The fallout from Cardinal Cupich's disastrous Cambridge lecture has been as constant and lethal as that from Chernobyl back in the 1980s. And while I have yet
to come across a single article or blogpost that takes up the cudgels for the hapless Cupich - who has brown-nosed blatantly in his assiduous sycophancy of
Bergoglio (not that I seek out anyone who would defend Cupich!) - everyday since that lecture has brought reactions galore from orthodox Catholics appalled at
Cupich's Bergoglian chutzpah!
If Cupich is the best that the Bergoglians can come up with to defend AL, I cannot help feeling Schadenfreude over the lack of an intellectual 'bench', so to speak,
in the Bergoglio entourage. Which does not stop them, alas, from blasphemously invoking the Holy Spirit as the source of Bergoglio's self-made unholy 'lio'! (Who
would ever have thought that the 'Holy Spirit' would spout the kind of self-indulgent blather that keeps springing forth from the Bergoglians!
I shall start with Fr H who manages to capture the absurdity of it all in a few short paragraphs - and point us to someone worth listening to because he has the mind
and the Catholic mindset so sadly absent in the Bergoglio camp. (I am collapsing together his last 3 posts on the subject - remember he had 3 memorable first-
reaction posts to the Cupich lecture.
Aidan Nichols, Amoris laetitia, and Tucho
February 20, 2018
Fr Aidan Nichols, OP, is without doubt the most considerable living theologian of the English-speaking Catholic world. For members of the Ordinariate, he is the great friend who helped and guided us during the years when we were planning, and then setting up, the Ordinariates. And he is as prolific a theological writer as Joseph Ratzinger (on whose theology he wrote a still normative guide, long before the election of Benedict XVI).
Now Fr Aidan has delivered a characteristic lecture on the crisis which has been precipitated by Amoris laetitia. The Catholic Herald gave a report on 18 August 2017, which is still there, only a google away. I urge everybody to read it; and to take it very seriously.
I would like to make two comment on my own behalf.
(1) Fr Aidan delivered his lecture at a meeting of the English Fellowship of Sts Alban and Sergius - largely an Anglican/Orthodox Society. Was this a good idea? Washing our dirty laundry in front of non-Catholics?
It was a thoroughly brilliant idea. You see, there are people who think that Pope Bergoglio's style of papacy may be somehow more "ecumenical" than that of some other popes.
Bergoglio goes around kissing Patriarchs and begging their blessings; the man who insults his fellow-Catholics with such easy and iterated fluency can speak only well of non-Catholics. He is reported to have reopened the "Question of Anglican Orders"; he spoke ambiguously about "intercommunion" with Lutherans; made a fool of himself at Lund.
But, as you will forgive me for reminding you, I have often tried to explain on this blog that
thoughtful Orthodox and Anglicans will not be attracted by a model of Papacy which can make any Roman bishop a self-obsessed tyrant propped up by an unhealthy personality cult; somebody whose least word or whimsy has to be accepted; who can, at will, change doctrine, morality, liturgy, and law. Such a papacy is not a papacy which the more open-minded Anglicans and Orthodox have ever been prepared to consider. There is no reason to think that they will be any more prepared to accept it when it comes with an Argentine accent and emphasis. Nor should they accept it, because it is not what the Catholic Church teaches.
Fr Aidan reminded his hearers that
Vatican I in fact limited the papacy; and surmised "it may be that the present crisis of the Roman magisterium is providentially intended to call attention to the limits of the papacy [in regard to teaching]".
(2) Very naturally, there have been people, since Amoris laetitia, who have kept their heads below parapets; who have been cowed into acquiescence by fear of the noisy bully-boys,
delatores, and sycophants who surround the current Roman bishop. The courage, and unambiguous words, of Fr Aidan Nichols might inspire them to show that parrhesia for which ... at an earlier stage in his pontificate ... pope Francis himself so often loudly called.
In his lecture on the current crisis in the Roman Magisterium, the full text of which, sadly, is not available, Fr Nichols justly observed that
the moral 'teaching' of Amoris laetitia, if not corrected, will "increasingly be regarded as at the very least an acceptable theological opinion. And that will do more damage than can easily be repaired".
In fact, the currently dominant
Tendenz has made no secret that this is precisely the plan:
a plot to poison the very wells of magisterial teaching. As Archbishop Fernandez has publicly put it, "There's no turning back. If and when Francis is no longer pope, his legacy will remain strong. For example, the pope is convinced that the things he has already written or said cannot be condemned as an error. Therefore in the future anybody can repeat those things without being sanctioned".
There have been heretical popes in the past, but I doubt if there has often been
a pope who (according to one of his closest collaborators and admirers) has cunningly plotted to enable heterodox teaching to erupt and flourish under his successor(s); and thus to undermine in advance the teaching of future popes. Strangling renascent orthodoxy before it has the chance to be born, if you will forgive my descent into rhetoric.
Did even Pope Honorius I dare to attempt that?
Since, mysteriously, the full text of Fr Aidan Nichols's lecture will not be made available, we must make the most of the passages which the Catholic Herald published. [UPDATE: See my post of earlier today.]
By the way: that lecture is highly important, and not only because of Dr Nichols's considerable theological prestige. It addressed the points that some of us did our best to articulate in our Correctio. I do beg you to read and reread it, and to pass its teaching on to as many people as you can. [As the Bergoglian pressure-machine cranks up into top gear, pressing for a final Result, interventions such as Fr Aidan's ought to be as widely known as possible.]
Today, I give you Fr Aidan's words on whether popes can teach error.
"It is not the position of the Roman Catholic Church that a pope is incapable of leading people astray by false teaching as a public doctor. He may be the supreme appeal judge of Christendom ... but that does not make him immune to perpetrating doctrinal howlers. Surprisingly ... this fact appears to be unknown to many who ought to know better."
[I wonder if poor Cupich is aware of this.]
"Doctrinal howlers". Gerhard Cardinal Mueller reminded us ... aptly ... of the abrupt observation of St Robert Bellarmine to the pope of his own day: "Holy Father, you know nothing about that."
And here's a a tongue-in-cheek take on the Cupich calamity by an anonymous wit who appears to be a devotee of Erasmus, St Thomas More, and the latter's
satirical novel Utopia...The writer purports to be a native of Utopia, of which Amaurote is the capital city, where he is a Philarch (a chieftain of sorts in More's
Utopia) of the Academia Moriae (Academy of Folly), obviously inspired by Erasmus's great work, Encomium Moriae (In praise of Folly), which he dedicated
to his good friend Thomas More.
[Editor's Note: Having recently returned to Utopia from a scholarly visit to Cambridge (England), Basilides Melchischyros, Philarch of the Faculty of Arts and
Humanities of the Academia Moriae in Amaurote, offers these tentative thoughts as a reflective accompaniment to the cardinal archbishop of Chicago’s recent
elucidation of Amoris Laetitia, which he was privileged to hear at the Von Hügel Institute.
He argues that, widespread criticism notwithstanding, the cardinal’s pronouncements are, when properly interpreted, not only consistent with traditional Catholic
teachings but a ringing endorsement of them. Of course he submits all that he proposes here to the judgment of Holy Mother Church..
In a recent lecture on the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia [not to be confused with the rather older treatise by the Doctor Consolatorius,
De coitus gaudio (The joy of coitus)], His Eminence Cardinal Blase Cupich explained the document as an endeavor to help families face up to the problems posed by the realities of life in the modern world.
In the lecture, which would perhaps have been more timely had it been given on February 14, he analyzed this papal initiative in terms of six hermeneutical principles for the “decipherment” of the experiences of the faithful in contemporary family life, principles which together constitute a “paradigm shift” in the Church’s pastoral ministry.
Now in some ways, the cardinal’s use of the term “paradigm shift” might be thought problematic. Its primary sense, according to the online Cambridge English Dictionary, is “when the usual or accepted way of doing or thinking about something changes completely.” The Oxford English Dictionary, more laconically, regards it as a “major change in technology, outlook, etc.”
The scholar who coined the phrase, Thomas Kuhn, used it to explain “scientific revolutions” such as the Copernican, the Newtonian, or the Einsteinian, and interpreted it as the rejection of one paradigm in favor of another.[1]
It is not surprising, then, if
some of the audience (as became apparent in the questions) balked at the suggestion that the Catholic Church had been led by the pope into some process of radical doctrinal change. Fortunately, the cardinal was swift to correct this misapprehension:
"I reject the idea that a paradigm shift is a rupture and is not part of organic development. . . . The premise that “paradigm shift” means a break from the past is unfounded."
With these words, of course, he implicitly proclaimed his intellectual affiliation with that Victorian pioneer of the “linguistic turn,” the eminent Oxonian Dr. H. D’Umpty.[2] Armed with this realization, the astute reader is in a much better position to interpret the cardinal’s words, and indeed those of the pope as well.
For the pope’s achievement in Amoris Laetitia (not to be confused with “Plaisir d’amour,” the well-known French song)[3] was
to pursue doctrinal development only by way of “retrieving a way of thinking” which had “deep roots in tradition.” [This is the sort of obscurantism in thought and speech at which Bergoglio and his minions excel!"]
One of the major thrusts of the lecture was to emphasize that Catholics should not advocate or impose an unrealistic ideal of the family. This was indicated by
the first hermeneutical principle of the pope’s new paradigm, that “the family is a privileged site of God’s self-revelation.” This stood, the cardinal explained, in helpful contrast to an “abstract and idealized presentation of marriage.”
It would of course be a travesty to infer that the pope intended thereby to dismiss or dilute the concept of Christian marriage as a sacramental institution ordained by God as the origin and basis of human society, for the mutual support of spouses and the upbringing of children. For, knowing as we do that the papal teaching has “deep roots in tradition,” it goes without saying (and in the lecture did go without saying) that,
as the Council of Trent put it, the Church has not erred in teaching that marriage cannot be dissolved even by adultery, that not even the innocent party in such a situation can validly contract another marriage during the lifetime of their first spouse, and that those taking second wives or husbands in that situation are committing adultery.
At the heart of the new paradigm, the cardinal explained, lies conscience, that “secret core and sanctuary,” as Vatican II described it, where the human person “is alone with God.” By “fully embracing the understanding of conscience” set forth in Gaudium et Spes, he emphasized, the pope had established both the possibility and the necessity of the kind of pastoral “accompaniment” commended to us in Amoris Laetitia.
In drawing attention to Gaudium et Spes, the cardinal thus encourages the laity also to take its teaching fully into account, as no doubt the pope himself intends. For it affirms that
the human person finds “in the depth of conscience a law which they do not give unto themselves, but to which obedience is owed,” and that “the more right conscience prevails, the more persons and communities shun blind choice and seek conformity with objective norms of morality” (Gaudium et Spes, ch. 15).
Evidently, then, the intention of the pope and the bishops, in conformity with the clearly stated teaching of the universal Church, is that the married laity should carry out what Vatican II describes as their paramount task, namely to manifest in their lives the holy and indissoluble nature of the marital union
(Apostolicam actuositatem, ch. 11). The task of accompaniment imposed upon pastors by the apostolic exhortation can hardly be anything less or other than to assist them in fulfilling the obligation enjoined upon them by the Second Vatican Council.
The cardinal was equally insistent on aligning this doctrine of conscience with that of the great Victorian cardinal, John Henry Newman, and his insistence is again useful in saving the judicious reader from slipping into the kind of casual misunderstanding that might arise from a lazy exegesis of the cardinal’s words.
The pope’s analysis of conscience, he observed, was prospective as well as retrospective:
"Rather than limiting the function of conscience to knowing moral truth about actions in the past and objective truth in the present, conscience also discerns the future, asking “What is God asking of me now?” [All of which is blatant sophistry, the rhetoric of choice for Bergoglio and Bergoglianism.]
By means of the hermeneutic that the cardinal mandates, we can accompany him and the pope on the path to answering this question. For
Newman taught that the Christian conscience — unlike the human conscience in the state of nature — was guided and formed by revelation:
Revelation consists in the manifestation of the Invisible Divine Power, or in the substitution of the voice of a Lawgiver for the voice of conscience.
Through the mystery of revelation, communicated to Christians by the Church, the human person is thus able to identify what God requires at any moment by means of conscience, which “acts as a messenger from above, and says that there is a right and a wrong, and that the right must be followed.”[4]
Aware that the preaching of the gospel is among the principal duties of bishops, Cardinal Cupich reminded us, in one of his few quotations from the gospels that evening, that
Jesus said, “I came not to teach you things, I came to give you life.” The diligent research assistants here at the Academia Moriae have not thus far been able to trace the precise source for this text, which he quoted in reply to a question, although they may seek further advice on this matter from the experts of the Jesus Seminar.
The cardinal perhaps had in mind not Rev. 22:18 but John 10:10,
“I came so that they might have life, and have it in abundance.” For someone who apparently did not come to teach, of course, Jesus did quite a lot of teaching, around the synagogues of Galilee, in the Temple at Jerusalem, and elsewhere, and was regarded by some of his hearers as teaching with an unusual manner of authority.
On one occasion, he even seems to have introduced a note of humor, though this has sadly been missed in some exegetical traditions. His observation that
“whoever divorces his wife, except on account of her fornication, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries her that is divorced commits adultery” (Mt 5:32 and 19:9) has been misinterpreted outside the Catholic Church as permitting divorce on account of adultery. But Our Lord’s ironic exception evidently applies not to the prohibition on divorce, but to the responsibility of the man (in this case) for the woman’s sin.
In the wake of Vatican II’s evocation of the apostolate of the laity, it was particularly heartening to hear the cardinal emphasize the need for the clergy, in the modern world, to listen to the voices of the laity. He was certainly given plenty of opportunity to do this during the questions that followed his lecture.[5]
Several questioners were plainly exercised about some of the perceived implications of Amoris Laetitia, and about the reported convolutions of Vatican politics surrounding its composition and adoption.
Critics of the pope and of his document, the cardinal replied, should ask themselves some questions “in conscience”: “Do you really believe that the Holy Spirit was not present at the synods? That the Holy Father is not inspired by the Holy Spirit in writing this document?”[6]
Once more, it is important to forewarn the reader against a hasty misinterpretation. Comments such as these might very easily be mistaken for the sort of simplistic misrepresentation that used to be flung at the Church by those ill-informed polemicists who somehow mistook the doctrine of ecclesiastical and papal infallibility for the childish claim that popes and bishops are directly inspired by the Holy Spirit in their thoughts, speech, and writings.
But of course, as Lumen Gentium stated very clearly,
the specific and active assistance of the Holy Spirit is assured only when the pope, or the pope together with the bishops in an ecumenical council, exercise supreme teaching authority in a formal definition regarding faith or morals — such as those of the Council of Trent on the subject of marriage.
Of course one may affirm the general assistance of the Holy Spirit to the pope and bishops in their teaching ministry, but the cardinal cannot have intended anyone to confuse such “inspiration” with infallibility, still less with what the Council repudiated as the notion of some “new public revelation”
(Lumen Gentium, ch. 25).
It was now “up to all in the Church,” the cardinal suggested, to “respond in a spirit of affective and effective collegiality” to the papal initiative. This invitation to the laity to participate collegially with the bishops in the process of doctrinal and pastoral discernment was perhaps the most important point he made. For the laity, as well as the clergy, participate in the tradition of the Church and have their part to play in the preservation and transmission of revealed truth.
It is indeed the case, as he observed, that
“not all discussions of doctrinal, moral, or pastoral issues need to be settled by the interventions of the magisterium” [Is that not a direct lift from AL?] — particularly not when they have long been settled in times past. This is all of a piece with the cardinal’s further elaboration in response to a question from the floor:
"Because the pope has now said this is official Church teaching, as crafted by the bishops of Buenos Aires,[7]
there is a demand for all of us to embrace with mind and will, as Lumen Gentium says, what that official Church teaching is.[8]"
As this rightly indicates, we are “all of us” obliged to embrace “official Church teaching.” It is for us all to “hold onto the teachings” which have been handed down to us
(2 Thess. 2:15), to guard that deposit of the faith embodied and developed in the teachings of the Fathers and the decrees of the Councils across twenty centuries. And it is for us all, in appropriately paternal, fraternal, or filial spirit, to play our part in encouraging others to do likewise.
In the words of the pope’s third hermeneutical principle, as expounded by the cardinal, “The consciences of the faithful are essential in the task of discernment.”
Notes:
[1] Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2nd enl. edn. Chicago, 1970), pp. 66 and 77.
[2] For more on the ill-fated though celebrated Dr. D’Umpty, see the early study by L. Carroll, Through the Looking Glass (London: Macmillan, 1872): “When I use a word . . . it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” References here from the critical edition by Martin Gardner, The Annotated Alice (London: A. Blond, 1960), pp. 261-76, esp. p. 269.
[3] ‘Plaisir d’amour ne dure qu’un moment. . ’.
[4] J. H. Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (London: James Toovey, 1845), pp. 124 and 348.
[5] In Dr. D’Umpty’s words, “I told them once, I told them twice: They would not listen to advice.” The Annotated Alice, p. 274.
[6] “I sent to them again to say ‘It will be better to obey.’” The Annotated Alice, p. 274.
[7] For nothing could ever be ultra vires if done by the bishops of Buenos Aires. Note that, as the poet says, the “pronunciation varies: some people call it Bu-enos Airés.” And I myself observe that there’s a school that makes it “Bwenos Airs.”
[8] As Dr. D’Umpty put it, “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you.” The Annotated Alice, p. 269.
Fr. Murray at THE CATHOLIC THING offers his usual sensible canonist's view on Cupich's 'propter magnam gloriam tuam' encomium for Bergoglio and AL:
Cardinal Cupich’s 'revolutionary conscience'
by Fr. Gerald E. Murray
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2018
The Church has always taught that marriage is intrinsically indissoluble by the express will of God. That the unbreakable unity of marriage is not an ideal, in the sense of an as yet unattained goal towards which married couples strive, but rather is the very reality, the very nature of marriage. The Church teaches that fidelity to marriage vows is not merely something that you should strive for in seeking to arrive at the ideal of marriage, but rather is a serious obligation inherent in the nature of marriage.
Thus infidelity is not an excusable failure to live up to an ideal that is difficult, perhaps even impossible to achieve. Infidelity is rather a positive rejection of a solemnly promised vow to live in accordance with the divinely willed nature of marriage.
In short, the Church teaches that God joins a man and a woman in an indissoluble bond and offers them the grace to be faithful for life to the obligations inherent in this state of life. Any infidelity to these obligations does not cause that marriage to die or disappear. And marriage is not subject to dissolution by the retroactive withdrawal of consent at any point after the exchange of vows.
Ever since the publication of Amoris Laetitia, doubts have been cast upon the necessity of adhering to this understanding of marriage. Chicago’s Cardinal Blasé Cupich recently spoke on Amoris Laetitia at St. Edmund’s College in Cambridge, England.
His line of argument undermines the Church’s teaching on marriage, and everything else, by treating one’s lived experience as some sort of divine revelation. This means that what one does becomes the standard of what one should believe.
Cardinal Cupich speaks about a synodal church in which:
there is no hierarchical distinction between those with knowledge and those without. As such, the most important consequence of this call to accompaniment ought to be greater attention to the voices of the laity, especially on matters of marriage and family life, for they live this reality day to day.
Laymen are often better instructed in Catholic doctrine than their pastors. The shepherds should rejoice when they find their flock to be knowledgeable and faithful believers. But what if they reject Church teaching? Is that rejection to be embraced as a sign of God’s action in their lives?
Cardinal Cupich argues:
“It goes without saying that this will also mean rejecting an authoritarian or paternalistic way of dealing with people that lays down the law, that pretends to have all the answers, or easy answers to complex problems, that suggests that general rules will seamlessly bring immediate clarity or that the teachings of our tradition can preemptively be applied to the particular challenges confronting couples and families. In its place a new direction will be required, one that envisions ministry as accompaniment, an accompaniment, which we will see, is marked by a deep respect for the conscience of the faithful.”
It is deeply demoralizing to hear a Catholic bishop describe the task of teaching the faithful the truths of the Gospel as being an exercise of authoritarianism or paternalism that “pretends” to answer the difficult questions or problems people have.
When he claims that it is wrong to think that “the teachings of our tradition” can “preemptively” meet “particular challenges confronting couples and families,” he is reducing Church teaching to an inadequate set of possibly useful suggestions.
The voice of the Lord speaking through the doctrine of his Church is no longer reliable or universally applicable. Instead, we must listen to the conscience of married couples, which is even seen as a new source of divine teaching.
Cardinal Cupich claims:
“Accompaniment also is an act of forming Church teaching. There is a continuum of accompaniment which undergirds this entire range of actions by the Church. And thus . . . the core goal of formal teaching on marriage is accompaniment, not the pursuit of an abstract, isolated set of truths. This represents a major shift in our ministerial approach that is nothing short of revolutionary.”
What does this revolution involve? Cardinal Cupich says:
When taken seriously, this definition demands a profound respect for the discernment of married couples and families. Their decisions of conscience represent God’s personal guidance for the particularities of their lives. In other words, the voice of conscience – the voice of God – or if I may be permitted to quote an Oxford man here at Cambridge, what Newman called “the aboriginal vicar of Christ” – could very well affirm the necessity of living at some distance from the Church’s understanding of the ideal, while nevertheless calling a person “to new stages of growth and to new decisions which can enable the ideal to be more fully realized” (AL 303).
[The folly! The folly!... The horror! The horror!]
Thus a decision of conscience, for instance, to leave one’s wife and civilly “remarry,” is labeled “God’s personal guidance” that would grant divine approval to one’s blameless embrace of the “necessity” of what is euphemistically called “living at some distance from the Church’s understanding of the ideal.” Cardinal Cupich is telling us that God will inspire someone to serenely decide in his conscience that it is necessary for him to commit adulterous acts, and that this is therefore God’s will for him. [How ironic that whereas Bergoglio would edit the Lord's Prayer because, he claims, God would never lead anyone to temptation, he has been affirming all along that God does something even more radical - and not God-like at all - which is, to condone sin as in adulterous relationships! How can anyone have any respect for 'teaching' that is not only prima facie erroneous but also self-contradictory?]
Is there any possible way that this opinion is reconcilable with Catholic teaching on the nature and proper formation of conscience, the necessity to avoid mortal sin at all times, and the impossibility of God approving of what He condemns, i.e., adultery?
What is revolutionary here is not any change in the Church’s teaching on marriage (which is impossible), but rather the attempt to impugn that teaching by claiming that since some people decide that they would rather not be faithful to their marriage vows, they may in good conscience claim that God does not require them to be faithful; rather they should calmly recognize the “necessity” of embracing what has always been taught by the Church to be a gravely immoral lifestyle. [It does seem that Erasmus's title could well be used for Cupich's Cambridge lecture, i.e., Encomium Moriae - In Praise of Folly.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/02/2018 06:35]