A reader with his wits about him sent me a link to an impressively detailed article today on Archbishop Bruno Forte and his background influence. Forte, you may recall, was the principal (some say singular) initiative behind the controverted passages in the mid-term Relato of the recent Synod in Rome. Forte insists that there were others involved. Be that as it may be, it's clear he was the mastermind and ringleader of the revisionist.
The article is "Aude Sapere 006 - Meet Archbishop Bruno Forte" (October 21, 2014), complete with podcast and full transcript.
Just a few surprising highlights: he is a brilliant and widely-read scholar, he is multi-lingual, he is slippery as an eel, he has a book in English, Face to Face with Jesus: Reflections for a Disciple, with a Foreword by none other than Scott Hahn; he was an associate of Karl Rahner, Von Balthasar, Walter Kasper, and Josef Ratzinger in Tübingen; he was a protege of Kasper and the future Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, Carlo Maria Martini.
The reader should be alerted to the fact that the author of the website on which this article and podcast appears, Athanasius Contra Mundum, is a Catholic Traditionalist; the content is also very thorough and highly informative. If you want to get a true fix on this prelate, read and learn. He's not what some may think from a superficial acquaintance.
[Hat tip to L.S.]
3 comments:
Sounds very much like the Pope's diverse background. Also calls to mind Cardinal Schonborn, who is mentioned tellingly in this piece:
http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2014/10/de-mattei-heading-towards-2015-synod.html
A revealing and thoroughly depressing article.
And so extremely indicative of our confusing modern predicament. A key problem is you have to be familiar with theology and have the patience to plow throw verbosity to make heads of tails of things.
but in essence, the dilemma is this:
You can have Scott Hahn going out of his way to stress the importance of Inerrancy (!) in oen breath, and then gushing over a Forte or a Augustine Bea or Yves Congar the next. It is not so much denying the law of non-contradiction, as ignoring it for the sake of insistence on the essential purity of the visible Church. There is a concerted effort to sustain the belief that Modernism is within the Church itself a thing of the past, one that could never infect the leaders and on that was skillfully dealt with in the past after a few decades of zealous and overheated overreaction.
The same phenomenon seems at work in the rush to endorse wholesale Ratzinger's books on Jesus as stunningly orthodox. Even "The Latin Mass" magazine ran a review that voiced not a single reservation. I may think they are very good in many ways, too, but the also go against the conservative Biblical scholarship people like Hahn advocate. Yet you would never, ever know it. People want to think the Popes are of course 100% Catholic, 200% orthodox.
So the progressive presence in all things Church grows and grows, and conservatives seem stunned when the drift permeates Synod overtures. "This can't please the Holy Father!!," etc., when the Holy Father could dispel any confusion with a simple pronouncement. I think it is very likely that near half of our Bishops are closer in theology to liberal Episcopalianism than traditional Catholicism, with the important exception of a cultural allegiance to the hierarchal model of Church fro which the derive their authority. In some ways it remind me of the moral sensibility suggested by "Sons of Anarchy." It's not so much Tradition as it is "Living Tradition." And "Living Tradition" seems like nothing more than a fusion of loyalties, to our times and then of course to 'The Club." wherever it goes.
If Forte ascends to the CDF, it will be as severe an occurring as was the Anglican churches' loss of their properties in the U.S. A silent schism or simply a general de-energizing will be impossible to deactivate.
"You can have Scott Hahn going out of his way to stress the importance of Inerrancy (!) in oen breath, and then gushing over a Forte or a Augustine Bea or Yves Congar the next."
The lesson here is, don't buy books from punsters who want to seem to be on all sides at once. It only encourages them.
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