essay by Fernandez, though it’s of lesser theological and ethical import.Here is a chart showing the dependence:
I wish that these lapses could stand as a regrettable but isolated fact about Amoris, but they cannot. I will point out three broader implications.
The first is that Amoris needs to be “taken back to the shop,” to have various flaws removed or corrected. I have already pointed out how footnote 329 misquotes Gaudium et Spes, and that it must deliberately misquote that document to advance its implicit argument. [Habitual tactic in Bergoglian texts, oral or written. But if the pope can habitually misrepresent what Jesus said in the Gospels - usually by omission, but also by his idiosyncratic Biblical exegeses - one cannot really expect him to be more punctilious in cases not involving Jesus at all! ]
Surely no text published under the name of the Roman pontiff should contain an inaccurate quotation of an ecumenical council.
There are seven or eight other instances of poor scholarship -misquotation, misleading quotation, misattribution, and so on - which should be corrected. I would be happy to supply a list. But there are many competent scholars, with goodwill toward the pope, who could have vetted the document in advance and who could still help clean it up now. [JMB and his minions are so disdainful of 'intellectuals' and of 'ideas' that one must not be surprised they are sloppy- or simply do not care - about the formal requirements of crafting any formal text worthy of the name, especially if it is a papal document.]
I suppose if Amoris were “taken back to the shop” for these relatively minor flaws, it might be good if Pope Francis at the same time definitively resolved its widely-noted ambiguities. [Oh, what a deliciously ironic understatement of the DUBIA crisis!]
A second implication is that these instances of material plagiarism call into question Fernandez’s suitability to be a ghostwriter for the pope. A ghostwriter should remain a ghost. By quoting himself, Fernandez has drawn attention to himself and away from the pope. In secular contexts, a ghostwriter who exposed the author he was serving to charges of plagiarism would be dismissed as reckless. Worse than that, Fernandez strains the consciences of the faithful.
Not a few bishops and cardinals, putatively speaking on behalf of the pope, have been saying to laypersons who find difficulties in Amoris, “It is the magisterium. You must accept it.” But in the plagiarized sentences do we find “the magisterium,” or Fernandez’s own theological speculations?
You may say that, as the pope has approved of the text, so he has approved those speculations. But surely each sentence in the text is approved in the manner appropriate to it. When Francis quotes Martin Luther King, Jr., Jorge Luis Borges, and Mario Benedetti, we rightly take the quotations to have exactly the weight that should be given to what poets and activists have astutely said, and no more.
Likewise, an explicit quotation of a theological journal article would be received as having its own distinctive force and weight. To say about it, then, in an unqualified way, “it is the magisterium,” would be a kind of spiritual bullying.
In fact, there is a distortion of St. Thomas [Again, such deliberate distortion of citations from the past great thinkers of the Church is a habitual problem in Bergoglian texts, as he misuses St. Vincent de Lerins's quotation about the Church quite frequently] in the first line from Fernandez quoted above, as he seems to want to use St. Thomas’s sound point (that some saints have found difficulty in doing some virtuous acts easily and well) to support an unsound point (that some persons have been saints while acting contrary to some virtues). [This was one of the blatant errors immediately noted in AL by those respectful of truth, but one that the pope and his defenders, including his new pet theologian Cardinal Schoenborn, have chosen to ignore.] I reject as contrary to the thought of St. Thomas what the sentence seems to intend to suggest, as do other scholars.
But a third implication arises from the fact that earlier texts by Fernandez were even consulted at all. Why should someone ostensibly writing about “the joy of love” be rummaging about in obscure theological articles?
Since Fernandez did go to these articles, we should expect their bigger themes to be connected to what he wrote in Amoris. The suspicion is not wholly unjustified that perhaps he might aim to have his own speculations win out, not through the usual tug-and-pull of theological debate, but by slipping them in as papal teachings.
If one reads the 1995 article, it presents an argument from Scripture and tradition that, by virtue of the Passion of Christ, each member of the human race, past and present, without any exceptions, and even apart from the instrumentality of baptism in any ordinary sense, has been saved and “effectively predestined” by God to eternal happiness.
He regards this view as the proper development of the tradition and, although he concedes it is not a “truth of the faith,” still, he feels so strongly about it that at the end of his article he concludes with a passionate Credo: “I rely firmly upon the truth that all are saved.”
It follows, Fernandez says, that the Gospel needs to be presented with an emphasis on God’s mercy and in a purely positive light, emphasizing its beauty and joy. [In other words, 'Forget the TEN COMMANDMENTS! God is soooo NEGATIVE!'...] Fear is never a good Christian motive, as the only question facing the soul is what degree of glory it will attain in the life to come. [1) Apparently, Bergoglio's longtime oneman brain trust has never heard of 'fear of God', which is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, nor of its adjective form 'God-fearing'! and 2) 'The degree of glory it will attain in the life to come'??? Are there 'degrees of glory' in heaven??? Now, one sees the 1985 genesis of Bergoglio's conviction that no one would ever go to hell, that in fact, there is no hell!]
If everyone is effectively predestined to salvation, then should everyone also be invited to share in Holy Communion? Fernandez seems sympathetic to the suggestion, although he takes up the question only indirectly.
He says Catholics who believe that only those already in a “state of grace” should receive Communion are not simply excluding others, they also seem to be “flouting” or “boasting about” freely given grace. [And the genesis of Bergoglio's 'communion for everyone' stand.]
Fernandez seems to prefer, in contrast, sinners who would approach the Communion table without that kind of boasting, although, he puts it delicately, this approach “points in the direction of a dialogue with Luther’s doctrine of simul iustus et peccator” (that everyone is at the same time both justified and a sinner).
Fernandez uses the plagiarized sentence in arguing that persons might be in objectively sinful situations yet still be “effectively predestined to salvation.” To be concerned that such persons risk eternal damnation, is to suppose that human creatures just on their own could reverse God’s will. [An argument he reprises in one of the more quasi-heretical 'teachings' of AL.]
These are the main speculations of the article, according to which, it seems, the essential nature of Christianity involves changes depending on testing and probation; that the moral law is irrelevant; and the distinction between mortal and venial sin breaks down.
Fernandez’s essay is deeply problematic. Yet now an apostolic exhortation of the Holy Father references it. Worse than that, a plagiarized passage is plucked to argue a line of thought in behalf of [ DIM=9pt][and obviously shared by] this pope.
Here, Pakaluk devolves into an untenable, unconvincing defense of JMB - and now it is clear why CRUX willingly published the article:
This can only cause confusion - because in the Holy Father too, of course, one finds an emphasis on mercy, including: a confidence of God’s action even among sinners in seemingly desperate conditions; a concern to hold up the appeal of a Christian way of life as beautiful and joyful; and a solicitude to welcome and foster (by “accompanying”) even the most fragile signs of movement toward God in souls. [It's not as if Bergoglio were the first pope or Catholic thinker to think that! That is the default position of any thinking Catholic but it is only one side of it. The position is also balanced out by a concern for truth and genuine charity, best expressed in Jesus's admonition to the adulterous woman, "Go and sin no more!' But Bergoglio obviously thinks it is negative to even talk about sin, so in AL, he has progressed to all but directly decreeing a concept Scalfari rightly attributed to him three years ago - the abolition of sin!]
These attractive themes are among the most loveable and helpful notes of Francis’s papacy. It seems obvious that they mark a good path for the Church now. Yet how can anything but mischief be the result if the problematic speculations of Fernandez are yoked to them? [They are yoked together, because Fernandez's reflections back in 1985 or whenever have obviously shaped Bergoglio's 'theology'!]
It is not difficult to imagine the Holy Father and his ghostwriter as inadvertently at cross-purposes. This need not be deliberate; in professional ethics one speaks of a “conflict of interest.”
What the pope understands as special solicitude for the weakest Christians, the theologian might view, perhaps even in spite of himself, as the fuller expression of everyone’s effective predestination.
In fact, Fernandez has a track record of distorting papal teaching to match his own theological ideas.
In the 2006 article, Fernandez applies his 1995 view to Pope Benedict’s encyclical Deus Caritas Est. After using that sentence about St. Thomas and citing the Catechism , paragraphs 1735 and 2352, Fernandez says, “There can be no doubt that the Catholic magisterium has taken the position with clarity that an act which is objectively wrong, such as a premarital relationship, or the use of a condom in sexual relations, does not necessarily lead to the loss of the life of sanctifying grace, from which the dynamism of charity springs.”
Rather, in such couples who have diminished culpability (including same-sex couples, he says), it is precisely their sexual relationship which can realize subjective values which have “a theological and Trinitarian richness.” Sex for them becomes “an expression of the ecstatic dynamism of the love which imprints sanctifying grace.” It involves “a sincere and genuine search (búsqueda) for the happiness of the other,” which is the essence of charity.
To propose, then, that such couples should continue this search while refraining from sexual relations, “to exclude completely bodily desire and pleasure,” Fernandez says, would be to place eros and agape in opposition, which Pope Benedict in his encyclical “has rejected with overwhelming force.”
It follows from Benedict’s teachings, he says, that the sexual acts in such relationships have “a deep Trinitarian content, which is at the same time a positive moral reality.”
It is shocking enough that Fernandez says such things, but even more disturbing that he says that Pope Benedict is committed to them also.
As for Amoris, Rocco Buttliglione argues that its silence on some key teachings of Popes John Paul II and Benedict - silence, not a contrary assertion - can be construed as a continuous development or extension, involving a small group of problematic cases. Others, such as Ed Feser, are not so sure, and think they see, even in the absence of an affirmation, the risk of a surrender to the sexual revolution or a collapse into antinomianism.
Whatever we hold on these matters, it cannot be denied that Fernandez’s “I rely firmly upon the truth that all are saved,” and then what he seems to regard as the concrete pastoral implications of that doctrine in his “extramarital sex can be an expression of the ecstatic love of charity,” [What an idiotic statement of nonsense, but this comes from the bishop who wrote a whole book on The Art of Kissing!, as if that were a pastoral concern at all] represents a fundamental, not a slight, difference.
CRUX adds this:
Archbishop Victor Fernandez responds:
First, Fernandez said that anyone wishing to understand his views on grace and the sacraments should consult this article published in 2011.
Second, he sent two paragraphs of response to Pakaluk’s analysis:
“The article about predestination has no connection with much later articles on the Trinitarian dimension of morality. The commentator also imagines that I make a connection between predestination and the possibility of Communion of a sinner, but that is in his imagination and cannot be based on my texts, because I would never make that connection. Why? Because predestination is related to the final state of the person and therefore with the grace of final perseverance (at the last instant), but not directly with the historical path of the person.”
“I would never admit that anyone can receive Communion if the person is not in a state of sanctifying grace. This profoundly contradicts my own theology, and cannot be based on my texts. I say only that an objective situation of sin can be subjectively not guilty. In that case, the objective situation of sin would not deprive the state of sanctifying grace.”
Please tell me if you understood any of that gobbledygook.
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What a refreshingly welcome voice from Benedict XVI's Pontificate!
Cardinal Levada on Pope Benedict, the CDF
and the prosecution of clergy sexual abuse
The CDF prefect emeritus defends its role as a source of unity for the universal Church
and its expertise in the prosecution of clergy sexual abuse cases
by Joan Frawley Desmond
January 16, 1017
MENLO PARK, Calif. — Amid calls for the decentralization of the Roman Curia by some Church leaders and theologians, Cardinal William Levada, the prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), underscored the CDF’s crucial role as the arbiter of faith and morals for the universal Church.
Cardinal Levada also suggested that the CDF was especially qualified to oversee the prosecution of clergy abuse cases, a responsibility given to the congregation by Pope St. John Paul II in his 2001 document Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela, issued motu proprio (on the pope’s own initiative).
Over the past month, media outlets have reported on proposals within the Vatican to shift the prosecution of abuse cases to another dicastery. These reports have not been publicly confirmed, and Cardinal Levada did not address them directly. Rather, he reflected on the CDF’s unique expertise in dealing with these often-complicated cases over the past 16 years.
Cardinal Levada, 80, the former archbishop of San Francisco who retired as prefect of the CDF in 2012, offered his comments during a wide-ranging Register interview on Jan. 9 at his residence on the grounds of St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, California. The conversation touched on his decades of service to the Church as a theologian, bishop and prefect of the CDF, and he also discussed the legacy of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.
As some Church leaders and scholars press for reforms of the Roman Curia that could give more power to national bishops’ conferences in the interests of collegiality and synodality, there has been talk of giving national bishops’ conferences the power to chart an independent course on questions related to faith and morals.
Cardinal Levada discounted such talk and predicted that the CDF’s enormous value as a source of unity for the universal Church would be recognized and secured.
“Bishops’ conferences can grapple with pretty much anything they want,” Cardinal Levada told the Register, as he recalled his own work with fellow bishops at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He characterized the relationship between the congregation and national bishops’ conferences as a “give-and-take.”
And he noted that it is “very important to have a prefect who has had the experience of being a bishop because, in a certain sense, the bishops are the principal clients of the Roman Curia, so there needs to be dialogue about trying to put the Pope’s directives into practice and then bringing to the Pope the problems that are surfacing.”
But he questioned proposals that call for the CDF’s role to be downplayed and for the national conferences to be given more independence — as if the Vatican were “like the European Union,” faced with the threatened exit of countries eager for more autonomy.
“I don’t think that would be a useful proposal,” he said. “It seems based on a mindset regarding Church structures that is almost entirely derived from a political view of structures, and that doesn’t take into account the theological roots of the Church: how the structures should seek to preserve and enhance what Jesus himself has left us and established as the Church.”
“It is not simply organizational. It is a part of divine revelation that Jesus intended to found a Church and is the head of his body the Church,” he added.
“Those are discussions that will continue to go on, but I don’t expect any dramatic decentralization,” Cardinal Levada said. “There are things that can be decentralized. But ‘independence’ is not the nature of the relationship. It is solidarity and cohesion.”
During his years as prefect of the CDF during Pope Benedict’s pontificate, Cardinal Levada was also responsible for overseeing the resolution of clergy sexual-abuse cases and would present the requests for laicization of priests credibly accused of such crimes during his weekly meetings with the Pope.
At present, once an accusation of sexual abuse involving a minor is leveled against a priest, his bishop and others conduct a preliminary investigation to establish whether the allegation has “the semblance of truth.”
If it does, the case is immediately referred to the CDF, which decides whether the CDF will handle it or send it back to the bishop. The CDF also decides whether there will be trial or an administrative procedure, which usually involves less complex cases.
“The experience that the CDF now has in the implementation of the motu proprio would favor the fact that it continues to do this,” said Cardinal Levada.
Over the years, the CDF has also established the proper disciplinary actions to be taken in such cases, “with the participation of highly qualified canonists working and teaching in Rome.”
While there is general uniformity in imposing penalties, individual cases are also scrutinized, with “the gravity of scandal and the problem of recidivism” taken into consideration. Further, he noted that the congregation has “gained vast experience in how to handle the experience of different countries and the interface with legal and police authorities.”
Cardinal Levada praised the Holy See’s effort to make the protection of minors and vulnerable adults the “gold standard” of the Church across the globe, but he acknowledged that even within the Curia “there still were those who do not understand the value of the delicate — often difficult — measures needed to insure the protection of minors from sexual abuse, including penalties for those guilty of such abuse.”
“Not everyone was on board, but they understood Pope Benedict’s position. I was very clear about that in talks I gave and in working with various congregations of which I was a member,” he said.
A California native who was ordained a priest in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Levada received a doctorate in fundamental and dogmatic theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University.
As a young theology instructor at St. John’s Seminary in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles (1970-1976), he discovered one of Father Joseph Ratzinger’s seminal works, Introduction to Christianity, and quickly added it to the syllabus for the course, a decision that marked his immediate respect for the German theologian, who would later choose him as his successor at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Subsequently, from 1976 to 1982, Father Levada served as an official of the CDF and continued to teach theology part time at the Gregorian. After he had served as a CDF official for a number of years in the early 1980s, he was thrilled to learn that Pope John Paul II had appointed the German theologian, then archbishop of Munich, as the new prefect of the CDF.
From the beginning, Father Levada was struck by Cardinal Ratzinger’s collegiality, humility and brilliance. “When he was prefect, he came into our working group, rolled up his sleeves — figuratively speaking. He listened, then summed up the discussion, and it was exactly right.
“He had such a great mind, and a synthetic mind, to be able to listen to people and then propose a consensus about some specific action or formulation of a doctrinal truth,” Cardinal Levada remembered.
After serving under Cardinal Ratzinger for one year, Father Levada returned to the United States and was appointed to a series of high-profile episcopal posts, including archbishop of Portland, Oregon, and then archbishop of San Francisco from 1995 to 2005.
While he was archbishop of Portland, Pope John Paul announced plans for the new Catechism of the Catholic Church and named Cardinal Ratzinger the chairman of the commission that would prepare a series of drafts of the Catechism. Archbishop Levada was one of seven bishops from around the world invited by Cardinal Ratzinger to join the editorial committee.
“For six years, I worked closely with him on the Catechism,” Cardinal Levada recalled. “That really had a central impact on my ministry and my life. It was such a great blessing to have so much of the doctrinal confusion resolved in a specific and unifying manner by the formulation of the truths of the faith in a way that was not hostile or polemical.”
Once the Catechism was published in 1992, Archbishop Levada sought to promote its use in Catholic schools and CCD programs, seminaries and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
“This was something Cardinal Ratzinger very much appreciated and found supportive of his efforts and those of the congregation,” he noted. “One of the key things on his mind when he was elected pope was to use the Catechism in an effective way in the teaching of the faith.”
After Cardinal Ratzinger’s election as Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop Levada traveled to Rome to offer his congratulations. During their conversation, “Pope Benedict said, ‘Listen, Your Excellency. I have something I want to say to you.’” The American archbishop stopped talking and was flabbergasted when the Pope asked him to be the prefect of the CDF. “I was astonished. I said, ‘I am not a great theologian.’”
Later, though, as Cardinal Levada reflected on his appointment, he better understood the Holy Father’s thinking: “He is a great theologian; and now he is Pope, and he doesn’t need a great theologian as prefect. He needs someone who knows the congregation — its personnel and procedures — who speaks Italian and who has had experience dealing with the sex-abuse crisis,” the cardinal reasoned.
As prefect of the CDF, Cardinal Levada met weekly with Pope Benedict for about an hour.
“To have the Pope as your immediate superior, who had your same job, you might think he would micromanage, but there was none of that in his approach,” he said.
Cardinal Levada submitted his resignation as prefect in 2012 at age 76, though he remained engaged in the work of numerous congregations and various papal commissions.
Pope Benedict’s decision to renounce his papal office came as a shock to Cardinal Levada, who was in California when he heard the news. Since then, however, he has come to appreciate the enormous importance of the pope emeritus’s decision to resign his office and live out his retirement on the grounds of the Vatican.
Pope Benedict’s resignation will now be an important part of his legacy, he predicted. It means that “someone who receives the votes from the cardinals in the conclave does not have to be concerned about ‘What will happen if I am sick or have a stroke, or cannot fulfill my duties as pope?’ That has been resolved by Pope Benedict’s decision to resign.”
The Pope’s decision to live on the grounds of the Vatican and devote himself to a life of prayer for the Church and his successor, he added, need not be the only path for a retired pontiff, but it does address potential issues that could generate tensions within the Church.
“It is a useful thing for us to see how he now continues a certain Petrine ministry of prayer and sacrifice on behalf of his successor,” the cardinal said. “He wanted to make sure he would never be viewed as a rival of his successor. There is no question that he is praying for his successor.”
Asked to comment on Pope Emeritus Benedict’s legacy, Cardinal Levada acknowledged the German Pope’s many achievements and drew attention in particular to his towering contribution as a homilist.
“Part of his extraordinary legacy is his homilies: his understanding of the liturgy and the way Scripture and the liturgical text can be applied and need to be applied in the homily for a feast-day celebration,” he said.
“He has given some of the most extraordinary homilies, and as the collections of those homilies are translated and come out in English, it will be a great part of his legacy for the Church in the U.S.”
Cardinal Levada also praised Benedict’s gifts as a writer who valued clarity of expression and who effectively mined spiritually powerful scriptural and liturgical images.
“You can trace his encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love) to the seminal ideas of his book Introduction to Christianity and how we envision God,” noted Cardinal Levada.
“God is a relationship. God is love. The relationship between Father, Son and Spirit is fundamentally a spiritual relationship of love, and that is the fundamental reality of creation.”
“These are dramatically important insights he offered to a technological age that wants to solidify everything according to a scientific pattern,” he concluded.
For Pope Benedict, then, the Holy Trinity “becomes a kind of poetic inspiration for all his work,” Cardinal Levada said. “At the base of everything is God, as Father, Son and Spirit, three divine Persons in one nature, a relationship of love.”
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Our pope's misplaced and misguided priorities...
Last night, I spent some time translating Aldo Maria Valli's most informative commentary on the Vatican decision to enlist Paul Ehrlich as a resource person for its next event aggressively promoting the anti-scientific and anti-Catholic outlook of the reigning pope as expressed in Laudato si. But I lost the translation just as I was saving it because the forum's server interjected itself to tell me I was not entitled to do that because I needed to log in... It will take some time to reconstruct my translation, because it also involved some research I had to do in order to explain or clarify certain statements by Valli that assume familiarity with Ehrlich and his preposterous population catastrophism disseminated worldwide through his 1968 book The Population Bomb.
Fortunately, Fr. Schall's column in the current issue of CWR is about this - even if his argument goes to the underlying philosophical and theological fallacies of Ehrlich and the population-control freaks who have become the reigning pope's secular acolytes-in-chief... That Bergoglio as pope does not seem to see how untenable his alliance is with these people is just as big a Catholic tragedy as his shameless advocacy of moral relativism in AL.
The bomb that never detonated
On the 1970s, Paul Ehrlich, overpopulation, and why poverty is
mostly caused by bad ideas and lack of virtue, not lack of resources
by James V. Schall, S.J.
January 16, 2017
I.
Back in the early 1970s, in the heyday of unceasing rancor over Humanae Vitae, a great number of books were published that prophesied disaster for the human race. Among the most famous was Paul Ehrlich’s widely read The Population Bomb.
At that time, we were given various apocalyptic scenarios about the end of things caused by our own uncontrolled breeding. We were soon to starve to death. The world, then with a population of around three billion, was running out of food, clothing, gas, and just about everything else. Things could only get worse. Resources were “limited”; no more new ones were imaginable.
The Catholic Church was often singled out as contributing to this approaching demise of the human race since she taught that the world was made for man. Her weird stance on human breeding was “irrational”. Her views on marriage and children were said to go against the principles of, you guessed it, “modern science”.
The main group that did not readily buy these forebodings were the economists, or at least the free market ones. (See, for example, John Mueller’s Redeeming Economics and John McNerney’s The Wealth of Persons).
Not a few farmers and agrarian biologists also thought that perhaps increasing populations was not such a bad thing. Increased yields in many grains were shown to be quite feasible and soon put into production. India, once a basket case became a bread basket, an exporter of grain and not just an importer of it.
Children and youth meant new markets and incentives. They also meant more potential workers who would be both producers and consumers. They were also provided some assurance to the elderly, as the Japanese and Europeans were to find out when they had too few of them. Some folks seemed to know how to respond to these so-called scarcities; others did not. It was something that needed to be both learned and encouraged.
World population proceeded to reach four billion, then five, and now approaches eight billion. If anything, we are better prepared to deal with eight billion than the world was prepared to meet its needs when the population of the planet was less than half a billion.
This is counter-intuitive; many would expect the opposite, especially if they do not really think about it. In fact, the whole socialist agenda was largely a thinking about it in a way that never worked and usually made things worse. The solutions based on empowering governments to deal with it always backfired.
Instead of inciting growth and increased quality in things, government control of resources to insure justice invariably produced stagnation and inefficiency. Such a seemingly sensible solution produced something worse; good intentions did not produce good results.
At that time, I wrote two books, Human Dignity & Human Numbers and Welcome Number 4,000,000,000 (more recently, there is On Christianity & Prosperity).
My thesis was that the birth of new human lives was not a disaster. It was something to rejoice about. This welcome was not merely in a family sense, but also in an economic, political, and cultural sense. This approach seemed to be the way things were supposed to work.
Earlier writers such as Locke and Rousseau had understood this value of population long before Malthus came along with his calculus of a world with standing room only. Subsequent writers have often been amused to point out that we could put the whole present eight billion population of the earth into the state of Texas with about as much space between folks as present day New Yorkers enjoy in their neighborhoods.
Increasing populations were in fact good, but this possibility depended on what we thought of the family, of children, and of the human ability to meet its own needs by means that actually work and were not intrinsically immoral. Man was not created with all the answers, but with the capacity to find good answers, and this process required a rejection of what did not work.
II.
At the time, I knew the late Julian Simon, whose books, The Ultimate Resource and The Ultimate Resource 2, proposed (along with George Gilder and Herman Kahn) that wealth was not a matter of supposedly available resources based on contemporary estimates of their quantities. Rather, the human mind was the only real source of wealth in the universe.
The Arabs sat on pools of oil for centuries with no idea what to do with it. Oil or anything else is only valuable if some use can be found for it. It seemed odd at first sight that people would think that unused raw material was of any value at all. The American Indians, who were said to have had ten square miles of territory for each person when the colonists arrived, actually were not surviving well merely on what they could garner from unimproved nature.
An intimate relation is found between human culture and nature. Contrary to some recent sentiments, the world was not intended just to sit there in order for us to admire it or to leave it alone.
At the time, everyone was amused when Simon made a bet with Ehrlich that in the future more — not fewer — resources of every type would be available than when the bet was made. Ehrlich assumed we were rapidly running out of most everything. As I read later, Ehrlich lost and paid the bet.
Adequate resources become available when we need them — if we are permitted to figure out how to do so and are allowed to sell them in the market at a profit. Simon’s point was that resources are not merely things in the ground, sea, or air. They are products of mind that only come about when we have need of them.
This point is why the economist Joseph Schumpeter’s famous “entrepreneur” is so important. If someone does not know what to do or how to do something, nothing much will happen. Moreover, to understand the world as a place designed for what man is, we need to have a correct philosophy about what nature and man are in themselves and in their relation to each other.
Poverty is mostly caused by bad ideas and lack of virtue, not lack of resources. Many cultures and societies are indeed stagnant because they never learned or never wanted to learn how to be otherwise. This is why cultures ought not simply to remain what they are. They ought to be open to what is the right order of things. Sometimes a little preaching helps.
After the seventies, the population issue seemed to die down. It became clear that resources were not the real problem, nor were babies. Governments, religions, and ideologies were the problem if they did not know or did not want to know how to deal with increasing human numbers. If there is a population problem, it is almost always the result of ideas and government controls that had other purposes than human well-being.
In addition, the countries we thought to be the poorest, China and India, suddenly became richer, though with many dubious anti-human policies still in place. The places where we were told people were starving, were in fact busy coping with smog from their new cars and industries. They had learned how to become rich by imitating enough of those systems that did know how to succeed in improving themselves.
III.
Paul Ehrlich, still around with his theories, was recently invited to a conference on “biological extinction”, to be held at the Vatican on Feb 27-March 1. Several similar advisers, who are well-known advocates of limiting world population, were invited earlier to discuss Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’.
There is no problem in hearing what adversaries hold, provided they are not imitated. For many, such invitations seemed to imply an unholy alliance. People who insist that the world should be limited to two or three billion in population, assuming this is a good idea — which it isn’t — also advocate enthusiastically the means they insist must be accepted to achieve it: birth control, abortion, gay marriage, and sundry other lethal proposals that sound mostly like the narrative in Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World'.
The key to understanding this strange relationship seems to be found in the notion that the earth is our permanent and only home. It needs to be protected at all costs from man’s incursions.
Instead of looking on the earth as itself given to man to accomplish his natural and supernatural purpose, the emphasis is shifted to the notion that the earth is the sole place of man in the universe. The purpose of the human race is to keep itself afloat in space for as long as possible.
This end requires an ethic of complete care rather than an ethic of virtue and abundance. Sin and moral fault are redefined in terms of how we use the earth, not how we stand to one another. The moral absolutes must therefore be reinterpreted in the light of this priority. [Which is the pervasive unconditional argument underlying Laudato si - and Bergoglio's secular anti-Catholic mindset.]
Though not always immediately evident, behind this earth-first perspective is a human control mechanism that usually proposes limiting the number of people present on the planet at any one time.[Bergoglio, of course, plays blind to this inescapable implication in his unconditional support of his secular acolytes in chief like Ban Ki Moon and Jeffrey Sachs, and his public endorsement of the UN's so-called Sustainable Development Goals, which openly provide for universal measures of population control and reproductive 'rights'.
This limitation, said to be based on available science, requires medical and legal procedures to limit these numbers, to license those who can and cannot be born.
Eventually, no doubt, the sun will burn itself out, and human life on this planet will be rendered impossible. But holding out as long as possible is, it is thought, a workable endeavor. Out of this thinking we find frequent proposals to transport at least some human beings to other planets, so that our kind are not “lost in the cosmos”, to cite the title of Walker Percy’s famous book.
Supporting much of this thinking is also the proposition that earth warming is caused, it is said, primarily by human development, not by recurrent natural causes. This is presented as an unquestionable scientific fact, even though recorded changes and computer projected changes are not the same. The evidence for this man-made cause is, to say the least, ambiguous, if not simply false. It is opinion, not science.
[This, of course, is the other prevailing secular ideology that Bergoglio promotes unquestioningly, without any evidence that he has ever paid any attention to the overwhelming scientific evidence debunking the climate catastrophists' pseudo-science, nor the abundant evidence showing how their side has shamelessly manipulated data to 'prove' their point when the accumulated data has shown otherwise.]
There is danger here, in any case, of what might be called the “Galileo problem” in reverse. Namely, the Church seems to embrace another form of dubious science in the name of its primary mission. This time the danger is in agreeing with 'popular' science, not disagreeing with it.
The so-called “sustainability” principle is premised on a projection of present-day science and technology on what might or might not be available in the future. It would be like proposing, on the same grounds, to leave development as it was in 1800 or 1900 and then to insist that what we have in the 21st century could not be possible on scientific grounds.
The view of the earth as parsimonious instead of abundant under man’s dominion results in very different attitudes towards the earth and our place in it.
Suppose we imagine that things are radically limited, that waste is the biggest problem. The world is basically divided between haves and have-nots. The function of morality is to redistribute existing goods on some abstract equality principle.
With such suppositions (besides making everyone poor), we will usually end up with a total control position. International control of resources and population will be offered as the only “just” solution. We will in practice, if not in our rhetoric, elevate goods over people and their final end.
We estimate what we think is now available in terms of technology and enterprise. Our focus is to take care of the poor, not to enable them to not be poor and hence independent of state control. This control is now justified because of scarcity thinking.
If, however, our operative presuppositions are abundance, we will emphasize our mind and inventiveness. We will suspect that plenty of resources are or can be made available. We do not need to panic and cut ourselves off from those ideas and procedures that can provide for increased population without subjecting everyone to state control.
The dark side of ecology, as Paul Johnson pointed out, is the ease with which its logic justifies the totalitarian state. [A case very much in point: The series of UN 'climate conferences' and their resolutions (the latest being that of Paris) which openly seek to impose universal legislation for draconian anti-climate change measures that are not just 1) simply too costly even for the richest nations on earth but are also 2) largely unnecessary and gross overkill because they are premised on the anti-scientific and preposterous fact that climate change is largely manmade, and 3) inevitably futile because they cannot remotely affect the cosmic factors - especially solar phenomena - that are primarily responsible for global climate in the medium and long term.
Emphasis should not be on a morality that assumes scarcity, but one that presumes abundance and gift. We need a just order that can envision a world prospering with more brains, more freedom, more virtue, and more enterprise.
IV.
Looking back over the whole cast of thinking in this area, we suspect a curious separation of reason and revelation. Reason and what we can learn from it are replaced with a exclusively revelational approach that does not envision any possibility of meeting normal human purposes. Rather it falls back on a keep-things-going vision.
For actual persons, there is an inner worldly instead of an extra worldly approach. Revelation normally presupposed, as in St. Thomas Aquinas, that man could and would learn to take such care of himself. He could, but he need not, lapse into a constant recurrence of worst regimes with different rationales. Revelation rightly did not see any necessity to reveal what the various sciences and arts were all about. It presumed that man could and should be left to figure out these things by himself.
Even with its relation to reason, revelation would always be needed and welcome in any existing society, as Pope Benedict pointed out in Deus Caritas Est. But revelation was not intended to substitute for it. When it did so, we witness a strange overturning of human ends.
The end of man now is said to be keeping the earth in its pristine form down the ages, not the salvation of actual persons within the time and place in which they actually lived. The focus is not on eternal life for each person according to his deeds and faith. [And isn't it the great tragedy of the Church today that the man who was elected to be its supreme leader has happily not just cast his lot with the the secular powers whose priorities are definitely anti-Catholic but has even assumed their leadership de facto? In a Vatican that daily shows itself to be at the service of this pope and his secular priorities and not in the service fof the Church, and therefore of Christ?]
At the end of time, however, we have no reason to suppose that the earth will also be running out of its resources at the same time. This suspicion of a “wasted” abundance should alone be enough to cause us to take another look at what the earth is really “for”.
The end of the earth is a function of the end of man. Perhaps a hundred billion human beings have already lived on this planet. They did not exist so that some future society be kept going down the ages. They existed to save their souls in the places they were.
There is nothing wrong with seeking a better regime in our time. But whatever regime we find ourselves in, even in the worst, we can achieve or reject the purpose for which we were created, that is, to achieve the eternal life that Jesus Christ, in a nasty political trial in one of the better ancient regimes, promised to us.
1/18/17
Here is my translation of Aldo Maria Valli's commentary on the Ehrlich issue:
Dr. Strangelove at the Vatican
by Aldo Maria Valli
Translated from his blog
January 14, 2017
You remember the contemporary prototype of the mad scientist, Dr. Strangelove, in Stanley Kubrick’s film which was subtitled “Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb”. Well, sometimes, reality goes beyond fiction.
And that is so in the case of Professor Paul R. Ehrlich, entomologist (specialist on insect life) at Stanford University, who became famous in 1968 after publishing a book called The Population Bomb, in which, on the basis of ‘careful’ calculations, h e made the catastrophic prediction that in the decade 1973-1983, as much as one-fourth of the world’s population would die of hunger.
And to avoid such a disaster, he wrote that draconian measures were necessary, starting with imposing laws, without regard to individual rights, for obligatory and indiscriminate birth control. How to administer the necessary drugs to do this? Simple: place contraceptive drugs in drinking water and in the most common foods.
[Says something of the general insanity of the time – this was 1968, remember? – that the book became an international best-seller despite proposing something as preposterous! Surely, those whou bought it didn’t do so because they thought they were reading satire!]
Obviously, the professor’s predictions, like those of all catastrophists, did not come to pass. [How could anyone in his right mind write a book in 1968 to say that starting in 5 years, mass deaths drom hunger would decimate the world’s population in the space of 10 years, and how could all the supposedly intelligent people who then turned Ehrlich into a celebrity, who was a fixture on talk shows and interviewed right and left, fall for such nonsense?]
But that didn’t stop him from continuing to insist on his hypothesis and to propose his solutions. Because one of the characteristics of inveterate catastrophists is never to take reality as it is, but to only consider selected partial aspects of it that they can use as a pretext to support their otherwise unfounded ideas. [Does that not apply so well to a pope we all know, and not just when he is being a catastrophist!]
Perhaps some may recall Ehrlich’s bet with economist Julian Simon, one who never allowed himself to be influenced by ecologistic and neo-Malthusian ideologies. Convinced that the world, despite inevitable population growth, would improve its available resources thanks to new knowledge, technology and globalization (already much-maligned at the time), Simon opposed population control, and above all, mass abortions. In 1980, he challenged his far more famous colleague: “Choose five primary resources, and I will bet you that within 10 years, they will cost much more than they do today” [and will still be abundant].
Those were the years when the famed Club of Rome was widely considered an oracle for its hypotheses on ‘the limits to growth’ and the necessity of reducing the mouths that have to be fed. Ehrlich, supremely confident he would win hands down, chose five metals: copper, chrome, nickel, tin and tungsten, commenting arrogantly: “I and my colleagues John Holdren and John Harte accept Simon’s astounding bet before greedy persons take him up”.
With the presumptuousness typical of ideologues, Ehrlich thought he would win easily. Instead, as Simon predicted, the prices for those prime metals did go down, and Ehrlich had to pay the bet. Not that it led him to any self-criticism at all!
So why bring this all back to mind? Because from Feb 27-March 1, at the initiative of two pontifical academies – of sciences, and of social sciences – the Vatican will host an international symposium on the subject of “Biological extinction: How to save the natural environment on which we depend”, and among the resource persons invited to address the symposium will be the ineffable Ehrlich, now 85, whose assigned topic is “How to save the natural world”.
Obviously, the Vatican is free to organize any event they wish and to invite anyone they please, but it is difficult not to ask: Of all the scientists in the world, why would the Vatican offer a platform to someone like Ehrlich, who has not just been the paladin of mass abortions but has also been completely wrong on his predictions?
What can he teach us, this Dr. Strangelove who said in 1969 that by the year 2000, England would have ceased to exist unless it immediately legislated mass abortions and forced sterilizations? [Valli appears to forget that for the past almost four years, Bergoglio has been the leading sponsor of the UN and persons like Ban Ki Moon and Jeffrey Sachs who may not be as radical in their ideas of population control as Ehrlich but certainly advocate it in order to have what they call ‘sustainable development’? Or that in their climate catastrophist ideology, Ban Ki Moon and Jeffrey Sachs are early 21st century editions of Ehrlich’s madness?]
Today, in the year of grace 2017, the global scientific community has belied the gloomiest predictions of the ctastrophists. Of course, there is still hunger in the world [perhaps there will always be, just as there will always be ‘the poor’, though the United Nations aims to eliminate both hunger and poverty in the world by 2030!], and yet despite population growth, the planet has never fed so many people nor has the quality of life improved for so many in the past half century alone.
If today there are still too many people who are hungry*, it is not for lack of resources but because there is too much waste [Which is only one factor, but not the most significant – which is a lack of proper distribution to the needy even if the richer nations do give enough for hunger relief].
* [In 2016, the World Food Program said "Some 795 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life. That's about one in nine people on earth. " (Down from 1 billion in 1990). At the same time, the Global Hunger Index, which annually measures progress and failures in the global fight against hunger, showed in 2015 that hunger levels have dropped 27% since 2000, though in 52 countries it remained at serious or alarming levels. (From Wikipedia, appropriately sourced figures)]
The problem for governments and aid institutions is not how to keep people from having more children but to guarantee adequate health and educational services for everyone.
Commenting on the Vatican’s invitation to Ehrlich, the president of the Population Research Institute, Stephen Mosher, an American scholar who opposes abortionist policies, said: “Ehrlich’s opinions on the rate of biological extinction are as exaggerated as his predictions were on a demographc explosion which all proved wrong. It is beyond my understanding why the Vatican would provide a platform for this secular prophet of doom. [But under Bergoglio, the Vatican has preferentially chosen to provide the platform for leading prophets of demographic doom and climate catastrophism to the exclusion of those who hold contrary views!] There are very many Catholic scientists whose opinions are based on facts whom the Church should recognize. What will the Vatican do next? Invite Raul Castro to speak on human rights?”
[One can allow for the fact that Jorge Bergoglio is not, by nature, an intellectual, or at least, not an openminded one, but he appears to have a talent for singling out the most dubious and unqualified of frontline advisers – Mons. Fernandez on theology, for instance, or Fr. Spadaro on the media, Cardinal Turkson on the economy, Leonardo Boff on the environment, and on scientific matters as in this case, his fellow Argentine Mons. Sanchez Sorondo, whom he appointed Chancellor of both the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences – to provide him with whatever information he uses upon which to make his decisions and his public pronouncements. Which is most unfortunate in someone who considers all his statements and actions omnisciently unchallengeable and who is now the de facto leader of the world's secular left.]
The postulate at the center of the coming symposium at the Vatican is that global climate changes are threatening ‘biodiversity’, 40 percent of which, the catastrophists say, will be extinct by the end of this century. [In other words, that 40 percent of all the known plant and animal species on earth will die off and never regenerate.] Defeated by facts insofar as world population is concerned, catastrophists are now riding another battle horse: from the population bomb to the climate bomb, with all the accompanying doomsday figures.
It is a question of ‘social justice’ and ‘morality’, the symposium organizers said to present the event, but even of ‘survival’ itself. And since, according to them, the cause of all climate change is man, we are back at the same hypothesis: Let us ‘eliminate’ man, because if we reduce human presence on earth, then every problem will be solved!
Recently, in the article «Biophysical limits, women’s rights and the climate encyclical» published in Nature Climate Change, Ehrlich and his friend Harte, commenting on the papal encyclical Laudato si, remarked that “the pope has extended a strong invitation for action against climate change but fails to confront the link between development and population growth”. Therefore, they claim, Bergoglio is laboring under ‘a senseless delirium’ until and unless he lays his hands on population control. [He already has, through the UN, but he cannot do it openly as pope, because he still needs to pay lip service to abortion, even as he warns Catholics to stop harping too much on abortion, contraception, euthanasia and the like.]
“It is crystal-clear,” Ehrlich wrote, “that no one who is truly interested in the state of the planet and of the global economy can avoid dealing with the population problem. It is the elephant that will always be in the room”.
Ehrlich, at 85, has lost all his hair, but not his vice of pontificating as he did in his 1968 book bomb. The surprising thing is that now he will pontificate to the pope himself. At the Vatican’s own invitation.
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For the record, here is the interview that has been reported in recent days. I think Cardinal Burke is properly realistic that - even if he can hope and we all can hope otherwise - the Four Cardinals are at an impasse, which only reflects the impasse to which this pope has brought the Church; and that this pope is unlikely to put an end to it, because his modus operandi consists, among other things, of keeping everyone 'confused', that is to say, uncertain what to think about what he thinks, and he seems to take sadistic enjoyment from this incredible power that he has over most Catholics who still believe "If the pope says it - whoever the pope is - then it must be so, and that's what we ought to follow"
Cardinal Burke:
'No ultimatum to the Pope, but we must press forward:
The faith is in danger! The confusion in the Church is evident.
Clarity is needed.'
Interview by Lorenzo Bertocchi
Translated from LA VERITA by Andrew Guernsey
January 11, 2017
The discussion over the DUBIA, formal questions submitted to the Pope by the four cardinals on how to interpret the exhortation Amoris laetitia continues to draw attention.
Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Muller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the watchdog of orthodoxy, in an interview with Tgcom24 said that the questions should not have been made public (the letter to the Pope was in September and the public disclosure was made in November), there is no need to correct the pope because "there is no danger to the faith."
"The confusion in the Church over the interpretation of certain passages of Amoris laetitia is evident," Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, the most outspoken of the Four Cardinals, says instead to La Verita: "that is why I do not see how anyone could be able to say that there is no danger to the faith. Moreover, we have communicated in a very respectful way five DUBIA to the Pope, and when they were not given a response, we decided, for the good of souls, to make public that there are DUBIA and that all the faithful are called to pay attention."
Burke, a signer with Walter Brandmuller, Carlo Caffara and Joachim Meisner, then raised the issue of a possible "formal correction" of the Pope. And according to reports from several Italian media outlets drawing from an interview published it the United States [with LifeSiteNews], Burke had given an 'ultimatum' for this "formal correction" to be made after the feasts of Christmas.
In reality, there is "absolutely no ultimatum," says Cardinal Burke. "Many media outlets have misunderstood. In that interview in the United States, they had asked me what would be the next steps with respect to the dubia presented to the Holy Father, and I simply said that nothing could happen at that time seeing that we were about to enter into the liturgical season of Christmas and of Epiphany. Only
afterwards could one possibly think of how to proceed, but it certainly was not an ultimatum for a confrontation with the Pope."
The DUBIA revolve around access to Eucharist for the divorced and remarried who live more uxorio [as husband and wife], access that, in certain cases, Amoris laetitia permits. And which instead, the previous magisterium had ruled out on several occasions, except in the case of a commitment to live as brother and sister for those divorced and remarried persons who cannot be separated for valid reasons.
Brandmuller has said that any possible "formal correction" of the pope would have to take place in camera caritatis [in private].
"In fact," Burke specifies, "I have never said that a public confrontation ought to occur. I agree with Cardinal Brandmüller, the first step would be to ask for a private meeting with the Holy Father to point out to him the unacceptable statements in Amoris laetitia, showing how, in one way or another, they are not appropriate to express what the Church has always taught.”
There are those who claim that an institution of “formal correction" of the Holy Father does not exist in the discipline of the Church. Have you invented it?
Of course not. St. Thomas Aquinas in his theological writings proposes the a possible formal correction of the pope, which is also in the discipline of the Church. It has been rarely used, there are some examples, and certainly we can envisage the case of a Pope who in some way might be able to fall into error. In this case, a correction must be made.
To claim that, in certain cases, the divorced and remarried who live together more uxorio can receive the Eucharist means to commit an error?
We could say that the statement is materially erroneous, because it is not possible to receive the sacraments for a person who is living more uxorio with someone who is not his or her spouse. To claim instead that this is possible constitutes a formal error that goes against what Jesus himself taught and has always been the teaching of the Church.
Therefore, to claim this is a heresy?
No, it seems to me that it can qualify as an error, but we are dealing with a complex situation. Heresy is the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt, on the part of the baptized, of a truth that one must believe by divine and Catholic faith. [In this case, are we to define 'obstinate' by Jesus's words?
15 “If your brother sins, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother.
16 If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.’
17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector." (Mt 18, 15-17)
Are we now at the third stage, and what would be the contemporary equivalent of treating the pope 'as you would a gentile or a tax collector'?]
One heresy could be that of one who sustains that there do not exist intrinsically evil acts; to affirm this would be to say something contrary to the doctrine of the Church and would clearly be a heresy.
The affirmation about access to the sacraments of which we were speaking a while ago, on the other hand, refers to a practice that contradicts two doctrines: that of indissolubility of matrimony and that of the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. At first glance we can say that certainly it’s an error.
Let's return to the DUBIA. There are those who insinuated that the four cardinals are divided among themselves. Is it true?
This is totally false, we are united and that's why I do not want to make any speculation about possible next steps to be taken for the initiative that we have undertaken. If we do it, we will do it after having confronted him. [Oh, so the letter and the publication of it do not even constitute the first stage of what Christ advised? But what if he never calls them, and yet in so many ways continues to make clear he is obstinate about his potentially heretical views???]
But do you still think the Pope will respond to your dubia?
We are always waiting for a response from the Pope as our supreme pastor. To not expect a response would be disrespectful of his office. [No, at some point, it becomes simply realistic to accept he will never give a formal answer! Or perhaps, he will - if and when - deign to direct some of his famed mercy towards you and ask to meet with you four! That can take forever.]
For many, the answer has already been given: the Four Cardinals are merely "doctors of law", severe and insensitive.
Moral law is not something that imprisons a person, it is exactly the opposite: Moral law frees the person and directs him to do good. In fact, when there is no respect for moral law, chaotic situations are produced, and morally there is a sort of imprisonment. For the person of faith, we must say that the Divine law liberates, and it is not a negative thing.
And to teach the moral law is a great act of love of neighbor because it points the way to authentic freedom and happiness. It is impossible to claim that a person can find some form of happiness while sinning.
The Pope has spoken of encountering "malevolent" resistance that "presents itself when the devil inspires wicked intentions." Did you all feel addressed specifically here?
I do not know to whom the pope was referring, personally I certainly did not feel guilty, because it is not the description of my position.
With your public initiative, does it seem to you to be contributing to dividing the Church rather than uniting it?
What divides is falsehood and ambiguity, the truth always unites. It is absurd to say that four cardinals who ask five reasonable questions, of fundamental importance for all Christians, are acting in a way to divide the Church. We are serving the Petrine office, giving the Pope the opportunity to confirm us in the teaching of the Church, faced with a situation that is proving ambiguous in practice.
Do other cardinals and prelates endorse the merit of the questions you have asked?
We are not only four. I personally know other cardinals who fully endorse the DUBIA.
Why so much noise for a problem that many have a hard time understanding? [That's a weird question! There is so much 'noise' about it precisely because many have a hard time understanding a most unprecedented situation when the reigning pope appears to be promoting anti-Catholic thinking and actions.]
We are dealing here with a question that concerns the Church in a profound way: matrimony and family, which is its fruit, and they constitute the foundation of the very life of the Church. Our task is not to lose ourselves in difficult or vague questions; we are simply giving our contribution to the growth of the Church in the most elementary cell of society.
Ultimately, the only 'crime' that remains is that of being intransigent traditionalists?
Well, all these labels are very convenient for not addressing the core of our concern, which is the life of the Church. The DUBIA, like it or not, are directed to this.
Serendipitously apropos my introdutory remark above to Cardinal Burke's interview, John Smirak has put together an instructive catechesis of just what it is that a pope can rightly say and do. I think the takeaway slogan is his last line, which I have elevated to be a subtitle:
Do Catholics think that everything the pope says
is infallible and/or must they be bound by it?
The pope is like a Fedex guy - it’s his job to pass on a package. He’s not empowered to open it, rifle through the contents,
and replace them with something else even if he thinks it is 'better'
By JOHN ZMIRAK
January 16, 2017
Pope Francis warned us that he wanted to “make a mess” in the church, and at the moment, he seems to be making good on that promise. In still-fresh 2017, we have seen:
- The pope’s close advisor, Rev. Antonio Spadaro, who edits the quasi-official Vatican journal La Civilta Cattolica, defend Pope Francis’s apparent defiance of the infallible Council of Trent on divorce and remarriage, by explaining that in theology, “2+2=5.” No one knows quite what that means, but perhaps that’s the point.
- The bishops of Malta have published a set of guidelines for Holy Communion based on Pope Francis’s ambiguous document Amoris Laetitia, which openly depart from Catholic teaching and practice of 2,000 years. The Vatican’s response? To publish those guidelines, without criticism, in the Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano.
- The Vatican’s science congregation, led by Argentine Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, has summoned a conference on biodiversity, and invited as a speaker Paul Ehrlich — a discredited “overpopulation” crank who favors coercive population control and abortion.
- As Professor Michael Pakaluk of the Catholic University of America revealed, papal ghostwriter, Argentine Archbishop Victor Fernandez, committed plagiarism in the text of Amoris Laetitia — lifting paragraphs almost whole from Fernandez’s own, wacky theological speculations. Some of the most troubling parts of that document which the pope made his own are snipped and tucked from an article where Fernandez asserts that absolutely every human being is saved. At least Fernandez didn’t (so far as we know) include any passages from his 1995 book: Heal Me with Your Mouth: The Art of Kissing.
And we still have 50 more weeks to go!
In light of all this dumpster fire smoke, it seems useful to examine the very narrow limits within which papal authority is circumscribed by the Church’s perennial teaching. Otherwise, well-meaning people might very well get the idea that the Catholic Church is morphing before our eyes into a mainline Protestant denomination. Plus bingo.
Talking Real Catholicism with an Imaginary Protestant
As I remember, you Roman Catholics used to take the occasional jab at Protestants for the moral chaos that erupts when you don’t have a central authority — you know, a trustworthy figure whom you’re certain will keep the church’s doctrine the same as it always has been, since the apostles.
Yes, some of us did.
So… how’s that working out for you?
Very funny. I’d bring up Benny Hinn right now, but I frankly don’t have the heart.
So has Pope Francis’s behavior led you to re-evaluate papal authority?
Absolutely. It’s forcing us to hunker down and realize exactly what it was that Christ promised us, and what He didn’t.
Thanks to Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI, we Catholics got good and spoiled. Both men were well-educated, highly intelligent, deeply benevolent, and devoted to the historic teachings of the church. It was easy to assume that every pope would have to have all those attributes — though of course a reading of Renaissance history (for instance) would have told us something different. A pope really can have none of those attributes, and still hold the throne of Peter. At such times, it’s only the Holy Spirit that protects us against our shepherd.
Fair enough. Without getting into all sorts of Catholic inside foosball, explain to me how you can still be Catholic and reject what the pope is saying and doing on crucial areas of faith and morals. And how can he apparently contradict what previous popes and councils have solemnly taught on those issues?
Okay. The whole idea of church authority which Catholics and Eastern Orthodox hold, and which virtually every Christian on earth accepted until 1517 — I’d like to remind you — is this: Jesus taught the apostles many things, not all of which got literally transcribed in the documents which decades later were written, and were compiled by bishops into the New Testament. Those truths which Christ taught them, which they preached to the first Christian communities and then from the pulpits of churches, were key criteria which the church used when it discerned which “gospels” were authentic and divinely inspired, and which ones were pious fictions. Did this “gospel” match what the bishops had learned from their predecessors, who learned them from Jesus?
For instance, it is possible to read the New Testament and be confused about whether Jesus is co-equal with the Father. Millions of Christians (called “Arians”) got that wrong. It took the bishops of the Church gathered in councils to clear up such misunderstandings (“heresies”). That body of teachings which bishops passed down for three hundred years before the Canon of scripture was “closed” has a name: We call it sacred (big-T) Tradition.
It is not the traditions of men, but the handing-0n (traditio) of what Jesus taught the apostles. Combine those truths with the truths of scripture, and you’ve got the whole megila, which we call the Deposit of Faith. It’s the job of the bishops and the pope to hand on that Deposit of Faith, unchanged and untarnished by human inventions, from one generation to the next. Think of it as a relay race.
So how do you determine what’s the authentic Deposit of Faith, perhaps rephrased or clarified, and what are human corruptions that a wicked or stupid bishop or pope has decided to slather on top of the baton?
The Church has a teaching authority, which we call the Magisterium. (We stole that name from the villains of a Philip Pullman novel.) It amounts to the bishops and the pope. On extraordinary occasions, the bishops will gather in a universal (“ecumenical”) council, and issue decrees that clear up disputed points.
That happened at Nicaea when the bishops condemned the Arian heresy, which taught that Jesus was less than the Father. It happened again at Trent, when the bishops condemned divorce and remarriage. Every pope thereafter is bound by the results of such a council.
On even rarer occasions, a pope will invoke his maximal authority, and issue a teaching that has the same weight as a council’s. This has happened at least twice, and at most probably eight times in history. These are the only exercises of the Church’s authority which we call “infallible.” We call them (sorry for the jargon) the “extraordinary Magisterium.”
What’s the ordinary kind?
That refers to statements by bishops and popes that simply repeat, perhaps slightly rephrased, what the church has always taught since the age of the apostles on a given subject. T
These re-statements of previous Church teachings don’t claim infallible authority, but Catholics are supposed to defer to them, on the assumption that bishops and popes probably know the Tradition better than we do. That’s usually a pretty good bet.
What happens when a pope says something that isn’t grounded in Tradition, but is simply his own idea or interpretation?
Then it’s not part of the Magisterium, and we have no duty to defer to it.
What about when the Church has said one thing in one century, and another thing later on? For instance, after Constantine made Christianity the official religion of Rome, bishops suddenly wanted the government involved in policing people’s religious faith. But at Vatican II, the church renounced that idea, and went back to its old call for religious freedom.
That didn’t go back to the Apostles, you’ll notice, so it could never have been part of the original Deposit of Faith. But the very fact that the church took two opposing positions at different times means that it was never part of the ordinary Magisterium. The same thing is true of lending money at interest and slavery, on which church authorities have expressed conflicting opinions.
Most political and economic questions, except at the very highest level of general principle, cannot be settled by appealing to the Magisterium. So you can’t put together a Catholic ideology based on what popes have said over the centuries. It just doesn’t hold together. That’s not true of dogma and doctrine.
Now the question of divorce and remarriage has been settled, infallibly as you say, by the Extraordinary Magisterium. So if Pope Francis were to say, “Yes, I am teaching something new on divorce, remarriage and Communion. …” You wouldn’t be obliged to defer to it?
No, we’d have the duty to scream our heads off and reject it — as the laity rejected the Arian heresy, even when a pope got squishy under pressure from the emperor.
If the Catholic claim about papal infallibility is true, no pope would live long enough to sign an ex cathedra document that taught heresy.
So that wouldn’t be part of the Magisterium?
Not at all — because it doesn’t repeat previous teaching, but contradicts it. Now Jesus was able to come along and say things like, “Moses taught you X, but I say unto you Y.” You know why He could do that? Because he was GOD. Okay? That’s not a power which every pope, or any pope, is given. To say that really would be idolatry, treating popes as if they were God.
But aren’t some Vatican officials and bishops claiming that the new teaching in Pope Francis’s document, Amoris Laetitia, is part of the Magisterium?
Yes. They are misrepresenting the truth — as Bishop Sorondo did when he claimed that Pope Francis’s opinions on the scientific details of climate change were Magisterial teaching.
What if Pope Francis decided to issue an infallible statement, insisting that the Maltese bishops’ interpretation on divorce, marriage and communion is authentic Catholic teaching?
In such a situation, we believe the Holy Spirit would intervene. As Catholics, we believe that God would veto such a statement.
How would he do that?
Look back at scripture for examples. Noah’s flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the fate of Onan. It’s not for me to predict what means He’d decide to use. But if the Catholic claim is true, no pope would live long enough to sign such a document.
And that’s all that papal infallibility means? “Try to teach heresy ex cathedra, and get a heart attack?”
Yes, in effect. The pope is not an oracle, not a second Jesus, not the Supreme Court rewriting the Constitution as it goes along. He’s like a Fedex guy, and it’s his job to pass on a package. He’s not empowered to open it, rifle through the contents, and replace them with something he thinks is 'better'. [BRAVO!]
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LUST: Sins, scandals and betrayals of a Church made of men
If even just a few of the cases alleged in this new book is true, what does that make of this pope's often-touted 'zero tolerance' for sex abuse by priests? It's already been found severely deficient in a couple of cases involving headlined priest abusers in Chile and Argentina and the recent revelation of the 'Don Mercedes' priest defrocked under Benedict XVI in 2012 and 'restored' to priesthood by this pope in 2014. Now, this book is about more cases in Italy in the past three years.
My first reaction - since I am no longer surprised at Bergoglian hypocrisy - was to think: "And what has Cardinal Bagnasco done about all this?" After all, he is still president of the Italian bishops' conference, even if he is under virtual Bergoglian house arrest by the presence of the pope's handpicked eyes and ears at CEI, the outrageous Mons. Nuncio Galantino (who sometimes can make even Blaise Cupich look 'tame'), who has shown in many ways that he holds the reins at CEI. Is Bagnasco even aware of the cases Fittipaldi reports on? If not, how could he not be? Did Fittipaldi at least interview him - or the pope's man, Galantino - about these cases?
Of course, beyond Bagnasco, what about the responsibility of the Primate of Italy who happens to be the Bishop of Rome? And does Fittipaldi know if any of the allegations he reports on were brought up to the CDF at all? If they were, what did the CDF under Cardinal Mueller do?
And why is there no reaction at all in the media, Catholic or otherwise, about this apparent laissez-faire in the Bergoglian Vatican regarding sex abuses by priests? Whereas they never let up on Benedict XVI, on all kinds of flimsy pretexts, for supposed tolerance and inaction over this issue though he was singlehandedly responsible for fighting back against this 'filth' in the Church since 2001?
These are all questions that unfortunately, the reporter does not even bring up.
One of the Vatileaks-2 journalists releases new book about
1,200 plausible allegations of priestly sex abuse
of children in Italy during the last three years
Fittipaldi denounces 'a system that conceals and protects pederasts'
by Jesus Bastante
RELIGION DIGITAL
January 17, 2017
'LUSSURIA' (Lust), a compendium of horrors. This is the new book by Emiliano Fittipaldi, one of the two journalists acquitted by "Vatileaks II", which contains dozens of cases of abuses in the Catholic Church, while denouncing the existence of "a system that conceals and protects pedophiles. "
Fittipaldi has collected interviews with priests and judicial officials to affirm the existence of 1,200 plausible allegations of harassment of boys and girls during the last three years. In some of the 20 cases of alleged sexual abuse committed by priests in Italy in 2016, writes Fittipaldi, priests have been convicted of abuse without the Church taking any canonical action against them.
In an interview with La Repubblica, Fittipaldi stressed that this "system" allows protection for religious investigated or convicted. Especially in Italy, where, according to the journalist, more than two hundred religious were linked, directly or indirectly, with cases of child abuse in recent years.
"In the last two years, counting only convicted and investigated, there are more than 200 Italian priests denounced for acts of lust with adolescents," writes Fittipaldi. Despite this, he insists, in the country this scandal "has never exploded."
Fittipaldi puts some examples of this "system" that protects "the orcs and coffers of the Church" in Italy. Thus, it shows the case of the religious Antonello Tropea, who "in March of 2015 was found by the police in a car with a young man of 17 years" in Calabria, whom he met thanks to an "application used for encounters between homosexuals."
"Investigated for prostitution of minors, he continues to practice as a priest," while the Italian bishop Francesco Milito advises him, according to Fittipaldi, "to avoid talking to the police about these things."
Also in Calabria, on this occasion in the diocese of Locri, Fittipaldi mentions Bishop Francesco Oliva to underline that "in 2015 he assigned a priest of his, Francesco Rutigliano, to a parish in Civitavecchia near Rome, though the priest had been suspended for 4 years in 2011 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith "for abuse of minors" "committed" between 2006 and 2008."
Fittipaldi also cites the Fr. Franco Legrottaglie, "convicted in 2000 of abuses" of two young girls, who "in 2010 was named by the emeritus bishop Rocco Talucci hospital chaplain and priest in a church" in Ostuni, a town in Apulia.
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There are two ongoing 'Maltese debacles'. The first involves the Vatican's improper and illegal attempt to intervene in the internal governance of the Sovereign Order of Malta which has the same status as a sovereign state in international law as Vatican City State. And the second involves the Church in Malta whose bishops - including the once iconic prosecutor of clerical sex abuses Mons. Charles Scicluna - have decided to go all the way and interpret AL the way this pope really intends it to be interpreted, no ifs or buts, which dramatically illustrates the great split in the Church that this pope has now provoked directly with his deliberate equivocations in AL and refusal to clear them up...
More on the (second) Maltese debacle
by Christopher A. Ferrara
January 17, 2017
The Church has reached a turning point in her history whose magnitude cannot be exaggerated. With the evident approval of a sitting Roman Pontiff, who immediately published their “guidelines” in his semi-official newspaper, the bishops of Malta have turned what was once a veritable fortress of orthodox Catholicism, into an outpost for the institutionalized acceptance of divorce and “remarriage” in the Catholic Church.
The Maltese prelates accomplish their evil end by proclaiming patent moral nonsense not even worthy of being called casuistry. As they write (citing Amoris Laetitia [AL]):
If, as a result of the process of discernment, undertaken with ‘humility, discretion and love for the Church and her teaching [!], in a sincere search for God’s will and a desire to make a more perfect response to it’ (AL 300), a separated or divorced person who is living in a new relationship manages, with an informed and enlightened conscience, to acknowledge and believe that he or she are at peace with God, he or she cannot be precluded from participating in the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist (see AL, notes 336 and 351).”
This is devilish sophistry, shamelessly dependent upon a deliberate abuse of language. How can “humility, discretion and love for the Church and her teaching,” “a sincere search for God’s will and a desire to make a more perfect response to it” and “an informed and enlightened conscience” be consistent with a belief that one can be “at peace with God” while continuing to engage in adulterous sexual relations outside of marriage?
How can the bishops of Malta, successors of the Apostles themselves, dare to proclaim that public adulterers thus deluded must be admitted to Holy Communion? Have these bishops gone mad? Or are they merely the cunning proponents of a new religion that is attempting to impose itself upon the universal Church during this pontificate? A religion that drapes itself in pious blandishments while it promotes an intrinsic evil at war with the piety it deviously professes.
Of course the bishops of Malta are no mere outliers. They are only following the trend that Francis has set in motion throughout the Catholic world.
For example, before the bishops of Malta made explicit what was always implicit in AL, Bishop Robert McElroy, installed as the Bishop of San Diego by none other than Francis, had already done the same. In a statement issued to parishes in San Diego, McElroy declared that priests of the diocese must “assist those who are divorced and remarried and cannot receive an annulment to utilize the internal forum of conscience in order to discern if God is calling them to return to the Eucharist.”
That’s right: the bishop personally installed by Francis in a major American diocese has decreed that Catholics who cannot obtain an annulment, and thus are bound for life to their spouses in Holy Matrimony, may nonetheless “discern” that they can “return to the Eucharist” while engaging in sexual relations with someone to whom they are not married.
As the always sober and balanced Father Brian Harrison has observed,
“if Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation on marital love comes to be generally interpreted and applied as liberally as it has been in the Diocese of San Diego, California, it will in effect mean the death of this sacrament as the Gospel of Christ and the Catholic Church have always presented it: a sacred covenant whose indissoluble character means that remarriage after divorce constitutes adultery — a violation of the Sixth Commandment that excludes one from sacramental absolution and Eucharistic communion.”
Apocalyptic is the only word that captures the gravity of this situation. One cannot say too much about it. No doubt more will be said here, for nothing like this has ever happened in the entire history of the Catholic Church.
The impression of a terminal phase in the ecclesial crisis of the past half-century is now almost palpable, as is the sense of an impending and quite dramatic intervention from on high. God will not be mocked, and His mockers will not have long to continue trampling upon His law.
There is no doubt any longer: to recall the famous words of Cardinal Ciappi, this is the apostasy that “begins at the top” as foretold in the Third Secret of Fatima.
[For some time now, I have felt that de facto apostasy, rather than just heresy - even if apostasy means, in the religious sense, the formal disaffiliation from, or abandonment or renunciation of a religion by a person, and in the broader sociological sense, renunciation and criticism of, or opposition to, a person's former religion - is the more appropriate term to apply to what Jorge Bergoglio has been doing in the past four years, in setting up his undeclared church of Bergoglio most cunningly and conveniently on the readymade infrastructure and institutions of the Roman Catholic Church.
Obviously, he cannot formally renounce or disaffiliate from the Church he was elected to lead, and he would be foolish to give up all the perks and prerogatives, the power and authority, he enjoys as pope to do what he wants, as he wants, without recognizing any limitation to what he can do. So, for the moment, he is having his cake - setting up the church of Bergoglio with every day that passes while, in effect, gobbling up what he can of the Roman Catholic Church. The world and the Church have not seen a more satanic scheme for one man to have his perverted way with the Church of Christ.]
May Our Lady of Fatima protect us from the chastisement that is surely approaching as the human element of the Church [led by no less than the supposed Vicar of Christ on earth] widely rebels against her divine Founder!
Meltdown in Malta
BY Fr. Gerald E. Murray
JANUARY 18, 2017
One of the most troubling and questionable affirmations in Amoris Laetitia is found in paragraph 301:
“The Church possesses a solid body of reflection concerning mitigating factors and situations. Hence it can no longer simply be said that all those in any ‘irregular’ situation are living in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of sanctifying grace.”
But how can anyone be so sure of the truth of this counter-intuitive assertion when applied to a particular case of an adulterous union? - - Isn’t there a greater probability that a Catholic who has separated from his spouse and entered a second “marriage” in a civil or non-Catholic ceremony, and then committed acts of adultery with someone who is not in truth his spouse, would be aware that his behavior was condemned by Our Lord Himself: “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery.” (Lk 16:18) [But the metaphysical elephant occupying the entire space of AL is precisely that teaching of Christ, which the document ignores completely!]
- And would he not thus would be guilty of offending God by his freely chosen sinful behavior?
- Is it possible that he never heard of this teaching?
- Didn’t he attend Pre-Cana classes before marrying his spouse in a Catholic ceremony in which he vowed fidelity until death in the indissoluble bond of marriage?
- Isn’t it the reality that he couldn’t celebrate a Catholic ceremony for his second “marriage” because the Church does not consider a second union, while his spouse is still living, to be a marriage, but rather an adulterous union?
The Church’s discipline of denying Holy Communion to those living in a public state of sin is not uniquely based on her duty to prevent public scandal. It is also based on the plainly reasonable assumption that someone who freely commits objectively grave violations of God’s law in a matter with which they have sufficient familiarity (in this case, the recognition by a Catholic who has been married in a Church ceremony that he is never allowed to commit adultery) is, in fact, guilty of intentional violations of that law and thus has fallen into mortal sin.
Can a Catholic married man who, following a civil divorce from his wife, “remarries” and has ongoing sexual relations with a woman who is not his wife safely assume for any reason whatsoever that he is not guilty of mortal sin, and thus is free to approach the altar to receive Holy Communion?
Of course not! The Church is not in the business of supplying “get-out-of-jail-free cards” to people who violate God’s law and then search for excuses why that law does not apply to them in their particular cases. To do so is to treat God’s law on marriage, or any other matter, as merely a suggestion, subject to personal ratification before becoming obligatory.
The bishops of Malta have regrettably embraced the get-out-of-jail-free mentality. They recently chose to instruct their faithful as follows:
If, as a result of the process of discernment, undertaken with “humility, discretion and love for the Church and her teaching, in a sincere search for God’s will and a desire to make a more perfect response to it (AL 300), a separated or divorced person who is living in a new relationship manages, with an informed and enlightened conscience, to acknowledge and believe that he or she are at peace with God, he or she cannot be precluded from participating in the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist (see AL, notes 336 and 351).
Thus Maltese Catholics who are living in an adulterous second marriage are now being told by their bishops that they can engage in gravely sinful behavior that is publicly known and not be denied Holy Communion when they “acknowledge and believe” that they are “at peace with God.”
- What did Our Lord ever say that gave the bishops the impression that being at peace with God includes committing acts that are explicitly and strictly forbidden by God?
- Did Our Lord tell the woman caught in adultery “Go and sin no more, unless you have convinced yourself that you are exempt from obeying the Sixth Commandment, and that adulterous behavior in your case is pleasing, not displeasing, to God and should therefore be embraced as good for you by the rest of the Church community, including any spouse aggrieved by this behavior.” No. He simply said: “Go and sin no more.” (Jn 8:11)
- How should Maltese priests who hear confessions respond from this point on to divorced and remarried Catholics who seek absolution without a firm purpose of amendment?
- Are they to cooperate in what is plainly an act of non-repentance of adulterous behavior, as in the case of a man who tells the priest in confession that he plans to continue committing acts that he was taught were mortally sinful but now, thanks to this new document, he believes he is at peace with God?
- Are priests now to accept without question the “at peace with God” claim of divorced and remarried Catholics who come forward for Holy Communion in their parishes?
- Is there no harm and scandal given when publicly known behavior reprobated by God is treated as a matter of indifference by the Church – so long as the person engaging is such behavior has decided, against the plain words of Our Lord, that he is just fine with God.
- Or thanks to his bishops, he is now sure that God has no problem with his behavior, which he has judged to be good for himself in his concrete circumstances?
Clearly, this is scandalous and destructive of faith and morals.
Should Pope Francis answer the dubia of Cardinal Burke et al? The Maltese Bishops’ document is undeniable evidence that in the absence of a papal reaffirmation of the Church’s constant discipline and teaching about marriage, divorce, adultery, and the reception of the sacraments the integrity of the Church’s teaching and mission will be undermined by her own confused shepherds.
Unless the pope acts, we will witness a global fragmentation of what was once consistent, universal, faithful Catholic teaching.
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January 18, 2017 headlines
Canon21.com
PewSitter
About the bottom headline - I had noted earlier that the 2014 CDF Responsum would not be taken into account by the Bergoglians at all, because it came before AL, which in their eyes, overrides anything else that went before - in everything that it affirms, equivocally or not - contrary to pre-Bergoglio Magisterium which even consistently denies or ignores Christ's own teaching on adultery. If the pope and his myrmidons can be so cavalier, to say the least, about Christ's teaching on adultery, you can be sure a CDF responsum means less than a dog's turd to them.
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Edward Pentin continues to be the only Vaticanista reporting this dispute coherently and comprehensively since it began. In this report, he puts much more due diligence into getting more pertinent background information and new developments in the dispute, with much material I have not seen elsewhere.. Here is how things stand right now.
Order of Malta & Vatican remain
at odds over inquiry commission
Grand Master's letter outlining the order’s position rejecting the commission
was followed by a Jan. 17 Vatican statement insisting on the inquiry
by Edward Pentin
January 18, 2017
VATICAN CITY — In the latest developments in the dispute between the Holy See and the Knights of Malta, the head of the 900-year-old order has written to its members emphasizing that his refusal to recognize a Holy See commission of inquiry is because he is trying to protect the order’s sovereignty and to safeguard the Church and the Knights from “any potential scandal.”
The Holy See responded by issuing a statement Jan. 17 in which it reaffirmed “its confidence” in members of its commission, adding that the Holy See “counts on the complete cooperation of all in this sensitive stage” — meaning that it still expects the order to cooperate with it. The Holy See went on to say that it “awaits” the commission’s report “in order to adopt, within its area of competence, the most fitting decisions.”
In his letter dated Jan. 14, Grand Master Fra’ Matthew Festing also sought to offer reassurance that the legality of the process used to remove former Grand Chancellor Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager has been “clarified by numerous sources,” in particular the avvocato di stato (attorney general), who issued a statement Jan. 10 saying the correct procedure had been followed.
Boeselager was asked to resign Dec. 6 because of what the order, in a Dec. 13 statement, called an “extremely grave and untenable” situation. He refused twice, leading the grand commander, with the backing of the grand master and the order’s Sovereign Council and “most members of the order around the world,” to initiate a “disciplinary procedure” against him that saw him suspended from all offices within the Order of Malta.
His dismissal led to the Holy See announcing Dec. 22 a commission of inquiry (the Vatican prefers to call it a group), which is seeking to obtain information on the matter. It began acquiring information Jan. 16 and is mandated to complete its work by Jan. 31. The Order of Malta has refused to recognize the group of inquiry, saying it is an internal matter of governance for the order and that its religious nature “does not prejudice the exercise” of its “sovereign prerogatives.”
In an article on the matter last week, the Register revealed that the group is made up of five members, most of whom have been close associates of the former grand chancellor, including the commission’s head, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi. Further complicating matters is the fact that Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, is a friend of Boeselager. According to sources within the order, the ex-grand chancellor applied considerable pressure on the Holy See to set up the commission immediately after his dismissal.
In a Dec. 13 statement, the order defended its reasons for removing the German-born Boeselager, saying it was “due to severe problems which occurred during Boeselager’s tenure as grand hospitaller of the Order of Malta and his subsequent concealment of these problems from the grand magistry, as proved in a report commissioned by the grand master last year.”
These severe problems primarily related to the distribution of contraceptives, but the order has also referenced other issues that it says remain confidential. The order’s spokesman, Eugenio Ajroldi di Robbiate, told the Register Jan. 13 that Boeselager was “ultimately responsible” for the contraceptive distribution, as reported by the first Register article on this story, but there are other issues amounting to “a failure of trust.”
The issue of contraceptive distribution was nevertheless a considerable factor that eventually led to Boeselager’s dismissal. According to a firsthand testimony given by a former employee with Malteser Werke, the order’s humanitarian arm in Germany, the organization “definitely distributed condoms within its refugee service facilities” in the German towns of Xanten, Hemer, Hamm, Willich and Viersen and “perhaps also in other localities” as far back as the early 1990s.
Boeselager was grand hospitaller of the order at the time and responsible for overseeing the work of the Malteser agency, a position he held from 1989 to 2014.
The employee found the distribution of condoms at odds with his conscience and faith, but when he raised the matter with his immediate superior, he said he was threatened with dismissal.
Although a number of the order’s national associations have publicly backed Fra’ Festing, others are concerned that such a long-serving and senior member should have been dismissed without any kind of tribunal. They have also been critical that he has been replaced by two “unelected” members, which they describe as a “coup” attempt.
Robbiate said such a statement “is nonsense,” as the interim grand chancellor, Fra’ John Critien, was elected in May 2014 to the Sovereign Council, a body that assists the grand master, and then elected as grand chancellor in December. The other “unelected” member in question, Christophe Drzyzdzinski, has not changed his role as director of the grand master’s cabinet, a position he has held since 2014.
Robbiate also stressed that all members “are committed to faithfully comply with its laws” and that no disciplinary action has been taken other than that against Boeselager. He also said the grand master “regularly consults the constitutionalists before making major decisions” and that this was specifically done before Boeselager’s dismissal.
Boeselager is not giving comments to the media until the commission has finished its work, but in Jan. 11 comments to the Register, his spokesman, Max Hohenberg, drew attention to the fact that Boeselager had taken his case to the magistral tribunal of the order to appeal against his suspension and in particular his removal from the function as grand chancellor. Hohenberg said his suspension went against the constitution and argued that “no disciplinary procedure has validly been initiated.”
In his Jan. 14 letter, Fra’ Festing said the makeup of the Holy See commission had “raised serious questions,” including because of “serious accusations of a conflict of interest for at least three of the members who have been proved to be linked to a fund in Geneva.”
The Register previously reported three commission members — Archbishop Tomasi, Marc Odendall and Marwan Sehnaoui — had been involved with Boeselager regarding a mysterious 120-million Swiss Franc ($118 million) donation to the benefit of the order.
According to documentation the Register has obtained, the order appears to be connected to a Swiss trust. The Register contacted the trust, but did not receive answers to questions related to such connections. Instead, reference was made to Swiss law and criminal penalties if the name of the trust or its members, or allegations about the trust, were published.
The Register has contacted Archbishop Tomasi, Odendall and Boeselager to request information about their apparent involvement in the trust (their names are also in the documentation), but all three have declined to comment ahead of the Jan. 31 completion of the commission of inquiry’s work.
In his Jan. 14 letter, Fra’ Festing said regarding the fund that “there is nothing to suggest anything untoward, but personal and financial links make the commission members clearly unfit to address the situation objectively.”
He added that what he has learned of the trust has prompted him to set up an Order of Malta commission to look into it. The Register understands that the trust, like many of Boeselager’s activities, were unknown to Fra’ Festing, who was elected grand master in 2008.
In its Jan. 17 statement, the Holy See reaffirmed its “confidence” in the five members of the commission and said it “rejects, based on the documentation in its possession, any attempt to discredit these members of the group and their work.”
The Order of Malta’s leadership has long struggled with its German association. Sources within the order say the association — the wealthiest of all of the order’s national bodies — is seeking to “disenfranchise” the highest rank of the order — its religious — who take a vow of poverty, chastity and obedience, and ultimately take over the running of the order.
Due to its lack of vocations, the German association does not have a single professed member, so none of their members can become grand master and be involved in the order’s highest level of decision-making, which is why some say the German members wish to see an end to religious vows.
“The Germans want to remove the grand master and take over the entire Via Condotti [the Knights’ administrative headquarters in Rome],” said a source inside the order who wished to remain anonymous.
“The Germans play a huge role and don’t play by rules,” said another source speaking on condition of anonymity, while sources in Rome and Germany have indicated that Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich was highly active in helping to influence the decision to set up a papal commission of enquiry.
The German association denies allegations of wanting to rid the order of its religious character. Its president, Erich Lobkowicz, told the Register Jan. 7 that it is “completely absurd to claim that we do not, with all our heart, support the professed knights as the core of the order.” He added, “We think they should come from the old aristocracy or like-minded generous Catholic people” and said that the order’s lay nature “depends on the professed knights.”
“We have not the slightest inclination to change this,” he said, and he put the current dispute down to a “battle between all that Pope Francis stands for and a tiny clique of ultraconservative frilly old diehards in the Church — diehards that have missed the train in every conceivable respect.”
He added that the German association was “being bad-mouthed as too liberal, because that's easier than attacking the Pope.”
Lobkowicz also said it “pains us deeply to be defamed by certain persons, doing nothing but sitting around in luxury, as lacking in faith or spirituality.”
The German association president added, “We actively help and do our best to live and proclaim our Catholic faith. There is no teaching of the Church we do not adhere to! Ask our cardinals and bishops, most of whom know us well.”
Despite these firm denials, the Register has learned that the Holy Father has taken the claims seriously and has asked Cardinal Raymond Burke to review the order’s constitutions specifically to address the allegations of a German strategy to remake it into what some fear would become a quasi-non-governmental organization.
The aim of the review would be to affirm the religious nature of the order, especially with respect to its highest ranks, which, until Boeselager was elected grand chancellor, used to be filled only with professed knights who have taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.
The review instruction came after the order’s last elections in 2014, when the German association succeeded in placing three very senior positions (grand chancellor, grand hospitaller and receiver of the common treasure) into the hands of non-professed knights.
The second rank, to which Boeselager belonged, is a contemporary introduction into the constitutions and is seen by some members, from the most senior ranks down, as a means of diminishing the importance of the professed knights, especially when their vow of obedience seems to be misunderstood, as critics of Boeselager maintain.
Lobkowicz’s response to the order’s opposition to the Holy See commission, which he called an “open rebellion” against the Pope, was not well received by some associations, most notably the Italian association. And according to a source inside the order, further “horrible” messages from German members attacking the grand master are likely to provoke “disciplinary action” against them when this dispute ends. Such behavior contravenes the order’s constitution.
Some in the order speculate that the Holy See commission already has reached an internal conclusion, given the very short time it has been given to complete its work. But with its longstanding ties to the Holy See, it's hoped a resolution can be reached in which all sides save face.
Cardinal Parolin was invited again to answer questions on the issue by the Register, but his office did not respond.
In his Jan. 14 letter, Fra’ Festing stressed he would “not allow the rebellion of a few influential members of the order to succeed in their aim, for whatever reason, to drive a wedge between the Holy See and the order and the Holy Father and me.” And he urged members not to misunderstand his intentions, “nor question my unflinching loyalty to the Holy Father.”
“Let us pray together, that this needlessly fluid situation is quickly resolved and that unity can be restored to the order,” he said. “ The only truly disturbing consequence of the removal of the former grand chancellor is the distraction of some members of the order from their defense of the faith and their service of Our Lord, the sick and those in need.
“I call upon all of you to unite in prayer and service to witness the strength and unity of the order, and to ensure that those few who are trying to drive a wedge between the Holy See and the order for their own interests meet with failure.”
“I personally need your loyalty and support now more than ever,” Fra’ Festing’s letter concluded. “Please pray for the Holy Father’s intentions, for the continuation of our good relations with the Holy See, and for me.”
In its Jan. 17 statement, the Holy See reiterated its “support and encouragement for the commendable work” that the order carries out in various parts of the world in defending the faith and serving the poor and the sick.
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Based in Houston, Texas, this is at present, the only Ordinariate in the United States and Canada for Anglicans who turned Catholic under Benedict XVI's Anglicanorum coetibus. Its first bishop is Steven Lopes, right.
Very welcome news from the only Ordinariate in North America... If only the 'original' Catholic bishops of both countries were as unequivocal about standing by the deposit of faith and fundamental morality...
‘Conscience’ cannot justify Communion
for the remarried, says Ordinariate bishop
January 18, 2017
Bishop Steven Lopes, head of the American branch of the Ordinariate, has released a pastoral letter which reaffirms traditional Church teaching on Communion for the remarried.
On Friday, the bishops of Malta stated that remarried people might find it “impossible” to live as brother and sister, and could therefore take Communion if they felt “at peace with God”.
But the Ordinariate document, which has been sent to all 42 Ordinariate parishes and communities in the US, repeats the teaching of Popes including John Paul II and Benedict XVI. It says divorced and civilly remarried couples can receive Communion only if they are “committed to complete continence”.
In the 16-page document, A Pledged Troth,
https://www.ordinariate.net/letters-and-statements
Bishop Lopes says that indissolubility is part of the nature of marriage, and that the Church’s dogmas “illumine the path of faith”.
On the question of the Eucharist, he writes that, before receiving Communion, a Catholic must confess any objectively grave sin, and make a resolution not to commit the sin – in this case, adultery – again.
The bishop writes:
“A civilly-remarried couple firmly resolving complete chastity thus resolves not to sin again, which differs in kind from a civilly-remarried couple who do not firmly intend to live chastely, however much they may feel sorrow for the failure of their first marriage. In this situation, they either do not acknowledge that their unchastity, which is adultery, is gravely wrong, or they do not firmly intend to avoid sin.”
The document says that a firm resolution to amend is a necessary step before receive Communion. “Unless and until the civilly remarried honestly intend to refrain from sexual relations entirely, sacramental discipline does not allow for the reception of the Eucharist,” it says.
The Maltese document claimed that such a resolution might be “impossible”, and that “an informed and enlightened conscience” could decide to receive Communion. By contrast, Bishop Lopes says that the resolution is difficult but possible, since God “never abandons us in our weakness and need”.
He also rejects the idea that conscience can find “exceptions” to absolute moral prohibitions, such as those on adultery. Rather, “The word of God and the authoritative teaching of the Church provide abiding truth for the education of conscience.”
The bishop adds, quoting from the Catechism: “Conscience is not a law unto itself, nor can conscience rightly overrule the holy law of God, for conscience ‘bears witness to the authority of truth’ but does not create that truth.”
Quoting from St John Paul II’s Familiaris Consortio, Bishop Lopes writes: “The prohibition against adultery admits of no exceptions, and discernment with respect to individual culpability and growth does not permit us to ‘look on the law as merely an ideal to be achieved in the future’.”
He also quotes John Paul’s teaching that there are not “different degrees or forms of precept in God’s law for different individuals and situations”.
The document says that those living as brother and sister can receive Communion when there are “serious reasons”, such as the need to care for children, which prevent them from separating entirely. It also says that the reception of Communion must avoid “occasions of confusion and scandal”.
Elsewhere in the document, Bishop Lopes speaks of how to accompany the divorced and remarried. He says such accompaniment begins “in reminding people in this circumstance that they are loved by God and remain cherished members of the Church.”
He also recommends that the divorced and civilly remarried consider whether their first marriage was valid, and whether it may be possible to seek an annulment.
Bishop Lopes says that Amoris Laetitia must be protected from those, including the secular media, who “would misuse it to promote practices at odds with the Church’s teaching”.
Most of the Ordinariate’s members are former Anglicans, and the group retains Anglican traditions while being entirely Catholic. Bishop Lopes said it could therefore draw on the experience of different teachings in the Anglican Communion, which has often accommodated divorce, contraception, and homosexual unions. “As a result, that Communion has fractured as the plain teaching of Scripture, Tradition and reason was rejected.”
Bishop Lopes noted that the Anglican Communion has also permitted Communion for the remarried.
The bishop said that former Anglicans who become Catholic through the Ordinariate do not experience Catholic teaching as “as alien or external, but as our own. The indissolubility of marriage is our own teaching found in Scripture, from Our Lord, in our liturgy, in reason and the nature of marriage itself, and in the Tradition of the Church of which we are part.”
1/20/17
Fr. H comments on Mons. Lopes's instruction to the North American Ordinariate:
Bishop Lopes and remarried divorcees
Bishop Lopes, Ordinary of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter in North America, has issued a very fine instruction on the question of the "remarried" divorced.
In this document, printed in its entirety in the National Catholic Register, he binds together formulae from our Anglican (Patrimony) Marriage Service; from the Catechism of the Catholic Church (which Benedict XVI's Anglicanorum coetibus formally declared to be the official doctrinal statement of the Ordinariates); from St John Paul's Familiaris consortio; and from Amoris laetitia.
Drawing sensitively upon our corporate experience when we were still separated from the Unity of the See of St Peter, he shows how the whole Biblical doctrine of the use of sexuality handed down by Tradition unravels, with increasing rapidity and violence, once an ecclesial body starts 'making exceptions' which the Incarnate Word Himself explicitly excluded.
Bishop Stephen's Letter demonstrates exactly how immensely valuable it is for the Catholic Church to have a separated tradition such as ours, with its own liturgical inheritance, its own centuries-old experience of the Christian life, entering, enriching, and strengthening the Tradition which is from the Apostles. It is, surely, for fine teaching such as this that God called us into unity.
As it happens, our liturgical inheritance in this matter is not in its origins Protestant at all. Of all the Sacramental rites in our Prayer Book tradition, the service of Holy Matrimony is the one which Archbishop Thomas Cranmer messed around with least. This is because, despite Henry ("It was null just like the last time!") Tudor, the Church of England substantially preserved Catholic Truth in the matter of the indissolubility of Marriage.
Accordingly, much of the traditional Anglican Marriage service stays word for word in line with that of the Medieval Catholic Sarum Manuale (i.e Rituale). There, of course, much of the Wedding Service had to be in English ... so that bride and groom understood to what they were assenting. And perhaps also because the congregations knew the words so well.
After the Reformation, English Recusant Catholics continued to use Sarum, so that for centuries Catholics and Anglicans in England got married with (almost) the same words; words already sanctified by centuries of use...
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Bishops of Kazakhstan issue 'Appeal to Prayer'
with concerns about misuses of AL
'Notwithstanding repeated declarations concerning the immutability of Church teaching on divorce,
many local churches nowadays accept divorce in their sacramental practice, and the phenomenon is growing'
January 17, 2017
Three bishops of Kazakhstan — Tomash Peta, Metropolitan Archbishop of the archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana; Jan Pawel Lenga, Archbishop-Bishop emeritus of Karaganda; and Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary Bishop of the archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana — have issued an "Appeal to Prayer" in response to certain publications made "in some particular churches" of "norms" for the application of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia that allow "the divorced who have attempted civil marriage with a new partner, notwithstanding the sacramental bond by which they are joined to their legitimate spouse" to be "admitted to the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist without fulfilling the duty, established by God, of ceasing to violate the bond of their existing sacramental marriage."
After presenting in detail many of the "truths and doctrines that the Catholic Church has continually taught" about the indissolubility of marriage, the appeal notes, "Notwithstanding repeated declarations concerning the immutability of the teaching of the Church concerning divorce, several particular churches nowadays accept divorce in their sacramental practice, and the phenomenon is growing."
Further, the three bishops point to "the ineffectiveness of numerous appeals made privately and in a discreet manner to Pope Francis both by many faithful and by some Shepherds of the Church," which they say has forced them "to make this urgent appeal to prayer. As successors of the Apostles, we are also moved by the obligation of raising our voices when the most sacred things of the Church and the matter of eternal salvation of souls are in question."
Herewith the full text of the appeal:
APPEAL TO PRAYER
That Pope Francis may confirm the unchanging praxis of the Church
with regard to the truth of the indissolubility of marriage
Following the publication of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia, in some particular churches there were published norms for its application and interpretations whereby the divorced who have attempted civil marriage with a new partner, notwithstanding the sacramental bond by which they are joined to their legitimate spouse, are admitted to the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist without fulfilling the duty, established by God, of ceasing to violate the bond of their existing sacramental marriage.
Cohabitation more uxorio with a person who is not one's legitimate spouse represents, at the same time, an offense to the Covenant of Salvation, of which sacramental marriage is a sign (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2384), and an offense to the nuptial character of the Eucharistic mystery itself.
Pope Benedict XVI revealed such a correlation when he wrote:
"The Eucharist inexhaustibly strengthens the indissoluble unity and love of every Christian marriage. By the power of the sacrament, the marriage bond is intrinsically linked to the Eucharistic unity of Christ the Bridegroom and his Bride, the Church (cf. Eph. 5:31-32)" (Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum caritatis, 27).
Pastors of the Church who tolerate or authorize, even in individual or exceptional cases, the reception of the sacrament of the Eucharist by the divorced and so-called "remarried,” without their being clothed in the "wedding garment," despite the fact that God himself has prescribed it in Sacred Scripture (cf. Matt. 22:11 and 1 Cor. 11:28-29) as the necessary requirement for worthy participation in the nuptial Eucharistic supper, such pastors are complicit in this way with a continual offense against the sacramental bond of marriage, the nuptial bond between Christ and the Church and the nuptial bond between Christ and the individual soul who receives his Eucharistic Body.
Several particular Churches have issued or recommended pastoral guidelines with this or a similar formulation: "If then this choice [of living in continence] is difficult to practice for the stability of the couple, Amoris laetitia does not exclude the possibility of access to Penance and the Eucharist. That signifies something of an openness, as in the case where there is a moral certainty that the first marriage was null, but there are not the necessary proofs for demonstrating such in the judicial process. Therefore, there is no reason why the confessor, at a certain point, in his own conscience, after much prayer and reflection, should not assume the responsibility before God and the penitent asking that the sacraments be received in a discreet manner."
The previously mentioned pastoral guidelines contradict the universal tradition of the Catholic Church, which by means of an uninterrupted Petrine Ministry of the Sovereign Pontiffs has always been faithfully kept, without any shadow of doubt or of ambiguity, either in its doctrine or its praxis, in that which concerns the indissolubility of marriage.
The norms mentioned and pastoral guidelines contradict moreover in practice the following truths and doctrines that the Catholic Church has continually taught as being sure:
- The observance of the Ten Commandments of God, and in particular the Sixth Commandment, binds every human person, without exception, always and in every situation. In this matter, one cannot admit individual or exceptional cases or speak of a fuller ideal.
St Thomas Aquinas says: "The precepts of the Decalogue embody the intention of the legislator, that is God. Therefore, the precepts of the Decalogue permit no dispensation" (Summa theol. 1-2, q.100, a.8c).
The moral and practical demands, which derive from the Ten Commandments of God, and in particular from the indissolubility of marriage, are not simple norms or positive laws of the Church, but an expression of the holy will of God. Consequently, one cannot speak in this respect of the primacy of the person over the norm or the law, but one must rather speak of the primacy of the will of God over the will of the sinful human person, in such a way that this person is saved, by fulfilling the will of God with the help of his grace.
- To believe in the indissolubility of marriage and to contradict it by one's own actions while at the same time considering oneself even being free from grave sin and calming one's conscience by trusting in God's mercy alone, represents a self-deception against which Tertullian, a witness to the faith and practice of the Church of the first centuries warned: "Some say that for God it is sufficient that one accepts his will in one's heart and soul, even if one's actions do not correspond to this: in this manner they think themselves able to sin while maintaining the integrity of the principle of faith and fear of God: in this way, it is absolutely the same as if one attempted to maintain the principle of chastity, while violating and breaking the holiness and integrity of the matrimonial bond" (Tertullian, De poenitentia 5,10).
The observance of the Commandments of God and in particular of the indissolubility of marriage cannot be presented as a fuller expression of an ideal towards which one should strive in accordance with the criterion of the good which is possible or achievable.
It is rather the case of an obligation which God himself has unequivocally commanded, the non-observance of which, in accordance with his Word, carries the penalty of eternal damnation. To say to the faithful the contrary would seem to signify misleading them or encouraging them to disobey the will of God, and in such way endangering their eternal salvation.
God gives to every man assistance in the observance of his Commandments, when such a request is properly made, as the Church has infallibly taught:
- "God does not command that which is impossible, but in commanding he exhorts you to do that which you are able, and to ask for that which you cannot do, and so he assists you that you might be able to do it" (Council of Trent, session 6, chapter 11) and
- "if someone says that even for the man who has been justified and established in grace the commandments of God are impossible to observe: let him be anathema" (Council of Trent, session 6, canon 18.)
Following this infallible doctrine, St John Paul II taught:
- "Keeping God's law in particular situations can be difficult, extremely difficult, but it is never impossible. This is the constant teaching of the Church's tradition" (Encyclical Veritatis splendor, 102) and
- "All husbands and wives are called in marriage to holiness, and this lofty vocation is fulfilled to the extent that the human person is able to respond to God's command with serene confidence in God's grace and in his or her own will" (Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris consortio, 34).
The sexual act outside of a valid marriage, and in particular adultery, is always objectively gravely sinful and no circumstance and no reason can render it admissible or pleasing in the sight of God. St Thomas Aquinas says that the Sixth Commandment obliges even in the case where an act of adultery could save a country from tyranny (De Malo, q.15, a.1, ad. 5).
St John Paul II taught this perennial truth of the Church: "The negative moral precepts, those prohibiting certain concrete actions or kinds of behaviour as intrinsically evil, do not allow for any legitimate exception. They do not leave room, in any morally acceptable way, for the "creativity" of any contrary determination whatsoever. Once the moral species of an action prohibited by a universal rule is concretely recognized, the only morally good act is that of obeying the moral law and of refraining from the action which it forbids" (Encyclical Veritatis splendor, 67).
The adulterous union of those who are civilly divorced and "remarried," "consolidated," as they say, over time and characterized by a so-called "proven fidelity" in the sin of adultery, cannot change the moral quality of their act of violation of the sacramental bond of marriage, that is, of their adultery, which remains always an intrinsically evil act.
A person who has the true faith and a filial fear of God can never be "understanding" towards acts which are intrinsically evil, as are sexual acts outside of a valid marriage, since these acts are offensive to God.
The admission of the divorced and "remarried" to Holy Communion constitutes in practice an implicit dispensation from the observance of the Sixth Commandment. No ecclesiastical authority has the power to concede such an implicit dispensation in a single case, or in an exceptional or complex situation or with the goal of achieving a good end (as in example the education of the children born of an adulterous union) invoking for such a concession the principle of mercy, or the via caritatis, or the maternal care of the Church or affirming not to want to impose many conditions to mercy.
St Thomas Aquinas said: "In no circumstances should a person commit adultery (pro nulla enim utilitate debet aliquis adulterium committere)" (De Malo, q.15, a.1, ad. 5).
A norm which permits the violation of the Sixth Commandment of God and of the sacramental matrimonial bond only in a single case or in exceptional cases, presumably to avoid a general change to the canonical norm, nonetheless always signifies a contradiction of the truth and of the will of God.
Consequently, it is psychologically out of place and theologically erroneous to speak in this case of a restrictive norm or of a lesser evil in contrast with the general norm.
A valid marriage of the baptized is a sacrament of the Church and of its nature has a public character. A subjective judgment of the conscience in relation to the invalidity of one's own marriage, in contrast to the corresponding definitive judgment of an ecclesiastical tribunal, cannot bring consequences for sacramental discipline, since the sacramental discipline always has a public character.
The Church, and specifically the minister of the sacrament of Penance, does not have the faculty to judge on the state of conscience of an individual member of the faithful or on the rectitude of the intention of the conscience, since "ecclesia de occultis non iudicat" (Council of Trent, session 24, chapter 1).
The minister of the sacrament of Penance is consequently not the vicar or representative of the Holy Spirit, able to enter with His light in the innermost recesses of the conscience, since God has reserved such access to the conscience strictly to himself: "sacrarium in quo homo solus est cum Deo" (Vatican Council II, Gaudium et spes, 16).
The confessor cannot arrogate to himself the responsibility before God and before the penitent, of implicitly dispensing him from the observance of the Sixth Commandment and of the indissolubility of the matrimonial bond by admitting him to Holy Communion.
The Church does not have the faculty to derive consequences for the external forum of sacramental discipline on the basis of a presumed conviction of conscience of the invalidity of one’s own marriage in the internal forum.
A practice which permits to those who have a civil divorce, the so called "remarried," to receive the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist, notwithstanding their intention to continue to violate the Sixth Commandment and their sacramental bond of matrimony in the future, would be contrary to Divine truth and alien to the perennial sense of the Catholic Church, to the proven custom, received and faithfully kept from the time of the Apostles and more recently confirmed in a sure manner by St John Paul II (cf. Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris consortio, 84) and by Pope Benedict XVI (cf Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum caritatis, 29).
The practice mentioned would be for every rational and sensible person an evident rupture with the perennial and Apostolic practice of the Church and would therefore not represent a development in continuity. In the face of such a fact, no argument would be valid: contra factum non valet argumentum.
Such a pastoral practice would be a counter-witness to the indissolubility of marriage and a kind of collaboration on the part of the Church in the propagation of the "plague of divorce," which the Vatican Council II warned against (cf. Gaudium et spes, 47).
The Church teaches by means of what she does, and she has to do what she teaches. With relation to the pastoral action concerning those in irregular unions, St John Paul II said: "The aim of pastoral action will be to make these people understand the need for consistency between their choice of life and the faith that they profess, and to try to do everything possible to induce them to regularize their situation in the light of Christian principle. While treating them with great charity and bringing them into the life of the respective communities, the pastors of the Church will regrettably not be able to admit them to the sacraments" (Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris consortio, 82).
An authentic accompaniment of persons who find themselves in an objective state of grave sin and on a corresponding journey of pastoral discernment cannot fail to announce to such people, in all charity, the complete will of God, in such a way that they repent wholeheartedly of their sinful actions of living more uxorio with a person who is not their legitimate spouse.
At the same time, an authentic accompaniment and pastoral discernment must encourage them, with the help of God's grace, not to commit such acts in the future.
The Apostles and the entire Church throughout two millennia have always announced to mankind the whole truth concerning the Sixth Commandment and the indissolubility of marriage, following the admonition of St Paul the Apostle: "I did not shrink from the responsibility of announcing to you the complete will of God" (Acts 20:27).
The pastoral praxis of the Church concerning Marriage and the sacrament of the Eucharist has such an importance and such decisive consequences for the faith and the life of the faithful, that the Church, in order to remain faithful to the revealed Word of God, must avoid in this matter any shadow of doubt and confusion.
St John Paul II formulated this perennial truth of the Church thus: "With this reminder of the doctrine and the law of the church I wish to instill into everyone the lively sense of responsibility which must guide us when we deal with sacred things like the sacraments, which are not our property, or like consciences, which have a right not to be left in uncertainty and confusion. The sacraments and consciences, I repeat, are sacred, and both require that we serve them in truth. This is the reason for the Church's law" (Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, 33).
Notwithstanding repeated declarations concerning the immutability of the teaching of the Church concerning divorce, several particular churches nowadays accept divorce in their sacramental practice, and the phenomenon is growing.
Only the voice of the Supreme Pastor of the Church can definitively impede a situation where in the future, the Church of our time is described with the following expression: "All the world groaned and noticed with amazement that it has in practice accepted divorce" (ingenuit totus orbis et divortium in praxi se accepisse miratus est), evoking an analogous saying by which St Jerome described the Arian crisis.
Given this very real danger and the widespread plague of divorce within the life of the Church, which is implicitly legitimized by the mentioned norms and applications of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia;
given that the aforementioned norms and guidelines from some particular churches as a result of today's global culture are in the public domain;
given, furthermore, the ineffectiveness of numerous appeals made privately and in a discreet manner to Pope Francis both by many faithful and by some Shepherds of the Church,
we are forced to make this urgent appeal to prayer.
As successors of the Apostles, we are also moved by the obligation of raising our voices when the most sacred things of the Church and the matter of eternal salvation of souls are in question.
May the following words, with which St John Paul II described the unjust attacks against the faithfulness of the Church’s Magisterium, be a light for all pastors of the Church in these difficult times and encourage them to act in an increasingly united manner: "The Church's Magisterium is often chided for being behind the times and closed to the promptings of the spirit of modern times, and for promoting a course of action which is harmful to humanity, and indeed to the Church herself. By obstinately holding to her own positions, it is said, the Church will end up losing popularity, and more and more believers will turn away from her” (Letter to families, Gratissimam sane, 12).
Considering that the admission of the divorced and so-called "remarried" to the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist, without requiring of them the obligation to live in continence, constitutes a danger for the faith and for the salvation of souls and furthermore constitutes an offense to the holy will of God;
- furthermore, taking into consideration that such pastoral practice can never be the expression of mercy, of the via caritatis or of the maternal sense of the Church towards souls that are sinning,
we make with profound pastoral solicitude this urgent appeal to prayer that Pope Francis may revoke in an unequivocal manner the aforementioned pastoral guidelines which are already introduced in several particular churches.
Such an act of the Visible Head of the Church would comfort the shepherds and the faithful of the Church, according to the mandate which Christ, the Supreme Shepherd of souls, has given to the Apostle Peter, and through him to all his successors: "Confirm your brethren!" (Luke 22:32).
May the following words of a holy Pope and of St Catherine of Siena, a Doctor of the Church, be a light and a comfort for all in the Church of our days:
"Error when not resisted, is accepted. Truth, which is not defended, is oppressed” (Pope St Felix III, +492). "Holy Father, God has elected you in the Church, so that you might be an instrument for the stamping out of heresy, the confounding of lies, the exaltation of the Truth, the dissipation of darkness and the manifestation of light" (St Catherine of Siena, +1380).
When Pope Honorius I (625 - 638) adopted an ambiguous attitude towards the spreading of the new heresy of Monothelitism, Saint Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, sent a bishop from Palestine to Rome, saying to him the following words: "Go to the Apostolic See, where are the foundations of holy doctrine, and do not cease to pray till the Apostolic See condemn the new heresy.“ The condemnation occurred in 649 through the holy pope and martyr Martin I.
We make this appeal to prayer conscious that our failure to do so would have been a serious omission. Christ, the Truth and the Supreme Shepherd, will judge us when He appears. We ask Him, with humility and confidence, to reward all the shepherds and all the sheep with the imperishable crown of glory (cf. 1 Pet. 5:4).
In the spirit of faith and with filial and devout affection we raise our prayer for Pope Francis:
"Oremus pro Pontifice nostro Francisco: Dominus conservet eum, et vivificet eum, et beatum faciat eum in terra, et non tradat eum in animam inimicorum eius. Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam Meam, et portae inferi non praevalebunt adversus eam."
As a concrete means we recommend to recite every day this ancient prayer of the Church or a part of the holy rosary in the intention that Pope Francis may revoke in an unequivocal manner those pastoral guidelines, which permit the divorced and so-called “remarried” to receive the sacraments of Penance and Eucharist without asking them to fulfil the obligation of a life in continence.
+ Tomash Peta
Metropolitan Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana
+ Jan Pawel Lenga
Archbishop-Bishop emeritus of Karaganda
+ Athanasius Schneider,
Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana
18 January 2017
Ancient Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter in Rome
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Pope Francis promotes the myth of radical capitalism
Have we really witnessed, as Pope Francis says,
the triumph of a radical capitalist ideology?
By SAMUEL GREGG
January 19, 2017
It’s no secret that Pope Francis has negative views of economic globalization. Occasionally, he has acknowledged the hard-to-deny benefits of global markets when it comes to reducing poverty. [I trust Mr Gregg's research, but I must say I do not recall ever coming across such an acknowledgment by this pope.] No one, however, would describe the pope as an optimist on this subject.
It’s true that globalization isn’t a cost-free exercise. Just think of the late middle-aged coal miner with no easily transferable skills thrown out of work when his mine shuts down. Advocates of free markets like myself should acknowledge these realities whenever we highlight the real benefits of global markets, such as the enhanced economic growth you need to reduce poverty as well as lower prices of goods and services for all.
A persistent difficulty, however, with the pope’s reflections on the issue is that many of his arguments don’t fit the evidence. That includes his oft-repeated suggestion that a radical capitalist ideology has taken hold throughout much of the world.
Francis’s latest expression of this view was delivered in a speech to a gathering of the Roman Round table of The Global Foundation at the Vatican. After congratulating the group for promoting private efforts to combat what he often calls the “globalization of indifference,” the pope stated:
In 1991, St. John Paul II, responding to the fall of oppressive political systems and the progressive integration of markets that we have come to call globalization, warned of the risk that an ideology of capitalism would become widespread.
This would entail little or no interest for the realities of marginalization, exploitation and human alienation, a lack of concern for the great numbers of people still living in conditions of grave material and moral poverty, and a blind faith in the unbridled development of market forces alone.
My Predecessor asked if such an economic system would be the model to propose to those seeking the road to genuine economic and social progress, and offered a clearly negative response. This is not the way (cf. Centesimus Annus, 42). Sadly, the dangers that troubled St. John Paul II have largely come to pass.
Francis omitted to mention that the same paragraph from the 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus affirmed a capitalism which “recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector.” That type of careful distinction is, alas, often absent from Francis’s commentary on economic issues. [As typical as his omission of the rest of the paragraph from Centesimus annus that does not fit into his argument.]
Putting this aside, is Pope Francis right to claim that a capitalist ideology that is unconcerned about the marginalized and leaves everything to market forces has run rampant across the world? The evidence, I’d suggest, doesn’t support this argument.
In the lead-up to Communism’s collapse in the former USSR and Eastern Europe, there was a flourishing of ideas that challenged not only the basic premises of such command economies but also the Keynesian consensus which dominated Western countries.
That’s partly because socialism’s flaws became obvious. Likewise, mixed economies had proved unable to address the problems of rising inflation and high-unemployment which began afflicting the West from the 1970s onwards. In developing nations, there was an increasing willingness to acknowledge that programs, ranging from outright socialism to heavily-interventionist and protectionist policies, hadn’t much reduced poverty.
Following these failures, center-right and center-left government in the 1980s began to deregulate, lower trade barriers, reform labor markets, remove restrictions on foreign capital investment, and privatize state-owned industries. Markets consequently became more integrated, a process that technology accelerated.
Still, there was much that did not change. Can one really claim that a radical economic individualism has achieved a global ascendancy when, for example, government expenditures accounted for 38.9 percent of America’s annual GDP in 2016, almost half of which was on what are called “social expenditures”? In the same year, many Western European government expenditures consumed over 50 percent of GDP, well over half of which was on welfare.
Looking outside the developed nations, can it really be said that free market ideas have conquered the Middle East, North Africa or Russia? Crony capitalism — a polar opposite of free markets — is the norm throughout, for example, in Russia.
Until quite recently, many Latin American nations (including the pope’s native Argentina) were dominated by the decidedly anti-free market agendas of the left-populist governments which came to power in the early-2000s. I’ve often wondered why the pope seems so reluctant to criticize the “21st century socialist” policies associated with figures such as the late Hugo Chávez, which have inflicted destruction upon countries like Venezuela.
Even in East Asia, where poverty has been drastically reduced over the past forty years, it’s a mistake to assert that radical capitalist ideas are ascendant. China’s opening to global markets, for instance, has certainly transformed its living standards. Yet, as observed in the 2016 Index of Economic Freedom, “beyond nominal openness to trade and investment, genuinely liberalizing reform measures have not been undertaken, and policies continue to favor the status quo and promotion of the party’s interests.”
Besides the fact that it’s hard to find countries with unbridled capitalism (let alone promoting radical capitalist ideas), the pope seems unaware that few free market thinkers believe that market forces are enough to resolve issues of marginalization and poverty.
Despite, for instance, lifting millions out of poverty through openness to trade, India continues to struggle economically. One reason is that India has, as the Index of Economic Freedom states, “long-standing institutional shortcomings.” A significant gap is “a well-functioning legal and regulatory framework.” Another challenge for India, the Index adds, is “uncertainty about land ownership.” This is described as “one of the biggest problems facing the economy.”
In other words, what’s missing in many countries are
(1) institutions such as rule of law and clear property rights and
(2) the cultural settings in which, as John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus insisted, markets must be imbedded if they are to work.
It’s not hard to find free market economists — many of whom are Christians who take seriously the Gospel’s non-negotiable commandment to help the poor — who have focused on how to strengthen such institutions and cultures in countries where they are weak or don’t exist. Indifferent to poverty, they are not.
Far from being cheerleaders for radical individualism, these thinkers recognize that the capacity of markets to reduce poverty and promote human flourishing depends on the strength of many non-economic relationships. This is obvious from even casual reading of prominent free market thinkers such as the Nobel economist Vernon Smith or the long-deceased Walter Eucken and Wilhelm Röpke.
In his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’, Francis showed some awareness that institutions and culture are crucial for social and economic development. It’s less evident he understands how much, or just how long, many free market economists have focused on this.
Grasping these points, however, requires the pope — and whoever’s advising him on these matters [unfortunately, the only likely person for that role in the pope's immediate circle is Cardinal Turkson of Ghana whose ideas of economics are unlikely to be helpful and are sometime flaky, even] — to dispense with the myth that a radical capitalist ideology has sunk deep roots across the planet. Unfortunately, I fear, this may have to wait until the next pontificate.
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January 20, 2017 headlines
PewSitter
Canon212.com
PewSitter-2
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It seems there are bishops in the era of the Bergoglio pontificate who are just as intent as tearing down the brick-by-brick progress made in revitalizing the Extraordinary Form as the hundreds of priests around the world responsible for that progress ten years after SP was promulgated...
An Illinois bishop 'repeals' Summorum Pontificum
By Joseph Shaw
January 20, 2017
Bishop Malloy of Rockford, which is in Illinois in the USA, has sent a rather remarkable letter to his priests. Rorate Caeli received a copy on 16th January, and it is reproduced in full here.
The citation of Summorum Pontificum is truly astonishing: it refers to sections which state that, to celebrate the Traditional Mass, 'a priest does not need permission, neither from the Apostolic See nor from his Ordinary' (Art. 2), and that priests should 'willingly' (libenter) accept requests from groups to celebrate the Traditional Mass (Art 5 §1).
Having referred to these sections, Bishop Malloy then contradicts them: priests do need his permission, and they should not willingly receive requests to celebrate the ancient Mass.
Perhaps Bishop Malloy should point to another part of Art. 5 §1:
Let him [the priest] see to it that the good of these faithful be harmoniously brought into accord with the ordinary pastoral care of the parish, under the governance of the Bishop according to canon 392, by avoiding discord and by fostering the unity of the whole Church.
However, it is obvious that this is not intended to contradict the earlier statement that priests don't need permission to celebrate the Traditional Mass; rather, it is intended to govern the way that they go about doing so: Parish priests should set up celebrations of the Old Mass in a way which harmonises with the parish's pastoral care, avoids discord and fosters unity with the Bishop.
The whole point of Summorum Pontificum is that there is no need to imagine that there should be any problems of discord, if priests are both generous and sensible. Pope Benedict makes this point with particular force in the Letter to Bishops which accompanied the Motu Proprio: addressing this 'fear', he remarks: 'This fear also strikes me as quite unfounded. '
Bishop Malloy, however, appears to be arguing that there is a danger to the unity of the diocese not from any unreasonable behaviour from priests who support the Traditional Mass, but merely from the fact that it is different from the Novus Ordo. The idea that disunity derives inevitably from liturgical differences also lies behind the ban on celebration of Mass ad orientem. This is not just contrary to the entire purpose of Summorum Pontificum, but to the clear teaching of the Second Vatican Council:
in faithful obedience to tradition, the sacred Council declares that holy Mother Church holds all lawfully acknowledged rites to be of equal right and dignity; that she wishes to preserve them in the future and to foster them in every way. (Sacrosanctum Concilium 4)
Even in the liturgy, the Church has no wish to impose a rigid uniformity in matters which do not implicate the faith or the good of the whole community. (Sacrosanctum Concilium 37)
It is also contrary to the whole tenor of the 1970 Missal, which, as has often been pointed out, is a Missal of options. [A great example of why, in matters of the faith, there should be no doctrinal 'options' - 'Let your Yes mean Yes and your No mean No' - as there ought to be few options, if any, in the practice of the faith: the chaos of AL (which strikingly implies 'options' in very fundamental doctrines by making 'options' possible regarding admission to communion). I did not realize that Paul VI provided so many 'options' in the Novus Ordo - no wonder its champions immediately went overboard multiplying those options to the point of 'do as you please' with the Novus Ordo Mass.]
I wonder if any two celebrations of the Novus Ordo in the Diocese of Rockford on a given Sunday use exactly the same texts and ceremonies.
- There are, after all, multiple options for the Eucharistic Prayer, the acclamations, and sometimes for the readings.
- Parts or all can be celebrated in Latin, or indeed Spanish, Polish, or any other of scores of languages.
- The Penitential Rite can be replaced by the Asperges.
- The Sign of Peace and the Offertory Procession can be included or omitted.
- The Offertory prayers can be said silently or aloud.
- The proper chants can be replaced with banal and perhaps heretical 'any suitable' vernacular hymn.
- In a number of places the priest is invited to extemporise. Examples could be multiplied indefinitely.
If all the priests of Rockford do all use the same options, if they all stick to the same tried and tested texts and hymns, this is not a sign of unity: it is a sign of laziness, of a failure to explore the richness of the Paul VI Missal.
[I take it Joseph Shaw approves of these options, which I find strange in someone who is chairman of the Latin Mass Society. He calls these options 'richness', I call it chaos.
1. If too many 'options' are allowed, it amounts to virtually granting a license to do whatever pleases the priest, because yes, he will be lazy to see exactly what options are allowed, and he simply will say, 'OK, since the Missal allows options, I'm going to take the options I please'. Which seems to me exactly how all the liturgical abuses of the NO came to become routine (though subject at any time to innovation) in many parishes and dioceses.
2. Liturgy, which is by definition "formal ritual enacted by those who understand themselves to be participating in a divine action", should follow definite rules precisely because it is a 'formal ritual': formal means 'not informal', and ritual means "a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects, performed in a sequestered place, and performed according to set sequence".
So, one may have a choice of liturgy, as we do in the Catholic Church - e.g., the NO, the EF, the Dominican, Mozarabic and various Eastern rites - but if I am not mistaken, except for the NO, all the other forms have remained substantially the same for centuries, and only the NO allows so many options which do not even allow it to be called a 'ritual', much less liturgy. If it is celebrated in a straightforward manner - Benedict XVI's Masses are a model for the NO - then the NO is liturgy. If it is celebrated any other way, i.e., too many options, authorized or not, it no longer deserves being called liturgy: it devolves into an informal rite (a ceremony) - not ritual - celebrated as it pleases the celebrant.][/com]
At least, that is what liberal liturgical theorists will tell us, and it must be admitted that all those options must have been included for some reason. Did all those trees die in vain?
It does not appear that Bishop Malloy is concerned, at present, to stop his priests celebrating the Mass in a variety of languages, using a variety of Eucharistic Prayers and however many other options. Perhaps he is picking his battles and intends to write another letter insisting on the use of EP II and Acclamation IV.
The canonical advice I have received indicates that his power to forbid celebration ad orientem is 'arguable', though it should be noted that Catholic churches are not guaranteed to have sanctuaries set up for celebration versus populum.
[All this was covered amply in the debate that followed Cardinal Sarah's recommendation last year to all his fellow bishops to start having the NO performed ad orientem. In short, there was never any explicit rule ordering the versus populum altars to be installed and used in place of the traditional altars in churches, even if, as a consequence of NO abuse, many churches around the world tore down those traditional altars.]
The idea that Bishop Malloy has the right to repeal Summorum Pontificum for his diocese is simply wrong. There is no way a bishop can reverse the solemn legislation of the Supreme Pontiff.
To cheer up Bishop Malloy's flock, however, he has very kindly uploaded a video of himself taking part in 'car pool kareoke'. Party on!
For more on the Church's teaching on liturgical diversity, see the FIUV Position Paper on Liturgical Pluralism.
http://www.unavoce.ru/pdf/FIUV_PP/FIUV_PP6_PluralismFinal.pdf
For more on the legal and theological status of celebration ad orientem, see the FIUV Position Paper on Liturgical Orientation
http://www.unavoce.ru/pdf/FIUV_PP/FIUV_PP4_OrientationFinal.pdf
Postscript: A reader in the USA has pointed out to me that Bishop Malloy is not entirely unfriendly to the Traditional Mass. The Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest has an apostolate in his diocese, and their website shows him visiting them, and assisting at the Traditional Mass in choro, on 9th August 2015 (scroll down). This does not solve the problems in his letter, of course, but may put them into a little more context. [What context? That he was merely being courteous to the Christ the King apostolate in his diocese? That he, in fact, probably had them ask his formal permission before celebrating the EF - as they habitually do elsewhere - in his diocese?
No, it is more likely that he 'welcomed' the apostolate to his diocese before Bergoglio, and that, seeing the aversion that the new pope has for the EF, Malloy has since decided it is more prudent for him to line up with the pope.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 21/01/2017 20:11] |
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Do you suppose someone can call the pope's attention to this outrage? And if someone did, would he do something about it at all? But then, since Cardinal Farrell says it was the Holy Spirit speaking in AL, JMB will probably agree with this Colombian bishop...
Colombian priest suspended 'a divinis'
by his bishop for rejecting AL!
Called 'apostate, heretic, schismatic'
for 'refusing to submit' to pope's teaching
January 21, 2017
We will translate the whole document provided by Rorate's Spanish-language partners "Adelante la Fe" as soon as possible -- but the news is explosive. A priest in the Diocese of Pereira, Colombia, was admonished and suspended by his Bishop exclusively because he criticized in public the new doctrine invented by Pope Francis on Marriage and the reception of the Blessed Sacrament.
Father Luis Alberto Uribe Medina is the victim of this startling act by his bishop, Rigoberto Corredor.
DECREE no.1977
Of January 16, 2017
By which a priest is suspended
THE BISHOP OF PEREIRA
Considering
1st. That Father Luis Carlos Uribe Medina has expressed publicly and privately his rejection of the doctrinal and pastoral teachings of the Holy Father Francis, mainly regarding Marriage and the Eucharist.
2nd. That today, January 16, 2017, His Excellency the Bishop summoned Father Luis Carlos Uribe Medina to explain his doctrinal position regarding the teachings of the Holy Father. This act included the presence of four priests of the diocesan clergy.
3rd. That Father Luis Carlos Uribe Medina, in this meeting, persisted in his posture against the Holy Father Francis. Therefore, for His Excellency the Bishop and the priests there present, it was concluded in a decisive manner that the aforementioned priest separated himself publicly from the communion with the Pope and the Church.
4th. That Canon 1364 paragraph 1 of the Code of Canon Law states that, "an apostate from the faith, a heretic, or a schismatic incurs a latae sententiae excommunication." Paragraph 2 states that, "if contumacy of long duration or the gravity of scandal demands it, other penalties can be added, including dismissal from the clerical state."
Moreover, considering Canon 194, par. 1, n. 2, he for is removed by virtue of law from the ecclesiastical position. Likewise, Canon 751 defines schism as, "the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him."
5th. That on January 2, 2017, Father Luis Carlos Uribe Medina, without notifying his Bishop or any diocesan authority, abandoned [????] the Parish of Santa Cecilia, in Pueblo Rico, [Department of] Risaralda.
DECREES
ARTICLE THE FIRST:
Father Luis Carlos Uribe Medina is suspended from the exercise of the priestly ministry.
ARTICLE THE SECOND:
Father Luis Carlos Uribe Medina is prohibited from diffusing his ideas contrary to the Catholic faith and the ecclesiastical discipline.
ARTICLE THE THIRD:
The faithful of the Catholic Church are asked not to follow the teachings of the aforementioned priest as long as he does not accept the doctrine and teachings of the Vicar of Christ.Never mind that Fr. Uribe is following the teachings of Christ himself, not that of his unworthy vicar!]
ARTICLE THE FOURTH:
The faithful are exhorted to pray for Father Luis Carlos Uribe Medina so that he may return to the Unity of the Church.
Be it thus notified and ordered.
Given in Pereira, Risaralda, on the sixteenth day of January of the year two thousand and seventeen.
+ RIGOBERTO CORREDOR BERMÚDEZ
Bishop of Pereira
Father Alirio Raigosa Castaño
Chancellor
[Note: As soon as we have more information on the situation, we will inform you | Just to be clear: the "doctrine" the suspended priest criticized was the "new doctrine" for Communion for adulterers "allowed" by Amoris Laetitia.] as represented in the audio of one of his sermons embedded in Adelante la Fe.]
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I am always thankful to the indefatigable Maike Hickson for promptly keeping the Anglophone Catholic online world abreast of the latest
developments in the German media that have to do with the life of the Church, but I did sit a few days on her most recent post in 1P5:
http://www.onepeterfive.com/surprising-german-editorial-de-facto-schism-church/ because I decided to go to the primary German link she provided.
https://www.die-tagespost.de/politik/Leitartikel-Faktisches-Schisma;art315,175459
Ms. Hickson translates as a native-born German speaker and as an academic, whereas my translation (as one who only learned the language
and not as well as I learned English which is the language I always automatically think in about anything serious, personal or otherwise)
is not always literal but tries to be contextual without betraying the writer's thought.
Moreover, I do object strongly to the loose usage of the word 'schism' to refer to the undeniable split in the Church today between those
who are fully and unquestioningly behind anything the current pope says and does - even when he arguably violates what Jesus actually said -
and those who object to those statements, actions and gestures which violate, in one way or other, the deposit of Catholic faith (Revelation,
Tradition and Magisterium together).
Ms. Hickson also rightly points out that this editorial by Horst is most surprising since only a few days earlier, he had written another one
in which he affirms, among other things - "...It is clear that, in the foreseeable future, there will be no further attempt coming
from the College of Cardinals or the world’s episcopacy to correct the pope formally, as Cardinal Raymond Burke once proposed ...
Also the debate in public concerning the DUBIA - as it has gone on in the recent past - is closed. It may continue among
the experts, but it is no longer a cause for irritation.”
A de facto schism
Editorial
by Guido Horst
Translated by
January 16, 2017
Anyone who makes the rounds in the Vatican these days to ask individual clergy what they think about the prolonged debate on "Amoris laetitia" is bound to encounter a sort of speechlessness, ['Sprachlosigkeit' in German - but is it really 'speechlessness', perhaps more idiomatically ‘at a loss for words’, or choosing to say nothing in order not to commit oneself irrevocably, in a formal technical way, to an unequivocal position – exactly as the pope has chosen to do about the Four Cardinals’ DUBIA]. A ‘speechlessness’ which, depending on the individual's theological competence and appreciation of doctrine, betrays bewilderment.
With his declaration on Italian TV recently that certain ambiguities in the Chapter 8 of Amoris laetitia represent no "danger to faith" and that therefore, a correction of the pope is not necessary nor even possible, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has made a possibly far-reaching decision.
There will be no answer from Francis to the DUBIA expressed by the Four Cardinals. Otherwise, Mueller would not have said what he did. But 'answers' are now coming from bishops who interpret those ambiguities in the way the pope intended them to be [i.e., allowing sacramental leniencies].
The Church of Malta is a tiny local church on the outskirts of Europe, but Malta's Archbishop Charles Scicluna is a respectable man who had a decisive role as a leading member of the Congregation of the Faith at the height of the sex abuse scandals. [Obviously, his competence as a canonical prosecutor is not matched by any appreciation of the doctrine of the faith as one might expect from someone who worked at the CDF for more than a decade.]
If he now, together with the Bishop of Gozo, instructs the faithful of the small island state, that every remarried divorcee can decide by himself whether he can go to communion or not if he feels 'at peace with God', it clearly means that each local church can now do what she wants. [Worse than that: It would mean that every Catholic can now do as he wants, independent of Catholic teaching.]
The moat [dividing local churches among themselves] becomes deeper. Florence against Rome, Poland against Argentina, Malta against Milan. This is called an actual schism. [NO, IT IS NOT! What we have is a serious split in the church - exacerbated greatly under this pope, since the original split that was evident after Vatican II. Schism does not occur until one side formally breaks off, and in this impasse, neither side will, if only because the 'bad' side happens to be led by the pope himself.
The analogy to the Arian crisis is more relevant than ever. The Arians, even if they were the more influential - and perhaps also, the more numerous at the time - never formally broke off from the Church even if they were considered heretic, materially and formally, and even if at least one pope took their side. And that is why no historian ever refers to the Arian crisis as 'the Arian schism'.]
The Vatican, which in the past, after long consideration, would come to a decision eventually - for example, after the debate over the right of local churches in Germany to provide abortion counselling - now seems unable to clarify a matter of Catholic witness. [At that time, it was over the right to life, this time, it is over the validity of other equally fundamental moral truths the Church has always taught.]
The Pope chooses not to answer the Cardinals'DUBIA, nor will he make a clear statement that the controversial paragraphs of "Amoris laetitia" must be read in the light of his predecessors' teachings. This refusal is in itself an answer. Even as the CDF Prefect says that effectively, the debate over AL is ended.
Rome has stopped being the voice of clarity but a silent observer as the unity of pastoral practice in the Church is breaking up. At the expense of 'the little people'. Priests have to explain to the faithful exactly what has changed: morality? The sacraments? pastoral practice only?
The pope's great concern that weak and sinful persons [such as RCDs] should not consider themselves excommunicated but know that there is a place for them in the Church is threatened by the uncertainty among bishops and priests and the increasingly poisonous exchanges between theologians and bishops on opposite sides of the conflict.
Horst betrays his bias.
1) No pope before this pope ever said that RCDs are not welcome in the Church - only that they must live with divine law as the Church enforces it, which means not to insist on sacrilegious communion unless they are prepared to make the necessary penance to be absolved of adultery. This pope wants to comfort them at the expense of Jesus's own exhortation to "Go and sin no more".
2) Horst reports on 'increasingly poisonous exchanges' when the poison has been entirely on the part of those who side with the pope who have no arguments to present, against those who are protesting the casuistries of AL by citing solid Catholic theology and morality.
Cardinal Caffara was right when he said that this has become a burden for the priest who is uncertain what to do - and priests have largely been left to fend for themselves. [colore… [i.e., the Vatican does not seem interested in lightening that burden with a clear Yes or No. It is obvious that the pope does not think he is imposing any burden at all on the Church by his studied ambiguities.]
Ms. Hickson, in her 1/18/17 post, goes on to comment as follows:
In light of these forthright and stirring comments written by Guido Horst and Carl Olson [from whose CWR commentary on the'Maltese fiasco' she also made one citation], it might be noteworthy to make reference also to an article published today on the official website of the German bishops, Katholisch.de [entitled 'The divisiveness of the conservatives']
http://www.katholisch.de/aktuelles/standpunkt/die-zerrissenheit-der-konservativen
The article is written by Björn Odendahl and rebukes the conservative Catholics for their perceived moral resistance toward Amoris Laetitia, saying quite assuredly that their words “are becoming more and more absurd.” He even sees “hatred” coming from that direction.... The importance of this polemical article, however, lies in its last paragraph: "In one aspect, the conservatives are right: the words of the pope are not always clear enough. He should speak out once and for all to put an end to these goings-on which damage the Church." [Q.E.D. Odendahl himself demolishes his own preceding arguments in 'poisonous language' against those who object to the equivocation of AL.]
While Odendahl himself not long ago had made a stir because of his demeaning remarks concerning the African Church’s opposition to any permissive laxening of the Church’s moral teaching... we do agree with him on at least one essential aspect: It is up to the Vicar of Christ on earth once more to raise his authoritative voice and to clarify Amoris Laetitia. Here Odendahl even effectively agrees with the three bishops of Kazhakstan who have just made an eloquent public appeal for exactly that same intention.
On January 20, Marco Tosatti commented on the German articles cited in Maike Hickson's 1P5 post, but added most pertinent observations as well:
The Germans admit that AL has
'provoked a de facto schism' -
and the pope should make things clear
Translated from
January 20, 2017
[Tosatti quotes from the Horst editorial, then comments as follows]:
... The problem, Horst says, is that "The pope is silent about the letter of the Four Cardinals and thus indirectly refuses to make a clear declaration that on the controversial paragraphs [or statements, in general] in AL mst be read in the light of the magisterium of previous popes".
And, we must add, in the light of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. [Tosatti then cites the concluding paragraphs of the Horst editorial.]
I believe it is unlikely that the pope will ever do it [answer the DUBIA or clarify the doubts over AL], and in not doing so, thereby allowing a split in the Church on such a central matter as the Eucharist and Jesus's own words on matrimony and adultery in a way that is unprecedented in modern times.
And I think he will not do it in the light of what [one of the pope's men] Archbishop Bruno Forte said in April 2016 [shortly after the publication of AL], saying that during the 2015 'family synod', the pope had confided to him:
If we speak explicitly about allowing communion for remarried divorcees, you don't know what a mess they [opponents of sacrilegious communion] can create for us! So let us not speak in a direct way, but set up the premises for me, and let me draw the conclusions.
[Thank you, Mr. Tosatti, for bringing that up. I have often remarked that in the continuing barrage of outrages coming from the mouth of this pope and his surrogates, the public - and even most commentators - tend to forget substantial and egregious earlier outrages which ought to be emblazoned like permanent markers annotating the shortcomings and errors of this pontificate.]
Mons. Forte was named by the pope to be the special secretary of the two family synods, and was the author of the controversial 'intermediate report' of the 2014 synod that was rejected by the synod president, Cardinal Erdo of Hungary, and by majority of the synodal fathers. [Principally, it contained two substantial paragraphs supportive of homosexual practice even if this subject was hardly ever even discussed in the synod.]
Mons. Forte then commented of the pope's remark: "Typical of a Jesuit", adding that AL "does not represent a new doctrine but the merciful application of the doctrine as it has always been". But if the anecdote Forte recounted is true - and there is no reason to doubt him [nor has the Vatican ever belied it] - then one can better understand the degree of confusion and ambiguity, as well as the diversity of interpretations, raised by AL.
In short, a deliberate lack of clarity which brings to mind the polemics and secular accusations that have been levelled for centuries against the Society of Jesus [the Jesuit order]. It is also the fruit of a [papal] strategy that was decided upon even before the first 'family synod' began. [Which indicates that, in his heart of hearts, even Bergoglio doubted that he could carry off extending his 'communion for everyone' policy to the universal Church, i.e. that he would encounter substantial opposition by the bishops' synods, even after packing the assembly each time with 45 personal appointees constituting a substantial block that could have swung the vote too the two-thirds majority required for any consensus.
Having failed to do that in both synods, he simply took the option which he knew he always has as pope - to say anything he wants to say in his post-synodal exhortation, regardless of what the synodal fathers actually voted for and presented to him as recommendations. He already did that very significantly in his post-synodal exhortation on the New Evangelization (a synod convoked by and held under Benedict XVI), in which he virtually ignored the specific meaning of 'New Evangelization' in the language of John Paul II and Benedict XVI to proclaim the manifesto for his pontificate in Evangelii gaudium -'the joy of the gospel', yes, but the gospel according to Bergoglio.]
The geography of a fragmented Church
From the English service of
For Pope Francis 2017 got off to a bitter start. His popularity remains high, but without a corresponding rise in religious practice. Latin America is even witnessing declines.
The glaring case is Brazil, where those who say they belong to the Catholic Church have plunged over the last two years from 60 to 50 percent of the population, according to a brand-new grassroots survey by Datafolha.
Just half a century ago in Brazil, almost the whole population identified as Catholic. By 2000 the share had gone down to 62 percent and had stabilized there. But now it is again taking a nosedive, precisely during the first reign of a Latin American pope.
The only continent where the numbers of Catholics continue to grow at a sustained pace is sub-Saharan Africa. But the African Church, with its bishops and cardinals, is also the most determined opponent against the changes that Pope Francis has set in motion.
Paradoxically, the pope 'called from the ends of the earth' for the purpose of renewing the Church [That's not what his electors said before and immediately after the 2013 Conclave - they said he was elected 'to reform the curia', as if that was the biggest problem the Church is facing - and not the obvious decline of the faith worldwide - at the start of its third millennium. has to rely on the worn out and depleted national Churches of the Old Continent, in primis that of Germany, in order to put his plan into practice, coming up against the tenacious resistance of none other than the young and fervent African Churches.
Even within the Roman Curia this fracture is visible to the naked eye. The cardinal favored by Jorge Mario Bergoglio is the octogenarian Walter Kasper, a German, [who, however, is no longer a member of the Curia, although he represents the members of the Bergoglian Curia who are 1000% behind anything this pope says and does, including Cardinal Marx, who remains Archbishop of Munich-Freising while being Chairman of the Vatican's Economic Council and a member of the pope's Crown council of nine advisers)] while the one most antithetical to him is the Guinean Robert Sarah, a hero and beacon for a large portion of the Catholic Church, and not only in Africa.
In the two synods convened in 2014 and 2015, Pope Francis experienced firsthand the resistance to the innovations that he wanted to introduce into that minefield representing pastoral care of the family. [But this was never a 'minefield' when papal magisterium on marriage and the sacraments was clear and unconditional, but Bergoglio has made it a minefield by unnesssarily elevating to central importance the concern of an insignificant fraction of the world's Catholics - i.e., Communion-unqualified remarried divorcees in the West who are supposed to be substantially concerned that they cannot receive communion when that was a canonical penalty they knew full well they would incur by getting divorced and then entering into a civilian marriage without annulment of their Church marriage. And in the process, also seeking to exonerate even common-law Catholic couples from sin. All in the name of false suprious mercy.]
He used a crafty trick to deal the opposition, as one of his proteges, Archbishop Bruno Forte, candidly revealed after the fact when he related these actual words that the pope had said to him during the synod: “If we talk explicitly about communion for the divorced and remarried, you have no idea what a mess these guys will make for us. So let’s not talk about it directly, you get the premises in place and then I will draw the conclusions.”
In effect, that is just how it went. Bergoglio has never stated clearly that he wants to allow communion for the divorced and remarried, an act never before permitted by the Catholic Church. But he gave slack to the champions of innovation, the Germans foremost. And once the double synod was on the books without winners or losers, he himself saw to adding it all up in the apostolic exhortation “Amoris Laetitia,” where he slipped the innovations so dear to him into a couple of sibylline footnotes, between the said and the unsaid.
But that’s just it: The “mess,” in his words, that he had been able to ward off at the synod, erupted for Francis afterward, because the ambiguities he intentionally introduced into “Amoris Laetitia” have released an unmanageable explosion of contrasting theoretical interpretations and practical applications.
With the result, for example, that in the diocese of Rome, communion for the divorced and remarried who live more uxorio is allowed, while in the diocese of Florence, not yet [Magister had an earlier post about how in that archdiocese, Archbishop Giuseppe Betori had initially asked his predecessor as Archbishop, Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, to write the guidelines on AL, which Antonelli did in the light of preceding Magiserium, but Betori subsequently asked a group of theologians to interpret AL chapter by chapter, and the man to whom he assigned Chapter 8, has a Bergoglian interpretation soon to be published, resulting in what AL critic Aldo Maria Valli has called this pontificate's 'Yes, but also no'/'No, but also yes' doctrinal abdication]; in San Diego yes, and in Philadelphia no.
And this is the way it is all over the Catholic world, where from diocese to diocese and from parish to parish, the most varied and opposing practices now hold sway, and all of them reflecting their respective interpretations of “Amoris Laetitia.”
What is at stake is not only the yes or no to communion, but the end of the indissolubility of marriage and the routine acceptance of divorce in the Catholic Church too, as it is among Protestants and Orthodox. [Bergoglio never refers to this practical and most unfortunate application of his 'ecumenism', whenever he waxes rapturous over 'ecumenism of blood' or 'ecumenism of common cause' with other Christian confessions - a false 'ecumenism' that, for now, appears to be equivalent in his case to outright Lutheranism.]
Four cardinals, Caffarra of Italy, Burke of the United States, and the Germans Meisner and Brandmüller, these last two going against some of their countrymen, have publicly asked the pope to dispel once and for all with a clear statement the doctrinal and practical “doubts” put into circulation by “Amoris Laetitia.”
Francis has not responded. Nor could he, without contradicting himself [if he answered the DUBIA in the only right way, because otherwise, unless he himself corrected AL accordingly, he would be admitting to heretical statements at odds with the Catholic deposit of faith.]
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The pope grants interview to El Pais on Inauguration day for President Trump.
Pope Francis takes 'wait and see'
attitude on President Trump
In an interview on Inauguration Day, Bergoglio warns that populism
in a time of crisis to the rise of Hitler and urges dialog
January 21, 2017
On the heels of the presidential inauguration, Pope Francis has said he is taking a “wait and see” attitude about President Donald Trump and wants to deal with “specifics” before making a judgment on the new leader of the free world.
[But he already judged him as 'not a Christian' back in September 2015 because candidate Trump advocated (and still does now he is President) advocated building a wall along the US border with Mexico to considerably reduce the easy entry of illegal aliens into the United States.
Besides, what world leader says on Day 1 of another leader's term of office that he will 'wait and see' - of course, anyone may think that prudently, but no one articulates it - unless one wants to broadcast his skepticism to the world? And that is what this MOST MERCIFUL EVER OF GOD'S CREATURES is doing.
His subsequent words also make it clear he thinks Trump may well end up being like Hitler 'who was also elected'. How does that distinguish him from the wrongly self-baptized singer Madonna, other 'celebrities' and the largely adversary media, who compare Trump to Hitler and are currently thoroughly deranged by their hatred of Trump?
Yet the media took umbrage when Trump said that their dissemination by Obama's CIA director of an unfounded 'dossier' of supposedly scurrilous acts by Trump compiled by the Russians, i.e., manifestly unfounded news, was right out of the Nazi propaganda playbook. In this p.c. world, it is never correct to ever ever compare anyone to Nazis or Hitler, so Trump did himself no favor by using the Nazi simile, because he could have used Communist propaganda as a simile instead.
But here we are - and now that the pope has compared Trump to Hitler, will anyone call him out for it? Don't hold your breath.]
The Holy Father also warned that the political phenomenon taking place in both the U.S. and Europe has led to a form of populism where people look to a charismatic leader to be a savior from crises and to restore a nation’s identity — just as they did, he added, in 1930s Germany when its citizens elected Adolf Hitler.
“That is a very serious thing,” Francis said. “That is why I always try to say: talk among yourselves, talk to one another.” [What does 'dialog' have to do with? In the Bergoglian context, is the ne plus ultra way to deal with anything - which means ultimately not dealing with anything because it means endless dialog] - he also appeared to express agreement with Trump on border policy, saying “each country has the right to control its borders, who comes and who goes, and those countries at risk — from terrorism or such things ['Terrorism" Pshaw, it's just a thing!] — have even more the right to control them more, but no country has the right to deprive its citizens of the possibility to talk with their neighbors.".” [Well, it's interesting what he says in the first part of his statement, because he has never before conceded that obvious fact, but where did the second part of the statement come from? Who has ever said the nonsense that any country has "the right to deprive its citizens of the possibility to talk with their neighbors"]?.
On the day of Trump's inauguration, the Pope sent the new President a letter in which he offered him his good wishes and prayers.
The Pope’s comments, excerpted below, were made in a lengthy exchange published today by the Spanish daily El Pais (see full English text here). The interview took place as President Trump was being inaugurated Jan. 20.
Your Holiness, about the world's problems that you have just mentioned, Donald Trump has just become the president of the US, and the whole world is tense because of it. What do you think about that?
I think that we must wait and see. I don't like to get ahead of myself nor judge people prematurely. We will see how he acts, what he does, and then I will have an opinion. But being afraid or rejoicing beforehand because of something that might happen is, in my view, quite unwise. It would be like prophets predicting calamities or windfalls that will not be either. We will see. We will see what he does and will judge.
Always on the specific. Christianity is specific or it is not Christianity. It is interesting that the first heresy in the Church took place just after the death of Jesus Christ. The gnostic heresy, condemned by the apostle John. Which was what I call a spray religiousness [???], a non-specific religiousness. Yes, me, spirituality, the law... but nothing concrete. No, no way. We need specifics. And from the specific we can draw consequences.
We lose sense of the concrete. The other day, a thinker was telling me that this world is so upside down that it needs a fixed point. And those fixed points stem from the concrete. What did you do, what did you decide, how do you move. That is what I prefer to wait and see.
Both in Europe and in America, the repercussions of the crisis that never ends, the growing inequalities, the absence of strong leadership are giving way to political groups that reflect on the citizens' malaise. Some of them — the so-called anti-system or populists — capitalize on the fears in face of an uncertain future in order to form a message full of xenophobia and hatred towards the foreigner. Trump's case is the most noteworthy, but there are others such as Austria or Switzerland. [Now that's a loaded leading question that virtually begs for the answer that Berghoglio did give! So much for objective journalism!], Are you worried about this phenomenon?
That is what they call populism. Which is an equivocal term, Which is an equivocal term, because, in Latin America, populism has another meaning. In Latin America, it means that the people — for instance, people's movements — are the protagonists. They are self-organized, it is something else.
[For Bergoglio, it seems, only these 'people's movements' in Latin America - each and everyone of them a Marxist movement - constitute populism! When Trump says in his inaugural address that 'today marks the day when the power in Washington is transferred to your hands', that's not populism. Well, let's all wait and see about Trump's populism. But in the past several decades, Latin American populism has either been the false populism of Peronism or Marxist populism - neither of which was brought progress to anyone.]
When I started to hear about populism in Europe I didn't know what to make of it, I got lost, until I realized that it had different meanings. Crises provoke fear, alarm. In my opinion, the most obvious example of European populism is Germany in 1933. [There,he has created the opening he needed for his next statements.] After [Paul von] Hindenburg, after the crisis of 1930, Germany is broken, it needs to get up, to find its identity, a leader, someone capable of restoring its character, and there is a young man named Adolf Hitler who says: "I can, I can". And all Germans vote for Hitler. Hitler didn't steal the power, his people voted for him, and then he destroyed his people.
[In which Bergoglio has his history all wrong. Hitler was never elected but defeated precisely by that Hindenburg, then 84, in a runoff election when he was considered the only German who could defeat Hitler. But with the increasing political instability of the post-World War I Weimar Republic, that Von Hindenburg had led since 1925, he dissolved the Reichstag (parliament) twice in 1932 and finally, under pressure, agreed to appoint Hitler Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, because Hitler's National Socialist Party had won 37% of the vote in the November 1932 elections.
But that was a significant drop in votes for the Nazi Party with increases for the Communists and the national conservative DNVP. It was the last free and fair all-German election before the Nazi seizure of power on 30 January 1933 (when Von Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor, as the following elections of March 1933 were already accompanied by massive suppression, especially against Communist and Social Democratic politicians. Even then, the Nazis got even less votes, 33%, down from 37% the previous year. In that sense, the Germans never 'elected' Hitler at all. God protect us from a pope who is not only radically 'revisionist' in the teaching of the faith, but is also willfully revisionist - or not sufficiently informed - about world history.]
That is the risk. In times of crisis, we lack judgment, and that is a constant reference for me. "Let's look for a savior who gives us back our identity and let's defend ourselves with walls, barbed-wire, whatever, from other peoples that may rob us of our identity". [Which is not what Trump has been saying about the dangers to the USA of uncontrolled immigration. The danger is more immediate - the danger to the nation's security, its economy and its laws.]
And that is a very serious thing. That is why I always try to say: talk among yourselves, talk to one another. [What's with this obstinate non sequitur about dialog???? In any case, Trump's first calls today to other foreign leaders were to the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada, so it's not as if he has ever said he opposes any dialog - as long as it leads to some resolution.]
But the case of Germany in 1933 is typical, a people that was immersed in a crisis, that looked for its identity until this charismatic leader came and promised to give their identity back, and he gave them a distorted identity, and we all know what happened. [The Germans were not in search of identity in 1933, they knew all too well who they were - a nation defeated in the first World War, for which they now had to pay. But they did want political stability and an economic future given the onerous Treaty of Versailles which ended that war - and Hitler played to them by denouncing that treaty, a bagatelle he conceded while going on to establish his dictatorial regime.]
Can borders be controlled? Yes, each country has the right to control its borders, who comes and who goes, and those countries at risk —from terrorism or such things — have even more the right to control them more,[MARK THAT IN RED because he has never acknowledged this before!] but no country has the right to deprive its citizens of the possibility to talk with their neighbors. [And mark that in deep purple for being a nonsense non sequitur!]
I'm not tempted to read the rest of the interview, but surely others will come up to point out anything else questionable or objectionable in it...
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January 23, 2017 headlines
Canon212.com
PewSitter
Two sites yesterday cited Benedict XVI on truth and morality, not surprising given the apparent relativism that has characterized the reigning
pope's statements on sin, the sacraments and conscience. What surprised me is that one of the citations was made by someone who has been a
1000-percent outspoken Bergoglidolator (for which reason, I have not used his posts at all) but perhaps it is his way of dealing with the current
Bergoglio-generated crisis of the faith, without having to make any direct references while squaring with his own conscience.
Benedict XVI:
‘The concept of truth has become suspect’
by Deacon Greg Kandra
JANUARY 23, 2017
It might be useful for us all at this moment to revisit the wisdom of Pope Benedict XVI. In a conversation with journalist Peter Seewald, Benedict expounded on a phrase that has become closely associated with him and the times in which we live: the dictatorship of relativism.
In his futuristic novel Brave New World, the British author Aldous Huxley had predicted in 1932 that falsification would be the decisive element of modernity. In a false reality with its false truth – or the absence of truth altogether – nothing, in the final analysis, is important any more.There is no truth, there is no standpoint. Today, in fact, truth is regarded as far too subjective a concept for us to find therein a universally valid standard. The distinction between genuine and fake seems to have been abolished. Everything is to some extent negotiable. Is that the relativism against which you were warning so urgently?
It is obvious that the concept of truth has become suspect. Of course it is correct that it has been much abused. Intolerance and cruelty have occurred in the name of truth. To that extent people are afraid when someone says, “This is the truth”, or even “I have the truth.” We never have it; at best it has us.
No one will dispute that one must be careful and cautious in claiming the truth. But simply to dismiss it as unattainable is really destructive. A large proportion of contemporary philosophies, in fact, consist of saying that man is not capable of truth.
But viewed in that way, man would not be capable of ethical values, either. Then he would have no standards. Then he would only have to consider how he arranged things reasonably for himself, and then at any rate the opinion of the majority would be the only criterion that counted.
History, however, has sufficiently demonstrated how destructive majorities can be, for instance, in systems such as Nazism and Marxism, all of which also stood against truth in particular.
“We are building a dictatorship of relativism”, you declared in your homily at the opening of the conclave [in 2005], “that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate standard consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.”
That is why we must have the courage to dare to say: Yes, man must seek the truth; he is capable of truth. It goes without saying that truth requires criteria for verification and falsification. It must always be accompanied by tolerance, also.
But then truth also points out to us those constant values which have made mankind great. That is why the humility to recognize the truth and to accept it as a standard has to be relearned and practiced again.
The truth comes to rule, not through violence, but rather through its own power; this is the central theme of John’s Gospel: When brought before Pilate, Jesus professes that he himself is The Truth and the witness to the truth. He does not defend the truth with legions but rather makes it visible through his Passion and thereby also implements it.
- Excerpted from Light of the World: The Pope, The Church and the Signs Of The Times: A conversation with Peter Seewald, 2010
From Cardinal Ratzinger’s homily during the 2005 conclave:
All people desire to leave a lasting mark. But what endures? Money does not. Even buildings do not, nor books. After a certain time, longer or shorter, all these things disappear.
The only thing that lasts for ever is the human soul, the human person created by God for eternity. The fruit that endures is therefore all that we have sown in human souls: love, knowledge, a gesture capable of touching hearts, words that open the soul to joy in the Lord.
So let us go and pray to the Lord to help us bear fruit that endures. Only in this way will the earth be changed from a valley of tears to a garden of God.
yesterday also featured the ff quotation from Cardinal Ratzinger's pre-conclave homily on April 18, 2005, the day before he was elected pope.
A clear faith based on the Creed
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
April 18, 2005
Let us dwell on only two points. The first is the journey towards “the maturity of Christ”, as the Italian text says, simplifying it slightly.
More precisely, in accordance with the Greek text, we should speak of the “measure of the fullness of Christ” that we are called to attain if we are to be true adults in the faith. We must not remain children in faith, in the condition of minors. And what does it mean to be children in faith?
St Paul answers: it means being “tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine” (Eph 4: 14). This description is very timely!
How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of the thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves – flung from one extreme to another: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism and so forth.
Every day new sects spring up, and what St Paul says about human deception and the trickery that strives to entice people into error (cf. Eph 4: 14) comes true.
Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be “tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine”, seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times.
We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.
We, however, have a different goal: the Son of God, the true man. He is the measure of true humanism. An “adult” faith is not a faith that follows the trends of fashion and the latest novelty; a mature adult faith is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ.
It is this friendship that opens us up to all that is good and gives us a criterion by which to distinguish the true from the false, and deceipt from truth.
We must develop this adult faith; we must guide the flock of Christ to this faith. And it is this faith – only faith – that creates unity and is fulfilled in love.
And eight years later, the cardinals elect a man who is now the unabashed POPE OF RELATIVISM!
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