The greatest threat to the Catholic Church's unity is the schismatic ideologies of both the left and the right and the mortal sin of calumny even toward the Holy Father. For this traditional Catholic, this sort of disrespect toward anyone especially the pope is simply anti-Catholic.
1. Reading the news accounts, one would think that every bishop that Pope Benedict named along with his predecessor, St. Pope John Paul II were culture warriors (as though this is something anathema in the Church, it is not a mortal sin to be a culture warrior, nor is it required by the moral law to be one) and that none of them cared about the poor, the immigrants or the marginalized. What hogwash!
2. The contrasts being made between Archbishop Blase Cupich and Cardinal Francis George makes the Cardinal look like an ogre whose tone did nothing for Chicago and the new Archbishop like the anti-George. This is not the first time in the history of the Church that a new pastor, a new bishop or a new pope had a different tone and emphasis from his predecessor. We are not clones of each other but we are all Catholic.
Archbishop Blase Cupich will be pro-life. He will uphold divine law revealed in Scripture, Tradition and natural law concerning the true nature of marriage and he will call the faithful to chastity no matter their state in life or sexual preferences.
He chooses to confront the social and moral issues of the day through dialogue and not being shrill. This is perfectly acceptable.
Liturgically, he will promote what the General Instruction of the Roman Missal allows. He will not forbid the Extraordinary Form. He will celebrate the OF Mass as it is allowed today even if he has other personal preferences about this, that or the other. Don't we all?
Isn't is time that Catholics start acting like Catholics and in the areas of faith and morals as well as Church law respect not only the office of the Episcopacy and lesser Holy Orders as well as respecting and loving persons, warts and all? Or are we post-Catholic in this regard?
3 comments:
You're asking us to simply ignore an overwhelming amount of evidence, when reason makes this impossible. You don't need to be a Rorate Coeli nut to be very concerned. Here is a summary of what is known about Bishop Cupich:
1. clash with TLM community in rapid city in 2002 regarding the easter triduum.
2. his banning of priests praying the rosary in front of abortion clinics.
3. his banning of 40 days for life.
4. his opposition to ad orientem worship
5. his equating liturgical abuse with devotion to the tradtional latin mass.
6. his allowing spokane catholic charity workers to become obamacare navigators, one of the few bishops in the country to do so according to winters/NCR
7. his being dragged kicking and screaming into fighting the HHS contraception mandate (second to last bishop to do so)
8. his rather hesitant opposition to gay marriage, as evidenced by the same pastoral letter you cite.
9. his recent speech against libertarianism at CUA (i'm not defending libertarianism, but it's telling that he was the one giving the attack on it)
10. his insulting language describing the extraordinary form as retrograde, something that harkens back to 1980s thinking on this.
(i'm happy to provide linkable citatations to all of these)
Also, the issue is not whether the man is orthodox or not. It's clear from his writings that he is 100 percent, down the line, Catechism of the Catholic Church orthodox. He is a total 1980s painful retrograde on liturgy, but that's likely an oversight in his spiritual reading.
No, what really is concerning everyone is that he seems to lack the stomach to want to fight on behalf of Catholic rights, and to fight against the evils the secular culture is visiting on us. He's weak.
Amy concern with Cupich, and not personally, but categorically, is that he needs to know his limitations, especially his intellectual limitations, and stand on the shoulders of giants rather than try to create his own line of teaching. This is how I felt about Timothy Cardianl Dolan and he has confirmed my concerns. I like Cardinal Dolan. I think he could be a great leader for many years, but I do not think he is a great mind. That is why he was not on my list of hopefuls for Pope. I need to read the original texts of comments from Bishop Cupich before making a conclusion, but the press I have seen does not give me much hope that he will resist the urge to make statements off the cuff that will come back to haunt him. And us.
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