Lumen Fidei (No?)

Don't forget the chocolate, you Renaissance Prince...

The new four-hand encyclical letter, Lumen Fidei, will be released on Friday. It surely calls for a quiet evening with a glass of brandy, some good chocolate and Beethoven – if you have a “Renaissance Prince” moment – in the background. I can't wait.

It would be easy to make the obvious joke and say the periods with five or six subordinates are Benedict's, and those ending with “eh?” or “no?” are Francis' … I will certainly resist the temptation… If I can.

More seriously, I can't imagine the work has not been revised by some wise theologian's pen, to give it uniformity of style, disguise the obvious gap between the heavyweight and the featherweight and not make it possible to say what is the one's, or the other's. This, assuming the encyclical is exclusively the work of the two, which does not have to be the case.

For the moment, I register with some satisfaction that the official version appears to be in Latin. I had feared Spanish, or perhaps Esperanto.

We shall see. Prepare the brandy.

Mundabor

 

Don’t Hold Your Breath

The black shoes were far too Renaissance Prince for the new Pope...

Reading around the readers' comment in Catholic blogs, I am surprised at the frequency with which comments appear indicating that either The End Is Near or at the least a great shaking in Church matters is about to happen, by which the Holy Ghost will reinstate sanity.

I would suggest that you don't hold your breath.

Please consider that short of stopping the Pope from proclaiming an heretical dogma, the Holy Ghost might not intervene at all in this mess, allowing things to go on in their very stinking way for a very long time. Words already count for very little, and in the last 50 years the Catholic clergy has proved very adept in promoting, or living together with, heterodoxy without openly challenging it. If, say, two “Catholics” live more uxorio and go to Church, the priest is very unlikely to say a single word to them, much less deny them communion. Contraception, fornication, dissent of all kind go along the same pattern. In fact, as far as a Neo-Modernist is concerned the entire corpus of Catholic doctrine can be disfigured to the point of making it utterly unrecognisable, without any need for an attempt to dogmatically proclaim the heresy.

Think of the Doctrine of War, or of Capital Punishment. They have been almost completely obliterated from Catholic thinking and acting, without any need to openly and formally deny the principle. It is sufficient that people are kept in ignorance; or told the “new man” doesn't need what the “old man” needed; or told the principle is the same, we now only interpret it in a slightly different way, because nowadays we are all oh so smart.

Therefore, things can, and probably will, become much worse than they are today. Already we have a Pope who renounces to intervene in the sodomy debate because he doesn't want to be “provocative”. Christianity is provocative: if one thinks the fear of “provocation” is sufficient justification to shut up on one of the sins crying to Heaven for vengeance, there is absolutely nothing to which the same principle cannot be applied. Not even the Father, the Son, or the Holy Ghost. Cue Imam Dolan completely ignoring in front of a Muslim audience – and thus, to all intents and purposes, denying; but without saying so openly – the Divinity of Christ.

Pope Bergoglio will, no doubt, appoint bishops and Cardinals who largely think and act like him, and we will see the effect of this in the next decades. They in turn will march “forward” on the way to easy popularity and harmless soundbites, very probably starting where Francis still stops. If the Pope has to be “one of us” it is difficult to see why the next Pope shouldn't wear a clergyman and tennis shoes, and the one after him shorts and flip-flops. Can't wait for the first tattooed Pope, too. Hey, I am reliably informed “Catholic Answers” thinks a Catholic tattoo is totally spiffy, so there you are….

How modern the clergy of the future will be! They will “celebrate” everything, and “judge” no one! They will drown in dialogue, and leave Christ aside. They will make the Mass as stupid as they can whilst still calling it Mass, but trying to let its meaning and purpose disappear from the collective consciousness as very “provocative”. They will bend over backward to appease everyone's “lifestyle” and “choices”. The applauding masses – by this time completely oblivious to Christianity – will be delighted. How very “in touch”, “relevant”, even “cool”. The springtime of the Church.

“Look”, Father Pansy will say, “the Church is full, as people of every creed celebrate our common desire to do good by barbecuing in the Church, in the presence of the Great Cool Inclusive Chap we call Joshua. Let's rejoice instead of being despondent, ye trads of little faith!”.

All this, mind, without openly denying any dogma. Dolan denies Christ and nothing happens to him because he does not explicitly say “I do not believe Christ is God”. Be assured his denial will assure him good cards in the next Conclave. So “inclusive”. Muslims will be delighted.

Make no mistake, Dolan and those like him are the future for the time being, a future that might well surpass our nightmares. Until the time, that is, when he and those like him will reap their rewards, and we will be given decent shepherds anew.

Again, don't hold your breath. I am afraid it might get much worse before it gets better.

Mundabor

 

Vatican II And Doctrinal Truths

Reblog of the day

Mundabor's Blog

Talking with friends about religious matters one is always astonished at the amount of shallowness and ignorance exhibited by many Catholics. This is the more shocking because these Catholic appear to be, more often than not, in good faith.

As always, one must point out to the tragedy of a Catholic instruction which is so deficient as to lack the very basics; and one can only hope, for the sake of the involved souls, that the priests in charge of instructing their sheep have not intentionally caused this abysmal ignorance (don’t ask me to bet on all of them, though).

Here I would like to shortly touch on one point: the relationship between Vatican II and doctrinal truths.

Whenever appropriate, Catholics must be told (in the office, within the larger family, among friends) that Vatican has not changed anything in the doctrinal apparatus of the Church, because Catholic doctrine doesn’t…

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