Make no mistake, the liberal Protestants of the late 1800's came us with modern Scriptural exegisis to compliment the Enlightenment as it concerned modern thought of that period.
It led liberal Protestants to search for the historical Jesus stripping Scripture of any post-resurrection insights, meaning what did Jesus say in actuality without the filters of the resurrection and what did what He say mean in the culture of His day.
Of course this leads to a very low Christology. Jesus is just a poor misguided soul.
By the 1920's, conservative Protestants had had their fill of such nonsense! Their over-reaction led to the Fundamentalist movement within Protestantism to recover a high Christology and to be "fundamentalistic" in interpreting the Scriptures.
Today, liberal Protestantism is almost dead whereas the fundamentalists are going strong.
Many Catholic Scripture scholars began to use a modified form of the liberal Protestant version of interpreting Scripture developed in response to the Enlightenment in 1942 when Pope Pius XII allowed for it.
But by the late 1960's it was almost identical to the misguided Protestant version and having the same negative or deleterious effect on the faith of millions of Catholics, both clergy and laity.
Well, low and behold, in conjunction with the recovery of the 1970's mentality of making the Catholic Church unrecognizable as being Catholic, the new head of the Jesuits has given an interview that highlights everything I was taught in the seminary about interpreting Scripture and Tradition, a failed exegisis. When will this generation move over for John Paul II and Benedict XVI's generation of priests and laity??????
Sandro Magister writes the following interview that the new superior general of the Society of Jesus, the Venezuelan Arturo Sosa Abascal, very close to Jorge Mario Bergoglio, has given to the Swiss vaticanista Giuseppe Rusconi for the blog Rossoporpora and for the "Giornale del Popolo" of Lugano.
Here are the passages most relevant to the case. Any commentary would be superfluous.
*
Q: Cardinal Gerhard L. Műller, prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, has said with regard to marriage that the words of Jesus are very clear and "no power in heaven and on earth, neither an angel nor the pope, neither a council nor a law of the bishops has the faculty to modify them."
A: So then, there would have to be a lot of reflection on what Jesus really said. At that time, no one had a recorder to take down his words. What is known is that the words of Jesus must be contextualized, they are expressed in a language, in a specific setting, they are addressed to someone in particular.
Q: But if all the worlds of Jesus must be examined and brought back to their historical context, they do not have an absolute value.
A: Over the last century in the Church there has been a great blossoming of studies that seek to understand exactly what Jesus meant to say… That is not relativism, but attests that the word is relative, the Gospel is written by human beings, it is accepted by the Church which is made up of human persons… So it is true that no one can change the word of Jesus, but one must know what it was!
Q: Is it also possible to question the statement in Matthew 19:3-6: “What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder”?
A: I go along with what Pope Francis says. One does not bring into doubt, one brings into discernment. . .
Q: But discernment is evaluation, it is choosing among different options. There is no longer an obligation to follow just one interpretation. . .
A: No, the obligation is still there, but to follow the result of discernment.
Q: However, the final decision is based on a judgment relative to different hypotheses. So it also takes into consideration the hypothesis that the phrase “let man not put asunder…” is not exactly as it appears. In short, it brings the word of Jesus into doubt.
A: Not the word of Jesus, but the word of Jesus as we have interpreted it. Discernment does not select among different hypotheses but listens to the Holy Spirit, who - as Jesus has promised - helps us to understand the signs of God’s presence in human history.
Q: But discern how?
A: Pope Francis does discernment following St. Ignatius, like the whole Society of Jesus: one has to seek and find, St. Ignatius said, the will of God. It is not a frivolous search. Discernment leads to a decision: one must not only evaluate, but decide.
Q: And who must decide?
A: The Church has always reiterated the priority of personal conscience.
Q: So if conscience, after discernment, tells me that I can receive communion even if the norm does not provide for it…
A: The Church has developed over the centuries, it is not a piece of reinforced concrete. It was born, it has learned, it has changed. This is why the ecumenical councils are held, to try to bring developments of doctrine into focus. Doctrine is a word that I don't like very much, it brings with it the image of the hardness of stone. Instead the human reality is much more nuanced, it is never black or white, it is in continual development.
Q: I seem to understand that for you there is a priority for the practice of the discernment of doctrine.
A: Yes, but doctrine is part of discernment. True discernment cannot dispense with doctrine.
Q: But it can reach conclusions different from doctrine.
A: That is so, because doctrine does not replace discernment, nor does it the Holy Spirit.
9 comments:
Isn’t the key_prudent_exegesis, to determine, for example, what is relative and what is timeless, what is literal and what is metaphorical? Did Jesus really intend for us to put out an eye or cut off a hand? Lack of prudence unmanned poor Origen I believe.
Bee here:
After reading the Q&A, all I can say is, Ei Yi Yie! (meaning, what a raft of horse manure... :-) )
God bless,
Bee.
Pure garbage. Unbelieving word-play. This is so old...libs want to alter things to suit their humanistic/socialist ideology by "contextualizing" and "discerning." One cannot "contextualize" from outside the context in question. They were not there...these people want to create their own context (a rationalistic, unbelieving one), then use that to contextualize. Discernment is just another way of saying "subjectivity." The only context that matters regarding the words of Christ is the context of sinful man and Revelation. Either you believe or you do not. There is no need for all the tedious "exegesis," rationalization, and such. BTW, the writer sounds just like Kavanaugh...LOL!
The documents of V-2 through the introduction of ambiguous verbiage the seeds of future dissents and heresies. The Jesuits have been at it ever since to make a new religion and the Francis Papacy was the opportune time to put the fine point on it.
When will they admit the first woman Jesuit? Are they misogynists?
Anon-1
Maybe it is the translation service messing up, but it reads like he was high during the interview. "Dude! All the little electrons orbiting the nucleus of every atom in my finger could be planets populated by dicerning believers.
Or not."
My understanding of discernment as a Catholic is to intellectually know the splendor of the fullness of Truth as taught by the Church and to discern how I, a sinner, will embrace it.
Hogwash and doublespeak. Again, two can play this game.
"it's been said that we should love our enemies and care for the poor, but ah, you see, that was then, for that time and culture, and we can't possibly set these words in stone you know, so in 2017 we can properly and infallibly discern in our atomistic and sovereign god-like consciences that we no longer have to love our enemies or care for the poor because our modern cultural context and the God of surprises leads us to find a fruitful space in our time that perhaps is unsettling for the Pharisees of our age who continue to hide behind these doctrines of love and concern as though they infallibly understand Jesus' ever morphing words."
See what mischief and fun we can have if we give them a taste of this medicine? If Our Lord's words can't possibly still be true when it come to chastity and marriage then what makes these egg head "theologians" so smug and sure that Our Lord's words matter when it comes to peace, love, charity for the poor, widows and orphans, etc.?
If they can paint us as Pharisees based on Jesus' words why can't we paint them as Herod's and Cain's?
If only the Suppression of the Jesuits had stuck. The next pope needs to suppress them completely out of existence.
The rot that entered the religious orders after Vatican II (and arguably as a result of it) did not only affect the Jesuits, but the descent of this once-great Society into confusion and heresy in the last 60 years is sad to behold. JP II distrusted them, preferring Opus Dei.
However, we have seen something of a revival among the Dominicans, and not all Jesuits are in the mould of Abascal, Spadaro and Bergoglio, so it is too early to write off the Jesuits altogether.
The Society was dissolved by a weak pope, Clement XIV, who caved in to the demands of the European monarchies in what Eamon Duffy has described as 'the papacy's most shameful hour'.
Post a Comment