Johathan Liedl, a reporter with The National Catholic Register, has written a very important article on one of the more influential theologians of the upcoming Synod on synodality in October. The article got some traction on social media early on but deserves heightened attention, which is why I wanted to comment on here.
The theologian in question is Rafael Luciani, a lay Venezuelan theologian who has been an advisor to the organizers of the Synod. Liedl gets right to the point and highlights the following:
The key, says Venezuelan lay theologian Rafael Luciani, is for the synod’s outcome to affirm a contested interpretation of Vatican II’s teaching on the “People of God” that has already been embraced in places like Germany, clearing the way for a more decentralized, less hierarchical approach to Church authority.
Luciani, a key theological adviser to the Vatican office organizing the synod and leading proponent of “synodality” more broadly, said in a July 23 interview with Katholisch, the German bishops’ news service, that although controversial topics like women deacons were no longer on the October assembly’s agenda after Pope Francis shifted them to separate study groups, the synod could still open the door to big changes.
In the interview, Luciani goes on to elucidate his interpretation of Vatican II’s teaching on the Church as the People of God, voicing high praise for the German “synodal way” and many criticisms directed at just about every other sector of the Church. He wants the Synod on synodality to adopt the German model and to export it to the universal Church. He also has sharp criticism of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI for having thwarted all attempts at implementing this ecclesiological vision.
In a nutshell, this is the same warmed-over progressive distortion of Lumen Gentium’s use of the People of God metaphor that gained notoriety in the immediate aftermath of the Council. In this approach the Church is deconstructed as a supernatural sacramental reality grounded in Christ and oriented toward an eschatological fulfilment in a “Kingdom not of this world”, and then reconstructed as a purely democratic sociological reality grounded in accommodation to modern liberalism, oriented toward purely horizontalist and globalist endeavors in a humanistic register.
From Hans Küng’s reconfiguration of Catholicism as just one religion among many other equally valid ones, through Rahner’s exaggerated engracing of the world as always already saved and standing only in need of having this reality “thematized” for it, and finally on to the Luciani’s and Bishop Bätzing’s of the modern Church, we see this revisionist theology of proletarian privilege run like an Ariadne’s thread through it all.
The very concept of a Church grounded in a hierarchy with apostolic authority as the sacramental making present of Christ for the sake of the world’s salvation is problematized to the point that the entire edifice is called into question.
Is it any wonder then that, in those European countries where this theology was the strongest, the Church has essentially collapsed? Luciani never mentions the Church in Germany is dying and that, in 2023, over 400,000 Germans disaffiliated from the Church (after over 500,000 had left in 2022). The lesson Luciani and Bishop Bätzing have drawn from this is that the German Church has just not been progressive enough–thwarted by JPII and Benedict and all that nonsense–and therefore it not only needs to double down on a bad hand, but should also now export the same bad hand to the rest of the Church.
In the name of “the people” Luciani wants the Church to impose the progressive Catholic misinterpretation of the People of God motif on all of those ecclesial backwaters (he mentions Africa, North America, and Asia as bad agents of counterrevolution) that do not share the superior and enlightened Teutonic theology of decline as veiled progress. One hesitates to see Marxist influences everywhere (a much overused category, in my view) but one cannot avoid the obvious. The elitist elevation of a largely European ideology of “the people” is to be imposed on less enlightened “people” who are not really counted as among “the people”, and this imposition will come from above via the path of progressive “reeducation” of the benighted masses–with or without their consent.
This has absolutely no connection to Vatican II, which in no way promoted a theology of the People of God standing in opposition to “the hierarchical principle” in the Church. I have written before on this topic so there is no need to revisit it again, but suffice it to say this reading of the Council is wrong and contrary to what it actually taught. One has to see in it a deliberate choice to engage in a kind of transposition of conciliar words and theology into the conceptual framework and dogmas of a globalist chic aesthetic of a world brought into solidarity, not by Christ, but by a counter gospel of the cult of secular liberalism.
This is salvation via bureaucratic structures—the exact opposite of a true synodality and its inherent Christological personalism. It seems to have escaped the notice of many that the predominant reality of this entire synodal “process” is the emphasis precisely on “process”. And that the “process” is dominated by the presence of endless committees operating, as all bureaucracies do, with the layered anonymity of faceless apparatchiks who were not voted on by “the people” but appointed by other faceless apparatchiks sitting behind some epicene desk in Rome.
Liedl’s valuable article brings to an English-speaking audience the fact that Luciani does us the favor of saying the quiet part out loud. He says:
If, at the end of the synod, we have a document that makes this ecclesiological leap and establishes the understanding of the Church as the People of God, there will be further developments in the areas of ministries and doctrine.
And he makes it clear later in his interview (again, as reported by Liedl) that this means the ordination of women. And since he has high praise for the Germans and their synodal proposals, one can also legitimately assume that the changes in “doctrine” to which he is referring have to do with the Church’s moral theology, especially in matters of sex and gender–the latter being the bête noire of all progressive theologies these days.
Why is all of this important? It could just be dismissed as the errant thinking of one theologian were it not for the fact the Vatican is currently littered with people who think like him. Furthermore, the new Instrumentum Laboris (or Working Document) for the Synod is riddled with vague references to “The People of God” which, although not as blunt and overt as Luciani’s misinterpretations, evinces an overall trajectory in a similar sociological direction.
There is little to no emphasis in the Instrumentum on eschatology, soteriology, and the absolute necessity of following the path of repentance from sin and sanctification. Instead, we are given endless descriptions of synodality with vague descriptors circling around the topic without ever getting to any level of clarity. Apparently, synodality means listening, dialogue, and an endless openness to pluralism. The People of God motif is then employed as the apparent subject of all of this pluralistic listening. But the text is short on analysis of how to read all of this pluralism. I am reminded of the comment from Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue that true pluralism is an integrated dialogue of intersecting viewpoints—not a mere assemblage of random opinions amounting to an unharmonious mélange of ill-assorted fragments.
I was initially happy with the Instrumentum Laboris since it lacked all references to the various hot-button issues that dominated the vibe around the last Synod. But, since then, we have come to learn that the Vatican has established a series of yet more committees to look into these issues in more depth. And that is a red flag. One does not establish committees to look into matters once and truly settled. For example, there is no committee looking into whether Christ really was divine or if God really is a Trinity or if racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism and xenophobia have their merits after all.
One only engages in endless chatter about matters that are held to be in dispute. So Pope Francis can say in various interviews all the right “orthodox” things concerning these issues, but insofar as he constantly forms these kinds of commissions in the name of “listening to the People of God” one is justified in seeing a certain “process” at work, which has the net effect of empowering the forces of radical change. One never sees, for example, a Vatican commission which seeks the proper synodal understanding of how faithful Catholic families can negotiate the jagged shoals of our pornified and sex-saturated culture in order to protect their children. Or how pastors can find the proper synodal understanding of how to promote greater liturgical participation in an era given over to the death of the sacred.
What we have in this synodal process, is a curated form of listening. Luciani confirms this when he points out there are vast swaths of the Church that not only should not be listened to, but who need to be forced to toe the line of the new ecclesiology of inclusion by way of exclusion. Apparently, some voices are more equal than others—and it is not just Luciani who thinks this way. The entire bureaucracy of the synodal apparatus is just so oriented to a curated form of listening where voices from the conservative wing of the Church are treated as dangerous “indietrist” and reactionary ones.
For example, recently there was a large gathering of “LGBTQ Catholics” at Georgetown University sponsored by the Fr. James Martin’s Outreach ministry. Pope Francis sent a warm letter of support for the event, and Cardinal Wilton Gregory presided at the Mass. Here is a quote from his homily:
In many respects you are engaging in an act of synodality – the vision and invitation proposed by Pope Francis that sincerely and openly speaking and listening to one another under the light and guidance of the Holy Spirit is the way that the Church grows in perfection.
What if, instead of Outreach, we were looking at a gathering sponsored by Courage? Or a gathering of (gasp!) traditionalists? Or a gathering of my clan, Catholic Workers who seek to restore the movement to the Catholic orthodoxy of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin? Or a meeting of Communio theologians devoted to the theology of John Paul II and Benedict XVI? Would those meetings count as an act of synodality and listening? Would the Pope send a warm letter of support? Would Cardinal Gregory “accompany” them on their synodal journey?
Perhaps they would. But I highly doubt it. In all of this there is simply the stench of power and its grasping ideological acolytes. As Liedl notes in his article, Joseph Ratzinger viewed such misconstruals of the theology of the People of God in just this light:
Joseph Ratzinger, the then head of the Vatican’s doctrine office, expressed this concern in a 2001 article in L’Osservatore Romano.
‘The crisis of the Church, as it is reflected in the concept of People of God, is a ‘crisis’ of God,’ the future Pope wrote. ‘It is a crisis of abandoning the essential. What remains is merely a struggle for power.’
Finally, it is my turn to say the quiet part out loud. These misuses of the People of God theology are so contrary to the actual teaching of Lumen Gentium and so manifestly incorrect as assessments of conciliar theology in general, that one cannot but conclude that the very intelligent people who surely know this and who are pushing this agenda are being deceptive to the point of mendacity.
There is an air of play-acting at real theology here and of a cynical insouciance toward the actual truth of the Council. It is a mendaciousness that is the product of a set of foreordained conclusions in search of an argument. Conclusions drawn from the dominant ethos of secular modernity and not the Gospel.
It is also a mendacity that seems to extend all the way up the ecclesial food chain.
• Dr. Larry Chapp and Carl E. Olson, editor of Catholic World Report, discuss the Working Document for the October 2024 Synod on synodality gathering in Rome:
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Just what we need, another article on what VII really means. Because the 4 million before didn’t quite get it. When will people.reqloze tat the ambiguity in the documents was intentional in order to allow any interpretation. I guess we still have a ways to go….sigh
Just we need: another flippant reference to the “ambiguity” of Vatican II documents.
The essay focuses on Lumen Gentium. What, exactly, is “ambiguous” about that document?
“The Church is a Sacrament.”
It is not clear in the document that in order to have Sacramental Communion, there must be Ecclesiastical Communion, as there Is Only One Word Of Perfect Love Incarnate.
If in dying, we are restored in Christ, we are part of The One Body Of Christ, Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church.
Outside The Catholic Church, there is no Salvation ,although Christ Has Revealed that there will be some, hopefully a multitude, who, like The Good Thief , at the hour of their death, will recognize Christ, in all His Glory, and come late to The Fold. The Catholic Church refers to this as “The Baptism of Desire.”
“For where your treasure is there will your heart be also.”
“Blessed are those that are Called to The Marriage Supper Of The Lamb.”
So although the plan of Salvation includes many outside The Church, in order to be Saved, those outside The Catholic Church, must answer God’s Call to repent, serve their Penance, and be transformed, through Salvational Love, God’s Gift Of Grace And Mercy.
Although, at the end of The Day, it remains a Great Mystery, God Is Trinitarian, because Perfect Love Is Trinitarian; The Lover, The Beloved, And The Ordered Communion Of Complementary Love Between The Lover And Beloved, The Beloved And The Lover.
How then, could the object of the worship of those outside Christ’s Church, be the same as those inside His Church?
At the heart of Liberty Is Christ, “4For it is impossible for those who were once illuminated, have tasted also the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, 5Have moreover tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come…”, to not believe that Christ’s Sacrifice On The Cross will lead us to Salvation, but we must desire forgiveness for our sins, and accept Salvational Love, God’s Gift Of Grace And Mercy; believe in The Power And The Glory Of Salvation Love, and rejoice in the fact that No Greater Love Is There Than This, To Desire Salvation For One’s Beloved. “Hail The Cross, Our Only Hope.”
We read: “Outside The Catholic Church, there is no Salvation ,although Christ Has Revealed that there will be some, hopefully a multitude…[etc.]”
Yes, and about which, this from St. Faustina:
“I often attend upon the dying and through entreaties obtain for them trust in God’s mercy, and I implore God for an abundance of divine grace, which is always victorious. God’s mercy sometimes touches the sinner at the last moment in a wondrous and mysterious way. Outwardly it seems as though everything were lost, but it is not so. The soul, illumined by a ray of God’s powerful final grace, turns to God in the last moment with such a power of love that, in an instant, it receives from God forgiveness of sin and punishment, while outwardly it shows no sign either of repentance or of contrition, because souls [ed. at that stage] no longer react to external things. Oh, how beyond comprehension is God’s mercy!
“But–horror!–there are also souls who voluntarily and consciously reject and scorn this grace! Although a person is at the point of death, the merciful God gives the soul that interior vivid moment, so that if the soul is willing, it has the possibility of returning to God. But sometimes, the obduracy in souls is so great that consciously they choose hell; they [thus] make useless all the prayers that other souls offer to God for them and even the efforts of God Himself…” (Divine Mercy in My Soul, the DIARY, n. 1698).
That’s trivially easy. It’s almost like Pope Benedict XVI pointed this fact out. That’s why he said that there’s a hermeneutic of rupture and continuity. The progressive position is precisely not to read Lumen Gentium (or any Vatican II document for that matter) as a standalone document. The implementation of Vatican II supports the progressive position because that’s how we got the missal of Pope Paul VI. The progressives implemented their vision for the Mass through carefully cutting and pasting together sections from whichever documents suit the thrust they wanted to make. There was no mention of revising all of the sacraments and yet, somehow that means that everything was changed.
The hermeneutic of Pope Paul VI, as applied to Lumen Gentium, easily supports the German “excesses” of synodality. Just cut and paste from the rest of the documents to support your position and–presto-vaticano–the Pope can come out in favor of the road to homosexual marriage before having to backtrack in the face of united African opposition. This is precisely because the documents of Vatican II and the implementation were never (I would daresay can never be) reconciled with the entire Magisterium Pre-Vatican II.
If one wants to silence the steady drumbeat of the SSPX–that the hierarchy departed from the constant teaching of the Church in the wake of Vatican II–one needs to credibly reconcile the Council with its implementation and with the Pre-Vatican II magisterium. No one wanted to tackle the Augean Stables immediately after the council, much less after 60+ years of neglect. After being raised in destructive novelties that don’t survive normality much less, I’ll stick with the 1900+ years of tried and true prior to Vatican II.
Just what we need, Sorengard, is the humility to realise that other people can very often have greater charity, wisdom and insight than ourselves.
May God bless you and enlighten you on your journey.
Why not “Church Militant” within the “Communion of Saints”?
That gets a lot closer to who we are as Catholics and Catholic Church here on earth.
I do not question Dr.Chapp’s erudition and good faith, but I really think “People of God” is one (and, in my view, perhaps the most egregious) of those many Trojan horses that are stabled among the documents of V2. Others include participatio actuosa. The Bergoglian horse soldiers “synodaling” today were foreseeable (foreseen by some at the Council?) 60 years ago, when I was contending with their predecessors in Catholic high school — and being labeled by the good Brothers an “integralist” for my objections.
We can know through both Faith and reason, you cannot be a disciple of Christ if you deny The Word of God Is The Word Of God. By denying The Word of God Is The Word of God, and reordering human persons according to sexual desire/inclination, in direct violation of God’s Commandment regarding lust and the sin of adultery, in order to justify the engaging in of demeaning sexual acts that are physically, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually harmful and thus abusive, the “fraternity “ having created a god in their own image, and denying the inherent Dignity of every beloved son or daughter, who from the moment of their creation , when they have been brought into being, at their conception, equal in Dignity, while being complementary as a beloved son or daughter, Willed by God, The Most Holy Blessed Trinity, worthy of Redemption, are attempting to create a counterfeit magisterium, that could not possibly serve for God and thus Mankind.
“Every man will be a god”, is not a call to liberty, it is a call to be a slave to sin, and is thus a call to anarchy.
When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defence of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man.” – Pope Benedict’s Christmas Address 2012
Jorge Bergoglio, as a cardinal, ipso facto separated himself from Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church, when his heresy was manifested and made public in his book, On Heaven And Earth, on page 117, where he stated, in regards to same -sex sexual unions and thus same-sex sexual acts, “If there is a union of a private nature, there is neither a third party, nor is society affected”.
-Jorge Bergoglio, denying The Sanctity of the marital act within The Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, that sin done in private is still sin, and that we, who are Baptized Catholic, are Called to be, “Temples of The Holy Ghost”. (God’s Universal Call To Holiness)
To deny The Unity of The Holy Ghost , is to deny The Divinity Of The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, which is apostasy due to blasphemy.
You can only have a Great Apostasy from The True Church of Christ, Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church, Through The Unity of The Holy Ghost(Filioque).
not promised to the successors of Peter that by His revelation they might make known new doctrine, but that by His assistance they might inviolably keep and faithfully expound the Revelation, the Deposit of Faith, delivered through the Apostles. ”
Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed. (Mystici Coporis 22)”
For those who claim that Jorge Bergoglio is the Pope of The True Church of Christ, why is he creating a magisterium that serves as a contradiction to Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, and The Teaching of every previous Magisterium, Grounded in The Deposit Of Faith, Entrusted To His Church By The Word Of God Who Has Revealed Himself to His Church?
Either the election of a man to the Papacy who denies The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, and thus the Deposit Of Faith is not valid, or it is possible for Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church, Through The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), to be both For Christ, and anti Christ, which is blasphemy.
An invaluable exposé, Mr. Chapp. Thank you for helping to prepare us for a jiggered Synodolatry outcome.
As you point out, the “process” employed by this Dark Vatican is not honest. It is not open.
And so we can only assume that the outcome is pre-ordained, wrought through diktat, subterfuge and legerdemain.
None of this is of God.
The spirit Bergoglio serves is an unholy one, I fear.
Our Church is under attack.
I’m no theologian, so feel free to disregard whatever I say.
But it’s difficult for me to see Bergoglio and his testy, imperious pronunciamentos blamed on Vatican II.
I too attended a Jesuitical high school in the late sixties. And there were people there who were adherents of Jesuiticals such as Tielhard de Chardin and John D. Gerken.
But I could never find any link between the hipster thinking these adherents espoused and the actual documents of Vatican II.
In fact the intention of Vatican II was to harken us back to earlier times, when we as a Church were closer to our God and Founder, Christ Jesus.
I have always found the documents of Vatican II to be solid, orthodox, compelling — and beautiful.
And the John Paul Catechism that followed them is an extension of Vatican II.
As evidence for my point of view, I would point out that Bergoglio is always viewed as being antagonistic toward his immediate predecessors, Benedict and John Paul.
Yet Benedict and John Paul are fathers of Vatican II. If Bergoglio’s errors were due to errors of Vatican II, Bergoglio would hardly be in conflict with them.
An evaluation of the Post-Conciliar instructions, which supposedly implemented Vatican II and effectively surpassed it in importance – would be some interesting reads? If the Vatican II documents enabled the instructions, it is the instructions which did the damage.
Synodaling perverts the People of God into the god of the people.
True! But, it has to be emphasized (as Larry Chapp does), only a certain *class* of the people.
The Church’s “essential” marks are known to be four.
Synodality is linked with catholicity, encompassing the idea of unity. The conditions for being united involve sharing the same universal values. Walking together means progressing, both in knowledge and action. A Synod develops the knowledge of faith and advances moral conduct.
The universal is a unity that remains the same within a multiplicity. Being Catholic is the same in all Catholics. In the Church, everyone is Catholic, even though each person is different from the others. For this reason, being Catholic holds a universal value concerning the Church’s constitution.
This unity can also be understood as union and communion, in the sense that we Catholics are all united in charity among ourselves, around a principle of unity, which is our faith, as St. Paul says: “One faith” (Eph 4:5).
The one who guards this faith is the Pope, as Head of the Apostolic College, representing the Bishops. This is the note of apostolicity.
However, our unity is not only theoretical but also practical. Our Pastors, under the guidance of the Pope, do not limit themselves to stating theories but also provide practical guidelines. The Church is not a philosophical and theological society but a communion of love among many brothers and sisters who love each other under the guidance of Christ and the Holy Spirit.
The function of the Holy Spirit is to produce holiness in the hearts of believers.
In conclusion, the four marks that define the Church also relate to the synodal aspect. They touch both the “substance,” that is, the ontology, and the essence of the Church. The substance refers to the “subsistit in” of *Lumen Gentium*; the essence corresponds to the nature of the Church. In conclusion, we can say that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church and is the Catholic Church.
The Church, intended as the people of God, and emphasized by the Second Vatican Council, aims to highlight the historical, existential character of the Church, and that of a messianic people who have inherited the messianic offices of Christ: the priestly, prophetic, and royal office. These offices belong to the entire people and all its members.
Thus, not only the hierarchy but also all the faithful are invested with the offices of the priesthood (the common priesthood of the faithful), prophecy (the proclamation of the Gospel, and therefore the missionary duty), and royalty through service (to establish the Kingdom of God in this world).
Regarding the second office, and so jumping into the fray, it should be noted that it is neither the writings of Catholic journalists nor individual theologians that make doctrine. Doctrine is that which is taught by Peter and the apostolic college together with him, that is, by the Pope and the episcopal college.
Only when we see in the *Denzinger* (the manual of dogmatic sentences and the most substantial Magisterium of the Church) that various Magisterial sentences contradict each other, could we talk about a change in doctrine. But this, given the guarantee by Christ, will never happen because “the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Mt 16:18).
It is faith in Christ that makes us certain of this in advance. I have presented not my opinion, which counts for nothing, but what we believe through our faith.
The Church never had to go through all that on account of VATICAN II or anything else including the marks of the Church, to express the Council or otherwise.
What you are doing amounts to circum-inscribing various marks of Modernism mixed with other problems which are not hard for the Church to identify and position.
What you put there summarizes the mess being made of post-Conciliar merit. Using the “subsists” formula to label it, will, actually, not put anything right by itself.
paolo: When you use enough sophistry to trivialize objective unchanging morality and make this gift from God that protects us from our vanities and keeps us from destroying each other, no matter how many silly platitudinous lies we tell ourselves about how our sinful vices can undergo “rethinking” to be now thought of as “loving,” you eventually believe your rejection of the Catholic religion is its fulfillment. The philosophical and theological society does exist because we are not unified, never will be, never can be. In fact, we have an obligation to reject anyone who preaches this false Gospel because they deny our perpetual need for redemption. As noted in the article, Kung and Rahner were fools to implicitly contend that the redeeming act of Our Lord does not need constant renewal in every individual heart (not collective). This is precisely why God’s own truth has been reduced to mere “guidelines,” no longer seen as worth dying for. Kung and Rahner and other dissidents might never have heard of World War II, but no one else needs to be that stupid.
From the beginning of his theological work, Rahner was a very controversial theologian. Especially from the time of the Second Vatican Council, to which he made an important contribution, his prestige and fame grew steadily throughout the world, both in academic circles and in the Catholic world in general. However, since the early post-conciliar years, eminent theologians have challenged him for serious errors or, at least, grave misunderstandings. Two factions thus arose: one in favor of Rahner and the other critical of him. The first faction seems to enjoy a majority and has managed to secure positions of power within the Church. But the other, which at one time counted among its ranks Joseph Ratzinger himself, is also gaining strength, and what can be foreseen and hoped for is that the negative aspect of Rahnerism will have to be removed.
As is well known, Rahner confuses being with human action, identifying them in the manner of Fichte, something that is an exclusively divine property. For him, human nature is “indefinable”: but only God is indefinable. Here again, we see the pantheistic tendency.
He says that man naturally tends toward the absolute, but this does not necessarily mean that every man tends toward God, because if one absolutizes either himself, riches, pleasures, or honors, he does not tend toward God at all, even while tending toward an absolute. Here is where Rahner confuses and becomes the founder of “excessive leniency,” in theological, moral and political contexts, to the point of absurdly claiming that even atheists and “sinners” tend toward God and are saved.
By reducing all human action to the absolute, he forcibly boxes every man into the choice for God, compelling everyone to go to heaven, while at the same time ignoring free will and the reality of sin and damnation. For Rahner, however, no one is damned, even if they want to be. Everyone is necessarily good, saved, and blessed. This is the theoretical principle of “exaggerated goodness,” which is so widely spread today and which irresponsibly comforts many deluded people, who feel they can take things very lightly under the pretext of God’s infinite goodness.
Regarding the delicate issue of the distinction between soul and body, Rahner is extremely confusing, and this manifests not only in determining the relationship between the spirit and the body, where the latter is falsely spiritualized in the manner of idealistic and Indian philosophy, but it also leads him to err in the direction of positivist and Freudian materialism, considering the spirit nothing more than a manifestation and self-sublimation of matter.
Rahner, in short, oscillates between a materialist conception of man—as an inseparable mix of matter and spirit and as a result of the evolution of matter—and an ultra-spiritualist, gnostic conception—as man as self-consciousness and self-transcendence. This leads him, despite his monistic intent, to an irresolvable dualism, not Pauline, but the ancient, gnostic-Platonic-Indian one, into a contradictory materialistic-idealist anthropology, in the desperate, yet seductive, attempt, shared by many theologians, to base such anthropology on Sacred Scripture; but the error of many does not constitute the truth.
For Rahner, it is the person who Prometheanly legislates over nature, always, as he says, “before God.” But after Rahner removes from God any right to regulate and guide nature and assigns it exclusively to man, this sounds like perfect hypocrisy! Indeed, how can we act “before God” with loyalty and a clear conscience, when we brazenly regulate our nature not according to the law that He Himself placed in nature by creating it, but according to the whim of our alleged “freedom,” which ignores the objective data and goes beyond the terms and norms established by the Creator?
Rahner thus defines the human essence through the category of its free action, so that the essence of man does not appear predetermined by the person’s action, but seems to be the effect of the person’s free action itself. Man does not decide about himself only in the moral sense of choosing his ultimate end, but also in the ontological sense of determining the characteristics of his very nature, which, as we have seen, is indeterminate, indefinable, and unlimited, that is, without clear and precise terms. This is an idealistic concept of man—man as the creator of himself—that we find in Fichte, Hegel, and Gentile; but in a materialistic key, it is also found in others, such as Marx and Nietzsche.
Unfortunately, such a blatantly liberal and permissive moral doctrine has spread widely in the circles of Catholic moral theology: this is what John Paul II denounced in his encyclical *Veritatis Splendor*, in which Rahnerian ethics are severely condemned, even though Rahner’s name is not explicitly mentioned.
Rahner’s grave error is his attempt to define the essence of man in supernatural terms, as if the Christian or supernatural life were an essential property of man. He is concerned with supporting and showing that grace, although distinct from nature, should not be seen as something extraneous—”like oil above water,” to use St. Augustine’s expression—nor as something superfluous, materialistic, like a “decorative pediment on a palace,” as Maritain said, or as something confused and idealistic, like “water mixed with wine”, but it permeates all of human nature in its innermost being, like “light in the air”, becoming the life of his life, as St. Paul says: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
Unfortunately, Rahner goes even further beyond this legitimate concern and repeatedly expresses himself in a way that suggests grace is a kind of fulfillment or requirement of nature and that it is necessary and obligatory for man to be what he must be as a man.
Rahner tries to remedy this defect, the merging of grace and nature, with his famous theory of “anonymous Christians,” but the cure is worse than the disease, because these so-called “anonymous Christians,” whom he elsewhere calls “implicit,” are not even implicit, because Rahner’s “overly indulgent benevolence” admits that even atheists can be saved, contrary to what the Letter to the Hebrews expressly says, according to which to be pleasing to God one must believe that He exists and that He rewards good works.
Rahner, by making divine life a necessity and even a constitutive part of the essence of man, dangerously approaches pantheism, even if perhaps his intention was only to exalt the beauty and greatness of Christian humanism (the famous “anthropological turn”).
But this obviously obliterates the distinction between human nature and divine nature, which is a dogma of faith defined at Chalcedon. Certainly, with Rahner’s proposal, theology students, due to the blending of philosophy with theology, might see the duration of their courses reduced. But would it be worth it, especially for future priests?
He neglects the fact that the life of grace is added to nature as a supernatural property or habit and does not constitute the substance of the human being, but is an “accident,” which can be lost and, unfortunately, some do lose it, and for this reason, they do not lose their human essence, even if they can be compared, as Scripture itself says, to “irrational animals” (Jude 1:10).
In Rahner, as in Hegel, metaphysics, anthropology, and theology form a unified whole. Therefore, there is no real distinction between two real persons: man and God. Thus, in Rahner, there is no true interpersonal dialogue between man and God, but only between the man-pole and the God-pole of the one self-conscious Being, which is at the same time acting and becoming, a passage from one to the other of the two poles.
For Rahner, there are not three persons in God, but three modes of existence of the one Divine Subject. In Rahner, man is essentially a relation (“self-transcendence”) to God, and God is essentially a relation (“self-communication”) to man. This, according to Rahner, would be the “Christian” God. A grave misunderstanding of the dogma of the Incarnation, which confuses person and nature and does not distinguish, like Eutyches and Hegel, between the two natures, but rather allows one to pass into the other, misinterpreting the Johannine phrase “The Word became flesh.”
(I summarized an article on Rahner by my inspirational theologian: https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/lantropologia-di-karl-rahner.html)
Paolo,
We read: “Thus, in Rahner, there is no true interpersonal dialogue between man and God, but only between the man-pole and the God-pole of the one self-conscious Being…
This is a succinct conclusion to your fine article-summary, and exposes those theologians who, today, think their task is to “harmonize” sociological “polarities” rather than to tell the truth. Fiducia Supplicans–and much of synodality–comes to mind.
Peter, invoking the famous admonition of Apelles, “shoemaker, stick to your last,” -sutor, ne ultra crepidam!- I will not venture to debate on the matter of FS or even the recent “A Short Lexicon on End-of-Life” by the Pontifical Academy for Life. The aim of this work is to demonstrate how modern perspectives, if rationally understood, can offer guidance on end-of-life issues that align with the Gospel message and Christian anthropology.
However, from a secular standpoint, which is my domain, just a few days ago, amidst the terrible wars in Europe and the Middle East, an intellectual from a mainstream Italian newspaper revisited the topic of the “decline of the West.” He discussed the possibility of “new skills” that could transform this decline into a vital moment in human history. This perspective, however, falls within the realm of “doing” and evades the foundational problem of “being,” implying a willingness to continue along the path we’ve followed so far. That is, “the daring of a metaphysical revolt… reigniting the ancient Promethean dream… seizing freedom from the heights of heaven and claiming its dominion here on earth. Discarding the concept of a providential God and instead embracing the belief in humanity’s emancipation… Unmasking every mirage of transcendence… proclaiming a new religion: faith in progress, purified of all mystery, based on technical-scientific rationality, and entirely entrusted to our hands as the true architects of history.” “Events follow a sense and purpose to be realized… and the end of history is the freedom of individuals, the fortunes of nations.”
In a word, this is a straightforward revival of Hegel’s vision, his “regnum hominis”, “regnum libertatis”, Kant’s “new (inner) church,” the third Joachimite age, Manichean, apocalyptic, Gnostic, “messianic,” eschatological, infra-temporal, post-human, post-Christian, and post-everything, as Peter Kreeft might say.
This was the idea nurtured in Masonic fraternities since the 1800s, and it would not have gained—and wouldn’t still have—such widespread influence if it were not, and still were not, tangibly connected to real power centers. It would not have been —and wouldn’t still be—the ideal of so many intellectuals if it were not visibly and demonstrably linked to real power structures (to cite just a few examples: the World Economic Forum, BlackRock, multinationals, and large “philanthropic” foundations, along with their intellectual patrons and agendas—such as the UN 2030 agenda on reproductive rights, ESG goals, or the Green Deal).
The spirit of 19th-century European literature and aesthetics was driven by this idea of a Prometheus who is Nietzsche’s Antichrist. The underlying theme of this revolt is the struggle against the father, a rebellion of man, as Camus describes it, with the anarchists later summarizing it as “neither God nor master!” There is no longer a God the Father; if God exists, He is a master, and man can only rebel: God is merely the limit of my freedom. This stance, which runs from Goethe to Sartre and Macron constitunalization of abortion, or the anti-Christian spectacle – better the worldwide Blak Mass of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games -, follows an almost direct line and explains the demonic aspects present in French and English literature. Even Shelley wrote his Prometheus, and Byron’s novels are clearly Promethean. Prometheanism is the fundamental theme of this rebellion against Christianity. Hegel and his companions—Freud, Kinsey, Marcuse, Reich, Pierre Simon, Macron, Peter Singer, Artur Caplan, Ezekiel Emanuel, John Harris, Yuval Harari, Judith Butler, and countless others—ultimately, willingly or not,fully partake in this titanism: one must struggle with the divine, strip divinity of its prerogatives, and return them to man. The core category here is “reappropriation.” These are our possessions; we must reclaim them because man is divine, and man has been humiliated by God. The idea of original sin is the quintessential idea of man’s humiliation, whereas, instead, divinity must be restored to man.
“Today, it is the same anti-Catholic, modernist, and secularist world, both inside and outside the Church, the same Freemasonry that supports the Jesuits in their Rahnerian current.” (cf. (https://oraetcogita.substack.com/p/from-tribulation-to-subversion?utm_source=publication-search))
But, as a contemporary and fellow countryman of Rahner (Erik Peterson) once said, “The ultimate demand of Jesus is this: His disciples must publicly, openly, bear witness to Him and confess His Name. He who openly declares for Jesus on earth, He, Jesus, will openly declare for him before His Father who is in heaven. Because in the time of judgment, in the true eschatological time—which is not that of Huxley’s *Brave New World* without God, nor the therapeutic society of Philip Rieff, nor even Harari’s digital evolutionism—there will be no other option: to confess Jesus or to deny Him. Trying to get by by isolating oneself in anonymous piety or remaining in the shadows is no longer an option, not by human choice, but by the very One who brought the sword, and whose name—oh sweet Name of Jesus—provokes a division that spares not even the private sphere of the family, but separates the son from the father and the daughter from the mother (Mt 10, 35).” Alleluia!
What place is there in faith for these generic words with no qualifier direction or particular teleology-meaning: literature, isolation, closed, open, inclusion, etc. Then when you set alongside the generic a special word from faith like mission, or, again, JESUS, but still the qualification is in confusion or adrift or is a novelty that is suddenly a marvel of the Holy Spirit above scrutiny and common sense.
“Good” or “bad” never mentioned or conditioned. What. Since when.
Heresies all occur in groups. Even existentialism at a secular level can be seen to a grouping phenomenon and a call and demand to a certain pattern.
A hermit can be holy or selfish and still he’s not a heretic. But a hermit can be a heretic even though he is welcoming and (somehow) very generous. So what is the point paolo.
This manner of speech throwing all kinds of heavy-hitting unknown names around with “high-flown” flourishes, declaiming, conclusive, exhortatory -is doing what, exactly. I have been hearing this a lot where I am in homilies since let us say shortly after our local Synod” arrived at an interim conclusion 2009. Maybe even before that by a decade in a non-parish Mass. Does it reflect a training from a particular European University with a Martini bent. Speak up and say it OPENLY. Say it.
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So. What’s the point, Paolo? I’ll pick one of the cherries you offer: Rahner’s man is God and his God is man. Re this, I agree with your/Cavalcoli’s statement: Rahner is controversial.
I do not dispute there is much wrong with Rahner, which is why I alluded to him and Kung implicitly as figures, among many, who downplayed the tragic reality of sin and over emphasized universalism, depending on their mood.
But he was notably attached to the anonymous Christian idea for reasons that I contend to not be in any way heretical. Jesus told his disciples to never disown him, but He also reminded them that the essence of discipleship is found in the corporal works of mercy, not merely in professing His name. And the Church has recognized the saving grace available to those who have never heard of Our Lord.
It is not true that the present age is different. Mass communication does not assure all have heard the truth about Our Lord rather than lies. As a former atheist, I do not know whether God would have found better favor with me had He taken me then, or after my conversion, or presently, still marked by many sins. I prefer to defer such judgments on such matters in accordance with the admonishments Our Lord gave in Matthew 23.
Amen, Brother Baker. Well and powerfully said.
“When you use enough sophistry to trivialize objective unchanging morality and make this gift from God that protects us from our vanities and keeps us from destroying each other, no matter how many silly platitudinous lies we tell ourselves about how our sinful vices can undergo “rethinking” to be now thought of as “loving,” you eventually believe your rejection of the Catholic religion is its fulfillment.”
You’ve described the essence of the synodal process, the synod’s goal, purpose, end, and raison d’être; only the Holy Spirit of God would grant that conclusive vision to His people.
To Paolo: Do you have a working, practical definition of the “communion of love” which you claim is the Church? Why is this “communion of love”, then, not a defining mark of the church?
The ‘People of God’ phrase is used to infer that we, all of us, will, as a people ‘evolve’ into the Second coming of Christ as per de Chardin. It is heresy.
Where does the phrase “People of God” include evolution as with Teilhard de Chardin?
The possible ambiguity is whether “the People of God” refers to members of the sacramental Mystical Body of Christ, or more broadly to all of the baptized? The novelty under the current practice of synod-ism is that the term seems to have no contours at all and, at the same time, that it is synonymous with “the universal call to holiness.”
Perhaps a better-informed reader of CWR can explain to us what the Vatican II Document (Lumen Gentium) means by the People of God. Is there a backstory in the records? My limited reading suggests that it was understood to mean all of the baptized, but is this correct, or as it should be in all contexts?
In any case, a broad roundtable of the baptized is not a synod, and a superimposed synodal “style” does sound Teilhardian. The “sound”: If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then….
“There are none so blind as those who will not see.” For me as convert from the Episcopal Church as it began to embrace the wisdom of this world, including the ordination of women as priests, etc. It is, in the words of Yogi Berra “de ja vu all over again.” This is part of a satanic plan, begin in the 18th century that all the popes from Clement XIV to Benedict XVI well understood and fought against. It is causing further damage and the loss of more souls, but it will not succeed. The People of God will be what it has always been, The Mystical Body of Christ.
At what point do we begin to conclude that certain influencers in the Catholic Church are Satanic?
Satan is a pure spirit with a will – a malevolent will. We need to ask whether some thoughts, trends, practices in the Church seem to be promoting Satan’s will. One cannot at the same time be advancing God’s will and Satan’s.
I wonder, looking back on the changes in the late 60’s and decades beyond, whether the Catholic Church went about digesting the proceedings of Vatican Council II all wrong.
Now, here, I am NOT questioning the Council and its documents one bit. But here is what I am suggesting: What would have been the effect if, after the Council closed, Paul VI had declared that for a period of 25 years, the Church – its prelates, scholars, theologians, etc – would carefully study, review, and contemplate the work of the Council BEFORE implementing one change in Church teaching and practices? Rather, the Church went headlong into change that was chaotic and confusing to most of its members. In short, the Church went “off the rails” and is still careening off the road. After all, the Church had been around then almost 2,000 years. Would waiting 25 years to thoroughly digest the meaning of the Council and discerning the Will of the Holy Spirit have been too much to ask?
I can recall my reaction as a 16 year old at the time: one day I worshipped God in a certain way and before I knew it, I was worshipping God in a radically different manner. If a matter as Holy Mass could change almost overnight, why couldn’t Church teachings be treated just as fungible? Five short years later as a senior at a men’s Catholic college, we celebrated Mass (with the college chaplain) in our dormitory apartment using glasses that the night before had been used to drink beer, used Silvercup bread for hosts to be consecrated, used readings for Mass from Kahil Gibran’s “Prophet” and Eric Fromm’s “The Art of Loving.” (We did sneak in a Gospel from Scripture.) I now ask: “Would this have happened if we had waited 25 years to thoroughly digest the work of the Council Fathers?
Not waiting 25 years, but at least after a derailed 20 years Pope John Paul II convened the 1985 Extraordinary Synod of Bishops precisely to restrain “divergent interpretations” of the Council. This was preceded a few months by Cardinal Ratzinger’s still timely “The Ratzinger Report” (Ignatius, 1985).
Among its “suggestions”, the Synod recommended “…a new, more extensive and deeper knowledge and reception of the Council. This can be attained above all through a new diffusion of the documents themselves.” Fancy that, a role for institutional memory versus institutional amnesia! After nearly 60 years, surely the Synod on Synodality has been apprised…
And, in his book, Ratzinger rejects that “the Gospel becomes the JESUS-PROJECT [italics], the social-liberation project or other merely historical, immanent projects that can still seem religious in appearance, but which are atheistic in substance.” Elsewhere he clarifies that even a council (and surely a synod, or the synodal “style”, or permanent synodal-ism) is only “what the Church DOES, and not what the Church IS.”
Thanks Larry, you have your head screwed on straight. You have the nail on the head. We must differentiate the difference between the Kingdom of God, of which the Church is a part, and the Kingdom of this world, which is under the domination of the Devil. We ( the Church-the communion of the Saints below) are in the world physically, but not of the world and its ways. We are a distinct people called out. We must think and live differently. We must be nonresident, but unmoved. We are called to live the Sermon on the Mount. If the Church is truly grounded on the rock of Christ, any evil intentions of any Synod WILL FAIL!!! The Barque may take on water, but it will NEVER sink! Praise God.
I think Robert Miller and Sorengard are way off, of course. That’s the problem with this web site–only the radical right seem to read this, with a few exceptions of course.
But what this article shows is that the development or evolution of Church teaching is really a messy process. I am not worried about the revisionist theology of people like Luciani and some scheming bishops. I don’t quite understand why you people are. The Church is guided by the Holy Spirit. This kind of bad theology has to come to the fore, as well as the bad theology embraced by people like Miller and Sorengard, and Kennedy Hall and Peter Kwasniewski. The Church will make its way through this feculence and come out with a much better product, one entirely consistent with Lumen Gentium. The play acting pointed out in this article only underscores the sinfulness, dull-mindedness, and self-deception that are a genuine part of the Church that Christ established. That’s nothing new. The Church has survived all this in the past, and she will do so at this time. So why get your knickers in a knot? It’s not as if they are reading these articles. As I said so many times before, let’s move on to some real theology that inspires.
One final point:
“What if, instead of Outreach, we were looking at a gathering sponsored by Courage? Or a gathering of (gasp!) traditionalists? Or a gathering of my clan, Catholic Workers who seek to restore the movement to the Catholic orthodoxy of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin? Or a meeting of Communio theologians devoted to the theology of John Paul II and Benedict XVI? Would those meetings count as an act of synodality and listening? Would the Pope send a warm letter of support? Would Cardinal Gregory “accompany” them on their synodal journey?”
Probably not, because these groups are clearly not as fragile, unstable, and needy as Outreach. They can stand up on their own two feet, like a tree that no longer needs supports. It’s hard to see that when you are a theologian looking at things from a relatively abstract point of view, as theological problems to resolve. But when you are a pastor, on the ground, actually engaging with these people, you see that certain people are very wounded, in the dark, fragile, and in need of a very caring and empathetic pastor like Father James Martin. If Father James Martin had a mind as suspicious and hyper-vigilant and overly defensive and cynical as yours is, he’d be a useless pastor.
I agree with you, Thomas James, it will all pass and we will come out on the other end all the better for it. When one is the middle of a dense and dark forest one feels lost and there doesn’t seem any way out, but when seen from above everything makes sense and the way out is apparent. In spite of it all, this Pope will contribute much good to the Church. God can use the most horrific circumstances and recycle them into the good. Time is more patient than we are.
Ps. Keep fighting for the truth of the CW movement! 🫠
Perhaps you can show me the data on who reads CWR, as we have tens of thousands of readers weekly and just a handful (less than 1% probably) comment. I know numerous longtime, regular CWR readers and the term “radical right” is wildly off the mark. What a surprise.
“The Church has survived all this in the past, and she will do so at this time. So why get your knickers in a knot?”
But, if that’s true, why do you get your knickers in a knot, while misrepresenting pieces and sites such as this one?
The history of the Church has countless examples of Catholics—theologians, lay people, bishops—who worked constantly to protect true teaching. While they certainly (of course!) believed that the Church and the Truth would prevail, they also knew they had a role in that work.
Plus, CWR is a news journal, so it’s entirely fitting that it would address ongoing controversies and major issues within the Church.
I get that CWR isn’t really your cup of tea, but I don’t understand why you think that your cup of personal tea is that only one that anyone should like or drink.
“….a very caring and empathetic pastor like Father James Martin.”
Well, there you go. A truly caring and empathetic pastor would not continually undermine the truth about the human person, sexuality, marriage, and related matters.
Define radical right please.
Thomas James:Evolution does not exist, not even in biology the way most are manipulated to believe, let alone in “doctrine.” Neither is there such a thing as a “radical right” in theology. The notion implicitly rejects immutable truth.
When the Church speaks of development of doctrine, it is meant as expansion not demolition. Our Lord always expanded the requirements of moral law. Mere lust is adultery. And it is not just the “radical right” opinion of Jesus. The crowd at the Sermon on the Mount were able to understand His every word because truth is self-evident when our hearts are honest and not clouded by sin.
The early Church specifically condemned abortion even though Scripture provides few references to the humanity of the unborn in language that would not be viewed as “political” by the stupidity of our contemporary intellectual establishment. God expects us to use the minds He gave us with honesty, not with sinful deceit.
Development of doctrine does not exist as a way to rationalize a way to weasel out of our sins by, such things as modernists are prone when they make preposterous abuses of things like “science” to justify them. Common sense tells us what we’re really up to when 99 percent of homosexuals are very supportive or abortion tolerant. Habitual abuse of a human faculty destroys moral reflexes, which is why the cynical, anti-pastoral accommodational approaches of Father James Martin or Pope Francis, for that matter, do so much massive harm to humanity.
Dear Mr. James:
Your bemoaning about “the radical right” is an intellectual crutch, indicating that you only have weak arguments to offer, and so instead (consciously or not) since you somehow sense that your own arguments are too weak to be defended, you attack instead.
Which leaves you open to be dismissed in turn as a “krypto-Marxist.”
That’s what a comment constructed such as your engenders.
Which leads nowhere…
The more I read the more confused I get. When complex, why is all made to be so complicated?
The pee -puuull….!!! Phhhhh….!!!!
Of lay theologian Raphael Luciani, not only “mendacity” but ecclesial jihad…In both cases, a cherry-picked reading of their cited documents…
DEFINITION: In the case of imam Luciani, “Lumen Gentium” actually defines “People of God”:
“Everything which has been said so far concerning the People of God applies equally to the laity, religious and clergy” Ch.4, n. 30). BUT there is no redefinition of the Apostolic Church (Ch. 3 with the “hierarchical communion” and further clarified in the extensive Prefatory Note).
TAKEN AS A WHOLE, the Vatican II Documents are less ambiguous than they are carefully articulated. Requiring thorough and attentive reading, rather than the airbrush mentality of our current secular politics and now even our synodal discourse within the Church. (Agreed, taken by themselves, parts of Gaudium et Spes and Declaration of Religious Freedom are exploitable with divergent interpretations.)
The SYNOD ON SYNODALITY (say what?)—(a) diocesan bishops “primarily as facilitators,” (b) then the roundtables of hierarchy mingled with laity with doctrinal responsibility and zeitgeist opinions equalized, (c) then this proceduralism extended over two years—or more (?) (d) governance and consultation clumsily equalized rather than clearly developed, (e) settled “hot-button themes” disinterred, and now sidestepped into ten study groups, (f) with the Synod itself now serving more as bubble-wrap (?), (g) all resulting in a new “clericalism” simply replacing the old?
Real shepherds don’t lead from behind…
In the hands of imam LUCIANI ET AL, why does this on-the-run medley remind us of a university safe-space also disconnected from things pensive, scholarly, differentiated, and articulated on campus? Take, for example, Brown University which offered to tuition-payers a backwardist (!) room of “cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh [not Plato], calming music, pillows, blankets, and a video of frolicking puppies” (New York Times, 2016).
SUMMARY: Is the Synod on Synodality simply an incrementally failed and (some say) manipulated attempt at, yes, difficult institutional architecture? How to do a constructively focused and credible Synod of “the People of God”? Consistent with the perennial Catholic Church and the real Second Vatican Council?
The Holy Spirit, but no less: “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8).
Excellent article! I only wish Larry could lose his habit of word selection – NOT using the most obvious commonly used and understood words which themselves fully convey his points. Chesterton criticized this habit of writers who somehow think that it elevates their thoughts to a higher plane. A simple example (among numerous in this article): “It is a MENDACIOUSNESS that is the product of a set of foreordained conclusions in search of an argument.”…..LIE!!! There are other writers at CWR that do the same thing.
From an internet search: “Mendacious is more formal and literary, suggesting a deception harmless enough to be considered somewhat bland. Lying is more blunt, accusatory, and often confrontational.”
Perhaps Chapp wants to include bland, oblique and evasive deceptions, even omissions and silences, in addition to or other than outright lies.
I very much enjoyed Larry Chapp’s article.
Regarding a previous comment, I believe it is hard to argue against “ambiguity” in the Vatican II documents.
Paragraph 13 of Lumen Gentium begins: “All men are called to belong to the new People of God”, and ends: “All men are called to this catholic unity which prefigures and promotes universal peace. And in different ways to it belong, or are related: The Catholic faithful, others who believe in Christ, and finally all mankind, called by God’s grace to salvation.”
Since all mankind is called to belong to the People of God, who decides who belongs is a question.
LG’s People of God appear to not have much say or sway except that, according to paragraph 17, “The Church prays and likewise labors so that into the People of God,…may pass the fullness of the whole world,….”
[Some words about Christ, the Body of the Lord, the Temple of the Holy Spirit, the Creator, and the Father of the universe also embellish that paragraph while questionably aiding clarity.]
The Synod has apparently and simply assumed the People of God to subsist within the Synod. Whether the Church subsists in the Synod or the Synod in the Church is another matter. And the People, meanwhile, are all in the mess together, ready or not.
Pope Paul VI said the smoke of satan entered the church.
Chapp uncovered the serpent obscured by the tapestry. They’re furtive those things. Something that those of us who have eyes to see and ears to hear had a troubling sense of but lacked the wherewithal for specificity that Chapp displays in his expose.
Synod impresario Francis all along, as usual assuring the people of God of his fidelity to Christ simultaneously performing a makeover of the people toward fidelity to a different god. That’s what crafty managers do to fill seats. What’s left for us to worship? Certainly not what motivated the long history of martyrs to love and die for.
Teresa Benedicta of the Cross Virgin and Martyr gives us a hint, her thought of the sin that may have caused the Fall of the human race. A sin that now permeates mankind and has made marked inroads in the Church. Her reasoning was that the act of disobedience would have been some specifying act contrary to human nature as ordained by God. Theologians for centuries have speculated on some sexual act [some the absurdity of the conjugal act]. Saint Teresa Benedicta presumed the act would instead be a sexual perversion of the natural order suggested to Eve that included Adam. We don’t know exactly what that specified sin of disobedience was or may have been since this is opinion.
What we do know by her speculation is that Edith Stein [St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross] had a strong sense of the gravity of sexual perversion. That sin is destroying family and Church, and is now being slipped in during this Synod on Synodality charade as a moral good. Edith Stein died a horrible death at Auschwitz gassed with Zyklon B, hydrogen cyanide, because of her Jewish race, and her faith. The witness of the saints cannot and never will be brushed aside. Their voice cries out from heaven. If this current pontificate doesn’t hear them Christ surely does.
Very well said.
Thanks Russell. You represent the trend of Protestants who’ve suffered the secularizing rationale that caused many among the denominations to abandon practice of the true faith, while it is now occurring within the Catholic Church. A Church that belongs to no man but Jesus Christ.
We have then self validated Catholic hierarchy who believe that ordination to Apostolic authority warrants them the power to act as if the Church is theirs, that every whim of their distorted intellects and passions must be true and good, that the transference of revelation by the Apostles and their successors up to Benedict XVI is subject to revision. Whereas they abandon their sacred duty as defenders of the faith to become purveyors of error and perversion. The Synod is their chosen vehicle to inexorably mitigate the faith revealed by Christ, faith pronounced by the early Fathers, transmitted as the deposit of truths, historically expanded with hermeneutic coherence.
Providence is at work in calling in fresh soldiers, men and women who hadn’t succumbed to fabrications, seeking good soil. Although the number of faithful Catholics is much fewer than previously. It’s clear [I submit as strong evidence that the more effective Catholic websites are edited by converted Catholics] that theirs, your mission is divinely ordained to revitalize a stricken Body.
So, I am going to ask what will sound (to those more knowledgeable about Vatican Ii) like a dumb question. I appreciate that this article focuses on how the interpretation of one key term, “the People of God,” in one core Vatican II document has become complicated over the decades,and that one of the major “complications” has been reintroduced into the current Synod on Synodality. This is much easier for me to follow and understand than the more wide-ranging dommentaries that often make sweeping statements that refer back to the intervening history, and the years and years of debate and disagreements.
I will admit that I am thoroughly confused about the many things that “the People of God” is used to describe. Here is the question, really two questions: given how the term “People of God” has gotten complicated over time (maybe in ways that aren’t necessary).
First question: what would need to be done at this point to return this term to the intended meaning that Mr. Chapp has set out here? Related question: is the term “People of God” so central to the understanding of “Lumen Gentium” that it must be retained in order for that document to be properly received, or could it be let go, without significantly impairing our understanding of that document?
Hope those questions make sense. These discussions involving Vatican II can be hard to follow for those of us who were introduced to them long after the Council concluded because of the vast amount of “insider knowledge” imbedded in them.
Thanks for your thoughts, mine too.
My comment about the People of God in the here and now, would be this. People of God refers to the Church encompassing those who are alive in this world.
That is not a problem. The problem is turning VATICAN II into something it is not by running everything into everything else -miscible, to borrow Fr.’s word- and producing the hailed amalgam “new paradigm” if not perhaps “necessarily reduced Church new paradigm residue”.
Some RC’s believe that the Church of Rome is “the Constantine Church” that was always legalistic and “unnatural” unlike the Orthodox churches; and that this has to be undone once and for all. They see VATICAN II as the inception/inflection point, authority and a rally call for the “true spiritual Church to emerge”. They mirror some ideas among Orthodox and want to make the catch-basin.
As if to say, “It’s what was really intended by the Council, the Church was always meant to be ‘spiritual’ and this is her ascendant-culminating moment.” Patriarch Bartholomew could be one of the prime sympathizers.
But what I perceive is, this highlights that what is needed is an index of errors about VATICAN II. Instead the Pope appears to be telling us in his latest interview that without a certain assistance you will necessarily be stuck in a labyrinth. In the same vision commending the Chinese as an ancient master race of patience. And he adds that the contrary could be “against the Church”. I say that some people listening to that will take to mean what they want for it.
Does the Holy Father realize that he is helping re-mechanize and propel errors at work where instead he must be naming them, targeting them intelligently and bringing about their rightful place.
On the other hand, he does admit that criticism can be good. So if he is sincere in that, the real matter would be, not that (according to Vigano) he had not the intention to accept the mantle of the See of Peter, but that it could prove to be the case in the end that he missed the mark.
See the interview video in the VATICAN NEWS link, below; only 10 minutes. We, however, do see the manipulations of the Council and attest to them. We are NOT stuck in labyrinths while it is all pending. We HAVE the helps of grace and the Holy Spirit. What we are already witnessing is truly spiritual.
If indeed he has knowledge of the trick of words concerning Constantine he is obliged to reveal it. If he does not, he must take note now that I have brought it to his attention; and that, that (part of) the labyrinth is demolished already in at least one person, so far, namely me, by the Hand of God.
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2024-08/pope-francis-offers-message-of-hope-for-the-chinese-people.html
Of lay theologian Raphael Luciani, not only “mendacity” but ecclesial jihad… In both cases, a cherry-picked reading of their cited documents…
DEFINITION: In the case of imam Luciani, “Lumen Gentium” actually defines “People of God”:
“Everything which has been said so far concerning the People of God applies equally to the laity, religious and clergy” Ch.4, n. 30). BUT there is no redefinition of the Apostolic Church (Ch. 3 with the “hierarchical communion” and further clarified in the extensive Prefatory Note).
TAKEN AS A WHOLE, the Vatican II Documents are less ambiguous than they are carefully articulated. Requiring thorough and attentive reading, rather than the airbrush mentality of our current secular politics and now even our synodal discourse within the Church. (Agreed, taken by themselves, parts of Gaudium et Spes and Declaration of Religious Freedom are exploitable with divergent interpretations.)
The SYNOD ON SYNODALITY (say what?)—(a) diocesan bishops “primarily as facilitators,” (b) then the roundtables of hierarchy mingled with laity with doctrinal responsibility and zeitgeist opinions equalized, (c) then this proceduralism extended over two years—or more (?) (d) governance and consultation clumsily equalized rather than clearly developed, (e) settled “hot-button themes” disinterred, and now sidestepped into ten study groups, (f) with the Synod itself now serving more as bubble-wrap (?), (g) all resulting in a new “clericalism” simply replacing the old?
Real shepherds don’t lead from behind…
In the hands of imam LUCIANI et al, why does this on-the-run medley remind us of a university safe-space also disconnected from things pensive, scholarly, differentiated, and articulated on campus? Take, for example, Brown University which offered to tuition-payers a backwardist (!) room of “cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh [not Plato], calming music, pillows, blankets, and a video of frolicking puppies” (New York Times, 2016).
SUMMARY: Is the Synod on Synodality simply an incrementally failed and (some say) manipulated attempt at, yes, difficult institutional architecture? How to do a constructively focused and credible Synod of “the People of God”? Consistent with the perennial Catholic Church and the real Second Vatican Council?
The Holy Spirit, but no less: “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8).
Can anything good come from Venezuela?
“we see this revisionist theology of proletarian privilege”
There might still have been some modest, plausible basis for this pretense in 1965. But today, just to look at the people who compose the ranks of the German Synodal Weg, or indeed the most common participants of the Synodal meetings I have seen…well, allow me to suggest that shipfitters, miners, and even Amazon warehouse workers seem awfully thin on the ground. What we actually seem to see instead is, de facto, a lay *managerial class* privilege. And, one might add, it is a managerial class cohort whose moral, political and social outlooks are just about indistinguishable from their liberal, non-Catholic managerial class peers.
All of which nonetheless only reinforces Larry Chapp’s sense of what destination lies at the end of the road this enlightened class wants to drive to: “a purely democratic sociological reality grounded in accommodation to modern liberalism, oriented toward purely horizontalist and globalist endeavors in a humanistic register.”
Excellent article. Especially this paragraph:
“This is salvation via bureaucratic structures—the exact opposite of a true synodality and its inherent Christological personalism. It seems to have escaped the notice of many that the predominant reality of this entire synodal “process” is the emphasis precisely on “process”. And that the “process” is dominated by the presence of endless committees operating, as all bureaucracies do, with the layered anonymity of faceless apparatchiks who were not voted on by “the people” but appointed by other faceless apparatchiks sitting behind some epicene desk in Rome.”
Yes, the main thing I have been reminded of, when I read about the Synod’s proceedings, is work. Especially the seemingly unending series of meetings for some planned reorganization or restructuring or re-visisioning that is intended to transform and revitalize the organization in unprecedented ways. I even recognize the “magic” round tables that are supposed to put all participants on an equal footing so that everyone can equally contribute, without respect to position or rank. Reports are made, sometimes with recommendations, and feed into other reports with recommendations which eventually make their way upline where big decisions are made, or maybe not made. By that point, there’s rarely enough substance in those final decisions for substantial implementation. Often, as a partipant, you end up wondering what happened to the recommendations that your groups made. But after you’ve been a participant several times, you stop wondering. I can just catch up on whatever Gartner or one of the other major consulting firm are currently pushing to figure out what might happen.
Seeing the same patterns emerging has been the main reason that I have lost faith in any of the current plans for transforming the Church through “synodality,” ever since the first big synod in Rome that was held how many years ago? I can’t even remember which one it was.
Just another hackneyed phrase used by everybody for anything for anyone who remotely “identifies” as Catholic. Same as “the new evangelization” where I am constantly reminded of an old New Yorker cartoon set in a Madison Avenue board room, where an ad guy is standing in front of a new ad for “New Improved Sparkle!”, answering a question from the board with, “What’s new about it?! The NEW is what’s new about it!!”
Seems difficult to refute any of this. In considering the possibility of refutation, I’d be interested in seeing one of the above-mentioned hypothetical conferences [e.g., a gathering sponsored by Courage, by traditionalists, or of Catholic Workers] actually coming into existence and then observing whether any papal blessings are elicited thereby.
Reply to Carl Olson’s reply to me:
I don’t have the data, of course. It’s an assumption on my part. Perhaps the less than 1% commentators are an unrepresentative sample. Perhaps not. Be that as it may, that 1% are certainly radical right. If that’s an inappropriate label, then I should think of another that expresses who they are, and from what I’ve read, they are arrogant, nasty, irreverent towards the Holy Father, sloppy, ignorant of Vatican II, etc.,. Maybe ‘radical right’ is too polite a term. They are certainly not balanced folk. I can’t help but think Chapp cringes when he reads their comments. If not, there is something not quite right with him.
You may have tens of thousands of readers, but I highly doubt that the more balanced minded Catholics read this journal. The articles are just too bitter–and since we’re speaking of tea, perhaps Kuding tea is a fitting comparison.
Your next comment shows that you are just not listening, and that makes perfect sense, given the continuous negative press on the synod that has as its goal a more listening Church. A Church that just pontificates from on high has not been taught to listen, and that seems to be what many on this site are comfortable with. My knickers are hardly in a knot. Rather, when I receive the latest issue of CWR, I look over the authors, and usually just delete, because I know what I’m going to get. But I’ve heard and read Larry Chapp before, and I enjoyed it, so I always hope that I’m going to get a nice article that is going to inspire and help me to deepen my understanding of the faith–even if it addresses a current matter. So I have been reading his articles, in a spirit of hope. But they’ve been so disappointing, and they continue to disappoint. I am beginning to think CWR brings out the worst in him.
Yes, Kuding tea is not really my cup of tea, but it is not unreasonable to expect a Catholic journal that claims to be “faithful” to build up rather than always whining and shooting fish in a barrel. You’re too much like mainstream media that is only interested in reporting on bad news. You’re obviously bored with the good news that comes out of the Vatican, which is why we hear nothing about it, but highly interested in whatever you can criticize.
And as for Father James Martin, he doesn’t continually undermine the truth about the human person, sexuality, marriage and related matters. Rather, we have an entire network of culture warriors obsessed with this issue, going over his every tweet, concerned about little else. I don’t blame him for wanting to push the envelope a little, but he’s written on why the Church teaches that same sex marriage is wrong, and he did a good job on it. That should have settled it, but it didn’t. Websites like Church Militant, Lifesite News, and this one, just cannot get beyond these issues.
Thomas James: It baffles me why anyone of your caliber would condescend to spend any of his valuable time hobnobbing with the dolts who frequent this site. Perhaps you ought not waste your time here and, instead, develop your own Catholic website where the elitists such as yourself can accompany one another.
Actually, Deacon Ed, I suspect Thomas James is far beyond us hard-right Catholics now. He ought to think about exploring more advanced spheres of consciousness via disciplines like Vinyana Flow or Neo Bhakti Yoga.
Brineyman: Actually. I would be proud to wear the moniker of “hard right” or “extreme right” and even that A-bomb of silencing strategies – “racist”. Let’s face it, the opposing thinking is “leftist” – synonymous with “sinister”.
Synonymous with culture of death.
“And as for Father James Martin, he doesn’t continually undermine the truth about the human person, sexuality, marriage and related matters.”
He most certainly does. Martin is a homosexualist priest who intentionally and actively subverts church teaching about sexuality. And he does so with the pope’s support. Anyone paying attention knows this.
Thomas James!
Thank you for your classic popesplanation! Yours is one of the all-time comments on CWR!
I couldn’t help noticing your entire case is built on ad hominem attacks, totally devoid of reason or fact.
To those of us “radical hard rightists” who are not agitating for the canonization of Bergoglio while he is still living, you offer no explanation for the various Bergoglian conundra we are constantly faced with. E.g.:
— Why Bergoglio supports the blessing of sinful gay associations, while attacking and vilifying the centuries old Catholic Mass.
— Why Bergoglio cashiers faithful Catholic bishops like Burke and Strickland while allowing the serial abuser and desecrater Marko Rupnik to continue to function (yes pun) as a priest year after year after year.
— Why Bergoglio continues to support bishops and priests who advocate for sexual sin.
— Why Bergoglio has appointed pro-abort personnel to the JP II Institute.
— Why Bergoglio exhibits the most barefaced and insulting bigotry toward millions of people he’s never met by mischaracterizing their beliefs and dismissing them contemptuously.
— Why Bergoglio fails to defend the faith at every turn, remaining mum in the face of the recent unprecedented Olympian anti-Christ hate-fest; scandalizing the faithful by meeting repeatedly with the architects of the most heinous holocaust the world has ever witnessed, members of the death cult that is the Democratic Party; saying nothing when the U.S. government targets peaceful pro-life advocates and condemns them as to years-long prison terms.
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Now, please let me know how my view of this papacy is faulty by detailing the many faults of Donald Trump.
brineyman: Nor why Saint Pope Francis adopts the atheistic denial of immutable truth, nor his implicitly atheistic contention that God can be stupid enough to keep changing His mind.
Thomas James,
About your slanderous whining, and thinking inter-religiously (!) from the Hadith: “the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.” have a smiley-button day!
TJ: You’re too much like mainstream media that is only interested in reporting on bad news.
I don’t believe you understand your own words or the reality they represent. Take a look at the listing of today’s CWR Dispatch articles. Do you not see the positives in any of these? If not, perhaps you’d better look again at the glass half full which you seem to see as almost empty. Do you understand projection? Negative complaints and whining (yes, whining) do not necessitate coddling from truth-seeking folk. The child God loves He will chastise.
* Athletes witness to their faith despite Olympic ban
* Spiritual hunger and the Bread of Life
* Hundreds of Christian leaders appeal for persecuted religious minorities in India
* Saint Dominic and the Dominican witness to truth
Thomas James: The early Church specifically condemned abortion even though Scripture provides only a few references to the humanity of the unborn in language that would not be viewed as “political” given the linguistic stupidity of our contemporary progressive establishment. Neither did the Fifth Commandment go into detail. God expects us to use the minds He gave us with honesty, not with sinful deceit.
Development of doctrine does not exist as a way to rationalize a way to weasel out of our sins by, such things as modernists are prone when they make preposterous abuses of things like “science” to justify them. As a scientist, I’ll remind you of what you were taught in third grade. Science says nothing about value judgments.
And honest moral understanding always increases in proscriptions. It never decreases. Common sense tells us what our rationalizing is really up to when 99 percent of homosexuals are either very supportive of abortion or consciously very tolerant. Habitual abuse and perversion of a human faculty destroys moral reflexes, which is why the anti-pastoral accommodational approaches of Father James Martin, whom you believe is humanly incapable of lying to himself and others, does so much harm to humanity.
“Undermine the truth of the human person”? What does that even mean? “Listening church”? Ditto. While people looking at the undermining of “male and female He created them”, and “be fruitful and multiply” and who become upset and defend the it are the ones with psychological problems? You are a really poor analytical psychologist, but then, most of them are…and resort only to insulting comments of unbalanced readers, panties in wad, obsessed cultural warriors, etc, where I say unto thee, “Modern keyboard warrior pop psychologist, heal thyself.”
Any reading of the Bible will show that God’s Chosen People often rebelled against God. No sooner than they had sworn a solemn blood covenant at Mt. Sinai that they broke this covenant by building the golden calf. Despite all the favors that God lavished upon King Solomon he listened to his foreign wives and had his heart turned away from God. Deuteronomy 17:14-20 lists the limitations of royal authority. King Solomon broke them. 1 Kings 10-11 contains a listing of his wealth and his errors. There is a reference to 666 talents of gold in verse 10:14. His reign ended in his fall though disobedience in spite of his wisdom.
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During Peter’s restoration for his denial Christ instructed him to feed His sheep. He also told him to “Follow Me” which shows that Christ is Peter’s master. In Revelation Christ’s messages to the seven churches contained rebukes, the one to the church at Laodiceia is very blunt.
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The Catholic Church belongs to Christ the Bridegroom. He is the One Who died on the Cross for our sins. He is the Author of His New and Everlasting Covenant that the Church is founded on. The Eucharist is the living embodiment of this covenant, linked by Christ during the Institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. It is this covenant that I bound myself to in the Sacraments of Initiation. The Church is not my personal property to do with as I please, I am accountable to Christ. Too many in the Church act like the tenants in the Parable of the Wicked Tenants. Everything in the vineyard was put there by the householder. The wicked tenants treated the vineyard like it was their own property. This parable was followed by the statement that “43 Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruits of it.” (Matthew 21:43)
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If you want to see how St. Paul dealt with factions read First Corinthians. There were those who thought that their knowledge that the pagan gods were false gave them permission to eat the meat offered to idols. This even though the Council of Jerusalem said otherwise. Sounds like the “spirit of Jerusalem” in action. St. Paul responded by saying that knowledge puffs up but that love builds up. That their knowledge could give bad example to people whose conscience was weak and lead them to sin. The Church appears to have those who have been swayed by puffed up worldly knowledge and wealth.
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Blind zeal is the result of those having too much confidence in their own opinions. I have a long time interest in contemplative prayer and like to meditate on spiritual matters. All my meditations that I do are subject to the test of the Bible and the historic Church teachings. Nothing is so because I say so. The corrosive effects of Original Sin, the darkened intellect, and weakened will, which survive baptism, afflict us all. I give myself no exemption to this reality. This is the distinction that the Bible makes between the sound eye and the bad eye. If I am unwilling to give myself a spiritual eye exam through self examination of the sort mentioned above, then how can I tell if I have a sound eye? The eye is talked about in the Fall of Man. Desire led Adam and Eve into Original Sin, and that was when they were in the state of Original Righteousness, bought about by listening to the serpent. They took the things that are God’s without His permission, just like the wicked tenants.
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Christ left us the Great Commission which says:
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16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 And when they saw him they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” (Matthew 28:16-20 RSVCE)
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The Holy Spirit was sent at Pentecost and has left us a 2,000 year record of His working in the Church. We have our mission, are we willing to do it faithfully?
Perhaps a moratorium on the use of “right wing” and “left wing” as descriptors in theological discussion would help reveal not only the paucity of faith-based reasoning these terms ignore but also the extent to which theology is subordinated to politics in the employment of them.
The heart of our current conundrum can be found in Dr. Chapp’s citation of Pope Francis erroneous attempt to justify – in essence – the entire post-conciliar enterprise, but specifically this current confection termed synodalism, all “…in the name of “listening to the People of God.”
Few indeed are the souls attending Sunday Mass who have the slightest knowledge of this enterprise. Those who do provide the thumbs down. Likely fewer of them have had any comprehensive, accurate catechesis. The preponderance of the baptized were abandoned by their pastors and religious in the late sixties.
The Roman Catholic Church – along with mainstream Protestantism – would presently be difficult to identify as a religion at all. The ecumenically sensitive Anglican theologian John Macquarrie once described theology as “the study which, through participation in and reflection upon a religious faith, seeks to express the content of that faith in the clearest and most coherent language available. Religion itself he regarded as the group of structures that grow up around the giving and receiving of a revelation. Contemporary Christianity is anything but – it is post-christian secularism anxious to have a seat of honour in the academy and in the secular materialist global initiative.
Whatever the positive notions propounded in the Conciliar documents – there was essentially nothing new. What is good and true there was good, true and present before October 1962. The conciliar event must be judged by its consequences. Those are tragic if not obscene. Anyone who denies this truth is as delusional as any pious recipient of a spurious apparition. Indeed, given the endless appeals to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit which we have shouldered in the post-conciliar epoch, one must ask how these inspirations are evaluated…do you have to have a Ph.D. or an S.J. after your name to be found credible? Do you have to have your personal correspondence with a woman remain under lock-and-key for one hundred years after your death as do Father Rahner’s missives?
There is a cloud of stench hanging over the Church of Christ today and it need be dispersed with an unrivaled zeal. The coffee klatsch generated by this article does little to accomplish that.
Von Balthasar comes to mind…”theology is an occupation of the knees,” as does Teresa of Jesus…”humility is truth.” The truth of ourselves must be engaged before we approach the Infinity Mystery of our God and His revelation to us. We are on sacred ground, not a field of dreams.
@Elias,
Your words remind me of the difficulties that the Militia of the Immaculata, as mentioned by Father Kolbe (whose liturgical memory we will commemorate tomorrow), are destined to face. Among these, the hardest challenge is not the work or the persecution from enemies, but the opposition that can come from sensible, prudent, and even devout and holy people. Even Father Kolbe was accused, by some of his confreres and superiors, of being a “visionary dreamer” and of exaggerating in his devotion to the Immaculata. I would never compare myself to him! However, it is important to remember that Jesus does not cause conflict for the sake of it, but because His testimony, in a world that already opposes Him, cannot help but provoke reactions. His disciples must be ready to overcome these challenges.
All conflicts throughout history, in one way or another, involve a choice between adherence to or opposition against Christ. Even in conflicts among Christians, there are those who are truly against Christ and those who only appear to be. Christ knows what is in the heart of man, as He is the creator of man. He compels us to make a choice: either we love Him with all our heart, or we reject Him.
Many today show indifference towards Christ, claiming that they can live well without Him, as suggested by various modern philosophies. God allows the Church to be opposed by demonic forces, which also work within the Church and within each of us, leading us to sin. However, the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph have an essential role in combating Satan’s influence, as the antithesis of Eve and the serpent.
In Europe, despite the presence of the Holy See, we witness a phenomenon of de-Christianization influenced by anti-Christian philosophies that began to emerge in the 17th century. The Second Vatican Council did not bring the expected fruits due to a resurgence of modernism and opposing conservative reactions. The Church in Europe appears divided and weakened, yet it continues to advance in truth and holiness.
The history of humanity is marked by the struggle between the forces of the Holy Spirit and those of the devil, a conflict that takes place primarily within the spirits and consciences of individuals but sometimes manifests outwardly as well. However, it is not always easy to recognize if what appears outwardly truly reflects the interior reality.
Ultimately, the fate of man and the meaning of life boil down to one’s relationship with God. If a person chooses their own ego over God, there are only two outcomes: either the carnal man, a slave to passions, or the diabolical man, who wants to become God or take God’s place.
I believe we must keep these truths in mind whenever Sacred Doctrine is criticized. I greet you and keep you in my prayers.
Very kind of you toward me I think; however, what it says does not do is add luster to those things I criticized nor does it resolve the conflict going on between/among members of the hierarchy themselves inherently set in place by the types of contents emphasized roundabouts everywhere nor does it resolve the sinfulness involved in those stymieing the ending of scandal.
This is what I am telling you about misplaced authority and misplaced non-authority. Certain members of the hierarchy might be dead set on an idea that a truth is meant to only originate from them and they are not rigid in the stubbornness.
If I demonstrate conclusively to a parish priest that the parish group is made up only on abortionists but for one; and by his subsequent actions he acquiesces, then in the eyes of God, words will make no difference and the elegance of the Kolbe story will count for nothing. Mind what you do around me please sir.
To quote our Pope,’there is already enough faggotry in the vatican’. I actually do think he is aware of the situation, and not as complicit as one might assume from the company he keeps. I think he is getting it all out in the open, by creating space for dissidents to gather he is bringing them out of the woodwork, or out of the closets one might say. I think we will watch the Holy Spirit deal with the heresy and heretics appropriately (with love, and no partiality) But that’s just what I think. Patience. Let’s pray, together, and often!
Thanks Larry for another stimulating read.
I remember Paul VI and the first council. Since then, where have we gone?
We have had great retreats and some were movements that may have been Anti-Christ brain-washing programs.
I have led (chaired) over 100 major proposals “Red Team” reviews. We always had a successful review. The goal was “To improve the document”.
Where is this activity headed?