Taking the measure of where we are and where we're headed

The underground correspondent we keep on retainer in an Atlantic Seaboard city that knows how to keep its secrets, Guy Noir - Private Eye, has been earning his keep lately and keeping me on my toes with as many questions as insights. And here came his three-page telegram today with a gin and tonic to boot (which always helps).

Citing an Ignatius Press add for a new book by Cardinal Schoenborn, he writes:

Ignatius Press has been instrumental as a source in my own journey as a Catholic. I hate to criticize them. And as a major contributor to the CCC, Schoenborn’s has been a name I esteem [in fact, I recall thinking he would be a good replacement for JPII back when his name was being kicked around: now I think, “Hey, either give me a Burke or give me a bonafide conservative. It is easier to steer between clear lines!” Hence Francis may not be quite the pox some think?] . Yet that is actually WHY his waffling on the homosexual question has been a turn I could not help but notice and one that makes me wonder at the theological assumption that enable his turn. “I thought you thought like me,” also means “I thought you thought like the Church,” and most importantly, “I thought I understood the Church and thought like it taught me to think!"

[Mary] Healy’s name is only one here form a list of blue chip names. All of whom I figure are much farther along the road to sanctity than am I. So I will only pose this question:

How are we to know what to believe or who to trust, other than from some party line as it floats from Rome, disconcertingly different in tone each decade? Theological assumptions seem fuzzy, official statements are fuzzy, and regardless of what detours the popular names take, they seem to unflaggingly receive the same hearty endorsements. No, we do not need to be orthodoxy police. On the other hand, if you praise Rowan Williams-types to the sky, don’t be surprise when Rowan Williams-type thinking becomes the reigning paradigm. Evangelicals were relieved when Welby succeeded Williams, but to and behold, it turns out the difference between the two, and their respective ways of thinking, has diminished to the point that one could be the other. When concern for orthodox morality or theology is de-emphasized, religion as human flourishing becomes the mantra. Schoenborn and von Balthasar are IP’s heavy-hitters and yet to me, IP seems, rather naively, stunned and dismayed when anyone pursues a novelty, unless of course it is a novelty already normalized by one of their own over the past 50 years or so. "Tradition matters!" Fr. Fessio’s team seems almost to shout… “As long it is that tradition as espoused by our own orthodox players. If you are part of the JPII-Benedict XVI coterie, you are by definition Truth as we know it.”

As Boniface notes,

. . . this thread demonstrates some inherent problems in the neo-Cath position: To what degree will we see that alleged orthodoxy to the Church is really just a matter of supporting what is viewed as “current policy”? Is there not a problem with viewing a perennial discipline as merely “policy”? Is not the value of discipline and tradition severely downgraded. if so? And if these sorts of matters are simply the “current policy” that can change the way it changes with each American presidential administration, what tools does the Church really have to ensure discipline and continuity in the long run?

Ultimately, the neo-Cath strategy is to insist loudly that certain things can never be changed so long as the current Pontiff does not want to change them; then, when the “policy” changes with another pontiff, suggest just as loudly that such matters were never immune from change to begin with. I’m not suggesting the practical question of whether or not to admit persons with deep-seated homosexuality to the seminary is a doctrinal question or that infallibility is on the line here; I am suggesting that reasoning that the Church’s very old discipline on this matter (it goes back to Trent and before) can be seen as merely “current policy” is destructively reductionist. [From Boniface, "Facebook fun with His Sheaness" (Unam Sanctam Catholicam, January 23, 2015)]