The radically different beliefs
of Fr. James Martin and Fr. Weinandy
highlight the split in the Church
by Doug Mainwaring
November 20, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – The last Saturday in September proved to be a day of sharp contrasts: I spent the morning in Washington, D.C.’s historic Holy Trinity Church, listening to Fr. James Martin, SJ, speak about his pro-LGBT book,
Building a Bridge. The evening was spent on the other side of town at venerable Capuchin College, where I was privileged to be at Mass and dinner with Fr. Thomas Weinandy, OFM, Cap., as he celebrated fifty years as a Capuchin.
It was the same Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church at both venues, although some observers might conclude Fr. Martin and Fr. Weinandy belong to two radically different churches.
The church of Fr. Martin
and the gospel of affirmation
In all its various forms, liberation theology concerns itself with liberating the oppressed.
Fr. Martin subscribes to what might be called
‘gay liberation theology,’ through which he interprets scripture — and more broadly, all church teaching — in light of the LGBT experience. He sees Catholicism through an LGBT prism and speaks in an LGBT tongue, presenting an LGBT-infused Gospel.
This is a Gospel foreign to most Catholic ears. Even to many same-sex attracted Catholics like me, it is not only foreign; it rings untrue. Yet crowds which gather to hear Fr. Martin greet him enthusiastically, lending him the status of a modern day Martin Luther King, Jr. Those who choose to call themselves gay, lesbian, or transgender and Catholic — and often their loved ones — see Martin as leading a freedom march through a backward, prejudiced church, seeking to end LGBT discrimination.
To battle what he perceives to be oppression, he proclaims a Gospel of LGBT Affirmation.
The Jesuit has taken great license with Pope Francis’s statement, “Who am I to judge?” to the point of not only casting aside all judgement, but leaping beyond, justifying LGBT identity and activity as fully normal. And sin is not sin.
Fr. Martin has his supporters and admirers among Catholic elites and the hierarchy of the Church. Cardinal Joseph Tobin, Archbishop of Newark, says Fr. Martin’s message is “prophetic.”
In a recent University of Chicago townhall discussion, The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne, said, “Jim Martin is a hero in a lot of the pews around the country for his rather inspirational writing.” Chicago’s Cardinal Cupich agreed, saying, “I’ve known Jim Martin for a long time ...
he really is ... the foremost evangelizer in the Church today, especially for young people.”
But for what church — and what faith — is Fr. Martin evangelizing his young listeners?
Do they experience conversion and repentance? Or do Fr. Martin’s words simply help them to feel better about themselves and their choices?
Of what is he a prophet?
While Martin’s LGBT prism casts the full spectrum of rainbow colors, it deflects the brilliant light of the Gospel and its power to actually heal and change lives.
The Martin Gospel offers only affirmation, never once calling for self-examination; never questioning whether homosexual identity and activity are part of God’s plan for our lives. By omission or by default, sodomy shares the same moral value as conjugal sex. In Martin’s selectively abridged Bible, they are the same.
Fr. Martin’s ‘church’ perhaps represents
the very best [Hardly!] that the human intellect, operating on its own apart from God, can impart.
[It represents, rather, the banality of human thought in the absence of God's light]. Likewise, it may offer the love of the human heart, wonderful on its own, but
human affirmation is a far cry from the life-giving divine love that the Catholic Church has offered to all for two thousand years, leading to salvation and new life.
The Church of Fr. Weinandy
and the Gospel of Jesus Christ
Full disclosure: I have known Fr. Thomas Weinandy for nearly 40 years. Tom presided over our wedding in 1985. He baptized our children. He remained a faithful friend when I strayed from my marriage and my faith, divorcing myself from both my wife and the church in order to live as a gay man.
And then when, much like the Prodigal Son, I came to my senses and returned to my wife and sought to return to the Church, Tom was there to assist me and welcome me back. At all times, he never failed to speak the truth to me, always in love, even when I didn’t want to hear it.
As a preeminent Christologist, Fr. Weinandy has singlemindedly focused his entire adult life on one pursuit: knowing Jesus Christ.
Fr. Weinandy has amassed quite a resumé: At Pope Francis's invitation, he was appointed to a five year term on the Vatican’s International Theological Commission; previously he was Executive Director of the Secretariat for Doctrine of the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops (USCCB); and before that he taught theology at the University of Oxford, where he was Warden (President) of Greyfriars College.
[Frankly, I am surprised - and probably others are as well - that with his resume, I had never heard of Fr. Weinandy until he wrote that famous letter. Which just goes to show there are many good men and good priests in the Church doing outstanding work quietly whom the media usually ignore.]
And although during his lifetime Fr. Weinandy has produced a solid collection of acclaimed scholarly theological and philosophical works, he is, at heart, a pastor and a brother. He may work in the ivory towers of academia, but he does not dwell there.
At his fiftieth anniversary Mass last month, Fr. Weinandy expressed his deep love for Jesus Christ. Not as an academic who loves his field of study, but as a man who loves the person of Jesus Christ, human and divine.
That Mass wasn’t simply about recognizing five decades of wearing a Franciscan friar’s habit; it was about 50 years of loving and proclaiming Jesus Christ. Fr. Weinandy is a theologian in the truest, fullest sense of the word. He said it outright before the small congregation gathered in Capuchin College’s chapel: “I love Jesus.”
As he spoke that evening, I shared the experience of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. My heart burned within me as Tom explained the Scriptures about our Lord and Savior.
While a student at the University of Maryland in the mid-1970s, a group of us committed to evangelize one hour per day. Great idea, but I was frozen. I would walk up to folks, but then walk right past them because I was too chicken to open my mouth. During confession with Tom I mentioned that I was reneging on my commitment out of abject fear. He said, “Douglas, stop taking yourself so seriously; just treat it like a lark.” And of course, my penance was to “Do it.” The next day I approached someone, took a deep breath, and opened my mouth. To my amazement, words came out. I soon found my heart set on fire to talk about Jesus with strangers daily.
In the early 1980s, Tom invited me to accompany him while visiting a former Capuchin, a young man, who had “come out” as gay, only to find himself dying of AIDS. Tom ministered and I testified about God’s love and having the grace to turn away from sin.
Because of that experience, I would later volunteer one night per week at Gift of Peace, the ministry Mother Teresa established in Washington, D.C., to care for indigent men dying of AIDS. Inspired by my experience with Tom, I dressed, fed, changed diapers, held hands, loved, kept company, prayed with and shared the Gospel as best I could.
There are many other stories to tell, and I am just one of many whose lives attest to Fr. Tom’s abundant, contagious love for Jesus Christ, and his Bride, the Church.
There is no mistaking it: The Church of Fr. Weinandy, like the early church, is built on rock, not shifting sands. And that rock is Jesus Christ.
The 'Splendor of Truth'
differentiates the two
Archbishop Chaput, writing recently on the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of St. Pope John Paul’s
Veritatis Splendor, said,
“When John Paul issued Veritatis Splendor nearly a quarter century ago, it very soon drew criticism from a range of ‘forward-thinking’ theologians. They (rightly) saw that their efforts — to bend Catholic moral teachings toward more ‘humane’ and ‘compassionate’ standards, whereby moral truths could evolve over time, relative to historical and cultural circumstances — would be derailed by it...
To a great extent, today’s debates within the Church — on issues of sexual identity, sexual behavior, Communion for the divorced and civilly remarried, the nature of the family — simply exhume and reanimate the convenient ambiguities and flexible approaches to truth that Veritatis Splendor forcefully buried.”
[Yet Bergoglio's unconscionable zeal for exhuming buried polemical corpses that have been definitively excluded from the Church's deposit of faith is boundless, going around scattering their maggots of doubt and unreason for which the erroneous thoughts they represent have long been rebutted and trampled out. Whatever his next exhumation will be, it will surely stink of untruth.]
Fr. Martin and Fr. Weinandy are both priests of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church: One priest loves and clings to the whole truth, including what Cardinal Sarah refers to as the Gospel’s “hard sayings.” The other seeks to evade those sayings.
Archbishop Chaput, concluding his comments, said,
“But the splendor of the truth cannot be hidden. It is ever ancient, ever new. In the long run, Veritatis Splendor will be remembered long after many other works of popes and politicians are forgotten. It will be remembered for one simple reason: What it says is true.”
This seems to be an appropriate post to which I can append yet another informed critique of AL's patently false pretensions to 'Thomistic morality'.If a pope had not signed this document, it would have been torn to pieces by critics for its outright lies on top of its blatant casuistic contradictions of Catholic doctrine...But in for a penny, in for a pound, Bergoglio continues to reiterate the bogus claim that AL is Thomistic, i.e., he continues to LIE shamelessly....
The 'morality' of AL
is not Thomistic
by RICHARD A. SPINELLO
November 14, 2017
In a formal address delivered during his recent visit to Colombia, Pope Francis implored his brother Jesuits to defend his embattled exhortation on marriage, which remains haunted by its obscurities and fervent vagueness.
In his short discourse, the pope also enlisted Thomas Aquinas in this enterprise by
insisting upon the Thomistic properties of Amoris Laetitia. He described how “the moral theology of Amoris Laetitia is Thomist, the morality of the great Thomas.” He juxtaposed this morality to the more rigid moral theology based on casuistry. And in a rather harsh tone he accused those who critiqued his exhortation of having a “purely casuistic” approach to moral reasoning. [
The pope made the same controversial claims in his speech to the Jesuits gathered at their 36th General Congregation. He proposed a morality based on discernment and again chastised his critics for trafficking in casuistry.
How are we to understand what the pope means by casuistry? It is difficult to address this question with precision since the pope’s meaning is not terribly clear.
He seems to be asserting that the casuist is one who advocates the application of specific moral norms to concrete situations without considering circumstances and context. [His self-delusion is such that he does not realize casuistry underlies and defines his most cherished and dubious propositions in AL!]
In a recent speech extolling AL, Cardinal Barbarin of Lyons claimed that
the pope disavows a moral system shaped by a dichotomy between what is morally permissible and what is forbidden because of the “extraordinary variety of personal situations.” According to Cardinal Barbarin, “a moral or pastoral norm can never apply to each particular case.” [That's more or less what Bergoglio-surrogate Fr. Spadaro has been saying. Which is like saying,
'Forget the Ten Commandments! No moral standard can be absolute - not even God's in this case!]
However, there is little in Amoris Laetitia that invites a comparison with Thomas Aquinas. There are some quotes from Aquinas, but
several references taken out of context do not warrant categorizing the pope’s writing as Thomistically inspired.
St. Thomas Aquinas’s moral philosophy is based on the natural law which is mentioned in passing only once in the entire exhortation. Furthermore, AL does not build on the insights of John Paul II’s Veritas Splendor, which is thoroughly Thomistic. That encyclical is never mentioned in Pope Francis’s long document.
In fact, liberal theologians have cheered AL precisely because it dismisses the natural law in favor of a more “pastoral” approach to moral issues. Michael Sean Winters of the National Catholic Reporter notes with approbation that
AL represents a major shift from the natural law reasoning favored by Aquinas and by John Paul II in their treatment of sexual morality. [At least, he is candid - though mistakenly proud - about that!]
Aquinas claims unequivocally that no human action of moral significance can be morally right unless the object chosen conforms to the moral law. As St. John Paul II explained, “some sins are intrinsically grave and mortal by reason of their matter, that is, there exist acts which, per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are seriously wrong by reason of their object” (Reconciliatio et Paenitenia, par. 17). The intentional choice to kill the innocent is always wrong regardless of the situation or circumstances.
This conviction, quite foreign to the proportionalist ethic favored by many liberal moral theologians, was strongly reaffirmed in Veritatis Splendor, but we can find no trace of this line of reasoning in AL. Instead
there are suggestions that there must be exceptions to norms based on the concrete circumstances of a person’s life, since “it is reductive simply to consider whether or not an individual’s actions correspond to a general law or rule” (par. 304).
Pope Francis and his supporters claim that they are being faithful to St. Thomas when they maintain that “the more we descend to matters of detail, the more frequently we encounter uncertainty”
(304). But for Aquinas such moral ambiguity might arise when there are affirmative norms at stake.
AL completely disregards the essential Thomistic distinction between affirmative precepts (such as “one must return borrowed items”), which apply always but not in every situation, and certain negative precepts (“do not commit adultery”), which are valid without exception.
According to Aquinas, while we cannot always determine what should be done in accordance with an affirmative precept, we can determine what must not be done in accordance with negative precepts (Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 140, a. 1).
When it comes to some negative norms such as “do not commit adultery,” there is never moral uncertainty or confusion, no matter how deeply we plunge into the details.
It is quite difficult to argue, therefore, that this exhortation reflects a Thomistic approach to moral reasoning.
AL embodies a different style of thinking that puts little emphasis on principles that direct us to human flourishing. Aquinas, on the other hand, gives great prominence to rules and laws as well as to virtues.
And some of those rules or moral norms prospectively exclude certain acts as always wrong by virtue of their object and regardless of personal intentions or extenuating circumstances.
Moreover, the arguments of the pope’s collaborators provide little support for his declarations about the Thomistic pedigree of this exhortation. In an early October conference on AL at Boston College, papal advisor Fr. Antonio Spadaro affirmed that [
the pope does not believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to morality. “We must conclude,” proclaimed Spadaro, “that the pope realizes that one can no longer speak of … [a] rule that is absolutely to be followed in every instance.” Father Spadaro went on to assert that “It’s no longer possible to judge people on the basis of a norm that stands above all.”
There is a germ of truth in this statement since we always have to look at subjective culpability, which is nothing new.
But Spadaro seems to be arguing that moral norms or rules need not be adhered to in every circumstance. If we follow Father Spadaro’s reasoning, there seems little guarantee against the arbitrariness of subjective opinion. [In Bergoglio's 'moral' theology, everyone is free to discern whether to follow any or all of the Ten Commandments, e.g., "I don't think I am committing adultery, and if I am, so what? It's my life and my body!"]
This view, which appears to emerge in certain passages of AL can hardly be reconciled with Thomas’s principled moral philosophy.
The reflections of Archbishop Fernandez, perhaps the principal cghost writer of AL, also fail to affirm the affinity between AL And the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. In an article called “Chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia: What is Left after the Storm,” Archbishop Fernandez actually demonstrates the asymmetry between this work and Thomistic morality.
According to Fernandez, the pope agrees with AquinaS about the importance of general moral norms. However, according to Al, "in their formulation they cannot provide absolutely for all particular situations” (304).
Archbishop Fernandez offers this explanation: “The absolute norm in itself does not admit of exceptions, but that does not imply that its succinct formulation must be applied in every sense and without nuances in all situations.” [Can't be more senselessly casuistic than that!]
He provides this example to illustrate his argument: the divine and natural law “Thou shalt not kill” does not admit exceptions, but what is included in the term “killing?” Is killing in self-defense prohibited by this norm? No one would question, says Fernandez, the validity of inquiring whether or not killing in self-defense falls within the narrow compass of the negative precept “Thou shalt not kill.” Thus, there are absolute moral norms but we cannot formulate them properly to include all violations of that norm and therefore exceptions must be allowed.
The same holds true for the simple moral norm that forbids adultery. According to Fernandez, it is perfectly valid to ask if all “acts of more uxorio cohabitation” should always fall within the negative precept that forbids adulterous behavior. [What part of sin and 'forbid' don't you get, Mons Tucho?]
However, Fernandez offers a muddled and incoherent vindication of Chapter Eight’s contorted moral logic. He does not always clearly distinguish between the objective status of an act and the issue of subjective culpability of the moral agent who performs that act. He also argues that since norms cannot provide for all situations in their formulation, they can only be the source of “objective inspiration for the deeply personal process of making a decision.”
Despite his claim to the contrary, this position is totally at odds with the thought of Aquinas and John Paul II. Fernandez argues that “uncertainty increases” in complex situations because general norms cannot account for all particularities. Such uncertainty, however, may be found in the application of positive norms, but not in the application of those negative norms that forbid lying, adultery, or the taking of innocent life. There is no uncertainty about the objective wrongfulness of such actions.
John Paul II addresses this very question in Veritatis Splendor where he condemns moral theories which maintain “that it is never possible to formulate an absolute prohibition of particular kinds of behavior which would be in conflict in every circumstance and in every culture” with certain values (par. 75). [You'd think he had written it with a prophetic projection to 2014 and the moral acrobatics of Bergoglio and company.]
What Fernandez proposes has no basis in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. He is also flatly wrong to suggest that specific moral norms cannot be properly formulated to include all situations. His imprecise analysis invites all types of exceptions to norms based on the claim that the norm is too broad and general to encompass every unique situation.
However, as contemporary Thomists like John Finnis have pointed out, there are no exceptions to the norm against killing when it is accurately stated: “Every act which is intended, whether as end or means, to kill an innocent human being is gravely immoral and never to be chosen.”
The norm against killing the innocent, therefore, does not exclude lethal acts of self-defense in a dangerous attack by an aggressor where the intention is to protect oneself against the aggression.
Similarly, there are no exceptions to adultery, when it is properly defined as sexual relations by or with a married person outside of marriage. If a person is in a valid marriage, then the Lord’s precept applies without exception regardless of the circumstances.
For Aquinas, who deftly reconciles reason and Revelation, adultery, defined in this simple but definitive way, is intrinsically wrong, and the adulterer should make every conceivable effort with the help of grace to extricate himself from this sinful condition (see De Malo, q. 15, a.1). Yet this sentiment is nowhere to be found in AL.
According to Aquinas, these exceptionless negative norms are essential since they provide the concrete borders of morality. The problem with AL is that it appears to do away with these unambiguous parameters of moral behavior in favor of a flexible and supple morality with porous borders.
Thus, Cardinal Barbarin boldly boasts that Pope Francis has “liberated the Church’s teaching from its legislative constraints,” by supposedly preserving the moral law while also recognizing the need for exceptions. However, these exceptional circumstances are discerned by conscience, which must contend with a superficial culture where moral truth is easily obscured. The end result is a moral exorbitance that is far removed from Thomistic principles.
For anyone who wants to read a papal teaching that truly reflects the teaching of the “great Thomas,” they should turn to John Paul II’s Veritatis Splendor. Unfortunately, those who call attention to the shortcomings of AL and commend a retrieval of John Paul’s works to resolve the confusing arguments spun by AL defenders have begun to pay a heavy price for their efforts.
The “persecution of orthodoxy” has been on display in the firing of Professor Josef Seifert and the more recent resignation from the USCCB of Father Thomas Weinandy. Many others profess that they are afraid to speak out and declare their true convictions about the flaws that bedevil the eighth chapter of this exhortation. They see an establishment that wants to sweep away any opposition, and so even thoughtful critics are maligned and discredited for their opinions. Open and candid debate is replaced by a climate of fear and intimidation.
The ultimate problem is that some of the premises and conclusions of Chapter 8 represent a conceptual muddle. Those like Archbishop Fernandez who ardently come to this exhortation’s rescue get caught up in a maze of incongruities and imprecision as they try to defend its apparent moral errors. ['A conceptual muddle' is such an appropriate description - it's the consequence of mental indiscipline which can never lead to clarity but to muddy incoherence.]
A direct answer to the questions of the DUBIA Cardinals might resolve the confusion but that is not likely to happen. The pope has said many times that he wants his changes to be irreversible. But unless those changes are firmly rooted in the fertile ground of Scripture and the Catholic tradition they will eventually wither away.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 25/11/2017 14:41]