I have really benefitted from Keating's stuff. But like most of the Church, he is caught in the dilemma posed by a theology that assumes the Church can't possibly teach bad ideas. But it can. What it can't do is formally define error as truth. Formally. Beyond that, it grows increasingly to look like its biggest grace in being a relay of truth is the sacraments, and its custodianship of official sources. Things a notch higher than encyclicals and pastoral conciliar documents. Otherwise, most best are off. Even if you go back a century, reliable and orthodox names like Fr. C.C. Martindale and Dom Hubert von Zeller were unwittingly batting their eyes at Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, long before John Paul II pronounced on evolution and universalism. It is not the men who speak that demand or trust so much as the deposit they guard. When they stop walking the perimeter and start pontificating on how it looks, to them, on the inside, bets are off. Verbose encyclicals and prolix conciliar statements by their format betray their presumption. What did Garrigou-Lagrange say of JPII, for example, "Writes much. Says little"? I'd say the greater the volume of talk in official material, the more earnestly the desire to reconcile ancient truth with modern mentalities, the likelier the increase in error. Exposition and explanation are not identical things when dealing with revealed truth.
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I have really benefitted from Keating's stuff. But like most of the Church, he is caught in the dilemma posed by a theology that assumes the Church can't possibly teach bad ideas. But it can. What it can't do is formally define error as truth. Formally. Beyond that, it grows increasingly to look like its biggest grace in being a relay of truth is the sacraments, and its custodianship of official sources. Things a notch higher than encyclicals and pastoral conciliar documents. Otherwise, most best are off. Even if you go back a century, reliable and orthodox names like Fr. C.C. Martindale and Dom Hubert von Zeller were unwittingly batting their eyes at Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, long before John Paul II pronounced on evolution and universalism. It is not the men who speak that demand or trust so much as the deposit they guard. When they stop walking the perimeter and start pontificating on how it looks, to them, on the inside, bets are off. Verbose encyclicals and prolix conciliar statements by their format betray their presumption. What did Garrigou-Lagrange say of JPII, for example, "Writes much. Says little"? I'd say the greater the volume of talk in official material, the more earnestly the desire to reconcile ancient truth with modern mentalities, the likelier the increase in error. Exposition and explanation are not identical things when dealing with revealed truth.
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