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Post by hibernicus on Mar 5, 2010 12:57:26 GMT
More horrors concerning Fr. Maciel are revealed. A Mexican woman alleges that he had a 20-year relationship with her and abused his children by her. (Note; these allegations should be treated with some caution at this stage, but I suspect it would be possible to confirm by DNA whether they are his children.) catholiclight.stblogs.org/markshea.blogspot.com/2010/03/despicably-evil-fr-marcel-maciel.htmlIn another entry on one of the above blogs Stephen Vere (who has represented alleged abusers before canon law tribunal) suggests the old minor seminary system is linked to some of the milder forms of abusive behaviour. He describes these as priests who were physically adults but emotionally teenagers engaging in forms of horseplay which might be unremarked between teenagers but were inappropriate between an adult and adolescent, and which if not checked could lead to worse behaviour. catholiclight.stblogs.org/archives/2010/03/questions-for-m.html
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 5, 2010 13:02:01 GMT
Some good advice for what should be our response to such things - the advice is applicable to all of us as well as the Legion. (Perhaps it is possible to be a bit more charitable - they may be paralysed by a "shellshock" effect - but the effect of such paralysis is still the same.) deirdremundy.blogspot.com/2010/03/sordid-tales-countersigns-and.htmlThe latest sordid information about the sins of Marcial Maciel has me thinking about Fr. Frechette and his work in Haiti again. (Yes, I’m still thinking about that article—it was truly eye-opening. If you haven’t read it yet, you should.) Father Frechette talks about sign and countersign – that when we witness great evil, we can respond by committing an act of great holiness. We can follow Christ’s teaching and shine a floodlight into the dark and evil places. Fr. Frechette did this when he and the sisters gave a Christian burial to the young man burned alive. This is another place where the Legion is falling short. When faced with the evidence of Maciel’s crimes, they’re NOT providing a countersign. They’re not reaching out to the victims or engaging in public penance. Instead of shining a floodlight to illuminate the darkness, they’re trying to hide the crimes under a bushel basket. “Don’t pay attention to that,” they tell us. “Look away. Focus on the good. Ignore the evil. You haven’t personally experienced it, so it’s not really there.” As Christians, we’re supposed to let our light shine— when our countersigns light up the darkness, they show the world both the evil and the alternative. You can’t repent if you don’t acknowledge the sin; you can’t heal if you ignore the illness. Right now, the Legion’s problems are like that old Tupperware in the back of your refrigerator. You know there’s something nasty in there. You know that when you open it and look inside, the smell will turn your stomach. So you shove it to the back, behind the milk and the eggs, and hope that it will miraculously clean itself up. But of course it doesn’t. It festers. It blooms. An entire world of filth grows where once there was a sprinkling of mold. If the lid’s not on tight, it gets into the air and starts contaminating other food, even the walks of your refrigerator. Until you can steal your stomach, grab the bleach, and attack the problem, everything else is tainted. This is where the Legion is right now. The rot is out of control, they need a countersign to fight the evil. Instead, they’re paralyzed, waiting for Rome to come in and save them—which is itself a sign of what’s wrong. Posted by Deirdre Mundy at 12:14 PM Labels: catholic, Frechette, Legion, Maciel, Mold, similes
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 5, 2010 13:04:58 GMT
And of course one thing we CAN do is to pray for Maciel's victims, and for all those who were and are involved in the Legion and its associated ministries as they struggle to come to terms with this and work out what they should do next.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 5, 2010 17:33:54 GMT
Here is a blog by a former Irish LC (from early 1960s to early 1980s) who is trying to come to terms with the recent revelations about maciel and is going to publish his memoirs as a contribution. This source is more sympathetic to the LC than others I have linked to. www.monkwhostolethecow.com/
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Post by Michael O'Donovan on Mar 30, 2010 19:59:49 GMT
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Apr 8, 2010 11:31:41 GMT
That was a good piece from Brendan O'Neill. I didn't vote as I would have said none of the above to the selection. I don't think Cardinal Brady should resign, but not because he should clean up his own mess nor because he's being accused unfairly.
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Post by shane on Apr 8, 2010 15:51:20 GMT
There was one state-run industrial school, located in Dublin; conditions there were actually worse than in the church institutions, difficult though this is to believe. My source is an article on the industrial schools in a recent issue of RADHARC, a New York-based journal of Irish studies. I cannot remember the author's name but it makes truly horrendous reading. Presumably this is Marlborough House. It was entirely state run and conditions were terrible. Anthony Keating wrote an account of it in Studies a few years ago: www.studiesirishreview.ie/j/page244It is covered in Chapter 16 of the Ryan Report : www.childabusecommission.ie/rpt/01-16.php
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Post by shane on Apr 8, 2010 15:57:27 GMT
Yes, Brendan's analysis is very good. David Quinn wrote a similar piece in Studies: Richard Dawkins (of all people) noted in his book The God Delusion:
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 8, 2010 16:48:19 GMT
I tend to be a bit suspicious of Brendan O'Neill because Spiked-online is run by a peculiar political cult formerly known as the Revolutionary Communist Party (former publishers of Living Marxism magazine). They make common ground with libertarian Tories because they believe the therapeutic model of personality undermines revolutionary consciousness by undermining people's sense of personal agency - I am inclined to think that this lies behind O'Neill's tendency to underestimate the long-term damage inflicted on victims of abuse. O'Neill is quite correct, however, in pointing out that much of the media coverage is being driven by desire to permanently marginalise or eradicate the Church. (A few days ago the IRISH TIMES reported a demonstration by abuse survivors in the Pro-Cathedral during Mass in which members of the congregation who objected to Mass being disrupted were implicitly portrayed as heartless and narrow-minded. The paper reproduced without comment the words of one victim who shouted at Archbishop Martin that the Church was "a Nazi Church" and that both the Church and the archbishop - who is of course an Irish citizen - should be banished from Ireland. If you think this is just neutral reporting, ask yourself when was the last time the IRISH TIMES included in a crime report a murder victim's relatives calling for the return of capital punishment, or for extrajudicial vengeance). Peter Hitchens has picked up on the same lecture mentioned by O'Neill - given by a British secularist to Amnesty International which argues that parents should be prevented by law from bring ing up their child as religious believers. Dawkins has actually commended the same lecture - if I am not mistaken, the Dawkins quote given by shane goes on to claim that bringing up children to be Catholics is worse than sexually abusing them! It is ironic to see a Marxist like O'Neill criticisng this, given the past record of Marxist regimes in forcibly repressing religious belief, but better late than never. Hitchens' THE RAGE AGAINST GOD has a very good discussion of the link between the atheist belief that humanity is infinitely malleable/improvable and the contempt of such regimes for individual liberty.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 19, 2010 9:24:08 GMT
An interesting and very critical analysis of Hans Kung's critique of Pope Benedict by a Lutheran. (Credit where credit is due - I found this via CATHOLIC TRUTH SCOTLAND, though I reaffirm all my earlier criticisms of that site's SSPX-mania). www.logia.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=121&catid=39:web-forum&Itemid=18SOME EXTRACTS: shrewd observers must wonder about the startling disproportion between the enormous hue and cry artificially whipped up by the media and the softly spoken real life figure who seems always to have avoided hyperbole like the plague. Even though the curial department over which he presided for almost a quarter century is the direct heir to the 16th-century Inquisition, the disciplinary measures dealt out by Ratzinger against barely a score of wildly Modernist (actually mostly apostate) theologians over more than two decades add up to a string of fairly mild censures, gentle slaps on the wrist in most cases. Hans Küng lost the right to teach theology as an accredited representative of the magisterium (as his missio canonica was stripped from him), but (despite his clear disavowal of the divinity of Christ!) retained his status as an incardinated (=rostered) Roman Catholic priest, and he has, well, greatly profited in fame and fortune from his much trumpeted role as Rome’s chief dissident. Had he rather than Ratzinger landed in the chair of cardinal prefect back in the early 1980s, the media would have shown no sympathy for the advocates of traditional Christianity that a totalitarian liberal such as Küng would have hounded to the remotest margins of Church life; ironically, there is no more illiberal force on earth than a liberal with his hands on the levers of power. Moreover, when someone takes the trouble to examine Ratzinger’s huge opus over close to six decades as a professional theologian, they make the discovery that he occupies a centrist position in the constellation of modern Roman Catholic theology; he is at most mildly “conservative”, the “ultra-conservative” label routinely affixed to him by most sections of the press being sheerly laughable. As I set forth the Roman Catholic reality in our St. Catharines Religious Bodies (Comparative Symbolics) course, I point out the current uneasy coexistence of three groupings in that vast church body... In the one corner are the media-supported Modernists, those who do not acknowledge the definitive quality of God’s unsurpassable self-revelation in Christ, and who thus regard faith and practice not as givens to be handed down intact but as man-made constructs to be refashioned at whim according to the capricious desire of succeeding generations. Roundly condemned and solemnly proscribed by Pius X (1903-1914) and still held back to a great extent by Pius XII (1939-1958), the Modernists crawled out of the woodwork during the reign of John XXIII (1958-1963), and Modernism swiftly rose to a dominant position in Roman Catholic theology in, with, under, and around the (sixteen) officially promulgated documents of Vatican II (1962-1965). As a young theologian, Ratzinger attended Vatican II as a peritus (=expert) of somewhat “progressive” tendencies. By Council’s close he was uneasy over the tone and content of its last document, Gaudium et spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church and the Modern World. Shocked to the core by the virulently anti-Christian positions embraced even by theology students (led by such figures as the radical Tübingen exegete Ernst Käsemann) in the student uprisings of 1968 (Achtundsechziger [“68ers”] is an actual word in modern German), Ratzinger firmed up his centrist credentials and switched his support from the left-leaning magazine Concilium (the house organ of Küng & Co.) to the middle of the road Communio (the substitute publication of von Balthasar and friends). Clearly, the Modernists who surged forth to theological dominance in the wake of Vatican II have never forgiven Ratzinger for his “betrayal” of their cause; in their books (literally, in the case of Küng’s interminable memoirs) he is and remains a cross between Brutus and Judas Iscariot. At least some of his media woes are attributable to the Modernists’ insatiable thirst for revenge for, say, his pointed critique of Gaudium et spes written ten years after the close of the Council. But these pages of sober commentary are surely sweet music to orthodox Lutheran ears... In the opposite corner to the Modernists who can do no wrong in the eyes of the mainstream media stands the numerically much smaller traditionalist minority that can do no right. When did you last read a fair account of the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (1905-1991) in the “quality” press? When did you ever read there an objective appraisal of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) that Lefebvre founded to withstand the Modernist juggernaut that came out of the Council? But the sainted Professor Marquart would have rejoiced at the clear profession of Ac 4:11-12 (“no other Name”) with which the SSPX politely responded to Benedict XVI’s address at the Jewish synagogue in Rome on Sunday 17 January 2010 (http://www.dici.org/en/?p=4263). After Archbishop Lefebvre (without papal permission) ordained four bishops in 1988 to continue his work, he and they incurred automatic excommunication, with the result that the SSPX has (paradoxically, given its deepest intent) been out of communion with Rome since that date. With his vast breadth of learning and his generosity of spirit towards the Orthodox and the heirs of the Reformation (especially the Lutherans: “The Lutherans are to Ratzinger what the Orthodox are to John Paul: the separated brethren he knows best, and for whom he has the greatest natural affinity.” John Allen, Cardinal Ratzinger, 231), Ratzinger is far removed from the wavelength of the SSPX and of the former members of that body who have returned to full communion with Rome under the auspices of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP). Of course, these groups are well aware that it is humanly impossible for them to face a more favourable occupant of the papal chair in the foreseeable future, with the result that the SSPX has lately toned down its anti-papal polemics and willingly begun to participate in a theological dialogue with the CDF. Ratzinger belongs to the centrist mass of Roman Catholics who accept Vatican II, but decline to see the Council (as do Küng & Co.) as a brutal rupture with the foregoing tradition. To understand his papal programme (inasmuch as we may talk of such a thing), we must realise that he is endeavouring to steer his massive ecclesial ship back into a centrist channel after a good forty years of disastrous leftward lurch—just consider the pitiful liturgical shambles that emerged from Paul VI’s Novus Ordo of 1969, causing Hermann Sasse to remark in his last years how Rome had suddenly “canonised St. Zwingli.” [In order to understand this reference one should know that Luther refsused to enter communion with the radical Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli, not least because Zwingli held that the Eucharist is purely symbolic - during their discussion Luther wrote the words THIS IS MY BODY on the table and refused to depart from it - whereas Luther held the theory of consubstantiation, that the Eucharist is BOTH bread and wine AND truly the Body and Blood of Jesus. In other words, this Lutheran is complaining that some post-Vatican II Catholic 'liberals' were further from Eucharistic orthodoxy than Luther!- Hibernicus] A few years ago, in his new capacity as Pope Benedict XVI, Ratzinger coined the phrase “hermeneutic of continuity” to describe an approach to Vatican II that seeks to interpret its documents in harmony with what went before. A major task awaits orthodox Lutheran theology in the shape of updating Chemnitz’s Examen Concilii Tridentini by performing the same service for the documents of Vatican II. Applying the hermeneutic of continuity to these texts, a Chemnitz of our time would discern areas of interconfessional agreement and rapprochement, on the one hand, and of ongoing dissent and debate, on the other. Remarkably, when the press manufactured further storms of outrage on his lifting of the excommunications still hanging over the four remaining SSPX bishops in January 2009, one of the strongest defences made of Benedict XVI in his homeland came from the word processor of Germany’s leading orthodox Lutheran theologian. Gottfried Martens once told me that he shares Joseph Ratzinger’s appraisal of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, namely that he also takes the view that the laboriously achieved document does not in fact represent an authentic, deeply based agreement on the topic in question. And yet, with much greater clarity and conviction that most German Roman Catholic spokesmen could muster, Dr. Martens pointed out in his parish newsletter that the Pope had simply smoothed the way for talks between the SSPX and the CDF by graciously lifting the excommunication of the four renegade bishops; he had not granted them a recognized public ministry in the Roman Catholic Church—they remain unrostered, to use our terminology; and least of all did he knowingly “rehabilitate” a Holocaust denier. But instead of surfing in search of better information to www.logia.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=79&catid=39:web-forum&Itemid=18, the mainstream media take every opportunity to add the charge of “rehabilitating a Holocaust denier” to their already lengthy list of Ratzinger’s many sins. The day after his election to the papacy, the headline of a British tabloid read, “From Hitler Youth to Papa Ratzi!” For as is well known, conscripted teenagers forced into the collapsing armies of the Third Reich shared all the guilt of the worst war criminals, especially if these young men happened to be German nationals. In addition to the unremitting hostility directed at him from the Modernist wing of his own Communion, even prior to his election as Pope, Ratzinger was a favourite target of the unbelieving world’s impassioned hatred for Christ Jesus our Lord and the members of His mystical body. Some years ago, the British Daily Telegraph (which at one time had the reputation of being a “quality” newspaper) reported that the then cardinal had committed a terrible “gaffe” by publicly expressing hope for the conversion of the Jews. Fancy that, a Christian wishing salvation for a sizeable group of his neighbours, a faux pas indeed! A Google search has confirmed my memory that British journalists were likewise incensed by the then cardinal’s comparison of Buddhism with spiritual autoeroticism. How scandalous that a Christian spokesman should speak candidly of religions that offer a spurious salvation! The Canadian mainstream media were frenziedly sharpening their knives against Joseph Ratzinger in the weeks when he was a strong candidate to succeed John Paul II. His papacy was barely a few hours old when the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) evening news ran a segment on an aged Italian woman (a “good Catholic”, of course) who stood crestfallen amid a jubilant crowd as Benedict XVI appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s, walking dejectedly away as she realized that women’s ordination, contraception, sexual licence, abortion on demand, and all that good stuff would still be denied the papal seal of approval. That bloody hatchet job had been carefully prepared way ahead of a cardinal’s booming “Habemus papam—reverendissimum dominum Josephum Cardinalem Ratzinger” from the balcony! ...The negative reaction aroused already by the Ratzinger Report laid bare the sheer fury shared by Roman Catholic Modernists and the unbelieving world in general against anyone who dares to intimate that the historic Christian religion is, to put it bluntly, true. Neither apostates within Holy Christendom nor naked unbelievers outside her borders will ever forgive Ratzinger for the grave breach of secularist, pluralist etiquette involved in the first volume of his Jesus of Nazareth. It goes without saying (and around the Holy Week of each year the several forms of mainstream media say it loudly, often, and emphatically) that Jesus was an ordinary man, a wacko apocalyptist, or a failed political revolutionary. Stones must fly and clubs be brandished against a learned man fully familiar with all the “Jesus of history” literature from Reimarus to the present, who winsomely draws on believing scholarship of all confessions to offer a calm and cogent argument that the real, actual Jesus is the one who meets us in the Gospel record. Where the North American liberal intelligentsia can offer no refutation, they spit contempt. And a Western Europe sunk in a new heathenism and undergoing Islamic takeover can only howl at this attempt to arrest its suicidal downward slide... Christendom as a whole is under attack In a letter to the Sunday Telegraph published in that newspaper’s 28 March 2010 edition (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/7528487/The-religious-rights-of-Christians-are-treated-with-disrespect.html), five Evangelical bishops of the Church of England have politely drawn attention to the increasing volume of persecution of Christians in England and, in a governessy sort of way, insisted that the antichristian forces in British society cease and desist forthwith. The bishops’ reproach fell somewhat short of white-hot prophetic vigour: “We are deeply concerned at the apparent discrimination shown against Christians and we call on the Government to remedy this serious development.” As the bishops’ letter begins with a protest over the case of a middle-aged English nurse dismissed for insisting on displaying, when on duty, a crucifix that she has worn since her confirmation decades ago, it demonstrates how British society in particular (along with European society in general) has lurched dramatically back to a stage prior to the work of the much maligned Constantine the Great. While the bishops’ concern is genuine and the issue they address real, one wonders whether they are taking the right approach. Can we picture Peter and Paul, around the year 68, stamping their feet and stressing the paramount need for Nero to respect the human rights of the nascent Christian community in Rome? Can we get our hands on evidence that the bishops and other ecclesial spokesmen of the day adopted the tone of these Anglican Evangelical prelates toward Decius and Diocletian? More to the point, can we imagine Diocletian, Decius, and Nero meekly agreeing to “remedy the serious developments” that had occurred on their respective imperial watches? Rather than issuing impotent appeals to the successive beasts that arise from the earth, bishops are to prepare and equip the Christian faithful to undergo the fires of tribulation that the Lord permits to come their way. For, make no doubt about it, the days of Diocletian and Decius and perhaps of Nero also are fast returning to the Western world. Not in the same ballpark as Leo X & Co.
Orthodox Lutherans would have to be churlish in the extreme if they could not spare an ounce of affection for Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI as perhaps the first Pope in history to have a good idea what the Lutheran Reformation was and is all about, and, moreover, to have at least a shred of sympathy for its core concerns. In his writings Ratzinger routinely quotes Luther from the Weimar Edition and the Confessions from Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht’s edition of the Bekenntnisschriften; not all Lutheran professors of theology do the same. His aversion to the philosophical trajectory of Karl Rahner took concrete form in Ratzinger’s preference for the Bible and the Church Fathers, especially Augustine, over Thomas Aquinas (see Milestones, 44, 52f., 128f.). Isn’t this how we too want to do theology?
[The author reiterates some standard Lutheran criticisms of Catholicism, then concludes] As Easter of 2010 approaches, though, if for no other reason than that we remember Martin Niemöller’s post-war regret at not having spoken up for the Jews in due season, we might fitly major in sympathy, understanding, and prayer for the courteous and learned aged prelate who is right now a walking target for innumerable hellish darts launched by theological Modernists and by the unbelieving world that have between them zero tolerance for any crisp, clear, and confident confession of Christ Jesus our Incarnate God.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 19, 2010 11:51:08 GMT
The reason I posted the previous item here rather than in some other thread is because I wanted to say something about Hans Kung's open letter to the bishops of the world, which the IRISH TIMES published in full on Friday last. Here is the text if anyone cares to read it www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0416/1224268443283.html I generally do not like to accuse commenters on the clerical abuse scandals of using them as a pretext to advance an agenda of their own, because the horrors and failings are so outrageous that anyone would naturally be angry. I make an exception, however, for Fr. Kung because it is all too obvious that he is fitting the whole scandal into his pre-existing template. Amongst many other heresies, he advocates a form of Gallicanism or Conciliarism, according to which the central authority of the Pope should be abolished, the Curia (as centtral administration) should go too and the Pope should be reduced to figurehead of a decentralised and localised Church with no central teaching authority. Thus we find him placing all the blame for the scandals on the Vatican by accusing it of mounting a centralised cover-up, and he accuses the then Cardinal Ratzinger of orchestrating said cover-up. (He does not argue that this is in fact the case, he simply asserts it). Now the Vatican's response to the scandal was extremely flawed, to put it mildly, but diocesan bishops were much more directly and clearly involved in cover-ups. I don't see how their authority in this can be said to be greater than the Vatican's. Let's see some of Fr. Kung's points: (1)Missed is the opportunity for rapprochement with the Protestant churches: Instead, they have been denied the status of churches in the proper sense of the term and, for that reason, their ministries are not recognized and intercommunion is not possible. [I.e. he is advocating full-scale intercommunion with the Protestant churches - it is pretty clear from his letter that in fact he holds the Protestant view that the Church is simply an association of the faithful rather than the Catholic/Orthodox one that it is a corporate body deriving directly from Jesus] (2) After criticising the Pope for reinstating the prayer for the conversion of the Jews and lifting the excommunication of Bishop Williamson (which Kung implies automatically involves official approval of that person's abominations) he complains: The fact is, Benedict sees in Judaism only the historic root of Christianity; he does not take it seriously as an ongoing religious community offering its own path to salvation. In other words, Kung actually holds the position which the SSPX accuses the mainstream church of holding: that it is unnecessary and undesirable for Jews to accept Jesus and that the Old Covenant should be seen as sufficient in itself without the New Covenant. (3) Missed is the opportunity to make peace with modern science by clearly affirming the theory of evolution and accepting stem-cell research. [The reference to stem-cell research here must mean embryonic stem-cell research, the moral objections to which are preceisely the same as they would be to subjecting Professor Kung to medical experimentation on the grounds that he is nothing more than a conglomeration of cells. What on earth does he mean by accusing the church of not "clearly affiriming the theory of evolution?" The church has been affirming theistic evolution as its preferred position for decades - Hibernicus] (4)Missed is the opportunity to make the spirit of the Second Vatican Council the compass for the whole Catholic Church, including the Vatican itself, and thus to promote the needed reforms in the church. This last point, respected bishops, is the most serious of all. Time and again, this pope has added qualifications to the conciliar texts and interpreted them against the spirit of the council fathers. [Here we see "the spirit of Vatican II" surreptitiously invoked to mean what Kung wants it to mean, whether the documents support it or not; this is then presented as the ONLY possible interpretation of the Counciul, and all who disagree with it are presented as enemies of the Council rather than of Fr. Kung's spin on it.] Time and again, he has taken an express stand against the Ecumenical Council, which according to canon law represents the highest authority in the Catholic Church [Note Kung implies that the Council ranks above the Pope]: He has taken the bishops of the traditionalist Pius X Society back into the church without any preconditions – bishops who were illegally consecrated outside the Catholic Church and who reject central points of the Second Vatican Council (including liturgical reform, freedom of religion and the rapprochement with Judaism). [Note that Kung does not acknowledge that the SSPX have not been fully reconciled with the Church.] He promotes the medieval Tridentine Mass by all possible means and occasionally celebrates the Eucharist in Latin with his back to the congregation. He refuses to put into effect the rapprochement with the Anglican Church, which was laid out in official ecumenical documents by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, [once again Kung treats the Commission as having superior authority to the Pope] and has attempted instead to lure married Anglican clergy into the Roman Catholic Church by freeing them from the very rule of celibacy that has forced tens of thousands of Roman Catholic priests out of office. He has actively reinforced the anti-conciliar forces in the church by appointing reactionary officials to key offices in the Curia (including the secretariat of state, and positions in the liturgical commission) while appointing reactionary bishops around the world. [After more in the same vein, denunciations of clerical celibacy, and comments, many of which are unfortunately true, of the failure of the Pope's agenda to reach the grassroots and of the harm doe to the Church by the abuse crisis, Kung offer the followingn six propositions] 1. Do not keep silent: By keeping silent in the face of so many serious grievances, you taint yourselves with guilt. When you feel that certain laws, directives and measures are counterproductive, you should say this in public. Send Rome not professions of your devotion, but rather calls for reform! [i.e. the idea that Rome is naturally entitled to devotion and obedience except in case of flagrant misbehaviour is dismissed out of hand] 2. Set about reform: Too many in the church and in the episcopate complain about Rome, but do nothing themselves. When people no longer attend church in a diocese, when the ministry bears little fruit, when the public is kept in ignorance about the needs of the world, when ecumenical co-operation is reduced to a minimum, then the blame cannot simply be shoved off on Rome. Whether bishop, priest, layman or laywoman – everyone can do something for the renewal of the church within his own sphere of influence, be it large or small. Many of the great achievements that have occurred in the individual parishes and in the church at large owe their origin to the initiative of an individual or a small group. As bishops, you should support such initiatives and, especially given the present situation, you should respond to the just complaints of the faithful. [We shall see further on what he has in mind] 3. Act in a collegial way: After heated debate and against the persistent opposition of the Curia, the Second Vatican Council decreed the collegiality of the pope and the bishops. It did so in the sense of the Acts of the Apostles, in which Peter did not act alone without the college of the apostles. [What Kung seems to have in mind is more like the Polish liberum veto, in which the seventeenth and eighteenth-century Polish parliament was unable to enforce its decrees if even a single member objected, so that nothing was ever done at all. The results of this for Poland are well-known, and would be replicated in the Church if Fr. Kung were followed.] In the post-conciliar era, however, the pope and the Curia have ignored this decree. Just two years after the council, Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical defending the controversial celibacy law without the slightest consultation of the bishops. Since then, papal politics and the papal magisterium have continued to act in the old, uncollegial fashion. Even in liturgical matters, the pope rules as an autocrat over and against the bishops. He is happy to surround himself with them as long as they are nothing more than stage extras with neither voices nor voting rights. This is why, venerable bishops, you should not act for yourselves alone, but rather in the community of the other bishops, of the priests and of the men and women who make up the church. 4. Unconditional obedience is owed to God alone: Although at your episcopal consecration you had to take an oath of unconditional obedience to the pope, you know that unconditional obedience can never be paid to any human authority; it is due to God alone. For this reason, you should not feel impeded by your oath to speak the truth about the current crisis facing the church, your diocese and your country. Your model should be the apostle Paul, who dared to oppose Peter “to his face since he was manifestly in the wrong”! ( Galatians 2:11 ). [This is exactly the passage quoted by the Radtrads and sedevacantists, and as with them he uses it to reduce the concept of communion with Rome to a nullity] Pressuring the Roman authorities in the spirit of Christian fraternity can be permissible and even necessary when they fail to live up to the spirit of the Gospel and its mission. The use of the vernacular in the liturgy, the changes in the regulations governing mixed marriages, the affirmation of tolerance, democracy and human rights, the opening up of an ecumenical approach, and the many other reforms of Vatican II were only achieved because of tenacious pressure from below. [I.e. let everyone do what he likes as when there was no king in Israel and the people were sheep without a shepherd. The watchmen are to be silent on the watchtowers while the wolves, Swiss and otherwise, devour the flock and call it reform.] 5. Work for regional solutions: The Vatican has frequently turned a deaf ear to the well-founded demands of the episcopate, the priests and the laity. This is all the more reason for seeking wise regional solutions. As you are well aware, the rule of celibacy, which was inherited from the Middle Ages [from the Church Fathers], represents a particularly delicate problem. In the context of today’s clerical abuse scandal, the practice has been increasingly called into question. Against the expressed will of Rome, a change would appear hardly possible; yet this is no reason for passive resignation. When a priest, after mature consideration, wishes to marry, there is no reason why he must automatically resign his office when his bishop and his parish choose to stand behind him. Individual episcopal conferences could take the lead with regional solutions. [In other words, he is advocating de facto schism] It would be better, however, to seek a solution for the whole church, therefore: 6. Call for a council: Just as the achievement of liturgical reform, religious freedom, ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue required an ecumenical council, so now a council is needed to solve the dramatically escalating problems calling for reform. In the century before the Reformation, the Council of Constance decreed that councils should be held every five years. Yet the Roman Curia successfully managed to circumvent this ruling. [This is conciliarism. How would the Church be governed if all the bishops had to go to a council every five years? Who would run the dioceses?] There is no question that the Curia [he means the Pope, but avoids saying so], fearing a limitation of its power, would do everything in its power to prevent a council coming together in the present situation. Thus it is up to you to push through the calling of a council or at least a representative assembly of bishops. He ends by calling on the bishops to act "alone if necessary" and his final salutation is "yours in the community of the Christian faith" rather than of the Church.
I must say that this sounds amazingly like some of the arguments we have heard on this forum about why the SSPX is not in schism. Fr. Kung unlike the SSPX bishops is a priest in good standing and possesses faculties, and I must say that while no doubt there are pastoral reasons for his not being formally excommunicated I quite fail to see what those are.
Martin Gardner the science writer stated that he agreed with Kung's religious views - i.e. he was a non-denominational Kantian theist - but he recognised that they were completely incompatible with Catholicism as normally understood and for that reason not only did he think John Paul II entirely within his rights to suspend Kung's licence as a theologian, he did not see how Kung could honestly remain a member of the Catholic Church.
Today, by the way the IRISH TIMES has published quite a good defence of the Pope by Fr. Vincent Twomey. It will thus be able to present itself as fair and balanced, even though it has given Fr. Kung's letter the weekend to get started, and in the interval treated its readers to another anti-Papal diatribe by Fintan O'Toole (in Saturday's review section). Such is our Paper of Record.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 20, 2010 10:32:11 GMT
John J. Reilly comments on various Church matters, including the suggestion by some commentators that Benedict is a better Pope than John Paul II, and Hans Kung's letter: EXTRACT Some things never change, of course, among them the views of old Hans Küng, who is using the current storm as an occasion to call on the world's bishops to resist the pope, perhaps by calling their own synod, in order to create a regime of greater local autonomy. Today's scandals are in fact good evidence that many of the world's bishops should not be trusted with sharp objects, much less increased disciplinary autonomy, but that is a large subject. The anti-papal campaign is the last chance for liberal Catholicism. If it succeeds, its proponents will be the heirs of ruins, but their whole careers have been dedicated to arguing that the old order passed away at the Second Vatican Council anyway. They are pleased enough at the prospect that only "cultural Christianit"y will survive them. Even in liquidation, the endowment of ecclesial institutions will last just long enough to pay their pensions. In any case, Fr. Küng is a Usual Suspect of long standing, whose views are very familiar. Far more interesting is the call for 1970s-style reforms from Peggy Noonan, writing in the Wall Street Journal: They need to let younger generations of priests and nuns rise to positions of authority within a new church. Most especially and most immediately, they need to elevate women. As a nun said to me this week, if a woman had been sitting beside a bishop transferring a priest with a history of abuse, she would have said: "Hey, wait a minute!" That younger clergy now have a chance for unusually rapid promotion is not in doubt. Anyone who has met younger clergy lately, however, will be aware that the younger they are, the more "orthodox" they are likely to be. (There isn't really a good term for this mindset: "conservative" suggests a residual recalcitrance, while "Traditional" has been hijacked by, well, don't get me started…) Young nuns are in short supply, but where they exist in numbers they rarely do so in an institutional context that Fr. Küng would find theologically congenial. As for women at the table when the disposition of suspect priests was concerned, are we to suppose that they would have been less likely than male advisors to advise handling such cases with therapy instead of punitive measures? Indeed, why should we think that women in the more progressive dioceses were not involved with these decisions? It is probably not wholly irrelevant to Benedict's difficulties that his views of social and global governance questions are European devices that do not run on America's Movement Conservatism current. Even his social conservatism is being displaced in the American mix by pure economic libertarianism. EXTRACT ENDS www.johnreilly.info/jjrblog.htmReilly also, by the way, has a gem of twisted argument from Geoffrey Robertson, the British/Australian human rights lawyer who has been calling for the Pope to be arrested and prosecuted in Britain: ROBERTSON'S ARGUMENT AGAINST THE VIEW THAT THE POPE IS ENTITLED TO DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY: Papal immunity is . . . questionable. It hinges on the assumption that the Vatican, or its metaphysical emanation, the Holy See, is a state. But the papal states were extinguished by invasion in 1870 and the Vatican was created by fascist Italy in 1929 when Mussolini endowed this tiny enclave – 0.17 of a square mile containing 900 Catholic bureaucrats – with "sovereignty in the international field ... in conformity with its traditions and the exigencies of its mission in the world". The notion that statehood can be created by another country's unilateral declaration is risible: Iran could make Qom a state overnight, or the UK could launch Canterbury on to the international stage. But it did not take long for Catholic countries to support the pretentions of the Holy See, sending ambassadors and receiving papal nuncios in return. Even the UK maintains an apostolic mission. EXTRACT ENDS A couple of obvious points here: (a) International diplomatic recognition is one of the things which constitutes a state. Once the Vatican has received diplomatic recognition (not just from Catholic countries, either - there has been a US ambassador for some decades, for example) it cannot be argued as Robertson does here that it never was a legitimate state. Even by withdrawing recognition a state could not retroactively cancel it - unless Robertson's legal principles extend to the view that the prohibition on retroactive law should be abolished, as they very well may. See below (b) Robertson has a long record of arguing that international human rights law should trump all sovereign claims and adopting whatever legal principle will allow him to achieve the desired result without regard for consistency. Thus he has argued in the past (in response to the fact that people atached to various London embassies have often claimed diplomatic immunity for crimes ranging from parking offences to domestic violence) that diplomatic immunity per se should be abolished, and has claimed in its support that diplomats originally existed to transmit messages between governments and that with modern methods of communication this is no longer necesary. In fact, of course, diplomats are not just message-carriers; the point of having them is that by living in a foreign country for years they come to know its government, culture etc more intimately than could be gained by a casual visit and are therefore able to smooth relations between the two countries by drawing on this knowledge. Robertson is basically a monomaniac with good intentions, who once he has decided something is desirable will not hear a word said agaisnt it however cogent that word might be. BTW for some years groups such as Catholics for Free Choice [i.e. for abortion] and their allies have been lobbying to have the Vatican derecognised and excluded from international fora. I wonder if some of the voices in Ireland which have been responding to the scandals by calling for Ireland to break diplomatic relations with the Holy See have this end in view? (It must be said, however, that I do think the Nunciature could have done more to co-operate with the recent inquiries).
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Post by Michael O'Donovan on Apr 20, 2010 20:57:06 GMT
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Post by Michael O'Donovan on Apr 20, 2010 21:15:28 GMT
BTW for some years groups such as Catholics for Free Choice [i.e. for abortion] and their allies have been lobbying to have the Vatican derecognised and excluded from international fora. I wonder if some of the voices in Ireland which have been responding to the scandals by calling for Ireland to break diplomatic relations with the Holy see have this end in view? Yes of course they have. There is an active Lutheran fifth column in the Church, like the notoriously chippy and increasingly egregious John Cooney in the Indo, for example www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/benedict-needs-to-stop-filth-from-smothering-his-papacy-2141862.html, who should by now be forgetting Woodstock and thinking about the Last Judgment.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 21, 2010 15:54:30 GMT
Don't insult Luther by referring to John Cooney as a crypto-Lutheran; he has the bad temper and the boorishness but not the theological scholarship. At least Hans Kung presumably knows the sacred languages.
Fr. Iggy O'Donovan predictably cropped up in the IRISH TIMES letters pages today; after ridiculing the claims (which I would agree are maladroit in many different ways) of Fr. Cantalamessa to compare Church-bashing with anti-semitism, Cardinal Sodano's reference to idle gossip and Cardinal Bertone's equating homosexuality and paedophilia, he then sneers at Fr. Twomey for describing Kung's letter as "atrocious". Fr. O'Donovan does not deign to respond to Fr. Twomey's arguments; he merely declares "In my view Fr Kung's letter is probably the finest piece of religious writing to appear in the IRISH TIMES in many a day." Given the number of heresies it contains, and the fact that it is primarily about church governance, it appears that Fr. O'Donovan sees religious writing purely in political terms, about who holds power in the Church. Fr. O'Donovan and Fr. Kung do, however, provide further evidence for the proposition that many priests have been retained in the clerical state when they have shown themselves altogether unfit for it.
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