At the height of the now laicized Cardinal McCarrick bombshell, scandal and revealed corruption in the Church, the Diocese of Savannah’s “then” bishop, now Archbishop of Atlanta, Gregory Hartmayer stated at our Chrism Mass that “the Church is broken” and needs to be fixed. This is a loose quote.
At the time, I was a bit befuddled by what he meant. Certainly it pertained to McCarrick and those who enabled him which reached the papacy. Surely it meant bishops, who in poor judgement and not following canon law or common sense, exacerbated the abuse scandal worldwide by these factors.
Surely it means that bishops, priests and religious who shirk their responsibility to present the Catholic Faith in the clearest way possible and not emphasize things that don’t pertain to one’s eternal salvation or place those things above a person and/or community’s salvation is a problem. Think here about the early post-Vatican II Church and the energy and effort, controversy and division that occurred with the manner in which the Mass was reformed and how poorly or differently from the TLM the new Mass was celebrated.
Think about the meltdown in religious life that finally the aging sisters of even liberal orders know they made a catastrophic mistake with so many of their reforms.
And now think about the papacy today yearning for the divisiveness of the immediate post-Vatican II period up to St. Pope John Paul II, that has not only polarized even further the worldwide Church, but also a former living pope, now mercifully called home to the Lord, cardinals, the Curia, the world’s bishops and rank and file clergy, religious and laity.
It is unprecedented, mind blowing and breathtaking even in the post-Vatican II Church to see, hear and experience the discord in the College of Cardinals who are suppose to assist the pope in his mission as well as in the hierarchy in general. Think of what Cardinal Pell, RIP, wrote anonymously to all the other cardinals. It is like a nightmare.
Yet, just as so many in the Church, especially the clergy, to include the hierarchy have done in the past, the blame is shifted to the victims, not the one causing all the anger, rage, heartache and divisiveness.
If we are to believe the late George Cardinal Pell, who is not alone in being a whistleblower, this papacy in particular is broken and it appears that His Holiness wants to break the worldwide Church through the synodal process and the havoc His Holiness has created in the Vatican and elsewhere.
Is that the plan, to divide and conquer?
Let’s put the blame where it belongs, the wrongheaded implementation of Vatican II (and God bless the two previous popes who tried heroically to promote renewal in continuity, not discontinuity) and a “new spirit of “synodality” that puts the 1960’s “spirit of Vatican II” into the fundamentalist’s traditionalist’s camp!
What the synodal way of the Church is doing is betraying Vatican II not implementing it. The extreme traditionalist’s attempt to deny Vatican II is small potatoes to what the synodal process is doing!
UPDATE: AFTER I WROTE THIS POST, I WENT OVER TO THE PILLAR AND FOUND A GREAT INTERVIEW WITH THE RETIED ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT. IT IS GREAT, FAIR AND BALANCED AND A MUST READ. YOU CAN READ IT BY PRESSING THE NEXT SENTENCE.
3 comments:
Rorate Caeli has a piece about Cardinal Pell’s posthumous article published in the Spectator - it is a barn burner
I don't think Vatical II itself broke the Church, rather, it was the ensuing actions that have caused the most damage. Rightly, or wrongly, the Church went wild in the days following the Council, the mass became unrecognizable to many and then, it HAD to incorporate "creativity", church buildings simply HAD to become as ugly as possible, Our Lord reserved in the blessed sacrament HAD to be moved to an obscure location, consecrated, particularly sisters HAD to forgo the habit and HAD to become front line social justice warriors, many HAD to forgo their vocations, a sub-culture of priests HAD to profane the royal priesthood with selfish and self-centered desires and people of all ages, particularly children were victimized. Perhaps VII was the tinder and social and moral shift of the era the spark.
What do you do about it? I have my own thoughts that will simply serve to entertain those who read this blog. What I seriously doubt will help, the Synod. The topics/questions, where they are intelligible, come off as rigged to guarantee a particular conclusion. What I do find to be odd is the current circumstance: the hierarchy seeming to be hellbent on making the laity take their medicine as "they know what's best", while at the same time, it seems many within the laity know what would be best to right Peter's barque sans rupture. Ideology and faith, simple faith of ordinary people, are colliding and doing so often. Despite the rantings of the Holy Father and perhaps his spokesperson on his blog (MT) as well, I hear, shake my head slightly and mostly move on. I cannot imagine that I am alone.
I agree, ByzRus. All I can do is shake my head and move on. My existence as a Latin Rite Catholic that entails attending the traditional Latin Mass and then more regularly the modern Mass celebrated in continuity with the traditions of the Roman Rite is antithetical to the Pope and many of the Cardinals he has surrounded himself with. It's all kind of a joke.
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