Remember a while back when Card. Marx pulled a fast one with the text of Evangelii gaudium? HERE
Over at LifeSite News, Hillary White offers another facet of Marx’s interview with Jesuit-run America Magazine. America is leading the charge in the English language in support of overturning Catholic teaching and practice about Communion for those in adulterous relationships (the divorced and civilly remarried). I suspect their goal reaches beyond mere adultery. Once you detach the marital act from proper disposition for Communion… well… anything goes.
So, what is the other point from the interview that needs some attention?
Cardinal hits young traditionalists who want to ‘be clear in their positions’: calls it ‘the beginning of terrorism’
February 9, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – One of Pope Francis’ closest advisors, and the leader of one of the most “liberal” Catholic hierarchies in the world, has denounced “traditional” young people for wanting “to be clear in their positions,” warning that it is a path to “terrorism.” In a related interview with the Jesuit magazine America, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, the head of the German Bishops’ conference, applauded people in homosexual partnerships who want a “lifelong” relationship.
“I am astonished that most of our young people, and also Catholic homosexuals who are practicing, want a relationship that lasts forever,” Marx told America. “We must begin with the main points of the doctrine, to see the dream: the dream is to have a person say, a man and woman say, ‘You and you, forever. You and you, forever.’ And we as church say, ‘Yes, that’s absolutely OK. Your vision is right!’
“So we find the way. Then perhaps there is failure. They find the person, and it is not a great success. But life-long fidelity is right and good.”
He added, “The church says that a gay relationship is not on the same level as a relationship between a man and a woman. That is clear. But when they are faithful, when they are engaged for the poor, when they are working, it is not possible to say, ‘Everything you do, because you are a homosexual, is negative.’” [That contradicts what the Church says in the pastoral care of homosexual persons. We don’t say that everything homosexuals do is negative. We say that homosexual acts are sins and that homosexual tendencies are disordered.]
In his Stanford lecture, Cardinal Marx said, “I had a discussion with some of the students,” before the lecture, who asked him, “‘Cardinal is it true that the younger people are more traditional?’ And that’s true.”
“But that is not dangerous,” he said. “I have no problem with tradition. But we have also the tendencies that the people want to be clear in their positions. Black and white populism is growing in Europe. And that is the beginning, perhaps, of populism, of terrorism, that’s clear.”
“The atmosphere of reducing the complexity of the world, to give simple answers, to give black and white answers, is growing, and I think that is very dangerous,” the cardinal said.
[…]
Hoping that more people will wake up and smell the coffee.
Click to buy!
Tradition… clear in their positions… growing populism… terrorism.
Reducing complexity to simple answers… black and white answers… dangerous.
On the other hand, to protect ourselves from terrorism and dangerous simplicity, we need complex and nuanced views of questions, especially moral questions. We need to set aside all the simplistic answer of the past, the black and white approach of “No!” and “A is grave matter” and “B is mortal sin” and “C contradicts natural law”.
From example… from later in the America piece (via the same LifeSite piece):
He said he has consulted with “many experts,” including canon lawyers and theologians, on the subject of the indissolubility of marriage. “What can we do when a person marries, divorces and later finds a new partner? There are different positions,” the cardinal said.
“Some bishops at the synod said, ‘They are living in sin.’ But others said, ‘You cannot say that somebody is in sin every day. That is not possible.’ You see, there are questions we must speak about.” He said it is important the Synod does not have “the spirit of ‘all or nothing.’ It is not a good way.”
I turned on the moderation queue. Try to post something I won’t ding, please. Think before hitting the button.
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“You can say that somebody is in sin every day. That is not possible.”
But why is wrong to say that “somebody is in sin every day”? If I commit a mortal sin I am living “in sin” every day until I make a good sacramental confession, ne c’est pas? And if a couple is not living a chaste life together then they are living in sin, no? Is he only referring to divorced and remarried couples when we can’t talk about them living in sin or is the situation different for a guy and gal shacking up together without any intention of getting married?
Undoubtedly I’m one of those black and white terrorists the Cardinal is referring to when I should be seeing everything as grey as he does. But isn’t grey to black and white the same as lukewarm is to hot and cold? And Jesus had some choice words for the lukewarm if I recall.
What bothers me is that he is a trusted advisor AND that he seems to feel comfortable enough to spout this nonsense.
Matthew 5:37 “But let your speech be yea, yea: no, no: and that which is over and above these, is of evil.” QED.
The Cardinal is essentially saying: since not everything a homosexual a does is evil then that must mean everything everything a homosexual does is good. This is simply poor logic.
I think that a good starting point is to recognize, as the Church teaches and as Pope Francis stated, that we are all sinners and that this is a result of the fact that all of us are disordered in some way. What we are called to do daily is to ask for the grace to avoid committing sin for that day. A question that needs to addressed is what the Church’s attitude toward a homosexual couple has made the choice to live chastely should be. If they have renounced acts that are judged sinful and have made a good Confession is that sufficient to allow them to participate fully in the life of the Church?
“You can say that somebody is in sin every day. That is not possible.”
I wonder what he would have said in 1939 about Der Führer?
The discussion of whether or not any particular couple is in sin is a red herring. That’s not what’s at issue. If they were merely in sin, they would not be withheld communion. They are withheld communion because they are living in a scandalous situation. The scandal is the concern there. It’s not just that Our Lord is defiled when received unworthily by adulterers; it is that the community is scandalized to see unrepentant adulterers (even if, for reasons of invincible ignorance that I suspect don’t apply anyway, their adultery is merely material).
He is a Cardinal of the Church, surely he understands this…?
But father, but father….they are working for the poor! Doesn’t that make everything okay? Didn’t the Archbishop of Chicago say something also along the lines that if one is not going to mass but is working for the common good, that is what is considered???
It reminds me of a time when I was teaching religious ed and a young girl piped up, ” But teacher, but teacher, as long as someone is using safe sex, then it is okay, right?”
Is God no longer offended by sin as long as one has some sort of natural goodness or works for social justice??? That would seem to be the message these days.
I saw recently that “Grey is the devil’s favorite color.”
I know from experience it’s very difficult to discern those different shades of gray, and if one isn’t firm then one can quickly find himself mired in moral confusion and self deception. and the Devil likes this best.
To be clear, clarity *does* increase the chance of conflict. The Council of Nicaea wasn’t exactly a picnic of hugs and kisses. But lack of clarity is far from a panacea. It leads to isolation (as you find in the tens of thousands of Protestant denominations and in the millions of specialized internet communities), individualism, and ultimately totalitarianism as the strong takes advantage of the confusion and promotes it (e.g. see Orwell’s 1984 or Orwell’s thoughtful “Politics and the English Language” or Brave New World).
It also leads to weakness and fear since you are never sure what’s really true, whether you are *really* okay with God, whether there is anything beyond the grave, whether you are *really* helping or harming your neighbour, and there is nothing to hold on to if the trials of Job ever afflict you or one you love.
One of the proofs of the divine protect of the Church is precisely that with so many Judases throughout the ages, with so many polar opposite factions within the Church and persecutions outside the Church that would let up if the Church just bended on allowing the King an annulment or throwing a pinch of incense to a deity that didn’t even exist, somehow the Church has survived and preserved all its doctrines. Clarity has never harmed the Church. On the contrary, it has given it strength and unified it.
It’s really hard to believe any Cardinal, even a wildly liberal one like Marx, would draw an equivalence between tradition and terrorism. I’m left to wonder if that means he believes the Church, before the “great renewal”, was not unlike terrorism? I think the world of Pope Benedict, but just how did he come to the conclusion to elevate to Cardinal some of the men he did? These are worrisome times.
He had to consult “many experts” so that he could eventually find a couple canonists and theologians that would agree with him, not that all of them agreed with him, which is how I read that particular snag in his interview. That also aligns with what he had said about the number Bishops that agreed and those that did not. It’s spun in a way that makes it sound like he consulted “many experts” that agreed with him, but as we all know, that’s not the case.
If populism equates to terrorism, then isn’t the populist movement towards ‘normalizing’ gay weddings a terrorist movement?
Ask some Colorado bakers.
Cavaliere,
“You can say that somebody is in sin every day. That is not possible.”
With all due respect, you forgot the word “not” which totally changes the meaning of what Cardinal Marx said.
Having said that, the sentence you quoted leapt out at me as well. It’s a very interesting idea, that one cannot be in sin everyday. Presumably, Cardinal Marx means that one *may* be in sin when actually committing the act of adultery but as the clock advances and one is at work, or grocery shopping, or playing bridge with friends then one is *not* in sin because at that moment one is not committing the *act* of adultery. So your sin depends on what you’re doing *at that moment*. I guess that means that an adulterer is in a state of grace if he dies while driving or at the mall – or on the phone, or cooking dinner, or on a beach in Hawaii. Who knew?
It seems some “experts” wish to find a way around Jesus’ rather clear admonition against adultery. I guess if you ask enough people, you’re bound to find an answer you like.
I will pray that Card. Marx and those who agree with him comes to their senses.
Funny thing Christ never equivocates. He never said, “Yeah, sodomy is gravely sinful but, you know, Miles and Eddie have been at it so long, it’s really ok. They love each other after all.”
I have read about this on several European blogs in various languages. It’s bizarre, because nobody ever said that everything done by a person with homosexual inclinations is bad. Those who are devoted to Christ have to deal with their own problems, which can range from homosexual inclinations to depression to alcoholism to other emotional problems, and some do it better than others. But probably all of them did it better when it was clear that the Church had a position on their problem.
What Marx and few others don’t seem to understand is that once a person begins to define him or herself as “homosexual,” aka “gay,” that means they have moved out of the Christian sphere and taken on a new identity, which is not in Christ. Most of them are completely misguided, thanks to people like Marx, so I don’t think God will hold it against them.
The Church was supposed to be a rock and a refuge from the insanity of the world…which, btw, is not new…but Marx and his ilk have destroyed this one last safe place. It’s not the fault of the poor sinners, who have been misled, but I think Marx is going to find it a little uncomfortable adjusting to his millstone.
To assert that nuance exists distinct from Truth honors reason by maintaining Truth — which is to say, God — as the ultimate referent. Those who do so, whatever difficulties their reasoning might present to the listener, nonetheless deserve respect.
To assert, or to attempt to conclude through logic, that the only truth is nuance is to reject reason and Truth. Public engagement in such a self-contradictory exercise is a contemptible abuse of one’s audience. If done in the name of God, it is the ultimate blasphemy.
Wow. That’s the second time in a week that a flaming liberal (first, Pres. B.H.O.) equates orthodox Catholics with terrorists.
I suspect the fear is setting in that the forces of Christ our King are on the march…and winning!
Is someone living in sin, who wakes up everyday and:
a. continues in her weekly coffee klatsch where most of the chat is mean-spirited gossip?
b. continues her job at the abortion clinic?
c. continues his enrollment as a student where black and white thinking is taught?
d. continues his monthly donation to the KKK?
e. continues his job at Fox News?
f. continues his monthly donation to Planned Parenthood?
g. continues his monthly donation to the so called “Human Rights Campaign”?
h. continues an affair with a wheelchair bound woman who needs his emotional and sexual support?
The answer is “Yes” to a, b, d, f, g, and h (c and e are trick questions for FrJim et al).
This is so very easy. But then again I still don’t have a color TV and my computer monitor is set to be monochrome.
Talk about a straw man argument! So if one is a traditionalist, then he is akin to a terrorist?! I say it is better to be a traditionalist than a heretical destructionist.
“Indeed, the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they are traditionalists.” – Pope St. Pius X, from the encyclical Notre charge apostolique; Our Apostolic Mandate
1. The cardinal said, “also Catholic homosexuals who are practicing, want a relationship that lasts forever,”
The masks are falling off. Marx ultimately wants the Church to say homosexual unions are OK. For a long time these errors have been simmering under the surface. But now it’s like we can see from what happened at the Synod that certain bishops do hold unorthodox views. It’s happened before! In a way it’s better that it comes out in the open.
2. The good cardinal is rather naive about the lifestyle of gay men if he thinks that these unions are typically lived in “monogamy.” Promiscuity is the norm. That’s just a fact.
So… let’s think about this for a sec:
Scenario One:
1. I believe, at some point, some things/acts are intrinsically good and some are intrinsically evil.
2. If I perform an intrinsically evil act, I will risk damnation
3. I do not do the evil act
Scenario Two:
1. I believe in relativism and that there is no “black and white”
2. I can “see the other side” and value it, or fear it
3. I can find a way to justify things some people think are intrinsically evil
Does the black and white world (at least that there is a definite good and definite evil) really lead to people embracing evil? What a dark view of mankind.
I wonder what the Cardinal would say to Paul who said homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God in 1 cor. 6:9-10
“Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men[a] 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”
“applauded people in homosexual partnerships who want a “lifelong” relationship.”
Cavaliere’s excellent point about mortal sin not withstanding – I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around so much of this… well, “grey-speak” if-you-will.
What about this notion of people who are already in… irregular situations – “homosexual partnerships” being one of these – but for goodness’ sake, they are *already* living in a near occasion of sin. It seems to me these folks do *not* want to stop mortally sinning, let alone living in a near occasion of sin.(Those who are divorced and civilly remarried, too.) Honestly, how many of these people in such situations just up and *not* live together? (let alone live like “brother and sister” or “brother and brother” or “sister and sister”)
Virtually all of the spiritual giants spoke of fleeing the near occasion of sin as if it were the plague.
Look, I know what it means to live in a “grey” world. I used to be my own pope in essence. I was in mortal sin and I knew it (even though I could not have given you a definition for it).
I *knew* I needed God. I so when I came home and I found the immutable Truth! Oh. My. Goodness. It *is not* black and white terrorism. It is the teachings of Jesus Christ as given to us by the Father through Him.
This is so confusing. St. Paul was fairly “black and white” in 1 Cor. 6:9 and Gal. 5:19,22.
Our Lady of Fatima, Ora Pro Nobis!
MSM
This argument seems to be making the rounds this week (and now even across the pond. Very impressive)
It summarizes to something like, “all fundamentalists are equally dangerous.”
Therefore, if a person is a fundamentalist (of any kind) one has the likelihood of being very dangerous.
No differentiation to be given for WHICH fundamentals are actually believed and followed, just all lumped In as dangerous, for being willing to so deeply commit, I guess.
LONG debate online with many people, ended up including Obama’s Crusaders comment… Thankfully some others were supportive.
I find the thoughtlessness of many of the “liberals” to be more dangerous. A near complete inability to reason in addition to completely lacking the information which would undermine their certitude, and unwilling to even read sources outside of their limited accepted sites….
The Cardinal is over-thinking this. Hence, because he’s not stupid, there must be other factors involved…
“But we have also the tendencies that the people want to be clear in their positions.”
The opposite of clear is cloudy, so what you end up saying is that Homosexuality is a sin, unless the dog barks, on a Tuesday, when the moon is full, unless something else says it isn’t or something.
My questions for Cardinal Marx look like this:
What kind of theology is it that says we can’t determine what is right from what is wrong? Doesn’t this simply give everyone an excuse to find a loophole? And if we cannot determine when something is right or wrong, why even bother with Christianity or any religion at all? Why worry about what cannot be understood clearly?
The “reducing the complex to black and white clarity” is, unfortunately, a weapon of political left thinking. While some truly complex issues require a great deal of thought (how to reform healthcare for instance) and have many valid opinions based on fact; most “overly complex” issues are really simple issues that some people want to make complex. This is often due to their inability to accept the simple truth.
The follow-on consequences of incoherently allowing couples who are in adulterous “marriages” to receive communion is not hard to see: if a couple who is committing adultery can receive communion, why can’t _________ (fill in as you choose) receive communion?
Now, I think there are advocates of this change who know this very well; it’s what they want. But notice no one among the bishops have said so openly. Have they?
Midwest St. Michael,
You nailed it. Cardinal Marx is equating the clear teachings of Jesus Christ with terrorism.
We also have a President identifying Christianity with terrorism.
Next step: Go after the terrorists.
We know that the Apostles went to the ends of the earth, even toward martyrdom, for what they believed. Cardinal Marx, is he doing the same, except his ministry is focused on an entirely different subject perhaps personal to him for whatever reason I shall not speculate? I wonder why Card. Marx is willing to bury Christianity and specifically Catholicism to do it, especially in the land of its origin. Anyone think priests blessing gay ‘marriages’ and the buildings that perform them would be allowed to stand in most Middle Eastern or Asian countries? This conversation is beyond selfish and individualistic minded, its also very Western-atheistic humanist focused and not in solidarity with the real poor. Not only does Marx loose marks for theology, his social justice needs retuning as well.
“He who is not for us is against us.”
Now Who was it that said that? Whoever it was, we can’t have black-and-white-thinking terrorists like that in our sweet li’l Church now, can we? And what about that Guy who divided the sheep from the goats and cast the latter into outer darkness? Well, at least I’m sure He’s not admitted to Holy Communion in the Archdiocese of Munich. They keep things tidy over there, I bet.
It keeps popping up everywhere now that as long as two people with same-sex attraction don’t engage in a physical relationship with each other, they can still live in some sort of chaste partnership or other type of romatic relationship. We can’t forget that it is fundamentally disordered for any two men or two women to engage in any kind of romantic relationship with each other. It boggles the mind that some Church leaders are now trying to highlight supposed positive elements in fundamentally disordered homosexual relationships. Yes, gay people can be friends with each other like normal friends; however, homosexuals living together and acting intimate, even without sex, seems like a very dangerous idea that would further cement homosexuals in their disordered inclinations.
[I think we have to be careful to make some distinctions. Part of what we are experiencing today is a distortion of the concept of friendship.]
Clearly, this is a first stab at a, ”quantum theology,” with an uncertainty principle, where the more one defines truth the less one can define charity (who knew they were conjugate variables?)…or, maybe it’s a first try at a theological theory of, ”General Relativity,” where the truth depends on one’s frame of reference. Either way, should we not nominate Card. Marx and the German School for a Nobel Prize in physics for this glorious undertaking?
By the way, one rarely finds the opportunity for such carefully prepared sarcasm…on a mobile phone, no less.
The Chicken
Ritter: You are such a Boy Scout! You see everything in black and white!
Jack Ryan: No, no, no! Not black and white Ritter, right and wrong!
Consulting canon lawyers and theologians on the indissolubility of marriage? Why doesn’t he consult the New Testament?
Marx criticizes “black and white thinking” using a black and white statement i.e. “black and white thinking is dangerous.” He, therefore, offers us a self-refuting hypothesis and his comments should be treated with the disdain they deserve.
His comments are as irrational and self-refuting as those of another prelate who criticized people who seek “excessive doctrinal security” and “clarity”. He, no doubt, had no intention of being clear in his meaning when he said this.
No clarity of thought or meaning should, therefore, be ascribed to either gentleman, so we should not let their comments disturb us in the slightest. Time to leave them in their nostalgia for the drug-hazed ’60’s and get back to the real black and white world (with some colour thrown in,)
“A man who has been killed by one enemy is just as dead as one who has been killed by an entire army. If you are friends with one habit of mortal sin, you live in death, even though you may seem to have all the other virtues.”
–Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
I think if Caiaphas were alive today he would accuse Jesus Christ of being a terrorist.
This is just silly rationalizing. I thought Germans were so smart. I’m tired of using Hitler. What if Stalin was a closet philanthropist? What if he delivered meals on wheels to old people on the days he wasn’t supervising slaughter? I mean, does doing nice things on the one hand mean you get carte blanche for sinning or evil on the other? If that’s how it is, well, that might be tempting. I’m only a weak and sinful person, and you’re throwing me a tempting out. I can do good things for others on weekdays and do my sinning on the weekend. I believe I can contain it to those two days, so as long as I do some philanthropy on the other days, I’m in good shape, if this is how it is.
These guys are no different from secular activists. They want what they want and they aren’t going to quit until they get it. Doctrine be damned to these guys.
His terrorism comment is chilling.
I converted to the Catholic Church lo these 20 plus years ago, and have found it an ever springing source of Grace, particularly in the clarity and sense of the Traditional and Magisterial teaching, the beauties of liturgical worship of our Good God (although often more present in theory than practice), and the bond of charity with our fellow humans that is encouraged. Listening to voices like Marx, Baldisseri, Forte, Maradiaga et al., I just have no interest in the kind of Church these people want to create — one where everything is mercy, but with no recognition of individual sin or call to repentance, one where the moral truths of the Faith announced by Jesus through Scripture and Tradition and handed down n the Church through the ages is tossed on the trash heap and the wisdom of the world is embraced as it is in the Episcopal church or other mainstream Protestant sellouts of Christianity. If these prelates get their way, the Church will cease being the one in which I was baptized. I just pray the Pope will in the end be guided by Holy Spirit to reject this course.
In the words of that immortal patristic theologian and Doctor of the Church, Bugs Bunny:
‘What a maroon.’
‘O Jesus, I pray for your faithful and fervent priests, for your unfaithful and tepid priests … ‘
The objective of the current reformation taking place in the Vatican is Gay marriage. We cringe but Obama and the Pope stand shoulder to shoulder with the sodomites. Rome, we have a problem. Help!
We can’t forget that it is fundamentally disordered for any two men or two women to engage in any kind of romantic relationship with each other.
Who says that (and, most importantly, what do we understand as “romantic” here?)?
The relationship of David and Jonathan was fully ordered and praiseworthy. As is, in the fictional world, the friendship between Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee. Or, to return into the real world let me point from afar to the fact that the friendship of our Lord himself to St. John was such that St. John was described, in a distinctive manner, as The Disciple-whom-Jesus-loved.
We have to fault today’s gay-culture for the terrible loss that we can’t even think of any male-male friendship above a certain degree of closeness and emotionality, which would not be disordered. I do not exempt myself, as far as this instinctive feeling goes, but if I’m not mistaken that feeling is quite mistaken.
What is sinful is the homosexual travesty of the sex act, and what is disordered is anything is, though possibly without guilt (i. e. e. g. in a homosexual believer striving to live chastely), directed towards it – i. e., any to any degree sexual relationship between males and males. But there’s nothing either immoral or disordered in the feeling of care, of (starkly) emotional friendship and what a less sexualized society once had termed “love” – and in my use of language, it would be that what “romantic relationship” refers to.
“Marx criticizes “black and white thinking” using a black and white statement i.e. “black and white thinking is dangerous.””
Great catch, Deacon Augustine. You reminded me of this excellent quote by G.K. Chesterton:
“No skeptic who believes that truth is subjective has any hesitation about treating it as objective.”
MSM
It boggles my mind that these can be expressed so publicly by a cardinal. A prince of the Church, no less. It’s like a professor of physics in an endowed chair at MIT proclaiming that matter is created in a chemical reaction. How on earth did someone with that viewpoint get into that position of authority?
Sigh.
Only thing that’s clear in my muddled mind is that the hubris of the German hierarchy didn’t learn from the hubris of the German hierarchy of the 1500s. And we know how that turned out.
The Rhine is still flowing into the Tiber. And the results, should there not be strong opposition and clear teaching, which I’m not sure will be able to overcome the propaganda of the moonbats in high hats, will be even more disruptive to the faithful.
Cardinal Marx seems to follow the magisterium of Fr Charles Curran rather than the Ordinary and Extraordinary Magisterium of the Catholic Church – especially on matters relating to the Sixth Commandment.
Now remember that in 1986, the Prefect of the CDF (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) wrote to Fr Curran:
“In light of your repeated refusal to accept what the church teaches and in light of its mandate to promote and safeguard the church’s teaching on faith and morals throughout the Catholic world, this Congregation, in agreement with the Congregation for Catholic Education, sees no alternative now but to advise the most reverend chancellor that you will no longer be considered suitable nor eligible to exercise the function of a professor of Catholic theology.”
For those with strong stomachs, details of Fr Curran’s dissenting views can be seen at:
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19860725_carlo-curran_en.html
Why then has Cardinal Marx’s Missio Canonico to teach not been revoked?
Surely the same criteria should apply to Cardinals as to priests.
And there should be an even greater degree of fidelity to doctrine and morals from Bishops and Cardinals than from Priests and Theologians.
Dear Father Zuhldorf, THank you for continuing to fight the good fight.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said that the revolution will come from the pews. As a pew sitter who cannot condone that the truth of our faith can be changed by the powerful people in powerful places concerning marriage and the reception of communion I urge everyone to look at the following link and if you agree to the fact that we are being pushed out of knowing the truth to sign up to this petition at America Needs Fatima.
https://www.americaneedsfatima.org/forms/E15016.html?lang=en&utm_source=sm-anf&utm_content=E.15016a_Split1
If I might reply to various comments above.
1. The Logos is the Second Person of the Trinity, not the Third. The mistake was little else than doctrinal rounding error, but nonetheless worth noting.
2. There has been in German thought a tendency to posit two different theologies: One based on the Logos (theology of Truth) the other based on the Holy Spirit (theology of Love). This latter is often referred to as Kenotic–it adopts the very radical understanding of Christ’s Kenosis (self emptying, cf Philippians) of Martin Luther. Christ didn’t have a clue what was happening but acted out of blind obedience (a residue of the Counter Reformation Church), inspired by the Holy Spirit. And if He was in the dark, so is everyone else.
In this German approach there is no notion of the Filioque or for that matter St Thomas’ verbum spirans amorem. One must choose between the Son and the Holy Spirit. Choosing the second is classic voluntaristic theology.
3. Papa Bergoglio is intelligent, but has not really studied much theology. Kudos to him for not continuing the theological study in Germany. Who in their right mind would want to spend years trying to understand how theological gumshoes like Karl Rahner try to track down the New Gnosticism?
4. I’m not so concerned about what is happening as others seem to be. It was very important that JPII devoted so much time to preaching morality (esp re the family), but it did little for the reform of the Church, despite all the neo-con enthusiasm. In anyone didn’t know already, the Synod showed that bishops in W Europe leave a lot to be desired.
Bruce said the following
“Ritter: You are such a Boy Scout! You see everything in black and white!
Jack Ryan: No, no, no! Not black and white Ritter, right and wrong!”
Well that gives me Hope, Bob Ritter and Arthur Moore did eventually come to their senses at Jim Greer’s funeral , it’s also apparent that if Jack Ryan and followed Fr. Tim into the Priesthood then we’d have fewer problems today :)
As to this:
“The atmosphere of reducing the complexity of the world, to give simple answers, to give black and white answers, is growing, and I think that is very dangerous,” the cardinal said.
And with respect to the ongoing Synodal discussion on the family, complexity, and the advocacy of different positions, I think, in retrospect, perhaps he is on to something valuable we might consider here after all, notwithstanding that the quotation does appear to calumniate tradition on its face.
Within the larger concern that the Church has for the family in today’s world, and the situation of Catholics who quite honestly in great part were not only poorly catechised but actively taught heresy by so many in responsibility over the last fifty years in the West, I think we perhaps must consider as part of the Church’s program for going forward a few aspects of the family, of the situation of parents, and the cultural stressors on family life, and even, and I am shocked that I will say this, allowing in a bit of relativising of the situation. To give a basic comprehension and understanding in order to discover better the way forward…When we consider irregular situations, the vast majority of these parents were in youth not only not taught the doctrine of the faith, but were not given an opportunity for mature spiritual growth through the means offered by the Real Presence and regular confession. Further, are we Catholics of a certain age in the West not all in some sense scandalized by the filth of sin within the Church a great many of have witnessed or even been harmed and scarred by? And not only that filth upon us and its effects, but the further faith crippling spectacle of the perpetrators of crimes living as it were the easy life ensconced and protected by the Church, for some even now, with victims having to cobble together a life as best as they are able with little to go on. Further, this entire generation has been deeply scarred and wounded by the absence of their peers, with some thirty million and counting lost to the slaughter under the rigid legalism that justifies the slaughter of half a generation, via torture, in their mothers’ wombs, with the violence this represents? I think in order for us to process out where we need to go to best serve such wounded warriors as are parents and families today undoubtedly are, and show them the mercy and healing they need, we need to acknowledge what has, and is happening, in Germany, I am sure just as it is in the U.S., ongoing. We cannot pretend that it is fine to make divorced parents who had not many benefits feel horrible in their plights when the ex-priest down the block abused several minors, never was called to justice on it, never paid even a dime for their therapy, and receives communion just the same as if all were fine and dandy…and many other horrible actions besides. Too, for the politician who receives communion from one side of their mouths but then goes on record about how much we need many more abortions of our young people, how can we place burdens hard to bear on the backs of families in the Church when these politicians are living the high life and celebrated for their deeds?
I for one agree with this Cardinal from Germany. There is much more complexity to these matters than meets the eye. Let us engage on it for the good of the whole universal Church, and for the good of our young people who deserve a fighting chance at salvation.
MSM:
” This is so confusing … ” Well, to that I say ” If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck …, guess what … It is a duck !”
2Timothy 4:2 Proclaim the message in season and out of season; refute falsehood, correct error, call to obedience.
Living in these times reminds me of a saying from St Augustine of Hippo ” Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.”
Dear Catholics : know your faith , live it and get ready for Pope Leo xiii warned us ” Catholics are born for combat”.
pax et bonum
If one is in mortal sin, one gets no grace.
What is so hard about understanding this teaching?