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Post by Admin on Dec 2, 2019 0:55:58 GMT
Dispute ideas, pope tells theologians, but don’t confuse the faithful
Pope Francis arrives for an audience with Design for Change children group in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican, Saturday, Nov. 30, 2019.
VATICAN CITY - Theologians must explore and debate disputed questions, at times even taking “risks” with what they propose, but those discussions should take place within the academy so as not to confuse the faithful, Pope Francis said. “Theology must move forward,” the pope told members of the International Theological Commission. “It must face things that are not clear and take risks in discussion. However, this is among theologians.” “You must give the solid food of faith to the people of God, not feed the people of God disputed questions,” because that could confuse them and cause them to lose their faith, the pope told the group Nov. 29 during a meeting celebrating the commission’s 50th anniversary. [St.] Paul VI established the commission to continue the collaboration between theologians and the teaching authority of the Church experienced at the Second Vatican Council, the pope said. And he wanted to ensure that the doctrinal congregation would benefit from the contributions of theologians reflecting on questions of faith in different parts of the world and in different cultural contexts. “In fact,” the pope told them, “you listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches in different cultures today in order to shed light on ever-new aspects of the inexhaustible mystery of Christ.” By “translating” the faith for people of different cultures, he said, theologians help people feel “closer to and embraced by the Church, taken by the hand where they are and accompanied to taste the sweetness of the ‘kerygma’ (proclamation of Christ) and its timeless newness.” “This is theology’s call,” he said. “It’s not an academic disquisition about life, but the incarnation of the faith in one’s life.” “Good theology” is research that is born of a theologian’s own active spiritual life, he said. “Theology is born and grows on one’s knees!” And, Francis added, theology develops within and contributes to the life of the Church. “One does not do theology as an individual, but in community, at the service of all, to spread the good news of the Gospel to brothers and sisters of their time, always with sweetness and respect.” Francis thanked the commission members especially for their 2018 document, “ Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church.” “You demonstrated how the practice of synodality, which is traditional but always needing renewal, is, in the history of the pilgrim people of God, the realization of the Church as a mystery of communion in the image of the Trinitarian communion,” the pope said. “As you know, this theme is very close to my heart,” he told the theologians. “Synodality is a style, it is walking together and it is what the Lord wants from the Church of the third millennium,” he said. The theological commission’s document said synodality promotes the baptismal dignity and call of all Catholics, values the presence of different gifts given by the Holy Spirit and recognizes the specific ministry entrusted to pastors and bishops in communion with the pope for the preservation of the faith and the renewal of the Church. “I thank you for your document,” the pope told members, “because today some think synodality is holding hands and going for a walk, having a party with young people or surveying opinions (like) ‘What do you think about women priests?'” In reality, he said, it is “an ecclesial way that has a soul, which is the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit there is no synodality.”
[Emphasis mine.]
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Post by Admin on Dec 2, 2019 12:41:07 GMT
We all know that many souls, particularly during this pontificate of Pope Francis, are apt to be [rightly so] scandalized at his seemingly constant stream of offenses against the Catholic Faith. Perhaps many are jarred out of their slumber, even souls in the Conciliar Church, because of his much more liberal interpretation of Vatican II than his Conciliar predecessors. But to give modernist credit where modernist credit is due, most of these scandals did not originate with Pope Francis. For example, Pope John Paul II allowed a Buddhist statue to be placed above the Tabernacle in St. Peter's Church in Assisi in 1986 (see here and here).
In the above article, Pope Francis makes (at least) two statements that have their roots in Vatican II. It is as if the Pope is a good scholar of that pernicious Council since so many of the directives of his pontificate can be traced back to there.
1. The first point relates to the same topic we have been hearing much of these past several weeks, the Amazon Synod and it's emphasis on the Amazonian culture. While many souls bristle at Pope Francis' concentration of indigenous cultures, the fault (so to speak) does not lie solely with him. From the above article in the OP: Well let us look at a few directives, if you will, from Vatican II on the the incorporation of different cultures. The following are taken from the SiSiNoNo commentary on The Errors of Vatican II, Part II. We see in these Council passages the seeds placed for the promotion of indigenous cultures at the expense of the true Catholic Faith. Gaudium et Spes §54 finds the Council affirming, with satisfaction, the development of "a more universal form of human culture, one which will promote and express the unity of the human race to the degree that it preserves the particular features of the different cultures." [Did we not hear this ad nauseam about the Amazon culture for weeks and months before the Amazonian Synod?]
This allegedly provides us with "evidence of the birth of a new humanism," raised to the level of being our currently assigned mission, namely, that "we build a better world based upon truth and justice" (Gaudium et Spes §55). [...]
[We see in these ideas of Vatican II that] "culture" exists for the "person," for "man's dignity," and not for God's glory. "Culture" is anthropocentric. And Catholics ought to open themselves to this culture, cooperate with it. They have the "the obligation to work with all men for the construction of a more human world" (Gaudium et Spes §57). They ought to fight for a "human culture favorable to personal dignity and free from any discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, nation, of religion, or social condition" (Gaudium et Spes §60). This is the type of culture programmed by the UN and its institutions, and whose characteristics necessarily mandate the disappearance of the entire idea of Catholic culture. [...]
What is human is placed on the same level as what is Christian, and even above it, because collaboration in the dialogue with the world-now the main mission-has its basis in human values, to which Catholic values must adapt themselves. The decree on the apostolate of the laity (Apostolicam Actuositatem §27) verifies that cooperation with non-Catholics is proclaimed by "common human values," which ought, therefore, to unite men beyond religions. Thus, it also wants to affirm the religion of humanity.
- Vatican II promoted the adaptation of worship to secular culture, to the different traditions and temperaments of people, to their language, music, and art, through creativity and liturgical experimentation (SC §§37-40,90,119) and through simplification of the rite itself (Sacrosanctum Concilium §§21,34). This was against the constant teaching of the Magisterium according to which it was the peoples' cultures that must adapt to the exigencies of the Catholic rite, with nothing ever having been conceded to creativity or experimentation or to any idea of men's temperaments in any given time in history. The baseless assertion, always denied by Tradition and Holy Scripture (e.g., Ps. 95:5: "For all the gods of the Gentiles are devils"; and I Cor. 10:20), that pagan religions, past and present, would have in some way been included in the plan of salvation.
In fact, §18 of Ad Gentes, on missionary activity, states:
"Working to plant the Church, and thoroughly enriched with the treasures of mysticism adorning the Church's religious tradition, religious communities should strive to give expression to these treasures and to hand them on in a manner harmonious with the nature and the genius of each nation. Let them reflect attentively on how Christian religious life may be able to assimilate the ascetic and contemplative traditions whose seeds were sometimes already planted by God in ancient cultures prior to the preaching of the gospel." Here, "ancient cultures" whose gods were "devils," and whose sacrifices were offered "to devils and not to God" (I Cor. 10:20), are unjustly re-evaluated by the Council, which wants to recognize in them a salvific presence of "semina Verbi" of the "seeds of revealed Truth." But that violates a truth always held to belong to the deposit of Faith. In Lumen Gentium §17 and in Ad Gentes §11, the same idea is applied to all contemporary non-Christian peoples, including pagans: missionaries must discover the "hidden seeds of the Word" in the people whose evangelization has been entrusted to them.
2. The second point on which Pope Francis speaks based on Vatican II principles can be found here: From Part I of the SiSiNoNo commentary on The Errors of Vatican II concerning the doctrinal errors found in the Council, starting with Pope John XXIII's October 20, 1962 "Address on Openness":
In general, the mentality at the Second Vatican Council was little if at all Catholic. This can be said because of an inexplicable and undeniable man-centeredness and sympathy for the "world" and its deceptive values, all of which ooze from all of the Council's documents.
"Providence is leading us to a new order of human relations that...are developing toward a fullness of superior and unexpected designs," [said] Pope John XXIII [in his] famous speech on opening up to the world. [...] "The Church has always been opposed to these errors [i.e., false opinions of men-Ed.]; She has often condemned them with the greatest severity. Now, however, the Spouse of Christ prefers to employ the medicine of mercy rather than that of harshness. She is going to meet today's needs by demonstrating the validity of Her doctrine, rather than by renewing condemnations."
In the main, the post-Vatican II Church, no longer condemning error, has substituted for it dialogue with those in error. This amounts to doctrinal error. Previously, the Church has always prosecuted dialogue with such errors and those in error. Pope John XXIII’s quote above denounces the error clearly: that demonstrating "doctrine's validity" is incompatible with "renewing condemnations." This is to suggest that such validity ought to be imposed only thanks to one's own intrinsic logic, and not from external authority. But in such an approach, faith would no longer be a gift from God, nor would there be any need of grace to fortify faith, nor any need to exercise the principle for sustaining faith via the authority in the Catholic Church. The essential error is concealed in Pope John XXIII's phraseology; it is a form of Pelagianism [i.e., that all men are, by nature, good-Ed.] which is typical of all "rationalistic conceptions" of the Faith, all of them repeatedly condemned by the Magisterium.
In Dignitatis Humanae §3, the following: "Further light is shed on the subject if one considers that the highest norm of human life is the divine law-eternal, objective and universal [the adjective "revealed" is missing -Ed.]-whereby God orders, directs and governs the entire universe and all the ways of the human community by a plan conceived in wisdom and love. Man has been made by God to participate in this law, with the result that, under the gentle disposition of divine Providence, he can come to perceive ever more fully the truth that is unchanging. Hence every man has the duty, and therefore the right, to seek the truth in matters religious, in order that he may with prudence form for himself right and true judgments of conscience, under use of all suitable means. Truth, however, is to be sought after in a manner proper to the dignity of the human person and his social nature. The inquiry is to be free, carried on with the aid of teaching or instruction, communication, and dialogue. In the course of these, men explain to one another the truth they have discovered, or think they have discovered, in order thus to assist one another in the quest for truth."
This principle causes the truth "in matters religious" to be something that is "discovered," found by the conscientious individual via inquiry done with "others," through reciprocal "communication and dialogue." In this process of inquiry, "others" are not simply other Catholics, but others in general, all other men, no matter what their faith, who, significantly, have for their object the divine law, etc....placed by God in our hearts, the eternal law of natural morality, as do Deists. In fact, by including everyone, revealed Truth cannot be the object, and this revealed Truth is denied in toto by non-Christians and, in part, by heretics.
This doctrinal statement openly contradicts traditional teaching legislating that, for Catholics, in "religious matters" (and also in moral ones), God reveals the truth, and it is conserved in the deposit of the Faith safeguarded by the Magisterium. It is a truth that requires and necessitates the consent of our intellect and will, a consent possible with the determinant help of grace: the believer must recognize and accede to it. Thus, he cannot "find" it through his own efforts. The conciliar document does not speak of the Holy Spirit's help. Moreover, the conciliar document recommends communal inquiry with heretics, non-Christians and unbelievers!
Substituted for an objective and properly Catholic criterion of the truth "in matters religious" which is such because revealed by God, is the subjective criteria of truth that is of Protestant origin and typical of modern thought. Truth is then truth because it is "found" by individual conscience in his "inquiry" along with "others" as a result, then, of collective and individual inquiry. In Catholicism, this then opens the door to an eruption of an anomalous, individual "religiosity," a "religiosity" of inquiry of the "heart," human feeling, of "conscience," dialogue. Much in the way of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, this is cloying, sugary.
It is hoped that these few examples will help remind souls that the eruptions of anger at Pope Francis for his offenses against the Faith (though certainly justified!) are nothing new in the last 50+ years since the Vatican II Council. Ironically, the angry outbursts are beginning to be heard most audibly in Conciliar circles. They are "scandalized" at the far-left interpretations of the Council passages implemented by Pope Francis. They want to return to the milder days of John Paul II (at least he had a devotion to Our Lady and didn't allow women priests) and Benedict XVI (with his sly nods to Tradition though all the while quietly continuing to uphold all things Vatican II).
Traditional Catholics who understand the issue have long resisted the ceaseless waves of modernism and liberalism in this schismatic Conciliar Church for decades. But sometimes we forget, the battle has raged long, and many traditional souls are weary and simply want to settle down with a nice traditional Latin Mass somewhere and live out their days in 'peace.' But Holy Scripture in the words of Our Lord Jesus Christ reminds us, "Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword." [Matthew 10:34].
Let us continue to beg Our Lady's help, especially Our Lady of Fatima. May Her request be honored to consecrate Russia to Her Immaculate Heart and let a true conversion flower and flourish in souls.
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Post by hermenegild on Dec 2, 2019 19:57:08 GMT
This helps stay focused on Vatican II and not too focused on persons. Thank you.
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