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Post by hibernicus on Nov 9, 2009 9:54:59 GMT
The pastoral is certainly very impressive and spells the central matters out clearly. It is also worth bearing in mind that "rad trads" as well as "liberals" subscribe to the "hermeneutic of discontinuity" interpretation of Vatican II.
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Post by Michael O'Donovan on Nov 12, 2009 23:12:36 GMT
I think the Spirit itself should be "decommissioned" ie put up agin a wall and shot....retirement is too good for it. How many souls did this spirit loose to the Church??? Monkeyman, I am trying to understand your position. Will you explain how the Spirit cause anyone to leave the Church. I thought all men and women had the ability to keep the faith even through trials in discernment. The so-called Spirit of Vatican II was made up by people who imagined, or pretended to imagine, that there was some kind of hidden message in the Council that was suppressed in the official documents. They have used it as an excuse for doing what they thought the Church should do: the most important example being hiding the sacrificial nature of the Mass and concentrating entirely on the Eucharistic aspect. (One example of this is that my niece in England was told she was being given "holy bread" when she made her First Communion.) The meaning of Vatican II can be found in the documents of the Council, which reaffirm unambiguously the traditional teachings of the Church. By the way, those documents do not anywhere say that the Mass should be celebrated facing the people, or that churches should be "reordered" to have cocktail-bar altars and no altar rails, or that Mass should be said in the local language. Those are all inventions of the "Spirit" of the Council.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 17, 2009 17:09:07 GMT
The Spirit of Vatican II crowd more precisely maintain that the importance of the Council lies in the fact of change (which they interpret as breaking with the past) rather than its content, and thus it is not necessary for changes to be specified in the documents - as distinct from the view that the documents must be read in light of the church's traditions which they may modify but do not renounce. To be fair, the documents cannot be seen in isolation; many of the changes did come from the official commissions set up to oversee the detailed working-out of the documents (on which commissions liberal theologians had more influence than in the Council itself). Another way of looking at the issue is whether the decisions of these commissions should be seen as the definitive interpretation of the Council, or whether it is legitimate to engage in a return to the sources and say that the commissions exceeeded/reinterpreted their brief and may be reassessed in their turn. Michael's criticism of Monkeyman [Michael's posts have now been deleted as timewasting irrelevancies] implies (a) that nobody ever apostasises (b) that every spirit comes from God. It is never a good idea to follow uncritically everyone who presents himself as an angel of light,no matter what he calls himself.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 16, 2009 12:37:01 GMT
This is a discussion board and anyone is entitled to respond to a public message. If Michael wished to address Monkeyman specifically he could usethe private message facility without clogging up the public board.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 16, 2009 12:51:02 GMT
I don't demand implicit imitation from anyone; I try to set out the reasoning behind my statements; that is one reason why they are so long. I do not simply state when I criticise someone that they are lacking in virtue and spirituality, nor declare that I know the Truth and they do not without further explanation; I try to go into specifics. Clarity is a virtue which Michael would do well to practice, out of consideration for his readers.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 30, 2009 18:36:38 GMT
In relation to my earlier reference on this thread to Cardinal Cathal Daly, your prayers for his phyiscal and spiritual well-being at this time would be appreciated.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 1, 2010 0:31:26 GMT
Cardinal Daly died this evening, with the old year. Your prayers are requested for his soul and for all the faithful departed.
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Post by Michael O'Donovan on Jan 3, 2010 21:33:19 GMT
They haven't gone away; in fact they are invigorated by the recent scandals and see them as an opportunity to revive their waning power. This disappointing article by Professor Emeritus Vincent Twomey www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/1209/1224260356178.html suggests that they are smelling blood. But who is going to "choose" bishops in their new dispensation? Is there to be a poll among the baptised? Or is it to be confined to the "practising" faithful and does this include those who come to church once every few years for a christening, marriage or funeral and don't even know who the parish priest is, let alone their bishop or even the Pope? Or is it, as I suspect, to be by a bunch of self-promoting loudmouths like the "Voice of the Faithful" or the people who get on to parish "liturgy committees" because parish priests have to set one up and have to take any crank who comes forward? I am sure the church authorities are robust enough to resist this kind of thing but it is never any harm to strike back in the public media. I am inclined to write to the Irish Times in terms like those I have used above, but I am open to advice or caution. I would encourage others to write as they see fit.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 5, 2010 14:53:25 GMT
Fr. Twomey's intentions are orthodox but he tends to be a bit vague on how they would work in practice. His remark that such elections would not be divisive shows this. Until the early twentieth century parish priests voted on a list of three candidates for a vacant see, and this led to unedifying factionalism. (The Archdiocese of Armagh was chronically divided between Louth and Armagh factions, which is one reason why three successive Archbishops - McGettigan, Logue, O'Donnell - came from Raphoe.)
Then, as Michael G points out, we have the current ideological disputes which would inevitably raise their head. Fr. Twomey seems to assume a "simple instinctive faithful" model; the liberals assume that they are the people. Both I think should take more account of Robert Michels' Iron Law of Oligarchy - which points out that any large organisation - however populist its original ethos - will eventually produce a self-perpetuating governing caste for a variety of reasons. I may write more on this elsewhere.
That said, there is no canonical reason why some of Fr. Twomey's suggestions should not be adopted - the present system of choosing bishops isn't necessarily set in stone. The question is about the prudence of suggested changes.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 6, 2010 16:50:35 GMT
I am under a lot of work pressure just now so can only post occasionally. TO keep you going here is an interesting and depressing piece from the PERTINACIOUS PAPIST blog discussing a difference of views between George Weigel and the CATHOLIC WORLD REVIEW columnist "Diogenes". Weigel thinks the election of Pope Benedict spells the inevitable defeat of Catholic "progressives". Diogenes predicted in 2005 that they wouldn't go without a fight, and suggests the recent wave of vilification directed at the Pope vindicates his own position: EXTRACT Diogenes remarks that he would be happy to report that Weigel was right and "your Uncle Di" was wrong, but that in light of the worldwide torrent of criticism directed recently against the Pope -- much of it from Catholic quarters -- he wonders. What follows in Diogenes' column is the original article he wrote in 2005, completely unaltered. Here are some excerpts: In a syndicated column that appeared in Catholic diocesan newspapers late in April, George Weigel argued that Cardinal Ratzinger's election as Pope Benedict XVI signified the twilight of Catholic progressivism. As he put it: It was expected that the Catholic Church would, indeed must, take the path of accommodation: that has been the central assumption of what's typically called "progressive" Catholicism. That assumption has now been decisively and definitively refuted. The "progressive" project is over -- not because its intentions were malign, but because it posed an ultimately boring question: how little can I believe, and how little can I do, and still remain Catholic? I am not as sanguine as Weigel regarding the intentions of progressivists. After all, they haven't been low-profile church mice quietly pleading for a live-and-let-live Catholicism. While the now-comic 1960s culture of flowers and folk music may incline us to view them as harmless sentimentalists, they were and are revolutionaries, out to replace their old order with a new one of their own devising. Diogenes asks us to remember how progressivists have taken over most theology departments, some seminaries, some diocesan religious education offices, as well as some religious congregations; and how they have used the "shibboleth issues" of contraception, women's ordination, gay rights, PC language, etc., to hire and promote ideological allies and torpedo others. While Weigel is correct in declaring that progressivists have failed to carry the day and that their religious minimalism has much to do with their failure, says Diogenes, most of us probably know seminarians or grad students or lay volunteers who, because of their orthodoxy, found themselves unemployed before realizing what hit them. For the same reasons I do not expect progressivists to shrug and gracefully fade off the scene. What is at stake is not a failed literary review, but the meaning of their entire life. In the Bolshevik revolution, the young firebrands of 1910 did not cede authority to the young firebrands of 1980; once having seized power, they couldn't relinquish it, and kept a white-knuckle grip on the Party until it was loosened by clogged arteries. So too in the post-conciliar Catholic putsch, the angry young mustangs of 1968 became the angry middle-ages mustangs of 1988, who became the angry old mustangs of today.... END pblosser.blogspot.com/2010/08/weigel-v-diogenes-on-role-of-benedict.html
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 7, 2010 11:06:23 GMT
Here's an interesting historical parallel for the most extreme "Spirit of Vatican II" mindset. In the middle of the nineteenth century the Gcaleka Xhosa people of South Africa had been repeatedly defeated by British forces and were losing much of their territory to the violent incursions of settlers. Under these desperate circumstances a young girl called Nnonqaswe declared that she was a prophetess and had seen a vision of the ancestors. They had told her that if the people showed their faith by slaughtering their cattle and destroying their crops and all their possessions, on a named day just over a year in the future the sun would rise in the west, it would be red in colour instead of gold, the invaders would vanish and all the Gcaleka had lost would be restored to them. The paramount ruler of the people believed her and ordered that everyone should do as she said. When the cattle were dead and the crops destroyed, the appointed day came - the sun rose in the east as usual and remained gold, but even as the people starved and their enemies took advantage of their weakness to close in on them, some people were still arguing that the disaster was the fault of those few who had not killed their cattle and destroyed their crops as they were commanded. If only everyone had obeyed the spirit of Nnonqaswe, they maintained, her prophecies would indeed have been fulfilled. Any resemblance between these true believers in the Cattle Killing and the more zealous advocates of the Spirit of Vatican II in our own day is of course entirely coincidental. I might add that some people believe Nnonqaswe was put up to it by the colonial authorities, but that is not really necessary; people under stress will believe desperate things. Any thoughts on this comparison?
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 7, 2010 11:25:43 GMT
John J Reillly offers some thoughts on liturgical restoration, its blessings and limitations. www.johnreilly.info/jjrblog.htmApplied Eschatology EXTRACT The connection between the imminent publication of the new Catholic Missal in English and Glenn Beck’s recent "Restore Honor" rally in Washington, D.C., has been widely overlooked, perhaps for good reason.The Missal, of course, will prescribe how the Mass is said in English, whereas Glenn Beck. . . well, we know who Glemm Beck. Nonetheless, there is a connection of sorts. Let us consider these remarks by Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, who had a great deal to do with the composition of the Missal, from his presentation of the Hillenbrand Lecture at that noted center of the traditional liturgical music revival, St. Mary of the Lake in Chicago: The liturgy is a participation in the liturgy of heaven, in which we worship in Spirit and truth with the worldwide Church and the communion of saints… This may be the most neglected dimension of the liturgy today. If our liturgies strike us as pedestrian, narrowly parochial, too focused on our own communities and needs; if they lack a po-werful sense of the sacred and the transcendent, it’s because we have lost the sense of how our worship participates in the hea-venly liturgy…. The Eucharist . . . . is a cosmic liturgy that unites the worship of heaven with our worship here on earth. In the Divine Liturgy, the Kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven. Heaven and earth are filled with the glory of God . . . . We see the heavenly liturgy in the Book of Revelation… The book is filled with liturgical and sacramental imagery. At one point John sees an uncountable multitude from every tribe, tongue, people and nation worshipping before the Eucharistic Lamb. The climax of the book is the coming of "a new heaven and a new earth" and the announcement: "Behold, the dwelling of God is with men"….[O]ur worship is an icon of heavenly things, a window through which the reality and destiny of our lives is glimpsed. [T]he heavenly liturgy is the key to the universality of the Church’s mission. In the Catholic vision of history, God’s plan of salvation is destined to culminate in a cosmic liturgy in which all creation gives praise and glory to God, the Creator of all things. We have a foretaste of the liturgical consummation of history every time we celebrate the liturgy on earth. This idea is as powerful as Platonism; perhaps it is Platonism, or maybe Platonism is just a special case of the same intuition. In the Absolute Elsewhere, something wonderful is going on, has always been going on, and it is possible to bring this wonderful thing into time. The question is, how much? It can be done within the confines of a rite, a special liturgy bracketed in illo tempore from everyday life. It is possible to do with it with a community of dedicated persons, whose rule of life becomes a kind of liturgy. The influence of such an institution can safely be wider and more diffuse than what goes on within its walls; if you believe Tom Holland, the emanation of the inner peace of the monastery at Cluny was one of the leading factors in the formation of Christendom. The problem is the persistent temptation to turn the whole world into a liturgy, to make all of society a monastery that moves to the transcendental mu-sic. Attempts to do this have had notoriously unhappy results. .. END
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 16, 2010 9:46:42 GMT
Last Tuesday (14 September 2010) Bishop Michael Smith of Meath had a piece in the IRISH TIMES "Rite and reason" column which deserves wider attention, because it sheds some embarrassing light on Fr Hans Kung's claim to be the definitive spokesman for the "spirit of Vatican II" which he accuses the present Pope of having betrayed. At the time of the Council Bishop Smith was a young priest at the Irish College in Rome and was assigned to preparing the official record of the Council's discussions (I presume in the same manner as the clerks who record and edit the Dail Record or Hansard). He states that Kung, while regularly pontificating in the media about the meaning of the Council, deliberately chose not to participate in the commissions which drew up the official texts of the council documents and that this caused considerable ill-feeling at the time. I must say this rings true - both because Bishop Smith cites Kung's own memoir in which he attempts to justify this, and because Kung's public statements are so riddled with arrogance and so given to assuming that whatever he says must be true because he says it, that it makes sense that he would not wish to take part in the cut-and-thrust of discussions which would involve admitting the possibility that he might be mistaken about something. Here is the link to the story. In case it ceases to work, I reproduce the key extract below. I wonder is Bishop Smith writing a full memoir? (He had a piece on his reminiscences of the Council in a recent book on the Irish College.) If so, it should be most interesting. www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0914/1224278824685.htmlEXTRACT Being present each day over the four years of the council, I had an opportunity of observing its workings closely. Scholars with expertise in theology, biblical studies, ecumenism etc had been appointed as “experts” to assist Council Fathers. These were assigned to different commissions, the primary one being the Doctrine Commission. It would consider in detail proposals received from the Council Fathers, and establish reasons why some could be accepted and/or some could not. One of those involved with the Doctrine Commission was Irish Franciscan biblical scholar Fr Alexander Kerrigan. I met him most days at the council, a kind and affable priest. I was surprised one morning to find him visibly angry after his experience the previous evening at a commission meeting. It had followed a visit to the commission by Dr Küng, the only time Fr Kerrigan had seen him present. Dr Küng left quickly, taking no part in the discussion. Since Dr Küng was spending a great deal of time giving lectures on the council and interviews to media, his refusal to be involved in drafting council texts was not appreciated by many. When he published his autobiography I was naturally interested in how Dr Küng presented his non-involvement in this central work of the council. He admits that he made a conscious decision not to be involved in the commission’s work. His account of why he did not do so is less than convincing. This is all the more regrettable as he had an opportunity to be involved in the three foundation documents of the council: on the church; on divine revelation; on the church in the modern world. He claims he had individual bishops submit his proposals in their name. That misses the point since all proposals were debated by the commission and he refused to be present to support his submissions. A clear conclusion, for me at least, is that Dr Küng is less qualified than most of those present to interpret that ephemeral concept which he constantly evokes – “the spirit of the Vatican Council”. END OF EXTRACT
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Post by assisi on Oct 31, 2010 11:22:29 GMT
I have been reading this discussion with interest. Is the Spirit of Vat II reday for retirement? Are some people here saying Vat II was all a big mistake? Prior to it Catholics in Ireland knew the faith and practised it. I made this point at a lecture some time ago and it was pointed out to me that the decline in the Church would have occurred anyway. I wonder. Yes, some degree of decline would have occurred, Vatican II or no Vatican II, as the onslaught of consumerism, secularity etc would have seen to that. The question is whether Vatican II can provide a basis for renewing the Church?
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 1, 2010 12:19:27 GMT
Yes, there would have been some decline if there had been no Vatican II (or if Vatican II had taken place under Pius XII's supervision in the 1950s, as might have happened). Much of the decline, as Assisi says, derived from factors that were already present before Vatican II - as we have seen with the current revelations about the industrial schools, for example. The trouble with Noelfitz's post which Assisi cites is that he mixes up "the spirit of Vatican II" with Vatican II itself. What we have got is a dispute over the meaning and implications of the Council. The "spirit of Vatican II" in this context refers to the invocation of the Council to support the agenda of someone like hans Kung - the aboliotion of the Church as traditionally understood and its reduction to yet another liberal protestant denomination of a type more liberal than protestant; opposed to this is "the hermeneutic of continuity" view - that the Council must be interpreted in the light of the Church's previous teaching, as a return to the Fathers to gain new understanding and strength under our present changed circumstances, but still remaining the same Church. The CATHOLIC HERALD has quite a good exchange between Moyra Dooley and Fr Aidan Nichols on this point - Fr Nichols suggests that General Councils are not self-contained but often require future Councils to "complete" them in the same way that the Church's christological doctrine was worked out over a series of 4 general Councils and would not be "complete" if any of them were lacking. Gracewing Publishers are going to publish the Nichols-Doorly exchanges as a book, and they will certainly make interesting reading.
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