At CWR, Carl Olson took on some words of Francis to Portuguese Jesuits – we saw something about that elsewhere – published in La Civiltà Cattolica especially about US “backwardists” and we poor benighted American’s and “ideology”. Thus, he demonstrates his willingness to dialogue with everyone without a hint of dismissal or, quod Deus avertat, personal insults.
Olson’s opening is just right. My emphases:
Who is really trying to replace doctrine with ideology?
There you go again.” — Ronald Reagan, 1980
Pope Francis, addressing a group of Jesuits recently, said: “When you abandon doctrine in life to replace it with an ideology, you have lost, you have lost as in war.” He is correct. But not, I think, in the way he apparently thinks.
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The timing of the interview is just as notable as the recycled and now all-too-familiar clichés about those who are “rigid,” “go backward,” and are “superficial”. While Spadaro is not very adept at mathematics or theology, he is a crafty operator who is undoubtedly looking toward the upcoming Synod in October in Rome. And I suspect this particular piece is meant to be something of a long stare at any U.S. bishops who might have the temerity to asks difficult questions about the endless process of the Synod on Synodality.
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Olson concludes with:
And yet, ironically, I do take hope in Francis’s remark: “When you abandon doctrine in life to replace it with an ideology, you have lost, you have lost as in war.”
As mentioned before, “ideology” is never defined. We are left to guess at it what it is coming from someone whose meanings are variable. However, whatever they are, at moment, they, by gum, are right and – if you know what’s good for you – you will knuckle under and recognize their truthiness.
Meanwhile, “there you go again”! Carter accused Reagan of being “against health care”, which is the perennial Dem trope, along with, “His party wants old people to eat cat food instead of getting their medication as they are being pushed off the cliff in their wheel chairs.” Reagan, in fact, supported “health care” but in a different form, a different bill.
In other words Reagan’s opponent painted a picture which was, in effect, a lie. But if you tell the lie over and over and over and over and over and over and, it eventually punches through people’s incredulity into, first, the realm of the possible, and then the probable, and the “truth” in their meta-universe. The Big Lie.
Constantly throwing out “indietrismo” without any real basis is the same and it deserves: “There you go again.” Hence, Olson got it right from the start.
BTW… that Carter/Reagan debate… a turning point… was also when Reagan wrapped up with this famous bit:
We don’t have much “voting” in the Church – except in the case of radical “walking together”. However, use a little imagination and translate then Gov. Reagan’s speech into today’s ecclesial terms. Are we better off now than we were, say, two years ago? Since 16 July 2021? Are we better off now than, say, 2013?
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Where we are today is a nightmare. In 2012 our family was in sync with Rome, with our pope, with where we were as a church. We thought of the church as what it was, unchangeable, solid, sure of who she was, our guide, really, we had no cause to even question that in 2012. The pope was Catholic. The church was Catholic. The faith was Catholic. We were Catholic.
I can’t even detail how our feelings have changed about all of those except the faith, which we still love and adhere to as best we can. To put it bluntly, we have actual animosity toward the others, and would cheer their comeuppance with only a slight sad note. That is a sorry place to be for Catholics.
Wonderful. Another buzzword the Catholic Left/Red Guard can use – “ideology”.
This is the same tactic that was used by the RG just after the McCarrick scandal blew up. It was… “clericalism”! (Ya! That’s the ticket. Yet… never really defined.) [Oh! Now he is unfit for trial. Imagine that!]
Thanks for posting Carl’s article, Fr. Z. I have been going back to it often the past couple of days.
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Such a great point Olson makes about the Holy Father’s straw-man argument about conservative Catholics allegedly ignoring labor-exploitation, lying and cheating while taking a magnifying glass to “sins below the waist.” Olson points out that the dominant society and the media aren’t constantly promoting labor-exploitation, lying and cheating. Indeed. Wake me up with the labor exploiters hold a “pride parade.” It’s been pointed out that Pope Francis lives in a kind of bubble, spending a total of 6 days of his entire life in the U.S., never watching television, reading only a couple (left-wing) newspapers and getting his “information” from a close circle of like-minded sycophants such as Spadaro. Maybe he truly doesn’t understand how much nice, normal Catholic families just trying to practice their faith feel under siege from an aggressive LGBT agenda that controls schools, social media, law, corporate America etc. Maybe he imagines poor, marginalized, minding-their-own-business-and-praying homosexuals being harassed and run out of churches by rabid, unhinged right-wing troglodytes. Maybe he truly doesn’t get who the aggressors are in this culture war. I don’t know. But what I do know is that I’ll never accept nor in any way support a Catholic Church that wraps itself in the Rainbow Flag. Much of the German branch is already there. If the rest of the Church follows, God help us.
It’s too strange to comprehend: fidelity to the Church’s perennial teachings is an ideology.
This man is so utterly lacking in self-awareness it’s breathtaking. Again and again he accuses the faithful of precisely what he himself does.
Fr Z, but we can vote. My vote is to get up from the Last Supper and follow Christ to the Crucifixion. I am attending the traditional Latin Mass.
The children’s book “Know Your Mass” explains the sacrifice beautifully. Originally published in the 1950’s.
I will help Christ carry His Cross along the way with rosaries, penance, fasting with charity and silence. Lord give us happy saints.
Praise God, we have a TLM in my diocese. If we did not, I’d find an SSPX chapel. God has preserved His Church in the SSPX.
While we may not have much “voting” in the Church, we have had a rambunctious synod or two in the past. In the spirit of Vatican II maybe we should spontaneously restore this ancient synodal practice? ;-)
In my fantasy world, wouldn’t it be something if the orthodox bishops in these United States did our own Synodal Way and produced pronouncements that we were going back to communion on the tongue, an end to horrendous “music” and a crackdown on liturgical abuses?
Aside from the USCCB not going along with it, if it did happen, I wonder what reaction we’d get from Rome?