There is an interesting piece in the ultra-liberal UK paper, The Guardian.
One of the biggest lies the church tells itself is that it doesn’t do politics. The General Synod of the Church of England is set up in the round so as to encourage the impression of consensual discussion amongst friends. [Note the criticism of the synodic government of the C of E. This liberal is saying that synodic government doesn’t work. Heh heh.]
That, of course, is profoundly disingenuous. You don’t have to be an expert on the novels of Anthony Trollope to know that cathedral cloisters and church synods have long been a poisonous hotbed of plotting and resentment. [Hey wait! I thought it was only patriarchal hierarchy that was poisonous. But today we see that the C of E, with its voting and synods, is poisonous! Hmmm.]
Yet those who are seeking scapegoats for the current car crash over female bishops are now pointing to church lobby groups as having introduced an inappropriate element of secular political organisation into church life. If only we would pray more, or be more holy, then all this nasty political stuff would disappear and real peace would break out.
This is a ridiculous form of false consciousness. Those who are too theologically squeamish for overt political contestation simply push politics into the shadows. It then becomes a manipulative business of saying one thing (something that sounds nice and friendly) while meaning something else entirely.
For instance, it is now almost obligatory in the church for us to say publicly that we respect each other’s differences. We speak of opponents’ “deeply held convictions”, but few of us actually believe anything of the sort. What we say in private is utterly unprintable. But for the church, even to admit this is an honesty too far. [He’s talking sense here. And liberal catholics better pay attention to this and get over the stupid illusion that synodic government of the Church and voting are pure and wonderful.]
Remember, the anti-politics lot say sweetly, Jesus said we ought to love our enemies. To which my response is to point out that he certainly didn’t say we ought not to have any.
So, let’s forget the theology and talk straightforward politics. What happened at the General Synod is that a dogmatic minority of biblical literalists and an even smaller minority of Roman Catholic wannabes – both of whom, for entirely different reasons, reject women as church leaders – have been appeased in the name of some twisted version of inclusion.
[…]
Okay, there is a lot more to this piece that is worth your attention. Read it there.
This is the point you need to take away.
catholic liberals want us to have synodic government. We are supposed to vote on things, doctrines are just “policies”, polled majority opinion reveals the sensus fidelium. That’s more “just”!
However, the C of E vote on women bishops shows that the synodic government just produced what liberals think is an “unjust” result.
When the vote goes your liberal way, it is sensus fidelium. When it goes against you, it is dirty politics!
Remember: If there is democracy and voting, then conservatives get to vote too… unless you suppress them with purely political tactics.
The Fishwrap‘s dream of governance by societal trend and voting and majority rule is totally bankrupt.
They might respond that human beings are flawed and some problems will creep in blah blah blah but synodic rule really is better, more just, than hierarchical rule in the long run.
We then have to ask: What possible evidence can you produce for that claim? The way the C of E works? The way the Orthodox do things? The “peaceful” councils of the early Church?
The piece in The Guardian, and the way the Fishwrap and The Tablet want things to be, reminds me of how just and peaceful liberals were in the seminary hell-hole I was in in these United States. If you were faithful to Church doctrine and didn’t dissemble or kept your head low to the ground, they made your life hell or threw you out. If you were against homosexual behavior and against women’s ordination, you were in danger of getting forced to go to a psychologist before getting thrown out or sent off for a “pastoral year”.
Liberals are soooo enlightened.
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Less voting. More priests saying “If you don’t like it, there’s the door.” (The priest who catechized me said that to a fellow catechumen once, hence he’s one of my heroes.)
Actually I don’t think there is an inconsistency. Anglicanism consists of 3 factions, the Calvinists, the Anglo-Catholics, and the Liberals.
For the Anglo-Catholic, the Orthodox and Catholic determine the essential sensus fidelium.
For the Calvinists, the Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Methodists determine the essential sensus fidelium.
For the Liberals (a.k.a. modernists) society and liberal elites determine the essential sensus fidelium.
Given this, the Anglo-Catholics are entirely consistent when they tolerate invalid female priests but not tolerate “valid” male priests, the Calvinists are entirely consistent when accept female bishops/ministers but accept their ban “for the sake of unity”, while the Liberals are entirely consistent when they are decry anyone who doesn’t follow society.
The only real inconsistency in all this is that the three factions with three completely different sensus fidelii are in one denomination and that Anglicans actually think they share the same faith. To be Anglican is to suffer either cognitive dissonance or to assume that your faction is “True Anglicans” and all the others are corruptions that must be expunged, or at minimum that you pray for their conversion to “True Anglicanism”.
One of the Church Estates Commissioners (don’t ask!) Sir (of course) Tony Baldry said this morning in the British Parliament: ‘ As a consequence of the decision by the General Synod, the Church of England no longer looks like a national Church; it simply looks like a sect, like any other sect. If it wishes to be a national Church that reflects the nation, it has to reflect the values of the nation.’
And pretty much ‘so say all of us’ says the rest of parliament. So there you have it – the role of the CofE is to reflect the ‘values of the nation’ rather than the values of the Gospel. I guess they know where they stand now … it’ll make things easier when the time comes to ‘discuss’ LGBTQQ stuff. And anything else parliament thinks it needs to ‘reflect.’
‘Democratic’ approaches are always divisory, and tend to cause more problems than they solve. It should be relegulated by subsidiarity. In any case, there are topics of morals and well… reality… that no amount of voting on will change. Because reality and morality is not something at the whim of the majority. Such things are established by God. And power comes from the top down, not the bottom up. Somewhere Satan and 1/3 of the devils are throwing a nutty that they were outvoted by Michael and the majority of the angels, though that doesn’t matter anyway because only God can be God. To pretend that voting on something can change reality is insanity. It is worshipping a deity that can flip and flop with the times and therefore constitutes nothing truthful or everlasting. This is why God has a Kingdom and Kingship. And if more countries actually kept that form of governance rather than moving towards a bottom-up structure they imagine creates ‘equality’ but in reality is always controlled by a bunch of elites anyway, it would help remind people about the true power that controls and upholds this world. Christ the King! If ‘Lex Orandi Lex Credendi’ defines what we believe by how we worship, then similarily I’d venture what we believe is also instructed by how we conduct politics. And these days people are conducting more politics than they are worshipping. And since our faith is justified by our works, and we can indeed pray without ceasing and continually glorify in how we conduct our lives, then it stands to reason that our politics is also naturally tied into our beliefs, and our conduct of them in the world, much like our liturgy in the Church also shapes our beliefs. Human actions , behavior and beliefs are all very interlinked.
No to women bishops: the Church of England votes for civil war, by Damian Thompson.
The Anglicans make parody redundant. I truly believe for the future of Christianity these developments are actually good. These liberal “churches” will disappear soon along with liberal “catholics”. What will remain is Pope Benedict’s smaller, purer Church that will then be able to give a faithful witness to the world.
“catholic liberals want us to have synodic government. We are supposed to vote on things,
doctrines are just “policies”, polled majority opinion reveals the sensus fidelium.”
Hey, voting on the Truth worked well for Barrabas!
And on BBC TV’s Question Time this evening, two Catholic MPs quick to shake their heads in sorrow at this appalling lack of Equality and backward step. One of them openly stated he was against his own Church’s teaching on women priests.
You’ve seen this open opposition to Church doctrine in the US, now we have it here.
No-one, but no-one, speaks of any theological issue of women and priests – not the the C of E ever speaks of doctrine – just Equality issues. They are a Church utterly unworthy of the name.
Someone mentioned yesterday reading Trollope to learn about the C of E. This is nonsense. That referred to the 19th century. The modern C of E is infinitely worse and bears little in common at all with how things were then. There are an utter shambles from top to toe and the only thing they do well now is to paint themselves into a corner.
Live by the Synod, die by the Synod.
Reminds me of the run up to the American Revolution. The Parliament in England was the great institution of the Puritans, which would make all things right. That Parliament would make things worse sparked a crisis in faith amongst them.
What will remain is Pope Benedict’s smaller, purer Church…
Exactly what he has been wanting for 25+ years.
Last one out, turn off the lights.
Actually frjim4321 , God Himself will turn out the lights, then He Himself shall be our light. That is how the story will end. The rest will have to gnash and moan in the darkness.
Interesting entry here from a former Anglican Priest:
http://www.patheos.com//Catholic/Where-Now-England-Dwight-Longenecker-11-23-2012.html
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out Frjim!
God bless all!
Further, what should be pointed out is that it is not a smaller holier Church that Benedict XVI wants… rather it’s one he knows is inevitable, and which Scripture and prophecy and typology all predict, as would many also claim, so too does the full text of the 3rd Secret of Fatima, which Benedict XVI has read and has commented about himself as referring to apostasy, dangers which threaten the faith and to corruption within the Church. The Church may grow smaller and holier, but it certainly doesn’t suggest it’ll be good times ahead. Rather it suggests days of darkness until the light finally dawns. A great majority will leave, well in point of fact they probably already have left in every instance but formally. A further number will be martyred. A small number will live, envying the dead and some will live to see the inevitable triumph.
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“We then have to ask: What possible evidence can you produce for that claim? The way the C of E works? The way the Orthodox do things? The “peaceful” councils of the early Church?”
I am left perplexed by this type of rhetoric. Why is it necessary to degenerate the practice of the Eastern and Oriental Churches, both Orthodox and Catholic, and the uninterrupted practice of the Church for two millennia?
The Holy Synod is not something that is to be taken so lightly. The Holy Spirit acts through the ordinary mechanisms of Church governance and especially through the Synod, or Council.
It is not just “c”atholics who support Synodoic Church governance, traditionalists of the East support this and they are just as authentically Catholic, if not more so, than those who support the behemoth of hierarchical governance that has arisen out of a hermeneutic of discontinuity of Vatican I.
The “hermeneutic of continuity” works for all Church Councils, not just Vatican II. The unfortunate wording of some of Vatican I’s decrees must be interpreted in light of the entirety of Church doctrine and practice, not just in the hermeneutic of the ultramontanists who scream the loudest.
The “synods” of the Anglicans are nothing more than a bunch of layfolk in ill-fitting cassocks balloting a new religion into existence every year. The Synods of the Churches, under the inspiration and protection of the Holy Spirit, are supported by Tradition, History, and the Scriptures. It is unfair and disingenuous to lump together an apostate community and the Holy Tradition of synodic governance in the Church.
I must take mild exception to the occasional tone, if not the content, of our blog hoster when he sometimes seems to express happiness over people leaving the Church or being sent packing. I certainly agree that those who dissent from Church teachings in these lax times need more wholesome chastisement, especially from our leaders the bishops and clergy, but the hope would be that they may see the error of their ways. And I would agree that excommunication or regretful encouragement to look elsewhere may on occasion be necessary in the face of obstinate dissenters. Nevertheless, I don’t think people leaving the Church is an occasion to rejoice, but one of sadness. It should lead to prayer for the departees’ conversion. And contra, Fr. Jim, I believe the Pope is just making one of his crystal clear rational analyses that in a time when there is a general falling off of Christian belief, the Church will inevitably get smaller if it is going to stay true to her teachings. I don’t think he necessarily “wants” that to happen, but he is just making a very logical observation of reality. Christ certainly wanted unity within the True Church and prayed for it, so let us pray for the conversion of sinners, heretics, schismatics, etc., and not rejoice in their exile. Anyways, I am just expressing my opinion.
frjim4321 says:
What will remain is Pope Benedict’s smaller, purer Church…
Exactly what he has been wanting for 25+ years.
Last one out, turn off the lights.
So you want big parishes, full of actively involved Catholics?
If so, you want the Diocese of Lincoln.
If people raised Catholic were taught honestly what the Catholic Church is and what Catholics believe, they could choose to be Catholics freely, and they would have the foundation to stick around when times get dark.
Instead, it has been the custom of the contemporary US Catholic Church in many places (and even before Vatican II, which is the problem) to teach Catholicism as a system of wishful thinking, in which people are asked to sign onto a system where various changes in Church regulation are bound to happen “soon” — or in which one can readily pretend and teach that they have already happened — regardless of whether the changes in question have happened or will ever happen.
I do not belong to this liberal vaporware Church. I don’t even belong to its pleasanter neighbor, the traditional vaporware Church. I belong to the actual Church that exists.
And I imagine that’s a smaller Church than the census numbers for people who claim to be Catholic, but it has a lot bigger membership in Heaven.
And yes, I think that in general, evangelization works better when you don’t bury people in manure and tell them they’re mushrooms. You might lose a few people who want to be mushrooms, but your crop of people will be bigger.
robtbrown says:
23 November 2012 at 6:38 am
frjim4321 says:
What will remain is Pope Benedict’s smaller, purer Church…
Exactly what he has been wanting for 25+ years.
Last one out, turn off the lights.
So you want big parishes, full of actively involved Catholics?
If so, you want the Diocese of Lincoln.
AND the diocese of Arlington, Virginia.
I am reminded of Bugnini’s book: when he gets his way it is the will of God; when he is thwarted evil is afoot.
FrJim4321 said:
“What will remain is Pope Benedict’s smaller, purer Church…
Exactly what he has been wanting for 25+ years.
Last one out, turn off the lights.”
I’m praying you will stay Father!
fxr2
I take exception to jhonno’s insistence on monarchy being the best form of government, in the temporal sphere NO!! In case Johnno hasn’t been paying attention in government 101 the vast majority of US Presidents in the last 50-60 years have been self made men who came from the lower socio-economic groups, whereas monarchy tends to create entrenched privalidge and you’re lucky if you get one half decent ruler in 300 years. I would also like to know what country he hails from, I know that lots of Ameriacn Catholics (bizzarely) are very romantic about monarchy having never actually lived under one.
As for other’s thinly veiled comparisons to the decline and fall of Rome along with the struggle to return to civilisation , I think that IF it does happen it will be on a vastly accelerated scale lets say one lifetime.
As for the Anglicans, its very tempting to smirk as they tear themselves apart.
@Suburbanbanshee : LOL! Very apt comparison.
@Fr. Jim: what’s the Church main job: making people feel good, important and in the driver’s seat, or helping them attain Heaven? Sadly, in today’s society, ‘both’ is not an option in a great many cases.
For the rest, I second Johnno’s endorsement of Fr. Longenecker’s piece.
I think part of what needs to be remembered is objective truth. Whatever our perception is of whether we are in the Church or not, there is an objective reality about that. If Catholicism means what it says it means, then I am or am not a Catholic objectively, no matter what my subjective perception (or projection) may be. So that means there may be many Catholics that are not Catholic right now (e.g. not oriented to God) and therefore it can only do harm if they believe or say that they are Catholic — not just to the Church on earth but to themselves.
What the best way to deal with that is when you seem to see it in others, I can’t say. And there is definitely a call to protect the Church and the community from those who would injure it in any direction, secondary to our call to encourage or correct any individual.
But I find it is important for me to look seriously at this for myself. Whether I have a saint icon on my wall and fulfill the Sunday obligation or not — whether I follow Church teachings or not — the question of whether I’m Catholic — whether I am following God as He has explained to me how to do through the Church — is still out there. I need to every day consider whether I am Catholic or not, because Catholic is supposed to mean trying to be with God, no? In the end? I don’t, personally, want to be “fooled” into thinking all’s good when it’s not. I have many religious friends, it’s extremely important — as extremely important as it can get — that they don’t use their and my religious “identity” to make me feel secure in my salvation when I’m not. They are my friends, so I have hope that they will always hold my feet to the fire (interesting metaphor, that), and use their and my Christian beliefs the way they are meant to be used — not as trappings or solace or accessories, but as firm guidance and vision.
The Protestants and anti-institutionalists are right — there is a huge, huge danger in institutional religion, it is the danger of idolatry. The danger of making an idol of an institution, which inevitably disintegrates into making idols of ourselves. Whatever our place is in the institution, it has to be because the institution is what we climb to get to God Himself. Members of the Catholic Church need to guard against this in themselves. They also need to guard against the “once saved, always saved” heretical way of thinking, which is not confined to Calvinist strains. We are all inclined to feel once we are in like Flint we don’t have to think about it much any more — we just each define “in” differently. That’s what the core of this blog — the call to repentance and confession — is so good for, recollecting people to the fact that every. single. moment their soul can be lost — or saved.
In like Flynn.
This from Suburbanbanshee:
“I do not belong to this liberal vaporware Church. I don’t even belong to its pleasanter neighbor, the traditional vaporware Church. I belong to the actual Church that exists.”
is good to remember.
People with a liberal mindset honestly and sincerely believe that the way they think and the things they believe are what all “right-thinking good people” think and believe. So to them, an election will always bring about the result they want because they can’t imagine that most people would NOT vote their way — because they also believe that most people are intrinsically good and fair. To them, when an election results in a different result than the one they want, the only possible explanation can be some sort of dastardly plot, or some sort of mass deception, or cheating.
I have a hard time rejoicing in anyone’s decision, mandated or not, to walk away from the Church. I recognize that sometimes it does happen, and that sometimes it must happen if the entire barrel is not to become infected by rot, but the ‘neener-neener-neener-don’t-let-the-door-hit -your-ass-on-the-way-out’ attitude is reprehensible. These are souls, and they are consigning themselves to Hell, and the proper response there, I think, would be a simple “We’ll miss you. We’ll keep the lamp lit in the window. Come home soon.’
Who are any of us to feel vindicated by another’s fall, or to laugh and turn our backs as they lie degraded in the mud?
Fr Jim – Pope Benedict never said he wants a smaller Church but he is a realist and can see what is happening. He sees that liberals have produced no vocations and young people raised in liberal parishes stop practicing their faith. As Fr Pacwa says, liberals are spiritual geldings. I asked you once how many vocations to the priesthood have come from your parishes and you said one. As Fr Z has mentioned, St Agnes in St. Paul had over 40 vocations during Msgr. Schuler’s time there. It has been pointed out many times here that dioceses with orthodox bishops have no vocation crisis (i.e. Lincoln, Alexandria, etc.). Fr Jim, I honestly would like to know how you explain that?
@ deliberatejoy, perhaps you should read my comment again. No where did I say all that leave the church should “let the door hit them on the way out.” I specifically said that comment to a priest that supports expanded abortion right, euthanasia, and gay marriage. A priest that supports these evils leads souls away from the church, and he should know very well what would happen if he left the church. Still, while it is sad that people would chose to leave the church, it is better to not have liberals in the church that lead others away with their false teachings and false gods.
I always felt like Cardinal Ottaviani said it best… “the only thing the apostles did collegially was run away”
In response to AJS, Father Z was NOT denigrating the East. But what’s good for Constantinople is not good for Rome. The West is a much larger, more diverse and multicultural entity than Eastern Christianity. Eastern Orthodoxy and the Eastern Churches in communion with Rome are more homogeneous. So it’s not cacaphonous to have bishops work together for a common goal., unlike in a West that’s both First and Third World, modernist and traditional culturally.
The East can get away with a quasi-parliamentarian approach to ecclesiology. Many in the East (certainly not all, and definitely not inter-Orthodox) are on the same page culturally, ecclesiologically, and theologically.
Here in the West there absolutely needs to be a supreme arbiter of the faith, one who stands alone as Executive, with the Curia as the Judiciary. Rome confirms the brethren. It makes right what could be wrong (the Holy Father, as Orthodox and Protestant polemicists get wrong, does much more reviewing and approving/vetoing in a reactive position rather than unilaterally dictating to the Church)
Catholicism’s temporal success, for whatever its worth, is due to having the Sovereign Pontiff. Her spiritual success, the end of the day really important and meaningful success for religion, is due to Christ and His Sacraments.
Here is a comment which I just tried to place on this thread on a liberal English Anglican blog; a little “rattling of the liberal cage” never comes amiss:
http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/archives/005768.html
Jeremy wrote (above):
“1. On reading the Church of England Convocations Act 1966, and the Synodical Government Measure 1969, it seems that the Queen-in-Parliament can dissolve Synod. If this happens, then new Synod elections will take place soon, with a more liberal result.”
and Karl Marx wrote (in “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” [1852]):
“Hegel says somewhere that all great historical facts and personages recur twice. He forgot to add, ‘First as tragedy, and again as farce’.”
This quotation came to my mind upon reading the first excerpt above, for it is a proposed action which would repeat exactly what happened in Sweden in 1957 and 1958: its Church Assembly rejected a proposed measure to allow the purported ordination of women; a great uproar ensued, together with much press criticism along the lines of how “if the Church of Sweden wants to remain a national church, it must reflect national values;” the government dissolved the Church Assembly and called for the election of a new one (the ensuing elections were highly politicized, and candidates stood for election under party political labels); and the new Assembly promptly accepted WO (together with a “conscience clause” to protect the position of opponents — which was revoked in 1983).
Where I disagree with Marx is with the “first as tragedy … again as farce” theme, as both decisions strike me, as a Catholic, as ludicrously farcical.
And see also:
http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/archives/005766.html
I deleted a few comments leading to a rabbit hole.
The Rabbit Hole Reduction Act of 2012, in effect.
This is where we turn the favorite liberal one-liner on THEM and say, “are you more Catholic than the Pope?”
First: Let us all pray that those who voted to ordain women bishops can stop treating whatever organization they belong to as merely the working out of their own version of social justice. It has yet to deliver justice, but this is partly because it was founded on the utter disregard of justice.
Second: Fr Jim: why did you construe the Pope’s comments as DESIRING a smaller church?
Third: As a follow-up, Fr. Jim, what leads to fewer children, fewer vocations and empty pews, i.e., a smaller church, after 50 years of implementation?
Fourth: In response to the monarchy-disparaging comments, it’s true that there have been bad kings and queens, just as there have been bad popes. It would be only proper, however, to note that the moral foundation of any monarchical system of government is superior to any democratic system. If the will of the people is always right, then the people is God (for only God doesn’t make mistakes). Utterly independent of this November’s election results, the very concept that the will of the people is always right is, to put it mildly, open for debate.
BillyT92679, that’s a bit of selective evidence building. Do you truly mean to say that Pope Paul VI’s promulgation of what is now known as the Ordinary Rite was not an ukase? Of course it was. So the issue is purely one of authority, and for a Catholic, one MUST believe that the Bishop of Rome’s authority trumps all, even the rulings of prior Popes, as per both V1 and V2. Which, of course, bodes well for progressives, who can wait for a future Pope to jettison any ruling of a prior Pope, as Paul VI did to Pius V.
What is 19 years? Is that a generation? Contrast the approach of the Guardian article – among many other things and utterances – with this from Hansard (the Parliamentary record) from 1 Nov. 1993:
Mr. Michael Alison (Second Church Estates Commissioner, representing the Church Commissioners) : The Act of Synod will provide for the appointment of up to three new suffragan bishops to act as provincial episcopal visitors. Their remuneration will be the same as that of other suffragan bishops. Housing and a car will be provided and working expenses will be reimbursed.
Mr. Harry Greenway MP: Will my right hon. Friend give an assurance to the House that the Church Commissioners will bear in mind the great concern expressed by the House in last Friday’s debate that priests and congregations committed to a male priesthood be properly looked after when females–ladies–are ordained as priests in a few months’ time? Will he give an assurance that the Act of Synod measure which deals with the matter will give proper moral and real authority to those bishops committed to protecting those congregations and to serving them?
Mr. Alison : I am delighted that my hon. Friend has underscored the need for the co-called Act of Synod to have real teeth and real moral authority. I shall convey the anxiety that my hon. Friend has expressed to the General Synod when it meets at Church house next week to discuss the very point that my hon. Friend has raised. The Synod will underscore the need for an Act which is adequate. If it is not adequate, the House will insist that a Measure be brought before the House to create a statutory provision.
And what is 14 years? (Are generations getting shorter? – but it can’t be exactly that…) A majority at the 1998 Lambeth Conference affirmed that those who could not see the theological possibility of such an ‘ordination of women’ were no less “loyal”.
And now, if I am not mistaken, neither Rowan Williams nor George Carey (for example) seem to think providing for such has any real importance.
While the C of E is peculiarly related to the Kingdom/state, does this bode well for anyone in all sorts of pressing situations, where ‘conscience’ (etc.) used, not so long ago, to ‘count’?
It’s not selective evidence. It’s the way it is for us.
I’m not going to be paranoid that some covert, unscrupulous person will become Supreme Pontiff in order to establish ecclesiological Stalinism with an iron fist.