The end of the dinosaurs?

26 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by chalcedon451 in Faith, Pope, Synod 14, Synod15

Tags

Catholic Church, Catholicism, controversy, orthodoxy, Synod 15

So,the Synod is over, and there we have it – the final statement which is, we are told a great improvement on the working drafts. Already liberal Catholics are ‘virtue signalling’ by tweeting and writing about ‘mercy’ as though they have just discovered it and think they own it. The spin machine of the German bishops is in overdrive, with claims that they got what they wanted. But one wonders? The Pope chose to make some sour comments about ‘closed hearts’, following the modernist view that an open heart is synonymous with an empty head, which hardly suggest he feels that the liberal agenda is now approved. It is clear what the Pope would like, but a Pope is a Pope, and they come, and they go, and this one has done what one suspects his backers wanted – and their throw of the dice has failed – although they will loudly proclaim otherwise.

There is a generation, which for the sake of convenience, one might call the ’68ers’ – it makes better sense in French where they refer to the ‘soixante huitards‘ – who thought that the tide of liberalism of 1968 marked a decisive change in the direction of history; they thought they were riding that tide. Those who did so in the secular world were right, but their religious counterparts were not so fortunate from the point of view of their careers. It is true that being so many, some of them have reached senior positions in the Church, but John Paul II and Benedict XVI proved stout defenders of orthodoxy, and with a younger generation of Western priests coming through in that mould, and with African and Asian priests of impeccable orthodoxy, the 68ers were running out of time. Benedict XVI’s unexpected abdication led to their being able to get their man in. The two Synods were their throw of the dice – and they have lost. The tide of history was not moving in their direction – they are dinosaurs stranded on sandbanks as the tide goes out.

They will, as is their wont, try to use words to mean what they want the words to mean, and those who agree with them will do the same; but that is hardly a new development – they have been doing it for fifty years – and longer – there is a reason the English use the word ‘Jesuitical’ as a synonym for casuistry. However, the speed of modern social media has meant that attempts to rig the Synod have not only been spotted, but called out and combatted. Those who were worried about a liberal triumph will continue to be, but many of these seem uncomfortable with the very existence of a liberal Catholicism; what is notable here is that even with a rigged Synod, the liberal agenda did not prevail. Given the age profile of the liberals and the fact that the rising generation is the John Paul II one, with heavy reinforcement from Africa and Asia, the demographics are against the German Cardinals. A group who can call for mercy towards those who reject established Catholic teaching, but show none to people who don’t pay their Church tax, and who are presiding over emptying pews in a Continent where the faith is ebbing fast, are in no position to claim to control the future.

Back when these men in their 70s were young, the culture they were in was one in which many were Catholics without thinking about it, and some such went into seminaries in much the same way. Some left in the sixties and early seventies, some stayed on thinking that things would change and that they could help. The passive-aggressive bitterness which marks so many of their utterances is the produce of hope deferred, and it feels almost cruel to tell them that they are a dying breed – but they are. As I commented in a recent piece in the Catholic Herald (not alas on line) the liberal option in religion leads to the Dignitas euthanasia clinic. The Faith, and the Church, will march on, and the soixante huitards will become yet another interesting sociological phenomenon to be studies by those with a taste for such things. Men attached to once-fashionable nostrums have their opinions, God has his Law, and we should be in no doubt about who will prevail.

Local churches?

19 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by Geoffrey RS Sales in Faith, Pope, Synod 14

≈ 53 Comments

Tags

Catholic Church, Christianity, controversy, Papacy, Synod 15

Now I may be wrong (it’s been known), but what I’m reading suggests that the infamous Synod is likely to result in what I’d call the ‘Orthodox option’ – by which I mean power being delegated to local churches to make what the Pope would call ‘pastoral decisions’. On the surface that’s sensible enough – except, as the Anglicans found out, if you have one local church saying you can have a gay bishop marrying his chum, and another one saying that is heresy, you have a bust up, not two brother churches getting along in amity. Perhaps no one at the Vatican knows this?

If this is where it’s heading, the results will be the same as in Anglicanism. The Africans and Asian will stick with what the Church has always taught, the Europeans and the Americans (some of them) will look for ingenious ways of doing what their society demands. The Africans and Asians will continue to see their churches grow, the Americans and Europeans will see a shrinkage, and in the end the latter will, as C commented to me in an email, end up sending missionaries to re-evangelise us.

But what, in all this, of the Pope? Seems to me that there won’t be much need for him. If each local church can do as its bishops decide, then they don’t need an umpire – especially one who has a problem judging – after all, that’s what an umpire is for, and if he can’t, or won’t judge, then there’s no need for the fellow.

That would open up interesting vistas in terms of Christian unity. One might expect to see the dwindling local churches of Europe finding some syncretistic formula that would allow them to unite to service their vanishing congregations – which would probably vanish even more quickly. That would allow those churches where there are orthodox believers who take the historic creeds seriously, to evangelise, with the help of the African and Asian churches, which, let’s face it, have vocations to spare. Within a generation or so, the United Church of tolerance of everything, would be down to a basement in Ecclestone Square, and the others would be expanding by evangelisation.

So, who can tell, for all the doom-mongering, perhaps rambling Pope Frank is following a path which will allow the progressives to expire slowly in their unholy huddle, and leave the way clear for orthodoxy to triumph. It’s all very well to have clever plans, but the Holy Ghost will lead, and he may well lead Pope Frank to a place where, all appearances to the contrary, he ends up doing something necessary. It would allow the Vatican II ‘spirit’ to die slowly whilst inoculating the rest of the Catholic Church against it.

Just a thought to cheer my Catholic friends here!

The modern Gutenberg

15 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by Geoffrey RS Sales in Faith, Synod 14

≈ 88 Comments

Tags

Catholic Church, Catholicism, Christianity, controversy, Synod 15

Respecting Chalcedon’s steering clear of the Catholic Synod until we actually hear what it is going to say, I want, nonetheless, to comment on one aspect of what is happening. I can recall the Second Vatican Council, and if you wanted any idea of what was occurring during it, you got a copy of the Catholic Herald or The Tablet, or even the Church Times and you’d get some news, and then, for those interested, you could read the documents when they were published. Now communication is instant, and the spectacle of Fr Rosica blocking twitter accounts which dissented from his ‘spin’ was both amusing and instructive: the former because it showed he had no idea how modern social media works; the second because it showed the impulse to clericalism still runs strong. If the fellow could ban people, he would – but in the modern world it isn’t so easy.

One thing striking me about all this is that fellows my age and a bit younger, simply fail to grasp the nature of the communications revolution that has hit us all. Back in Luther’s day the Church discovered it no longer had a monopoly over communications – Gutenberg’s invention made reading matter more easily available, and folk could print pamphlets and get their message out there whilst a conclave of Cardinals was taking its leisurely time in the old way of things. Likewise, those who are engaged in political intrigue can no longer do so under conditions of privacy which mean that it will only be years later that anyone will learn what they’ve been up to; things get out, and when they do, Twitter gives it a world-wide audience within moments. The idea of a press officer thinking he can stop this by blocking people is actually quite funny – but a bit sad, as it suggests the poor old chap hasn’t a clue – and as another poor old chap without much of a one, I sympathise – but then I’m not supposed to be running a media operation for a global church!

We can see how all of this explodes the ‘usual ways of doing things’ if we see what happened to Cardinal Kasper last year. He was quoted saying disobliging things about Africans by a reporter and denied doing so. Unfortunately for Kasper he’d been recorded. Still, the fellow didn’t apologise for telling lies – he’s a prince of the church and so criticised the journalist for recording him – and then wondered why many folk thought him a bit of a wide boy – that, of course, would have been on the basis of ample evidence. It’s clear that without the tape recorded Kasper would have simply kept on denying that he had said what he said (technically we call this lying, but perhaps for a Cardinal there is a Latin term which means he was telling a white lie with his fingers crossed?) – but he couldn’t. Equally, those who are trying to fix things can’t move without someone spotting them. Of course, some folk spot conspiracies where there are none, but that’s the price we pay for freedom – everyone has an opinion.

The Roman Catholic Church has always been big on authority and uneasy with it being questioned. For all his rambling ways, Pope Frank is no exception, he clearly doesn’t like being criticised, not least by his own side. Well, welcome to the modern world old chap, deference is dead, and all you’re going to get by trying to impose clericalism is criticism. Of course, he could always try sticking to what the Church has always taught – but that would upset Kasper and the Germans might take their money away. Quite what they are using their money for as the pews empty is another question.

My one piece of advice would be hand the thing over to the Africans, they believe in Jesus and in what the Church has always taught.