Michael Matt on the abdication, the council & Fatima
This is a bit of a reach from my usual fare, but my attention was drawn to this video by some comments I encountered on the Internet today. I don't know much about the Third Secret of Fatima, and I don't know what I think about some of the things Mr. Matt says here, but I do think many of you will agree that parts of his talk offer a striking and provocative departure from the mainstream.
11 comments:
Anonymous
said...
47In an article on the Remnant website I find the quote:
“on February 22, the Vatican answered the other question when it reported that Benedict XVI will retain his papal name: following his resignation, the former Pope will be referred to as His Holiness Benedict XVI, Bishop Emeritus of Rome.” http://remnantnewspaper.com/Archives/2013-0228-siscoe-bishop-dressed-in-white.htm
However in the Vatican is reported to have said: "The Vatican Announced Benedict will be known as "pope emeritus Benedict XVI" or "Roman Pontiff emeritus Benedict XVI", be addressed as "Your Holiness," and be referred to as "His Holiness Benedict XVI". http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/vatican-announces-pope-s-title-after-resignation-5354724?ref=rss
Dear Donna. There's no Fatima connection at which place Pope Benedict XVI said Mary did not appear (the three seers had some internal vision instead he said) and so this sorry attempt by Mr. Matt falls flat.
The Pope is not critical of Vatican Two - he loves it - and so he tried to slough-off onto the media the responsibility for of all of its manifest malign fruits.
Mr. Ferrara wrote a weird the-wish-is-father-to-the-thought piece that the abdicator is the Bishop in white of the Fatima message meaning, I guess, that the first Bishop in white, Pope Blessed John Paul II (who identified himself as the Bishop in white) was either a fool or a liar.
Vatican Two and Pope Paul VI are directly responsible for ALL that the abdicator tries to pin on the media in his shameless and shameful address.
Ever since he was a seminary student, the abdicator nursed strong desires to change the nature and direction of the Catholic Church and as the walls come tumbling down he splits for the castle blaming everyone else for the damage he and his new theologians caused.
The abdicator was never a traditionalist, he was always a very liberal cleric and while he had personal objections to some of the excesses of the Lil' Licit Liturgy, he was fundamentally in favor of them and only resurrected the abrogated Real Mass he said, as an act of tolerance.
Catholics are, understandably, extremely reluctant to wake-up and smell the incense.
From those possessing the power and authority of THE most important office on the planet, to the demented divorced dame dishing out Communion in the gathering space of the local faith community, they are ALL in denial as to the destruction that has occurred within the Catholic Church and the destruction began at the top and the responsibility for the destruction lies with the Pope and The Bishops and while they have, repeatedly,made apologies for the actions of long dead Catholics, they rarely, if ever, apologise for the damage they have directly caused.
Yeah, I agree: I don't know about the "bishop in white" business.
But in fairness, what M. Matt says is that Benedict XVI distinguished between the REAL Vatican II Council (animated by the Holy Spirit) and the "VIRTUAL" council or the "MEDIA" council.
Which raises the question Matt explicitly avoids raising: Is such a distinction sustainable?
So what was the Blessed Mother warning us would come upon the Church in the 1960s?
A little continuity in dealing with the Third Secret would have been helpful and, besides, Mary did not appear at Fatima; no, that heretofore accepted version of reality has been interpreted away by the then Prefect of The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.
And, he also clearly stated that the entire third secret has been revealed so there is no possible this that or the other thing to be revealed -unless, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and Pope Blessed John Paul II were lying to the world.
Good luck with all of that, Mr. Matt; for you to be on point now would necessarily mean that Pope John Paul II and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger were lying back then.
Them's pretty grim options, I am not Spartacus. I do see your point. So your response to Donna also assumes the 'ironic' viewpoint you offer immediately above, am I wrong?
Dear Charles. What I wrote was not intended as irony; it was intended to indicate the irrationality of the response to the abdication by Mr. Matt and The Remnant.
I wonder how long it will be before he and The Remnant awaken to what it is they have done; and what they have done is to lock their own selves into an analytical prison with the sole key of escape being humility.
They must admit they were wrong and they must apologise to traditionalists for misleading them.
As for the then Prefect of The Sacred Congregation for The Doctrine of The Faith and his explanation of what happened at Fatima?
Well, to this autodidact, he seems to locate Mary "at" Fatima in a numinous space where she keeps company with, in the magical rhetoric of Raymond Chandler - (paraphrase) A thought that is is trying to form itself on the edge of consciousness
So are you saying that Matt and his group are wrong in offering a "hermeneutic of continuity" in their interpretation of Papa Ratzinger and his predecessor rather than interpreting them in terms of their own "hermeneutic of rupture"? Is that the gist of it?
Benedict now offers the astounding theory that journalists -– outsiders -- bear responsibility for the “Council of the Media”: responsibility, that is, for what he has elsewhere called the “hermeneutic of rupture.” It is journalists who concocted a modernist fable of transformation, in which the Church surrendered her identity of two millennia in order to embrace secular morality and liberal democracy on the American model. All the while, apparently, council leadership – consisting mainly of middle European archbishops, cardinals, and periti (Fr Ratzinger prominent among them) – stood by aghast and helpless.
To believe this version of events, as Michael Matt apparently does, requires a substantial leap of faith – mainly that somehow or other, Pope Ratzinger is “really” on the traditionalists’ side. I find this ludicrous in itself. But to tie it in with Fatima prophecies of the “white bishop” is IMO over the moon. Although I have a lot of respect for Matt, and for the Remnant, I believe he is well off his game this time.
The modernist archbishops, cardinals and periti, who assumed control of V2 from the beginning, formed a natural alliance with the journalists who covered the council. Their ogling of the secular world, courtship of protestant figureheads, promotion of laicism, and passive-aggressive rebelliousness against papal authority combined to make them media favorites, whose every syllable easily found its way into print. The peritus and eventual apostate Edward Schillebeeckx, for example, was constantly passing nuggets to journalists, especially during the extended breaks between council sessions. My repetition of this point is no doubt tedious, but it is important to remember that Fr Ratzinger was a prominent member of the modernist vanguard at V2. However he might have remembered his role subsequently, his colleagues remembered him as one of them, and his group’s chief conservative foe, Cdl Ottaviani (today one would have to call him “traditionalist”), numbered him as one of a group of “experts” that Ottaviani considered “dangerous,” according to Yves Congar. Though Ratzinger, as cardinal and later as pope, may have come to regret some of the fruits of the council he and his colleagues dominated, he has never been willing to admit that those fruits originated in the efforts of his liberal-modernist group, both during and after the council. After all, the council fathers did not ascend to heaven on puffy clouds immediately after V2’s conclusion: they went on to positions of power and responsibility in the Church as chief tenders of the council garden, and chief dispensers of its fruit. But from the cardinal, pope, and pope-emeritus Ratzinger has come deus ex machina justifications, such as “hermeneutic of rupture vs hermeneutic of tradition,” and “Council of the Media vs Council of the Fathers.”
Let’s assign responsibility in the only way that makes sense: the “hermeneutic of tradition” was defended by Cdl Ottaviani and his allies at the council; the “hermeneutic of rupture” sprang from the machinations of the liberal bloc of which Fr Ratzinger was a prominent member. The former group was crushed by the latter – thoroughly outclassed politically. In the intervening years, although the degree of rupture eventually became so severe that some of the victors grew greatly troubled by the consequences of their political achievement, none of them have demonstrated the sturdiness of spine to admit the depth of this pastoral debacle – nor of their pivotal roles in it. Instead, blame it on journalists – before whom, of course, the council fathers never preened, and to whom they never fed a politically advantageous “leak.” Don’t blame you, don’t blame me – blame the journalist behind that tree!
Dear Ralph. Excellent recapitulation and it is not tedious - it is necessary not only to know the truth, it is necessary to keep repeating it so others will learn it - repetitio est mater studiorium,
It is also useful to remember that it was a young Father Joseph Ratzinger who wrote the Holy Office assault text delivered by Bishop Frings at the Council and which assault let to the execution of the Holy Office:
Henri du Lubac:
Allow me to recall something that happened. Joseph Ratzinger, an expert at the Council, was also the private secretary of Card. Frings, Archbishop of Cologne. Blind, the old Cardinal largely utilized his secretary to write his interventions. Now then, one of these interventions became memorable: it was a radical criticism of the methods of the Holy Office. Despite a reply by Card. Ottaviani, Frings sustained his critique.
It is not an exaggeration to say that on that day the old Holy Office, as it presented itself then, was destroyed by Ratzinger in union with his Archbishop.
Card. Seper, a man full of goodness, intiated the renovation. Ratzinger, who did not change, continues it.
It would be good to keep this episode in mind.
When the great Roman, Cardinal Ottaviani, had his microphone turned off while he was responding to the modernists in the Council, and when he was scourged by mocking laugher as he returned to his seat, only the blind could fail to see the grave symbolism of that act -Tradition was not only silenced, it was mocked.
"When the great Roman, Cardinal Ottaviani, had his microphone turned off while he was responding to the modernists in the Council, and when he was scourged by mocking laugher as he returned to his seat, only the blind could fail to see the grave symbolism of that act -Tradition was not only silenced, it was mocked."
And it was the blind (Ottaviani) who truly saw, while it was the sighted (modernists) who were blind to what was really happening.
11 comments:
47In an article on the Remnant website I find the quote:
“on February 22, the Vatican answered the other question when it reported that Benedict XVI will retain his papal name: following his resignation, the former Pope will be referred to as His Holiness Benedict XVI, Bishop Emeritus of Rome.” http://remnantnewspaper.com/Archives/2013-0228-siscoe-bishop-dressed-in-white.htm
However in the Vatican is reported to have said:
"The Vatican Announced Benedict will be known as "pope emeritus Benedict XVI" or "Roman Pontiff emeritus Benedict XVI", be addressed as "Your Holiness," and be referred to as "His Holiness Benedict XVI". http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/vatican-announces-pope-s-title-after-resignation-5354724?ref=rss
I simply don’t see the Fatima connection.
Donna
Dear Donna. There's no Fatima connection at which place Pope Benedict XVI said Mary did not appear (the three seers had some internal vision instead he said) and so this sorry attempt by Mr. Matt falls flat.
The Pope is not critical of Vatican Two - he loves it - and so he tried to slough-off onto the media the responsibility for of all of its manifest malign fruits.
Mr. Ferrara wrote a weird the-wish-is-father-to-the-thought piece that the abdicator is the Bishop in white of the Fatima message meaning, I guess, that the first Bishop in white, Pope Blessed John Paul II (who identified himself as the Bishop in white) was either a fool or a liar.
Vatican Two and Pope Paul VI are directly responsible for ALL that the abdicator tries to pin on the media in his shameless and shameful address.
Ever since he was a seminary student, the abdicator nursed strong desires to change the nature and direction of the Catholic Church and as the walls come tumbling down he splits for the castle blaming everyone else for the damage he and his new theologians caused.
The abdicator was never a traditionalist, he was always a very liberal cleric and while he had personal objections to some of the excesses of the Lil' Licit Liturgy, he was fundamentally in favor of them and only resurrected the abrogated Real Mass he said, as an act of tolerance.
Catholics are, understandably, extremely reluctant to wake-up and smell the incense.
From those possessing the power and authority of THE most important office on the planet, to the demented divorced dame dishing out Communion in the gathering space of the local faith community, they are ALL in denial as to the destruction that has occurred within the Catholic Church and the destruction began at the top and the responsibility for the destruction lies with the Pope and The Bishops and while they have, repeatedly,made apologies for the actions of long dead Catholics, they rarely, if ever, apologise for the damage they have directly caused.
I am not Spartacus,
Yeah, I agree: I don't know about the "bishop in white" business.
But in fairness, what M. Matt says is that Benedict XVI distinguished between the REAL Vatican II Council (animated by the Holy Spirit) and the "VIRTUAL" council or the "MEDIA" council.
Which raises the question Matt explicitly avoids raising: Is such a distinction sustainable?
So what was the Blessed Mother warning us would come upon the Church in the 1960s?
Dear Charles. Mysterium Iniquitatis.
Did the Third Secret describe some future or not?
A little continuity in dealing with the Third Secret would have been helpful and, besides, Mary did not appear at Fatima; no, that heretofore accepted version of reality has been interpreted away by the then Prefect of The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.
And, he also clearly stated that the entire third secret has been revealed so there is no possible this that or the other thing to be revealed -unless, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and Pope Blessed John Paul II were lying to the world.
Good luck with all of that, Mr. Matt; for you to be on point now would necessarily mean that Pope John Paul II and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger were lying back then.
http://tinyurl.com/cdlmh4e
Them's pretty grim options, I am not Spartacus. I do see your point. So your response to Donna also assumes the 'ironic' viewpoint you offer immediately above, am I wrong?
Dear Charles. What I wrote was not intended as irony; it was intended to indicate the irrationality of the response to the abdication by Mr. Matt and The Remnant.
I wonder how long it will be before he and The Remnant awaken to what it is they have done; and what they have done is to lock their own selves into an analytical prison with the sole key of escape being humility.
They must admit they were wrong and they must apologise to traditionalists for misleading them.
As for the then Prefect of The Sacred Congregation for The Doctrine of The Faith and his explanation of what happened at Fatima?
Well, to this autodidact, he seems to locate Mary "at" Fatima in a numinous space where she keeps company with, in the magical rhetoric of Raymond Chandler - (paraphrase) A thought that is is trying to form itself on the edge of consciousness
Spartacus,
So are you saying that Matt and his group are wrong in offering a "hermeneutic of continuity" in their interpretation of Papa Ratzinger and his predecessor rather than interpreting them in terms of their own "hermeneutic of rupture"? Is that the gist of it?
Dear Greg. Well, when it comes to hermeneutics I ask my own self why I went along with the latest word for interpretation.
Starting right now, I am giving-up hermeneutics for Lent; and then giving it up forever.
Benedict now offers the astounding theory that journalists -– outsiders -- bear responsibility for the “Council of the Media”: responsibility, that is, for what he has elsewhere called the “hermeneutic of rupture.” It is journalists who concocted a modernist fable of transformation, in which the Church surrendered her identity of two millennia in order to embrace secular morality and liberal democracy on the American model. All the while, apparently, council leadership – consisting mainly of middle European archbishops, cardinals, and periti (Fr Ratzinger prominent among them) – stood by aghast and helpless.
To believe this version of events, as Michael Matt apparently does, requires a substantial leap of faith – mainly that somehow or other, Pope Ratzinger is “really” on the traditionalists’ side. I find this ludicrous in itself. But to tie it in with Fatima prophecies of the “white bishop” is IMO over the moon. Although I have a lot of respect for Matt, and for the Remnant, I believe he is well off his game this time.
The modernist archbishops, cardinals and periti, who assumed control of V2 from the beginning, formed a natural alliance with the journalists who covered the council. Their ogling of the secular world, courtship of protestant figureheads, promotion of laicism, and passive-aggressive rebelliousness against papal authority combined to make them media favorites, whose every syllable easily found its way into print. The peritus and eventual apostate Edward Schillebeeckx, for example, was constantly passing nuggets to journalists, especially during the extended breaks between council sessions. My repetition of this point is no doubt tedious, but it is important to remember that Fr Ratzinger was a prominent member of the modernist vanguard at V2. However he might have remembered his role subsequently, his colleagues remembered him as one of them, and his group’s chief conservative foe, Cdl Ottaviani (today one would have to call him “traditionalist”), numbered him as one of a group of “experts” that Ottaviani considered “dangerous,” according to Yves Congar. Though Ratzinger, as cardinal and later as pope, may have come to regret some of the fruits of the council he and his colleagues dominated, he has never been willing to admit that those fruits originated in the efforts of his liberal-modernist group, both during and after the council. After all, the council fathers did not ascend to heaven on puffy clouds immediately after V2’s conclusion: they went on to positions of power and responsibility in the Church as chief tenders of the council garden, and chief dispensers of its fruit. But from the cardinal, pope, and pope-emeritus Ratzinger has come deus ex machina justifications, such as “hermeneutic of rupture vs hermeneutic of tradition,” and “Council of the Media vs Council of the Fathers.”
Let’s assign responsibility in the only way that makes sense: the “hermeneutic of tradition” was defended by Cdl Ottaviani and his allies at the council; the “hermeneutic of rupture” sprang from the machinations of the liberal bloc of which Fr Ratzinger was a prominent member. The former group was crushed by the latter – thoroughly outclassed politically. In the intervening years, although the degree of rupture eventually became so severe that some of the victors grew greatly troubled by the consequences of their political achievement, none of them have demonstrated the sturdiness of spine to admit the depth of this pastoral debacle – nor of their pivotal roles in it. Instead, blame it on journalists – before whom, of course, the council fathers never preened, and to whom they never fed a politically advantageous “leak.” Don’t blame you, don’t blame me – blame the journalist behind that tree!
Dear Ralph. Excellent recapitulation and it is not tedious - it is necessary not only to know the truth, it is necessary to keep repeating it so others will learn it - repetitio est mater studiorium,
It is also useful to remember that it was a young Father Joseph Ratzinger who wrote the Holy Office assault text delivered by Bishop Frings at the Council and which assault let to the execution of the Holy Office:
Henri du Lubac:
Allow me to recall something that happened. Joseph Ratzinger, an expert at the Council, was also the private secretary of Card. Frings, Archbishop of Cologne. Blind, the old Cardinal largely utilized his secretary to write his interventions. Now then, one of these interventions became memorable: it was a radical criticism of the methods of the Holy Office. Despite a reply by Card. Ottaviani, Frings sustained his critique.
It is not an exaggeration to say that on that day the old Holy Office, as it presented itself then, was destroyed by Ratzinger in union with his Archbishop.
Card. Seper, a man full of goodness, intiated the renovation. Ratzinger, who did not change, continues it.
It would be good to keep this episode in mind.
When the great Roman, Cardinal Ottaviani, had his microphone turned off while he was responding to the modernists in the Council, and when he was scourged by mocking laugher as he returned to his seat, only the blind could fail to see the grave symbolism of that act -Tradition was not only silenced, it was mocked.
"When the great Roman, Cardinal Ottaviani, had his microphone turned off while he was responding to the modernists in the Council, and when he was scourged by mocking laugher as he returned to his seat, only the blind could fail to see the grave symbolism of that act -Tradition was not only silenced, it was mocked."
And it was the blind (Ottaviani) who truly saw, while it was the sighted (modernists) who were blind to what was really happening.
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