On the anniversary of his election, and with a year of the papacy under his belt, it is fair to say that Pope Leo would make, as a friend of mine has stated, a “good poker player”. He holds his cards close to his vest and is careful to avoid giving away “tells” as to his deepest theological convictions.
I, however, will put my cards on the table: I like Pope Leo, and I think he is cautious to a fault precisely because he senses that the greatest need right now is for the turbulent ecclesial waters to be calmed.
Testing on two fronts
But that desire for a calming of the waters is about to be tested on two fronts with the emergence of two ecclesial headaches—from each end of the spectrum—that are going to force Leo to make some stark decisions.
First, Cardinal Reinhard Marx in Germany stated recently that the German bishops are going to issue a formal blessing for homosexual “unions”, precisely as an official liturgical blessing of those unions per se as unions. Unfortunately for the Germans, this violates Fiducia Supplicans in at least two ways (which I will discuss below). The German disregard for Fiducia is a serious matter, regardless of what one thinks of Fiducia, because the German move signals a kind of “end game” escalation of the German “synodal way” with the German hierarchy testing the new pope’s resolve to thwart much of the agenda of that “way”.
Fiducia asserts that the blessings of couples in “irregular unions” must be “spontaneous” and never formalized as an actual liturgical blessing published in an official liturgical text from the diocese. The current German proposal directly contradicts this rule and creates a situation where parishes will be advertising such “liturgical” events and hosting marriage-simulating celebrations for all manner of unions no matter their moral standing within the Church. Anyone who thinks that this is not where this is headed is naïve or in denial.
The Germans are attempting an end-run around Church teaching by stating that these are blessings of unions, but not in any way a form of “gay marriage” in the Church. But this is such a transparently empty distinction, given what the average German Catholic thinks about sex and gender issues, that nobody really believes that this is anything other than an attempted normalization of homosexuality in the Church.
Finally, and most obviously, Fiducia forbids the use of these blessings as a blessing on the union as such, and what is being blessed are merely two individuals who have asked for a blessing in order to lead a better and more Christian life. I think this is a slippery distinction, as I have written before, since it is open to the very abuses the Germans are now pushing.
Needless to say, just as with the SSPX’s recent announcement that they will defy Rome and ordain new bishops in July, here too is a “crisis” that has been deliberately engineered. There was nothing in the German situation that “demanded” this action be taken now. There is no real “emergency”—the Germans have decided, for reasons known only to them, that now is the time to throw down the gauntlet.
Differing motivations
The two situations, it seems to me, differ in their motivations.
The SSPX decision seems grounded in an exasperated impatience with Rome’s “stubborn” belief that an ecumenical council and the six papacies that followed it still carry binding and normative magisterial weight. The SSPX leadership knows that Pope Leo will not change this reality, and therefore their overtures to Rome for dialogue ring hollow. They know the situation is hopeless in terms of “regularization” and so their motives for making the move now are clear. We have a young pope who is not a “traditionalist”. Time to move on.
The Germans, by contrast, seem to be merely kicking the tires on this young papacy and deliberately engineering this confrontation to gauge just where Leo stands on all of this, and, by extension, how much else of the Teutonic “synodal way” will survive under his leadership.
It did not take long for the Germans to get their answer. In an airplane interview on April 23rd, Leo made it clear that the Vatican does not agree with the German plan and that this has been communicated to the German hierarchy. He did not say if there was any response from the Germans, nor did he give any clues about what he might do if the Germans defy the Vatican and move ahead with the blessings. The only clue he may have given, however obliquely, was to say that he did not think matters of sexual morality should divide the Church.
Was that a warning to the Germans that the Pope considers their proposal as potentially a sin against ecclesial unity and thus they should not insist upon it, or was he signaling that the Vatican would not insist upon its views on the matter, sacrificing doctrinal truth for the sake of ecclesial peace? My money is on the former and not the latter since Leo must surely understand that if the Vatican just turns a blind eye to the Germans, should they go ahead with this, the silence from Rome would in effect be a tacit approval for the new blessings, or at least that the matter is not important enough to warrant discipline.
And this would give a green light for many other liberal leaning episcopal conferences to do the same. At which point it would be too late for Rome to stop the popular tsunami of “gay blessings” that would sweep across vast sectors of the Church.
Pope Leo’s remarks on sexual morality
In that same interview, Pope Leo went on to reorient the relative importance of sexual morality in the hierarchy of moral concerns, which I think was expressed somewhat clumsily. I in no way think he meant to communicate via his statement that sexual issues are trivial. Furthermore, he was correct to point out that a singular fixation on sexual matters as the main focus of Catholic morality is a false characterization. And this is not a bogeyman or a straw man he is attacking, since there are many Catholics who, either consciously or subconsciously, so emphasize sexual purity as the bell cow of a “virtuous life”, that it has the net effect of trivializing other sins that are truly toxic to the soul in deeper ways.
By way of support for the pope’s views, I offer here what C. S. Lewis had to say on this topic:
If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual … For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold self-righteous prig who regularly goes to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But of course, it is better to be neither. (Mere Christianity, Christian Behavior, chapter five)
However, despite the obvious truth of the pope’s casual observation, some have claimed that the comment was at the very least “infelicitous” and in need of a better and more nuanced treatment. Especially in light of the interconnectedness of the Church’s moral teachings, which, although admitting of a hierarchy of truths, never pits the higher against the lower.
But was the pope “pitting the higher against the lower”? I think not. There is another way to read the pope’s comments that goes beyond a lament over yet another papal controversy generated by an off-the-cuff airplane interview. And that approach is to read his comments about the hierarchy of moral concerns as indicative of why he thinks both the SSPX and the Germans are wrong; to wit, that they both represent a skewed understanding of the exact nature of the crisis we face in the world today and, therefore, are engaging in a truly false reading of the “signs of the times”.
In other words, what they prioritize as of ultimate importance–even to the point of stressing ecclesial unity to the breaking point–is not of ultimate importance at all. It is not even of penultimate importance.
Herein, we begin to see the emerging theological priorities of Leo’s pontificate. And those priorities have no time for the bourgeois sexual obsessions of the left or the rage nostalgia of the Catholic right, as it seeks a romanticized restoration of a Church that never actually was.
We see this in his response to the SSPX. And so far, that response is silence; a “talk to the palm” dismissal of the SSPX’s myth of origin, which is that it is the sole hope for a Church in the death throes of a wide and deep apostasy. His silence represents a thorough rejection of the SSPX claim that this apostasy stretches from the pope in Rome down to the lowest regions of the Church, as seen in such “blasphemous” outrages as communion in the hand and the horrific “Masonic” Novus Ordo.
The restorationist emotivism of the SSPX betrays an intellectual immaturity incapable of dealing with the nettle of the sociocultural crisis that confronts us. In short, I think that, for Pope Leo, the Church does indeed face a crisis. But it is not the crisis the SSPX imagines it is. Furthermore, the SSPX’s misdiagnosis of the crisis at hand leads them to make positive prescriptive proposals that will not only not heal the crisis, but will make the patient far sicker.
Pope Leo, in my view, and without minimizing the need for intra-ecclesial reforms, understands that the real crisis we are facing is a sociocultural one with far-reaching implications for all of humanity, including, of course, those in the Church. What we see is the coming together of a perfect storm of cultural factors that threaten to strengthen into a monster typhoon of revolutionary change.
The current crisis and Leo’s thinking
This perfect storm began with the emergence of the reductive materialistic naturalism that is the default worldview of modernity, going back two or three centuries now. This reduction, which is ultimately corrosive of the human, is then combined with the modern digital technological revolution and further combined with the rise of predatory surveillance capitalism. All of this is larded with a de facto atheism that insinuates into this digital erasure of the human a subtle nihilism, which brings in its wake the false anthropology of a neutralist understanding of freedom as autonomy, all of which is finally now culminating in the rise of a truly post-Christian situation on both the political right and the left.
In other words, I think Leo sees clearly that the crisis that confronts us is a crisis of the loss of humanity as such, with the attenuation of our souls becoming so severe that it is a thinning out into a wispy, gossamer nothingness–both fragile and fungible–that only a return to Christ can solve. The moment we face is a radical one insofar as it is taking us back to the very roots of everything, all of which demands a powerful doubling down on the pursuit of holiness. As C.S. Lewis observed, what we face is the loss of the contours of the human in the “Abolition of Man”.
I think this is Leo’s concern as well.
Leo’s response to the Germans is equally dismissive. His comments could be rephrased as, “stop your obsession with sex and come out of your adolescent arrested development, since we have much larger concerns on our doorstep than baptizing and promoting the exhausted categories of bourgeois sexual mores.” That may be reading a lot into the pope’s comments. But based on many other things he has said, I think it is an accurate reading.
There are three keys to the mind of Leo here that are hidden in plain sight.
First, that Pope Leo is an Augustinian and therefore it is safe to assume that he has a largely Augustinian understanding of history as the theodramatic confrontation between the “city of man” and its fundamental orientation to the libido dominandi, and the “city of God” with its fundamental orientation to the love of God, and all that relates to God, which includes the charity and justice owed to our neighbors. Therefore, it is highly doubtful he is in that school of thought that believes that the Holy Spirit is “doing a new thing” via the unregenerated desires of pop culture, now baptized as the very voice of God.
The second key is his choice of the name “Leo”. I think he did so after very careful consideration. Many of the names he could have chosen carried with them the baggage of ecclesial politics. Had he chosen the name Francis or Benedict or Paul or John or John Paul or Pius, instant polarizations would have emerged and a narrative of who he “must be” concocted within hours of his election. Therefore, he reached back to a name not easily given to such political freighting, but also one that expressed his own concern that the Church’s “social teaching” (a term I am not fond of, actually) should be marshalled once again to confront what is perhaps the gravest set of crises ever to beset humanity.
The third key is the fact that he spent twenty years as a missionary in Peru. You do not come away from that experience unchanged. I spent time as a seminarian in Latin America. In the rural, poorer regions, what you encounter are elemental realities and truths that lead to a painful purgation of idolatries as the dross of what del Noce calls the modern “cult of bourgeois well-being” is burned away. Such a man as Pope Leo will have little time for our decadent obsessions with sex or for the epicene foppishness of our new class of liturgical savants.
It is clear that Pope Leo instead wants to tap into the Church’s deep reservoir of Christ-centered wisdom to meet these new threats—threats almost apocalyptic in their implications—via a deep and prophetic critique of the libido dominandi, which has morphed of late and undergone a very real apotheosis into the strong gods of Blut und Erde. To borrow a phrase from Paul Claudel, the Church must recover its Christological “mystique” to combat the counterfeit mystique of the murderous Moloch, the disordered eroticism of Dionysius, and the unvarnished and out-of-control rage of Ares.
Looking ahead
Therefore, both the SSPX and the Germans emerge as obtuse distractions, insofar as their concerns and obsessions are simply non-starters. I therefore make the bold prediction that, under Leo, we are not going to get women priests/deacons, “gay marriages/blessings”, contraception, a democratized Church, or any of the other Germanic fever dream fantasies.
Nor are we going to repudiate Vatican II and the entire modern magisterium of the Church and reject religious freedom, liturgy in the vernacular, and interreligious and ecumenical dialogue. Those also are fever-dream fantasies of a restorationist sort.
Along these lines, there are strong rumors that Leo will publish his first encyclical on May 15th, the anniversary of Rerum Novarum. The rumors are that it will be called “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity) and will attempt to apply the fundamental social teaching principles of Rerum Novarum in an updated way in order to address topics including artificial intelligence, the ever-escalating threats of war, and the loss of respect for human dignity and moral agency in an age of reductive techno-nihilism.
It reminds me of another first encyclical by a previous pope. John Paul II’s “Redemptor Hominis”. It also was a response to the sociocultural anthropological crisis of our time.
May Leo’s first encyclical be as successful. I think it will be, and it will give us a clear indication of his profound concern for the ongoing desolation of the human landscape.
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The SSPX doesn’t assert the Church must necessarily repudiate Vatican II, but that Rome will revisit its texts to make sure the conciliar “spirit” can no longer be grafted on to that Council. Just like the Council of Constance (which was in part overrun by ideological dross from the secular world and its power), Vatican II will be officially re-read by the Church in a way that makes clear there is no contradiction of preceding magisterium. The crisis surrounding Constance was even longer than our two generations of chaos, so those who are content with the pathetic stance of the Church over recent times should not draw comfort. It can’t last. Time to move on from the sixties, old boy.
The problem in the Catholic Church is now, and has been for decades, homosexuals (closeted and otherwise) in the clerical ranks. Homosexual behavior and attitudes have been a cancer eating at the moral fiber of the Church and it is most pernicious among the hierarchy. Unless the cancer is named and efforts made to eradicate it, disunity in the Catholic Church will worsen. Sin and a disordered lifestyle is never compatible with grace.
Thank you, Dr. Chapp. I have great respect for your extraordinary theological knowledge and wisdom.
I do, however, tend to agree with Deacon Edward’s emphasis. It seems to me that the SSPX is an infinitesimal segment of the Church having no real influence on or for 99%+ of practicing Catholics. The obvious and diabolical influence of the Lavender Mafia within the Vatican and broader Church, by contrast, is a far more serious concern that must be addressed in love and truth.
A very perspicacious understanding of a root problem within the Church, DEP. And the ongoing existence of and support for Fiducia Supplicans underscores how this problem continues to metastasize into more and more overt acceptance of active homosexuality as a “legitimate lifestyle” as is also evidenced by the infamous “Study Group 9 Report.”
Also note how Pope Leo’s criticism of the Germans plays into the acceptance of Fiducia Supplicans by too many Catholics who should be opposed to Fiducia Supplicans in its entirety, yet they praise the Pope for his would-be cracking down on the Germans in their going beyond what Fiducia Supplicans authorizes. By doing this, the Pope is wrongly seen as promoting official Church teaching, and this reinforces their gullible acceptance of Fiducia Supplicans.
But Fiducia Supplicans, no matter how it is “enforced,” is a monstrously evil document in and of itself, failing as it does in many ways, not the least of which is a failure to call sinful couples who engage in mortally sinful sexual behavior to repentance (which makes Fr. James Martin very happy in his ongoing Satanic efforts to get the Church to accept mortally sinful homosexual behavior as legitimate and not sinful), and the fact that the Pope criticized a more “extreme” application of Fiducia Supplicans by the Germans does not make the accepted application of Fiducia Supplicans a good or virtuous thing as the Pope and others promote it as being, and as too many people also accept it as being despite its abject acceptance of homosexual behavior no matter how it is spun by Church leadership.
Both sides of the spectrum? The SSPX basically believes what Catholics believed before and during the Council. The Germans believe something different than Christianity. The Pope spends time with people misleading others to think woman can be ordained. The Pope spends time with cardinals who reject the deposit of faith by saying woman can be ordained (contrary to JPII’s infallible teaching and clarification from Ratzinger’s CDF). The Pope does not meet with the group on the precipice of schism when they request a meeting. The Pope does meet with David Axelrod. The Pope does meet with Fr. James Martin, SJ. These are facts.
Much agreed: Spectrum?
Mr. Chapp writes:
“Leo made it clear that the Vatican does not agree with the German plan and that this has been communicated to the German hierarchy…..The only clue he may have given, however obliquely, was to say that he did not think matters of sexual morality should divide the Church.”
Not agreeing with the plan, which happens to include the ignored support for abortion? Is this like Francis’ lukewarm response that desired changes are not inherently wrong but must be done in union with the Church. Disagreements seem to have the weight of differing opinions on sports teams, not something too important.
No big deal are these matters of sexual morality, or any morality at all when a Kamala Harris fantasy of “unity” is at stake. No big deal if more millions of the unborn have to be sacrificed on the altar of the sex revolution when sustaining the fantasy is at stake.
Then what exactly did Jesus, in His unambiguous divisiveness, have to impart if not to take our sins seriously? Our sins are the one and only source of what separates us from God since the Garden of Eden. Small children, who are blessed to escape the non-Catholic indoctrination most receive in preparation for a First Communion, are able to understand this. Why not a Pope?
“Nor are we going to repudiate Vatican II and the entire modern magisterium of the Church and reject religious freedom, liturgy in the vernacular, and interreligious and ecumenical dialogue. Those also are fever-dream fantasies of a restorationist sort.”
Never difficult to create reductionisms of those “trads” ignored and scorned to posture a reasonable but fictional middle of “the spectrum.”
It is not the case that the pastoral non-magisterial Counsil, as Pope Paul describe it, is totally repudiated by SSPX or those sympathetic to them, only a collection of cynically planted, manipulatively worded, sentences at odds with doctrinal clarity, easily abused for Catholic anti-Catholic agendas, which even the Synod of 1985 recognized, are called for repudiation by “trads”.
And some liturgy in the vernacular is accepted by “trads,” such as the Nicene Creed, within a liturgical primacy of Latin, which VII did call for, which was rapidly displaced by revolutionaries, which VII did not call for. VII also fostered a view of religious freedom that downplays the Kingship of Christ, but “trads” do not deny the near impossibility of state religions in the modern world.
And when and where has ecumenism accomplished anything significant other than Christian deconstruction when the word apologetics is taken too literally?
What of the synod report 9? I think it is telling that the Vatican has threatened excommunication to the SSPX but no such threat to the German bishops or the authors of the report. So yes, I do think the Pope is minimizing sexual sin. Troubling especially around the time of the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima who emphasized the battle over marriage and family.
Thanks Larry for this most insightful piece. I agree completely.Particularly where Lewis sees the real conflict.Pax.
100%
I hope Larry is right about Leo, but I have my doubts.
I think Larry Chapp provides a sound overview of the set up of the situation.
I always found Lewis suspect and I say why by some of what shows here. Unchasteness becomes a supreme vice in the capital sin of lust; and unchasteness leads into those sins that cry to heaven for vengeance, namely sodomy and fornication. Unchasteness also attaches and helps other capital vices and sins like envy and murder. See today the world is awash with these major evils and we are told to make more and more accommodations for them because they relate with the secular realm “where no-one must pass judgment”. The reality is there is a constant drumbeat against chastity and it is coming from somewhere’ it is not countered effectively by “agreeing to downplay” chastity, nor are grace and virtue witnessed to that way.
Following the thought of Augustine, unchasteness is one of those things that unfasten the unity and integrity of the person. So what are rationalists to do but try to place people like Lewis over the fathers.
In fact we are obliged to regulate the secular realm and do it properly. This does not mean becoming merciless but it does mean mature and responsible use of discretion and good regulation by means available.
An interesting and worthwhile discussion, but, though I share Larry’s general hopefulness about Pope Leo, I think he may be reading too much into off the cuff airplane comments. I also feel called to point out, contra Leo’s and Lewis’s over-simplified categorization of sins, that St. Paul clearly says in Romans that God turned men over to sexual perversities precisely because of higher level sins. There is a reason “Pride” and sodomy are so linked today.
Another great article by Dr. Chapp! This tug-of-war between liberal German bishops and the demands of the SSPX on the Holy Father may offer an opportunity for the majority of Catholics to reaffirm our commitment to a balanced, post-conciliar orthodoxy; one exemplified in the teachings of Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, and articulated most clearly in the universal Catechism of the Catholic Church.
A genuine embrace of the hermeneutic of continuity could do much to heal divisions within the Church and provide a path forward. Religious communities that seem to embody this vision particularly well include the Oratorians, the Franciscans of the Renewal, the Nashville Dominicans, and the Sisters of Life to name a few. These communities excel in both evangelizing in the modern world and are also doing well in terms of vocations.
A generous, confident modern Catholic orthodoxy offers a constructive path ahead. By contrast, both nihilistic liberalism and nostalgic traditionalism are dead ends.
Someone in leadership of the Jesuits and/or on the hierarchy at the Vatican needs to do something about the James Martin S.J. problem. He is damaging the Body of Christ and is getting away with it.
There used to be a poster over on a site that closed down its comment section by the same of “Art Deco” who had a line about parts of the Jesuits being run on single malt scotch and sodomy, no doubt borrowing the line about the Royal Navy being run on sodomy, rum and the lash.
When I see Martin with his theatric effeminacy, he fits the bill, except I see him as a White Claw drinker. Do have to figure he’s putting his Wharton education and experience @ GE to good use making heresy a cottage industry.
I could not agree more.
To deal with the toadie, we must continue to call out his boss. Behind every Fr. Martin is the ideologically driven snake oil salesmen pushing the false cure. “See here, he eats the poison but survives with a bit of ‘holy’ water from the famed Fountain of Franciscus!”
Speaking of fun with AI, see the result for “toadie”:
“A toadie (also spelled toady) is a servile flatterer or sycophant. It refers to a person who excessively praises, acts obsequiously, or does degrading things for someone in authority, usually in the hope of gaining a personal advantage, special favors, or protection.Related InformationSynonyms: Bootlicker, brown-noser, minion, lackey, fawner, yes-man.Usage: Can be used as a noun (“He surrounds himself with toadies”) or as a verb—often as to “toady up” to someone (“She was always toying up to the boss”).Word Origin: The word originated in the 17th century as a shortened version of “toadeater”. Quacks and charlatans would have an assistant eat or pretend to eat a live, “poisonous” toad so the quack could then make a show of magically drawing out the poison and saving their helper’s life. Because the assistant had to do such a distasteful, degrading task to make the boss look good, the term evolved to describe any subservient flatterer.”
“Keep watch over yourselves and over the whole flock of which the Holy Spirit has appointed you overseers, in which you tend the Church of God that he acquired with his own Blood.
I know that after my departure savage wolves will come among you,
and they will not spare the flock.
And from your own group, men will come forward perverting the truth to draw the disciples away after them.
So be vigilant and remember that for three years, night and day,
I unceasingly admonished each of you with tears.”
(Acts 20)
Chapp’s assessment of what direction Leo XIV is leading the Church, if there is a considered direction rather than laissez faire is fair minded considering what resources are available during Leo’s first year.
An impression of strained argumentation is given in the response to a hierarchy of morality regarding sexuality, that Pope Leo is considering the big picture rather than moral specifics. The desolation of the human landscape.
That is true within limitations since sexual issues relate directly to the traditional family and the very existence of Man and Church.
Although conviction as to a favorable interpretation of Pope Leo’s first year doesn’t appear evident. What is favorable is the good intent for the Church in this essay.
Please, Father: standing before the Divine Tribunal, do you think the average Catholic in the pews will be drilled on the intellectual intricacies of sexual ethics or held accountable for their obvious infractions – the church for so-long no longer teaches it has now begun to embrace? What matters is the original SOS, i.e. the Salvation of Souls (not the modern SOS, i.e. Synod on Synodality – that tautology whose modernist malformed are ever-busy undermining what little remains of authentic Catholicism).
Mark, the good insofar as purity is an apprehension that comes from the heart, apprehended in the physical world, although all apprehension including the spiritual, in its physical sensual presence is intellectual. It’s the intellect that understands.
God reads the heart. One may avoid sensuality, the sin of impurity, but if it isn’t out of that sense of goodness, a love of pure love, it doesn’t benefit that person. As Christ revealed this to the Pharisees who observed the law but lacked love.
Definition: “Purity is an apprehension that comes from the heart”. Can you please tell me whose definition is that? I have never seen that definition before.
What the pope should have said:
“My children, I weep for the millions of souls plunging into eternal hellfire through fornication and sodomy! Sexual sin is the gravest crisis facing humanity! I cannot sleep for thinking of the torments awaiting the unchaste!”
Now, this would be really based.
So, spectrum, the difference between the Germans on the one hand and the SSPX on the other is simple. The former, thus far, have only talked about defying Rome whereas the latter have been formally separated from Rome for over 50 years. The SSPX are Protestants by another name. The German episcopacy may be as well, but they’ve yet to formally cross the Rubicon. If the Germans go ahead with their plans and there is no correction from Rome, then we rightly draw conclusions.
You have chosen to misinform yourself. The German hierarchy has been actively living apart from Catholic doctrine for decades. Luther is alive and well in their theological poverty, to which Francis was sympathetic.
The SSPX has not been living apart from magisterial authority, even while Rome separates itself from the faith, and the authentic magisterium, which is doctrine, not the personal whims of high prelates. Francis mocking the received Deposit of Faith was not a solo act.
The SSPX are the exact opposite of Protestants. The Protestants sought to create a new church, much like the Synodal church.
They are quite the same in willfully separating themselves from the one true Catholic Church.
I will be pleasantly surprised if the hammer is brough down on the Germans because the fact is, even under the “arch conservative” post Vatican II papacies progressive dissent is never confronted and is largely allowed to smolder whereas trads get the hammer and at best get to live on reservations at the margins.
repudiate Vatican II and the entire modern magisterium of the Church
Well, if your new theologian heroes like Balthasar, De Lubac, Wojtyla and Ratzinger could essentially bid their time do an end run around Humani Generis
and then overturn the previous magisterium up to including literally cutting off the microphones of men like Cardinal Ottaviani at the Council you admitted elsewhere essentially failed anyway then can’t really blame the trads or the progressives for following the same strategy and thinking that everything is provisional.
Seems to me that the SSPX explicitly reject Vatican I.
Actually, Vatican II, by introducing “collegiality” has upended any notion of Papal Primacy. The SSPX reject collegiality. They embrace Papal Primacy. Your comment falls flat.
Mark,
Your partially informed and widespread dismissal of “collegiality” is the reason why Pope Leo XIV must continue his Wednesday Audiences focused on the Documents of Vatican II—rather than on, say, the spirit of the Council or later hybrid/bastardized “synods [of bishops].”
Collegiality remains hierarchical. The papacy is in direct line with St. Peter, while the other bishops are more than delegates or franchises since they are in direct line with the other apostles.
How does this unique institution work? Two Citations and the Backstory:
FIRST, “Bishops govern the particular churches entrusted to them as the vicars and ambassadors of Christ [….] This power, which they personally exercise in Christ’s name, is proper, ordinary, and immediate, although in exercise is ultimately regulated by the supreme authority of the Church, and can be circumscribed by certain limits, for the advantage of the Church or of the faithful [….] Their power, therefore, is not destroyed by the supreme and universal power. On the contrary it is affirmed, strengthened, and vindicated thereby, since the Holy Spirit unfailingly preserves the form of government established by Christ the Lord in his Church” (Lumen Gentium, Ch. III, n. 27).
SECOND, realizing that this not-unambiguous wording was deliberate (by some) and would even be exploited after the Council—that the papacy was being “deceived” (see Backstory, below)—Pope Paul VI required an Explanatory and Prefatory Note to be wrapped around Chapter III:
“[….] Therefore, it is significantly stated that ‘hierarchical’ [italics] communion is required with the head of the Church and its members. ‘Communion’ is an idea which was held in high honor by the ancient Church (as it is even today, especially in the East). It is understood, however, not of a certain vague feeling, but of an ‘organic reality’ which demands a juridical form, and is simultaneously animated by charity. Hence the Communion by practically unanimous consent decreed that it must be written ‘in hierarchical communion’ [….] In other words there is no distinction between the Roman Pontiff and the bishops taken collectively, but between the Roman Pontiff by himself and the Roman Pontiff together with his bishops [….] In every instance it is clear that ‘the union’ of bishops ‘with their head’ is contemplated, and never any action of the bishops taken ‘independently’ of the Pope” (“Explanatory Note,” November 16, 1964, published to the Council prior to their final vote on the Constitution).
BACKSTORY:
“Then one of the extreme liberals made the mistake of referring, in writing, to some of these ambiguous passages, and indicating how they would be interpreted after the Council. This paper fell into the hands of the aforesaid group of cardinals and superiors general, whose representative took it to the pope. Pope Paul, realizing finally that he had been deceived [!], broke down and wept.
“What was the remedy? Since the text of the schema did not positively make any false assertion, but merely used ambiguous terms, the ambiguity could be clarified by joining to the text a carefully phrased explanation. This was the origin of the Preliminary Explanatory Note appended to the schema [but published unnoticed at the very end of the final constitution, rather than as intended at the front of the affected Chapter 3].” (Fr. Ralph M. Wiltgen, SVD, “The Rhine Flows into the Tiber: A History of Vatican II,” 1967, p. 232).
As a 20-year pulse-check after the Council, and to offset the abuses, a real “synod of bishops” (The Extraordinary Synod of 1985) was convened by John Paul II and Ratzinger.
Among the Synod’s explicit suggestion was #6: “…a new and more extensive and deeper knowledge and reception of the Council. This can be attained above all through a new diffusion of the documents themselves.”
This remedial hint, after 20 years! And, now, over 60 years!!
Based on my admittedly limited sample size, my conclusion is that not many of the recent and mongrel synodallers, whether laity or in red hats, or even on “expert” Study Groups, were even required to read or even see the actual documents, after 1965 during their seminary (de)formation.
But, let’s have a show of hands.
Departure from traditional Catholic sexual morality is greater in Fiducia Suplican than from the Catholic sexual morality in Fiducia Suplican by the German synodial way.
Yes, Pope Leo speaks as a poker player, an office manager, a diplomat, and to date has avoided firm unambiguous stances on these issues, and China running roughshod over papal perogatives, while the SSPX appears to be headed for excommunication for doing the same. Where is firm teaching without the babble of popesplainer on both sides of every issue showing how THEIR read is the right one? Why should we have to guess? Do we have a shepherd or a diplomat? Do we have a Church or a PR firm always blowing smoke? A Church or chain of sacrament dispensing stations wondering where all the customers and their supporting money went, and trying to open new markets for increased cash flow? The defection from the Faith of many now running things is plain.
One difference between the SSPX and what the Chinese are doing is that the SSPX bishops do not claim to be ahead of any ecclesiastical sees.
Oh, the Chinese are athiests and SSPX are Christian.
A very excellent and encouraging article overall, but we also read: “Finally, and most obviously, Fiducia forbids the use of these blessings as a blessing on the union as such [?], and what is being blessed are merely two individuals who have asked for a blessing in order to lead a better and more Christian life.”
Two very reluctant comments:
FIRST, from the back bleachers, we can’t quite put lipstick on that pig…
Fiducia used the word “couples” by categorically fogging the meaning of the word “blessing” (now “spontaneous, non-liturgical, non-scandalous”), thusly without actually crossing any red line of contradiction. For some such reconcilers of mere polarities, there are no red lines. Better coverage would be to notice that there is no better person than a re-evangelized Cardinal Fernandez to now draw the line clearly for SSPX, and this is what has happened, CWR May 13: Vatican says SSPX faces excommunications for ‘schismatic’ bishop consecrations – Catholic World Report
SECOND, then there’s the problem of C.S. Lewis who wrote: “If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong[…] All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual.”
About the diabolical, why is it that exposed homosexual clerics often sidestepped by claiming that they had never violated their “vow of chastity”? Is it the very nature of the diabolical (of any sort) to still acknowledge human nature and natural law, but then to simply claim a categorical exemption (as from merely binary chastity)? But not a contradiction?
SUMMARY: The diabolical IS the serpentine ambiguity to self-identify as the real Father, but not “most obviously” as the “Father of Lies” (Jn 8:44).
About the universal natural law, “what has Jerusalem to do with Athens” (Tertullian), and likewise, what has the spirituality of human sexuality to do with the non-exempt homosexual lifestyle?
I think Lewis was only wrong on the ordering of sins, I would place Gluttony below Lust on how “bad” a sin is. Also Gluttony leads to Lust and Lust drags Gluttony down with it to the bottom with Pride.
And to those who claim the SSPX upholds “Traditional” Catholic teaching, why are they regularly violating the jurisdiction of the Bishops? Why did they continue to offer invalid marriages until Pope Francis gave them faculties? Have they repudiated these practices? Have they gone back and now offered proper marriages to unknowingly adulterous unions that they deceived?
Ah, more popesplaining by americans under Leo, still claiming we don’t know who Leo is after a year. What garnered criticism under Francis, now gets a pass under Leo. Does Chapp realize he indirectly endorses fiducia supplicans by lamenting that the german bishops are “disregarding” it; which presupposes that it’s a sound document that should be followed and tsk tsk on the germans for not doing so? Or is unity in heterodoxy a good thing? Completely glossed over is the real story- Leo’s embrace of F. S. But as that reveals heterodoxy, it must be smoothed over by making it about the germans and accepting the new goal post of not going too far with “formal” blessings. F.S. is the underlying problem and provides the foundation for the germans’ actions; yet we’re supposed to believe the problem is not Leo’s continuance of the document, but some people merely over-reaching with it?!
The germans have already “defied” rome for the last 10+ years and nothing has ever happened to them and nothing will, at least until orthodoxy returns to the papacy. Cardinal Parolin has already said the germans will face no discipline, as it’s “premature.” It should be clear by now that Francis and Leo are allowing/tolerating the germans to do as they wish, and thus their protests are token- not a single act of discipline has ever happened with germany. On the contrary, those responsible are promoted and highlighted. Discipline is invoked only for the orthodox and “traditional.” And how could one deny that the german synodal way is largely rome’s version on steroids. With the blessings issue, it’s been two years since the germans announced they would be doing so and nothing was done, no threats; then 9 months ago they issued their guidelines, and nothing happened, no threats, except an identical reply by Leo to what he recently said. Now here we are at the point of simply implementing on the diocesan level what was already issued 9 months ago on a national level; and they are proceeding despite Leo’s “protest;” and nothing will happen now. All of this seems to be a tactic by Rome- gaining further acceptance of things by pointing to something even more extreme by comparison- what the germans are doing- and setting new goal posts little by little.
The germans vs. the sspx is actually a glaring example of where Leo and co. stand: when the germans- and many others- openly spout heresy and heteropraxy and all kinds of craziness, Rome does nothing, but at most gives token statements, and grants them “dialogue” and “accompaniment,” claims it can’t give definite judgments, issues ambiguous documents and statements, while the germans ignore it; but, when the sspx wants to consecrate bishops- or anyone is too vocal with their orthodoxy and traditional sentiments- suddenly rome gets tough, discovers canon law, enacts discipline, gives clear statements. The sspx is also being held to requirements to which no one else is, while at least one other group/situation identical to it- consecrating bishops without mandate- is tolerated. It is thus erroneous to treat these two groups as two sides of the same coin.
As to Leo’s record there is a mountain of proof already- for one, he’s now openly said his pontificate will be marked by continuing and further implementing Francis’ agenda. He has thus done nothing to repudiate the bad things and even explicitly embraced many of them- F. Supplicans; T. Custodes; A. Laetitia and communion for the D & R; the notion the death penalty is intrinsically evil; he’s explicitly said multiple times that doctrine can change- not develop- and cited women’s ordination, marriage/homosexual “marriage and teaching on same-sex attraction as examples; continuing the synodal machine, whose latest doc. contains open heresy; continuing the agreement with china, even after a recent report saying the status of catholics there is worse than ever, while the patriotic church CONSECRATES BISHOPS WITHOUT PAPAL MANDATE AND NO SANCTIONS ARE APPLIED! Leo has also kept the same heterodox, corrupt personnel and just about all his new appointments, including as bishops, are of the same, with support of “lgbt” stuff and women’s ordination being their top “qualifications. There is the same corruption of protecting misbehaving clerics, including the fact that the rupnik case has now passed another year, but american outlets have simply stopped asking about it under Leo.
Finally there seems to be a new low standard and straw man of what we should apparently applaud and accept as the new normal: that we will not have what cannot be changed in the first place: women being ordained, homosexual marriages, official allowance of contraception. Not to mention we have seen this ruse before: the doctrine remains on paper but is undermined through heteropraxy and casting doubt, which Leo has continued, even by explicit statements as noted above. We also must consider that he really doesn’t need to do anything but simply let what francis put in place continue, and thus appearances may be deceiving. And please don’t start with the, “it’s only been a year, he needs to be careful, etc.” One can’t imagine an orthodox pope allowing such things to stand for a year and not do anything against them. For those who want to say this is a lot of naysaying, I again note the reaction, at least by many americans, under Francis vs. Leo, when the latter continues the identical things.
YES. Well said. Truly sad and sadly all too true.
“Finally, and most obviously, Fiducia forbids the use of these blessings as a blessing on the union as such, and what is being blessed are merely two individuals who have asked for a blessing in order to lead a better and more Christian life. I think this is a slippery distinction, as I have written before, since it is open to the very abuses the Germans are now pushing.”
No, it is not obvious at all – it is a make-believe statement. Make-believe statements are usually produced by a psyche which does not wish to face unpleasant reality because doing so would destroy a hope (or illusions). The price for comfort is that the longer one remains with the blur, the more it gets accustomed to it, losing an ability to see the deception.
The reality is rather simple and brutal: if ‘FS’ is about blessing homosexual individuals then there was no need in ‘FS’ whatsoever because the Church has always blessed individuals and groups of people as well (for example army).
If ‘FS’ appeared, it was only because an oblique blessing of a homosexual couple as a couple WAS NEEDED to satisfy the world. The source of a blur and confusion are PF (before) and now PL who are trying to eat a cake and to keep it at the same time: they try “to keep the Church’s teaching” via referencing it with their words while violating it with their deeds “to look nice”. This sickly dichotomy is the true modus operandi of two papacies. “Being nice” of two Popes is devaluing = emptying the Church ofc “being good”, of Christ.
In the light of Christ, the blur goes and the choice becomes clear: one or another but not two together:
“…if we recognize the biological abnormality (according to the natural law) and sinfulness (according to the Scriptures) of the homosexual intimate relationship – as it has been the teaching of the Church and of the Old Israel even before the creation of the New Israel – we can either name a sin aloud and then bless homosexuals so the blessing would aid them in repentance and in a battle with their sin. Or we can reconsider the teaching of the Church, find it to be mistaken, say it aloud and then bless homosexual relationships as being good in the eyes of God. As long as the Church accepts and teaches that homosexual sex is sinful, it cannot bless a homosexual couple.
I am not going to address here the most common argument of the proponents of the blessings of homosexual couples in the Roman Catholic Church who manage to split their conscience to the point of truly believing that blessing a couple does not mean an approval of the very actions which make them a couple because “we are blessing them as persons”. It has been addressed already, by the fact that the Church has been imparting blessings on the all kinds of persons (including homosexual) for all its history hence there was no need of a document that states so – unless one had in a mind something else than blessing a person, in this case the blessing of a couple as a couple. “No, they are blessed as persons”. Here we go again.”
(‘Abomination of Desolation’)
This is also the understanding of marriage that is offered by the Gospel. For this reason, when it comes to blessings, the Church has the right and the duty to avoid any rite that might contradict this conviction or lead to confusion. Such is also the meaning of the Responsum of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which states that the Church does not have the power to impart blessings on unions of persons of the same sex. Fiducia Suplicans, part 5.
Dr. Chapp neither lied nor was ignorant. The very thing you call ambiguous is plainly stated. The document is not that long and is well organized. If you want specifically the parts on same sex blessings it is at the end, but then you would miss the good exegesis on the nature of blessings.
Priorities are all wrong in this essay.
It is much too worldly.
After all, our Blessed Mother told St. Faustina that the three virtues dearest to her are Humility, Purity and Love of God.
Virtues, all three of which have been tossed in the dung heap of irrelevance by both the Magisterium and society as a whole.
The sodomites, both within the Magisterium and secular society, are setting themselves up for destruction.
And so they have no excuse for feigning surprise or ignorance when it comes.
For too long, peoples of various beliefs and opinions have convinced themselves in their pride and arrogance that they can tell God what their rules of engagement are, and actually expect Him to passively go along with them.
Quoting CS Lewis, a smart and good writer, on the hierarchy of sin? This seems to show little regard or knowledge for the richness of Catholic theology.
Traditional Catholic patrimony is well represented in Aquinas and Gregory. Those two would rate gluttony as the least harmful sin.
Augustine rated his own worst personal sin as lust/unchastity. The sin is serious because it gives rise to many other sins, as capital sins are wont. A consequence of Augustine’s unchastity resulted in a son. What happened to that fatherless child when Augustine put away the child’s mother? Contemplate them.
Then contemplate the current US and world’s falling birth rate, the human and financial cost of the AIDS pandemic, the abortion rate, the transgender LGBTQ+++ behaviors, etc. Do we see that ugly picture of the apocalyptic HARM attending the vice of lust? It is grim and cries out to the Lord from the ground for vengeance.
https://scriptoriumdaily.com/augustines-worst-sin/
We read: “What happened to that fatherless child when Augustine put away the child’s mother?” and then the incomplete and misleading link from “Fred Sanders Theologian.”
An close reader of Augustine’s “Confessions” would know that Augustine learned that “a child teaches a man responsibility;” that because he (Augustine) regarded his union not as a valid marriage (under Roman Law a disparity of social class, and therefore a concubine for thirteen years although deeply attached, but not a marriage and on his part no permanent commitment: Bk 6, Ch 15, fn. 1); “…Adeodatus, born of me in the flesh out of my sin,” Bk 9, Ch: 6:14; that after the permanent departure of Augustine’s companion for Africa, arrangements were in fact made for a marriage to another, but with an impediment of age, “She lacked almost two years of the age of consent, but since she appealed to me, I was willing to wait for her,” Bk 6, Ch 13:23; but then “I was not so much a lover of marriage as a slave of lust…I procured another woman, but [still] not, or course, as a wife,” Bk 6, Ch. 15)…
And, that Augustine did not seemingly abandon (Fred Sanders link), but loved his son dearly (Bk 4, Ch 2, fn 2). The son, Adeodatus (“given by God”) showed great promise but died in 388 at the age of 17, “Well had you made him: he was almost fifteen years old [when he and Augustine and friend Alypius were baptized together], and in power of mind he surpassed many grave and learned men [.…] To me his power of mind was a source of awe. Who except you is the worker of such marvels” (Bk 9, ch.6:14).
(My footnotes from the John K. Ryan translation, “The Confessions of St. Augustine,” Image, 1960.)
Couple more thoughts and clarification:
Augustine apparently suffered greatly at separating from the mother of Adeodatus. Rather than the child being “fatherless” he became more motherless since he apparently remained with Augustine while his mother and father when his mothe3r and father separated.
All the sexual sins of Augustine, his experience of the loss and suffering consequent to and enslavement of his will to lust led to his teaching on the value of continence, chastity, marriage, and a celibate clergy.
All the sexual sins of Augustine, all the harm he caused to his mother, child, concubine, etc., occurred PRIOR to his Baptism.
Finally, although I rhetorically flourish in writing that Church leaders “flagrantly flaunt” their sexual sin, I sincerely believe that ANY cleric who argues against clerical celibacy, who argues who female clergy, who argues for CHANGE in perennial doctrine on homosexuality, abortion, or other consequence of sexual sin, DOES OUT HIMSELF most FLAGRANTLY.
meiron: methinks they dost protesteth too much.
Yes. In protesting they give themselves away.
So St. Augustine’s fiancee was approx. 10 years old?
Finally, contemplate Church leaders who flagrantly flaunt their sexual sins. See the harm they cause the Church…
Careful reading shows Fred Sanders allowing that we do not know what lavish or penurious care Augustine rendered his son.
Chapp regards CS Lewis’s pronouncement on the morality of sexual sin to bolster Leo’s misstep in traditional Catholic teaching. Since when has CS Lewis been Catholic? Since when has he received his licentiate in theology?
Consider Fred Sanders (“in theology”, not “Theologian”) as one person commenting on Augustine, just as you, John K. Ryan, I, and many others likewise comment.
The new wave of popesplainers are busy gearing up their rationalizations before new outrages even occur, like bending over backwards to conceive of the sins that produce mountains of corpses of the unborn as “spiritual.”
Yes. Aquinas says, “Carnal vices destroy the judgment of reason.” (STII-II, q. 53, a. 6 ad 3).
Language is used to rationalize falsehoods: ‘Babies’ become ‘mere products of conception.’ ‘Abortion’ becomes a woman’s ‘right to choose.’ Consensual sexual sins hurt no one. FS’ blessings are not for homosexual couples or acts.
Lust inflames passions, gives way to intense bodily pleasure, agitates the imagination, weakens the will, and reviles contemplation of higher goods.
Many persons and the social order itself are seriously harmed by ‘private’ acts of lust because of the disorder it causes. Some theologians hypothesize Eve’s sin may have been sexual since her punishment included “pain in childbirth,” etc.
The SSPX have responded to Vatican threat the only way they could, with a Profession Of Faith:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-sspx-responds-to-vatican-threats-with-profession-of-faith/
ND writes: “The SSPX have responded to Vatican threat the only way they could, with a Profession Of Faith:”
This is something that would be impossible for the Catholic Church in Germany to do.
The faith includes following the Vicar of Christ. Any profession that doesn’t include that is not of the faith.
Neither the Apostles nor the Nicene Creed—both sine qua non as professions of the Catholic faith— mention the Vicar of Christ.
What we declare in the Creeds includes the primacy of Peter, always did; the action of Christ establishing His Church. When we join the Creed it is opening to God to have His way according to its entire content now. The Creed is also God’s outline for us in the work to add what is to come encompassing the extents of Holy See.
Not faulting Chapp’s discussion, he covers the world and the flesh; there is also the devil.
One additional way to mark out what the devil is doing is, he is tempting all sides and the hierarchy with clericalisms.
I would say clericalism -singular; however, I mean to point to its many separate channels and different expressions.
Further, we are accustomed to referring to the world, the flesh and the devil but we can match man’s folly with the sections in that comprehensive dynamic. As did the Lord.
The devil is at work upon everyone with temptations into manifold follies, the novelty being how they are sustained upon their justifications of relevance.
‘ This perfect storm began with the emergence of the reductive materialistic naturalism that is the default worldview of modernity, going back two or three centuries now. ‘
For those on here complaining that I quote C.S. Lewis on the hierarchy of sins (since Lewis is apparently disqualified as a witness because he is not Catholic), I offer the following quote from the very Catholic Thomas Aquinas. It is in the prima Secundae, question 73, article 5. This article deals specifically with the question of carnal vs. spiritual sins. It is also interesting to note how often Aquinas cites as authorities elsewhere in this question Cicero and Aristotle. But both of those dudes are non Catholics so I am not certain how much we can trust the judgement of Aquinas on these matters. And for the obtuse — that is sarcasm. Anyway, here is Q73 A 5:
“I answer that, Spiritual sins are of greater guilt than carnal sins: yet this does not mean that each spiritual sin is of greater guilt than each carnal sin; but that, considering the sole difference between spiritual and carnal, spiritual sins are more grievous than carnal sins, other things being equal. Three reasons may be assigned for this. The first is on the part of the subject: because spiritual sins belong to the spirit, to which it is proper to turn to God, and to turn away from Him; whereas carnal sins are consummated in the carnal pleasure of the appetite, to which it chiefly belongs to turn to goods of the body; so that carnal sin, as such, denotes more a “turning to” something, and for that reason, implies a closer cleaving; whereas spiritual sin denotes more a “turning from” something, whence the notion of guilt arises; and for this reason it involves greater guilt. A second reason may be taken on the part of the person against whom sin is committed: because carnal sin, as such, is against the sinner’s own body, which he ought to love less, in the order of charity, than God and his neighbor, against whom he commits spiritual sins, and consequently spiritual sins, as such, are of greater guilt. A third reason may be taken from the motive, since the stronger the impulse to sin, the less grievous the sin, as we shall state further on (Article 6). Now carnal sins have a stronger impulse, viz. our innate concupiscence of the flesh. Therefore spiritual sins, as such, are of greater guilt”
This brings us to Group 9, Mr. Chapp, re “the sin at the root” option.
The BOTH things are sins, one in the supernatural order and one in the temporal. They both have to be acknowledged and put in their right frames. But Group 9 wants underrate the temporal sin as somehow “not sin” and that envelops the contrarian: the temporal sin has its own “weight” in sin, it is sin, it has consequences, it can be addressed as such, in addressing it there are different contexts and degrees.
The Church has never taught as Group 9 is asserting, ” … sin does not consist … “.
Aquinas has more to say than this one notice. Aquinas classifies spiritual sins as those that involve the spiritual faculty of REASON.
ALL sins involve reason, so ALL sins involve the spirit and are spiritual per se.
Aquinas classifies lust as a carnal sin since its pleasure is in the body. Covetousness would normally be classified as a spiritual sin since one takes mental (spiritual) pleasure at the idea and/or ownership of things outside the body. The soul’s appetites are involved (i.e., pride, envy, vainglory, avarice) in spiritual sin. The mind is the locus of spiritual sin’s pleasure.
Consider adultery. See Aquinas’ Reply to Objection 4 at ST, II–II, q. 72, a. 2:
Adultery involves lust and covetousness. In the case of adultery, the sin is both carnal and spiritual.
Carnal sins, in act and in fact, involve reason and so involve the spirit. Any sin offends God who is spirit.
Homosexuality is noted in scripture as one of four sins which cry from the ground to God for vengeance. Homosexual sin is a sin against nature. As such, it goes against reason from the get-go and is more egregious than heterosexual rape, according to Aquinas, since heterosexual sins (such as rape) involve what man is by nature more suited.
Finally, Aquinas’ classification of CAPITAL sins into carnal and spiritual is only one dimension of many ways to view and categorize sin. There are myriad varieties of sin with admixtures of capital sins. Pride is involved in almost every sin since it involves the person choosing self/opposing God. Homosexuality involves man choosing man rather than God. As such, it is not simply therefore a lesser sin because Aquinas classifies it as carnal! Homosexuality tears at the social fabric, mocks the family, and is sterile. Its sterility opposes God’s primary commandment to the first man and the first woman: Be fruitful and multiply.
Nice try but no cigar, Chappstick.
Please let me be explicit!
Capital sins are not acts in and of themselves. They are inclinations, dispositions or ‘roots’ giving rise to sin. Lust, just as much as pride or covetousness also may give rise to homosexual acts.
Also, my earlier post used the word “homosexuality” when I rightly should have used the words “homosexual acts.”
Aquinas’ sets forth his view of sins of homosexual acts in exquisite detail. See Lectures 7 and 8 of his Commentary on Romans (1:20-32)
https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~Rom.C1.L7.n145.4
Romans 1:26-32 says: For this cause, God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature. And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts, one towards another: men with men, working that which is filthy and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error. And as they liked not to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not fitting. Being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness: full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity: whisperers, detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, foolish, dissolute: without affection, without fidelity, without mercy.
How do we see the men who prepared the Group 9 Final Report? Are they faithful to their vows of ordination? Do they have mercy on the innocent sinners in the Church? Do they have affection for us? Are they wise or foolish?
1:32 Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things, are worthy of death: and NOT ONLY THEY WHO DO THEM, BUT THEY ALSO WHO CONSENT TO THOSE WHO DO THEM.
Also, the religious calling or state is a higher more meritorious one than the lay state and the sins against the religious calling or state are so much the worse.
In addition to the impurity.
I think the cause of the forthcoming schism is rooted in “disobedience”, is it not? How is it then that the Popes of Roam have all been disobedient to Our Lady – not revealing the 3rd Secret of Fatima, not taking the 5-minutes to pray for the conversion of Russia in conjunction with the Bishops of the world? Why is that OK? Who commits the greater sin? The SSPX who will be elevating new Bishops without a papal mandate, or the popes themselves since good John the 23rd who have ignored and been disobedient to the Mother of God and Queen of Heaven and Earth? The greater the individual sinned against, the greater the sin. I wonder why the Popes all condemn in the SSPX the faults they seem to have perfected in themselves? Diabolical disorientation, anyone? [The schism by Tucho of the SSPX will work as a blessing as Roam pushes out further to sea the Catholicism it has rejected. Such a move will work to preserve Catholicism in full measure – even while they burn down Roam and gut the last vestiges of Catholicism. Aquinas would be appalled at the use of his thought to justify an argument designed to condemn the faith.]
Your spelling is appropriate!
You have made at least 3 false assumptions about the disobedience of popes regarding the release of the Third Secret of Fatima. First, Our Lady indicated that it should not be revealed until 1960; there was no command that it must be revealed at that time, so discretion was not denied. In 2000, under Pope John Paul II, the Third Secret was revealed. There are, however, conspirarcy theorists who claim not all of it was revealed. There is no clear evidence of a cover-up, but more importantly, again, there was no command to disclose any of it. The third problem is that you assume that withholding a private revelation carries nearly as much gravity as on openly schismatic act.
Please ‘splain away the 5-minute prayer for the conversion of Russia . . . by their fruits, eh?
Just ruins a man faster than any other sin and multiplies vices. All it takes is looking at the great men of the Old Testament to confirm that.
David the only one described as a man after God’s heart. Lust ruined him.
Solomon the wisest man to ever live. Lust ruined him.
Samson the strongest man to ever live. Lust ruined him.
Please tell us more about how sexual sins aren’t serious when they took down the purest, the wisest, and the strongest.
Mortain, JT, Sam Topeka
That’s not the right approach, I think it would would keep the apparently differentiated problems all transfixed, blurred and escapist (Germans, SSPX/VATICAN II, Chinese).
The Germans are professing things that indicate they are abusing the Confessional, are unable to profess the Sacrament faithfully AND are on a progressive path of legitimizing as “societal journey within Church” some types of sin that are always sin.
Now the identical analysis can be made for SSPX and the Chinese.
Larry Chapp is persuasive.
So in Chris Jackson:
“A priest can bless two men in a relationship, provided the ritual is sufficiently vague and the press release sufficiently careful. A bishop can preside over liturgical chaos for decades and remain a bishop in good standing. Entire episcopal conferences can flirt with sexual revolution, women’s ordination, intercommunion, and doctrinal “discernment,” and Rome responds with letters, dialogues, study groups, and the occasional velvet-covered warning.
But Écône tries to preserve its sacramental line, and suddenly the canonical guillotine is polished.
This is why ordinary Catholics are losing confidence in the official categories. They watch men who defend the old Mass treated as ecclesial criminals while professional revolutionaries remain “in dialogue.”
Who to believe? I honestly don’t know. But it its hard to view the SSPX was deserving excommunication with a DDF head like the one few now have.
Larry Chapp, some focus is needed on the co-opting of the Church by the flagging and failing forces of homosexualism and (false) modernity of which we see an active demonstration going in synodalism and Group 9. I mean to say, from my perspective this is what has been trending since the mid-1990’s to now, parts of the secular world gambling on wrong things and trying to overtake getting refuted, seeing their poor results in most places and their prospects showing up even poorer, stepped up their game by preying on the soft minds and fanciful mentalities in religion and every place else. So it’s not just the RC Church with the silly synodalism; however the RC Church has the calling to forge the right example and path.
We are not “outnumbered” and the initiative is ours. So to speak. Yet how this is bearing down on the Popes, the Curia, the Conclave, the Bishops and the Congregations.
Let’s look at a little history in the Church. The Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church mutually excommunicated each other hundreds of years ago. This excommunication was lifted and Catholics can receive the Eucharist in the Orthodox Church (even though the Orthodox do not permit it). We acknowledge the Apostolic Succession of Orthodox bishops and the full validity and licitness of their Sacraments. And so, despite centuries of excommunication, the Orthodox continued to consecrate bishops validly. I would imagine that excommunication of the SSPX would not affect the validity of their episcopal ordinations. I do realize that the SSPX is under the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope but if the Orthodox don’t require the Pope to sign off on their episcopal ordinations, don’t subject themselves to the Roman See and enjoy fully valid sacraments, why wouldn’t the same hold true for SSPX?
It’s not to be compared to the Orthodox Churches, which follow unorthodox Christianity and don’t recognise the Popes. It’s about why the current Catholic hierarchy is so unable to agree with the profession of faith recently submitted to the Pope by Fr Pagliarani, yet saints like Catherine of Siena, Francis of Assisi or Vincent de Oaul would have had no difficulty. Those who believe Vatican II was year zero have to start providing justifications for it’s perceived changes or re-edit it so that nobody can see it as contradicting previous catholic belief.
Cdl. Fernandez very well might be thinking he’s “advancing” Catholicism by alienating its very presence from the Church of Roam. I’m sure Caiaphas believed the same when he argued “better that one man die than that the entire nation succumb to the Romans”. This has all the feel of the same hidden design of the mind and craft of the Divine. What appears as a “curse” likely will result in a blessing – a blessing of preservation, continued consolidation, growth and determination. The SSPX have the virtues based on the old Truths. Mortification, humility, longevity, fortitude, etc. While Roam pushes the SSPX out – it’s effect will work to preserve the faith, untainted by the modernist madness that manifests as clear diabolical disorientation in Roam. To that end, this declaration of schism is a blessing in much the same way that Caiaphas’ declaration that one man should die became a blessing for all of humanity. Deo gratias! God’s will be done!
“It is not longer simply a question of liturgy that separates us from Rome, but a question of Faith.”
Archbishop Lefebvre
https://youtu.be/XcG733oDZ58?is=KnB5IIXw0g9EooYI
Open letter to confused Catholics audiobook. Gifted from CN 😉