There is yet again another throwback to the 1970’s, but this time in the Jesuit run America Magazine.
You can read the entire article by pressing the title, but I print a couple of excerpts below the title.
Why in the name of God and all that is Holy does this priest think it is good to create discomfort and confusion in faithful Catholics from Cardinals on down to the simple person in the pew? Are these the ones we need to be chastising.
And what about the truly heretical ultramontism this priest affords the current occupant of the Chair of Peter? Is there no room to question His Holiness on His Holiness methods which seems to polarize, divide and conquer. Can’t we complain that doctrinal clarity and the Church’s mission are not opposed to one another? That it isn’t either/or but both/and?
And isn’t this article a promotion of the most crass form of clericalism tied to an ugly modern form of Gnosticism? That the pope’s way is not to be questioned because His Holiness has a inside track to the truth not known in previous ages or in the common Magisterium of the Church, which is in fact available to all?
This priest author also decries the political terms of conservative and progressive applied to this papacy or others in the Church. But isn’t the progressive agenda the most politically oriented and the most authoritarian and rife with clericalism where no one is to question anything?
What rubbish this article truly is!
It is no secret that Pope Francis is getting pushback from certain corners of the church these days. The church in the United States has been infected by the same harshness and polarization that inflame our politics. Our faith is challenged by ongoing polemics between Catholics labeled progressive and conservative. The due reverence afforded the papacy as one of the greatest sources of unity and cohesion for a global church is being undermined by a small but vocal chorus of vigilantes led by a small number of cardinals and bishops.
What is the source of the tensions and conflicts we have in the church today? I believe the reason for the uneasiness is the pope’s emphasis on mission. There is a profound difference between a church that is a nest or a niche, in which one can find peace, tranquility and seeming stability, and a church that sees itself as missionary through and through—always going out, reaching out to the margins, as Pope Francis likes to say. Such a church necessarily does not wait for outsiders to come to it; rather, it seeks them out and goes to them. Such a church is not overly concerned with its identity nor with the past. Rather, such a church lives and breathes a “culture of encounter.”
The renewal of the church envisioned by the Second Vatican Council was exciting but also deeply bothersome to many Catholics who had gotten used to a church that was locked in tradition, self-referential and fixed in its thinking. The renewal of Vatican II’s call for change under Pope Francis’ vigorous leadership proposes something else that is exciting but enormously challenging: to choose to follow Christ of the Gospels always requires courage, a willingness to change and risk-taking. That is why by insisting on the need for this kind of faith-filled grit and modeling it for us, Pope Francis is rattling our cages.
5 comments:
"It is no secret that Pope Francis is getting pushback from certain corners of the church these days."
It wasn't a secret that Pope Benedict XVI received "pushback" from certain quarters of the Church.
Certain "traditionalists" rejected the unwavering support that he had heaped upon Vatican II, Novus Ordo, interreligious "dialogue," Ecumenical Movement...they pushed back when he convoked Assisi III, which included a voodoo witch doctor who had chanted a prayer to a strange god.
Pope Benedict XVI received "pushback" from liberals when he lifted the SSPX excommunications...issued Summorum Pontificum.
Pope Saint John Paul II received "pushback" from "traditionalists", led by Archbishop Lefebvre, who declared that Pope Saint John Paul II (Cardinal Ratzinger, "modernist" Rome, "New Church") had lost the Faith.
The Archbishop insisted that Popes Saint Paul VI, and John Paul II, along with one Cardinal and bishop after another, had thrown in with the enemies of Jesus Christ.
Pope Saint John Paul II received "pushback" from liberals.
Pope Saint Paul VI received "pushback" from "traditionalists", as well as liberals.
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"Our faith is challenged by ongoing polemics between Catholics labeled progressive and conservative."
That has always been the case.
Massive disagreements within the Church have existed from Her beginning to date.
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"The due reverence afforded the papacy as one of the greatest sources of unity and cohesion for a global church is being undermined by a small but vocal chorus of vigilantes led by a small number of cardinals and bishops."
It is true that "traditional" Catholic bloggers/Twitter folks are on the warpath against the Vicar of Christ, Pope Francis. They attack him viciously day after day..concoct fake news stories designed to discredit him.
The "Open Letters," "Corrections," charges of heresy, claims that he isn't Pope...attempts to blame the clergy's sexual molestation "crisis" upon him...the attacks and garbage generated by Archbishop Vigano against Pope Francis...all have flopped in dramatic fashion as the overwhelming amount of Catholics love and respect His Holiness, Pope Francis.
Anyway, attacks by the Church's two extreme wings — left-wing, and right-wing — against our holy Popes aren't new.
Pax.
Mark Thomas
The author, whose comment is included with the write-up, in the former socialists countries were usually employed as a paid "apparatchiks" whose job it was to cover for the BOSS and the Party in general. Our clerical commenter tries shift the blame for the disaster of the current papacy is to the complaining victims. No need to detail the problem further. Everybody knows them. The All Knowing God also knows them. One would think this fact might make them pause and cut out the at least the most egregious ideological fibs. (For example, The Spirit of the Council themes and we do it for the periphery; Missionary Church, please no more of these obvious lies!).
God will deal with them in his good time.
Mark T
In the middle are the lukewarm. I am sure you know what happens to them.
Bee here
The author stated, "The renewal of the church envisioned by the Second Vatican Council was exciting but also deeply bothersome to many Catholics who had gotten used to a church that was locked in tradition, self-referential and fixed in its thinking."
It astounds me how clergy simply does not SEE the things faithful Catholics do in their day to day lives that ARE evangelical and the Gospel in action. Back in the day, before Vatican II, religious orders were thriving and had many vocations. Catholics ran hospitals, orphanages, schools, homes for unwed mothers, homeless shelters, soup kitchens, places to get clothing for free, just to name a few.
As I was growing up I watched my Catholic relatives constantly responding with generosity and good will to the needs of those they met in society, whether it was the person who needed a little money to get by that month, or a ride to the hospital to visit a sick relative, or someone to watch the kids while they ran some errands, or sending over a bag of groceries to a neighbor who just lost their job. My dad gave jobs to guys who just arrived in this country from Mexico and needed work, even though they lacked the skills of the machine shop he owned. He found something for them to do and trained them, and often they used that training to get another job, a better job than he could offer. These pre-Vatican II Catholics kept all these things quiet so as not to lose the merit of it. They didn't let their right hand know what their left hand was doing.
Yeah. Faithful Catholics were and are a bunch of insular creeps who didn't apply the Gospel to their daily lives.
I think the truth of it is that many post-Vatican II clerics didn't want to actually convert the world to Catholicism, but to convert Catholics to the world. They rejected Catholicism, not because it was failing, but because it was failing to let go of the Gospel, and the goal to become holy through the action of the Holy Spirit, and to thereby be leaven to the world. They rejected the Gospel as it had been taught from the apostles forward. They didn't want to be what they considered hobbled by the requirements to discipline themselves.
When you think about it they fell into the same sin as Adam and Eve. The promises of freedom from God's laws and the power to decide for yourself are still very seductive to fallen mankind, even priests. Maybe ESPECIALLY priests.
God bless.
Bee
I get so sick of pundits, both lay and clerical, ascribing all kinds of "themes" to the Second Vatican Council ("renewal", "updating", "modernization", etc.) EXCEPT the ACTUAL one.
"The Universal Call to Holiness".
I wonder if a concentrated effort by media-savvy Catholics to repeat to these people, almost ad nauseam, would make any difference at this point. Probably not.
Gaudete in Domino Semper!
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