- "The Good Schism in the Church" (RealCatholicTV, April 5, 2011): "Many faithful Catholics recognize an 'undeclared' schism in the Church. While the schism is quite clear, what might not be as evident at first glance is what is forming on the side of Truth."
- "Massive Attack" (RealCatholicTV, March 22, 2011): "There is a powerful bishop who is leading the fight to bring the Traditional Mass back to the faithful. Who could this Catholic hero be?" Will the forthcoming Instruction from the Vatican increase the power of Summorum Pontificum, require seminaries to prepare their students in the use of the traditional liturgy, and instruct bishops to stop placing restraints on the use of the EF?
Friday, April 08, 2011
State of the Church: dead wood and new life
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4 comments:
Voris sometimes has some good insights. At worst, he's a good weathervane. At best, a sort of prophet.
"Good Schism" -- this is a mere bedtime story in my diocese. I hope it is true elsewhere.
"Massive Attack" -- until a pope comes along who has the intestinal fortitude to deposit "collegiality" into the Vatican landfill of bad ideas, no amount of "instruction" to the bishops will make any appreciable difference. Benedict is not that pope. He is too weighed down by the ideological baggage of the Great Council, in which he played so large a role, to be able to forswear it now. Instead, he will come up with linguistic triflings: "ordinary and extraordinary form" to put the TLM and the NO on an equal footing, "reform of the reform" to give an illusion of the essential rightness of the aggiornamento, which went but a bit awry here and there, and "hermeneutics of continuity and rupture," which conveniently obscure the fact that "continuity" remains today where it has always remained: in the bosom of Church doctrine and tradition, which did not need a "pastoral" council to sustain it.
Thinking a bit more about the "hermeneutics of continuity and rupture":
Prior to the convocation of the Second Vatican Council, according to Fr Ralph Wiltgen, "Pope John created an Ante-Prepatory Commission, presided over by his able Secretary of State, Domenico Cardinal Tardini, to assist him in determining the subject matter of the council." This was 1959. The work of soliciting input, analyzing it and boiling it down to a proper agenda took over two years and involved hundreds of Church officials from all over the world. It was truly a comprehensive effort.
No sooner did the council begin than an alliance of European bishops began an effort to subvert the work of the commission, and replace its agenda with their own. Countless excuses were made. The commission's agenda did not deal sufficiently with "urgent" questions of liturgical reform, it was insufficiently "ecumenical", it did not adopt a sufficiently abject stance in referring to mistakes and faults of the Catholic Church in precipitating the "original separation" of protestantism, etc, etc.
Our present pope was a key player in this matter, and in what followed once his group of influential European churchmen assumed control.
So my question to our present pope would be: in that long ago council, which agenda represented an "hermeneutic" of continuity, and which an "hermeneutic" of rupture?
And what has changed since then, papa?
Ralph writes:
"So my question to our present pope would be: in that long ago council, which agenda represented an "hermeneutic" of continuity, and which an "hermeneutic" of rupture?
"And what has changed since then, papa?"
Brilliant question, Ralph. It would be nice to know whether the Holy Father is like the political conservative who was once liberal but then was mugged. As things stand, there seems to be an assumption that his position has remain unchanged over the course of his career as a professor, a peritus, a cardinal, and now pope. Yet in the presence of Cardinal Kasper he once referred to the "sins of my youth." But nobody is clear what the truth of the matter is.
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