"
Please, Pope Weigel, resign from your Pontificate" (Rorate Caeli, February 28, 2013):
"Not the 'Küng left', not the 'schismatic Lefebvrist hard-right', but I, the virtuous via media, hold the keys to authentic Evangelical Catholic reform, as I explain in my book, available in bookstores everywhere - just $ 9.99!," thus saith Supreme Pontiff Weigel descending from Mount Manhattan.
Can't Pope Weigel at least wait till the conclave is assembled to put forward his candidacy? Can't he at least wait till 8PM Rome time today to proclaim his declarations of apostasy and schism?...
The lack of restraint from those who wish to "frame" the next pontificate is astounding. Küng has tried it, Weigel, still not fully recovered from the end of the Wojtyla pontificate, is trying it as well. As for the "schismatic Lefebvrists", their only program seems to be this novena for the election of the Sovereign Pontiff, starting tomorrow. Now, which of these programs seems to be the truly Catholic one?
Well ... that is a bit of a problem, isn't it. Perhaps it's a good example of THE problem.
Now that the JP2 well of plenty has run dry, this smug overreacher has decided to ditch the middle man and offer his own pastoral bull on Catholiprotestantism. I saw him plugging "Evangelical Catholicism" on Little Raymond's program on EWTN a couple weeks ago. As Little Raymond beamed his approval, Pope Weigel spoke of "antiquarians," his word for traditionalists, which in this fellow's lexicon is more or less a synonym for "pests."
ReplyDeleteYou've got to understand the inside baseball going on here. In the once valid, now buried and passively repudiated encyclical of Pius XII, "Mediator Dei," Pope Pacelli also uses the term "antiquarianism." He writes of a certain species of theologian who distorts tradition by twisting the writings of certain early fathers of the Church to questionable, generally modernist ends:
He calls these theologians "antiquarians":
"63. Clearly no sincere Catholic can refuse to accept the formulation of Christian doctrine more recently elaborated and proclaimed as dogmas by the Church, under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit with abundant fruit for souls, because it pleases him to hark back to the old formulas. No more can any Catholic in his right senses repudiate existing legislation of the Church to revert to prescriptions based on the earliest sources of canon law. Just as obviously unwise and mistaken is the zeal of one who in matters liturgical would go back to the rites and usage of antiquity, discarding the new patterns introduced by disposition of divine Providence to meet the changes of circumstances and situation.
"64. This way of acting bids fair to revive the exaggerated and senseless antiquarianism to which the illegal Council of Pistoia gave rise. It likewise attempts to reinstate a series of errors which were responsible for the calling of that meeting as well as for those resulting from it, with grievous harm to souls, and which the Church, the ever watchful guardian of the "deposit of faith" committed to her charge by her divine Founder, had every right and reason to condemn.[53] For perverse designs and ventures of this sort tend to paralyze and weaken that process of sanctification by which the sacred liturgy directs the sons of adoption to their Heavenly Father of their souls' salvation."
So you see what this clever journalist/pontiff has done: by applying the term to traditionalists, he has used Pius's own term to discredit the message of "Mediator Dei", and those who continue to uphold it in these dicey post-aggiornamento times. He promotes instead the Neo-Cath modernism of the “great council” -- with pride of place given to the prolixities of his favorite pope and cash cow, JP2 "the Great." In Weigel’s world, an encyclical written in 1947 becomes an antiquarian artifact.
But then, the Neo-Cath version of the faith always gives pride of place to V2, the novelties of which always trump the sum of the Church's first 1900 years. It is that displacement of which Weigel aspires to be the hagiographer.
Brilliant, Ralph. As always.
ReplyDeleteWhat astounds me is how people everywhere continue to buy this fellow's snake oil at all.
ReplyDeleteDear Ralph. Smashing.
ReplyDeleteThe real antiquarians were those radicals of the Consilium and its various committees. They intentionally destroyed the Roman Rite and substituted a bunch of made-up crap that they attributed to Hippolytus (as if his putative Mass Texts really existed) and about whose work most reputable scholars say - whatever.
The Lil' Licit Liturgy is DIRECTLY the responsibility of Vatican Two and its chief interpreter, Pope Paul Vi whose dainty fingers are, as proved by the provocative Priest, Rev Anthony Cekada, all over the Mass massively mangled so as to please prots.
Think of that; we actually had a Catholic Pope who killed the Mass that was pleasing to God and substituted in its place a memorial meal pleasing to protestants.
Frankly, we all ought be thanking God that He has not punished the Catholic Church more than He has.
And make no mistake about it, we are being punished for the sins of our Fathers.