Yesterday I took time away – mostly – from the blog and email. I checked in only long enough to approve comments in the queue, etc.
Of course today lots of things are going “DING”, whimpering for my attention. Most of them are – as things are these days – bad.
One piece at LifeSite was especially gorge raising.
VP of German Bishops Conference wants to bless homosexual couples
What wrong with these guys?
Okay… sorry. That was a unguarded moment in which my naturally buoyant optimism peaked out through my increasingly battered carapace.
We know what’s wrong with these guys.
GERMANY, January 10, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Bishop Franz-Josef Bode, the Vice President of the German Bishops’ Conference, has called for a discussion about the possibility of blessing homosexual relationships. [Note the incrementalism.] He believes there to be “much [that is] positive” in such relationships. [How ambiguous.]
The new statement from Bishop Bode comes in the wake of a recent interview given to the German journal Herder Korrespondenz by Cardinal Reinhard Marx – President of the German Bishops’ Conference and papal adviser – in which he [Marx] proposed that the Catholic Church rethink her teaching on sexual morality in which he argued against “blind rigorism.” For him, it is “difficult to say from the outside whether someone is in the state of mortal sin.” Marx applied this statement not only to men and women in ‘irregular situations,’ but also to those in a homosexual relationship. [Everything is gray. How many shades of gray, I wonder.]
There has to be “a respect for a decision made in freedom” and for one’s “conscience,” claimed Marx. He said that one has to take into account the “concrete circumstances,” while still remembering “one’s own responsibility in light of the Gospels.” Of course, added Marx, one also has “to listen to the voice of the Church.” [Oh yes, we blow the dust off of a book and look up what the Church once taught… well… officially taught… wink, nudge… and then, having “discerned” for a while, maybe even “struggled” for a while, we do whatever the hell we want.]
[…]
B as in B. S as in S.
When, in the context of suggesting that something to which the Church has always said “No!” is being touted as something to which Church should now suddenly say is “Okay!”, you see mentions of “concrete circumstances”, you know you have verged into “bearded-Spock” parallel Church, or perhaps rather “Kasper church”, in which philosophy has been replaced with politics.
“Lived experience” is advanced as a trump card over “truth”.
The scholar Robert Stark pointed out that those who talk about bending the Church’s teachings (and practices) to “reality” claim that truth can vary from place to place and time to time. What might have once been true doesn’t necessary need to be true now.
The German/Kasperite/Rahnerian approach replaces the philosophical grounding of theology with politics (majorities can determine truth, and that might diverge from what people thought in the past). Truth changes according to shifting mores, values, etc. To hell with reason (e.g., syllogisms, etc.).
Some people think that the “perfumed princes”, to borrow some jargon, who interpret Ch. 8 of Amoris laetitia in a way that is inharmonious with Familiaris consortio will now ramp up a direct attack on Paul VI’s teaching in Humanae vitae about artificial contraception.
Proposals like that of this German bishop and Card. Marx about bending “blind rigorism” and blessing homosexual unions is part and parcel of both manifestations of infidelity. If they can succeed in separating the procreative act from procreation, then anything goes.
That’s what some of them want: anything goes.
Which is, of course, game over for Catholic teaching on faith and morals.
Frankly, I don’t believe that most of those who propose things out of harmony with the Church’s perennial teaching are farsighted or smart enough to have consistent long-range plans in this regard. Like this VP, they are being swept along on the mudslide triggered by those uphill from them. The effect is, however, still dangerous.
UPDATE:
“What happened?”, some of you ask over and over again.
There are a few books which are helpful in this regard. Picking up on a comment, below, an essential book which explains what happened is…
The Rhine Flows into the Tiber: A History of Vatican II by Ralph Wiltgern
US HERE – UK HERE
If you haven’t read this, then you probably don’t know what went on during and after Vatican II, how the agenda was hijacked.
From a reader…
Yesterday I took time away – mostly – from the blog and email. I checked in only long enough to approve comments in the queue, etc.
From the 
