Peter Kwasniewski who usually limits himself to very informative and insightful essays about the liturgy has joined Aldo Maria Valli in turning to satire and imagined conversations to make a point.
A conversation with the 'Santissimo Padre'-
perhaps overheard at Casa Santa Marta
by Peter Kwasniewski
July 25, 2018
Santissimo Padre: Who is it?
Swiss Guard: Holy Father, it is Monsignor Lospedale, wishing to have a cup of tea with you.
SP: By all means, send him in.
[The door opens, and a middle-aged priest strolls in, wearing a light blue clerical shirt and jeans.]
SP: So very good to see you. Have a seat. Sister will bring in the tea shortly. What’s on your mind?
Lospedale: Your Holiness, do you realize that polls are showing that 87% of practicing Catholics approve of artificial contraception? Other than those who may be ignorant of the Church’s teaching – a distinct possibility nowadays, since the teaching hardly ever gets mentioned – what do you think accounts for such an astonishing divide between official doctrine and actual practice?
SP:I ask myself about this. It’s clear that 99% of Catholics who still attend Mass are going to the Ordinary Form, but it’s also clear that the 1% who attend the preconciliar liturgy accept the teaching on artificial contraception. So I try to understand the situation. I find myself in front of people who are too lax, an attitude of laxity. And I ask myself: How come so much laxity? You dig, you dig, this laxity always hides something, a lack of faith in Christ. True love is not lax.
Mons: Why did you bring up the liturgy? Do you think it has anything to do with this problem?
Sp: Problem? Why not opportunity for mercy?
Mons: Quite right. Doubleplusgood.
SP: Well, you know the old axiom: “lex orandi, lex credendi,” to which some anti-’68ers – you know, the ones who wear Burkenstocks – add 'lex vivendi'. [Sighs.] I guess I should translate that phrase, seeing as clergy nowadays barely have enough Latin to figure out Novus Ordo. In violation of the clear requirements of canon law, I might add.
Mons: That hasn’t stopped us before.
S.P.: You spend altogether too much time with Coccopalmerio, who should be more retiring at this point in his career. Ah, Sister, thank you for the tea!
Mons: And I know what Novus Ordo means.
SP: So, as I was saying:
lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi. This means the law of prayer establishes the law of belief, which in turn establishes the law of living. In other words, we believe what we pray, and we live what we believe.
Mons: I’m afraid I’m not following.
SP: Then you ought to become more of a sheep!
The majority of Catholics are dissenters from the ban on contraception, and most of them are attending the Novus Ordo of the ever blessed super-saint, my thrice-venerable predecessor in innovation, Paul VI. Indeed, just about the only thing he didn’t innovate on was this vexing question of birth control.
On the other hand, a minuscule number of rigid Catholics who attend ridiculously rigid liturgies are not dissenting from what Paul VI (may he be blessed!) taught about contraception.
And I ask myself:
Why is it that the rigid people are following the Church’s teaching, whereas the actively participating worshipers in spirit and truth who feast on the table of plenty…are not? It seems as though it should be the other way around. No?
Mons: Umm, isn’t it because the teaching on contraception is rigid, unloving, and insecure? That would explain why the people with the right liturgy use contraception, while the people with the wrong liturgy refuse to. It makes perfect sense. Goes along with the normality of the one group and the kookiness of the other. I knew we’d get to the bottom of this if we tried hard enough.
SP: Ah, but it’s not so easy as that.
Not even I, with my Jesuitical equivocations, can make it appear that the Church has not consistently taught a ban on interfering with the procreative aspect of the marital act. It seems like something we ought to pay lip service to, at least…
Mons: You may be right about that.
SP: I’m always right. I’m the pope.
Mons: True. And a good thing, otherwise there might be a lot of confusion in the Church.
SP: Let’s not beat around the bush.
The traditionalists are incredibly stubborn. They’re throwing wrenches into the works all the time. I don’t know how to shut them down. And they have something going for them that normal Catholics don’t have. [Looks out the window pensively.]
Mons: Which is…?
SP: They have children, you nincompoop! Do you remember what we were talking about just two minutes ago?
“Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table…” They still believe all that stuff.
Mons: To think, in this day and age!
SP:
It’s worse than that. They have vocations, too. Lots of them.
Mons: This sounds, Your Holiness, almost like a compliment to the traditionalists.
SP: I intended no such thing.
Who am I to budge? I don’t change my mind so freely.
Mons: But…if you don’t mind my saying…in your latest airplane interview –
SP: Which one would that be? I’ve done so many, it’s hard to remember.
Mons: The one en route to Beijing, for the inauguration of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Cathedral.
SP: Go on.
Mons: In that interview, you answered some questions differently from the way you’d answered them before, which has given rise to a belief, shared by all the major liberal newspapers, that your papal magisterium is now evolving to a higher level of consciousness. Maybe even high enough to grasp the secrets of the Vatican Bank!
SP:
Papal interviews have not only no magisterial authority, but in many cases no interest except for psychiatrists and biographers. I am surprised, I might as well admit to you, that more people have not registered this important fact. You have noticed, by the way, that I have an official biographer? He has regular access to my sacred person.
Mons: That is Good News, as we would not wish to lose so much as a crumb of the Argentine wisdom that falls from your table of plenty.
SP: You are copying me now. This is not allowed, as the Libreria Editrice Vaticana holds the copyright to all things papal. Including the latest apostolic expectoration,
Daemonis Inundatio ['Demonic flooding'?]
Mons: Wonderful! Is this a new type of document? Can you tell me more?
SP: Not everyone is ready for it yet, but that will surely change. Development of doctrine is happening before our very eyes, at an exponentially accelerating pace. All things are in flux, just as Heraclitus said. No one ever steps in the same Tiber twice.
Mons: I understand, your Holiness: the new paradigm, Hegel, Teilhard…
SP: Exactly. Evolution is the name of the game. We’ve known this for a long time about the natural world and the world of cultures and civilizations.
Liturgy, needless to say, was a harder nut to crack, with all those fools who thought that we should keep doing what had always been done. Montini took care of that with a monumental nutcracker, or, should I say, sledgehammer. Morality and dogma have been the hardest to fall, as you might expect, but the evolutionary momentum has finally caught up with and subsumed them as well, like an irresistible tsunami.
Mons: Speaking of evolution, if you’ll pardon me, I need to relinquish this very comfortable and obviously poverty-epitomizing chair, stand upright, and use my two legs in hominid fashion to get over to the Secretary of State, who needs to see me.
SP: Really? What peril has Parolin got up his sleeve?
Mons: Something about…I don’t know…suppressing some order or other.
SP: Don’t relish it too much, or I shall have to make an example out of you.
Mons: Oh, don’t do that – it might qualify me for a fast-track canonization! [Lets out a belly laugh.] With my best wishes, Santo Padre, I leave you to that formidable pile of correspondence you’ve got there. Ciao.
[Lospedale shakes hands and strolls out. The Swiss Guard closes the door behind him, leaving the pope with his yerba mate.]
SP [musing]: Monsignor, ah, a useful man. [Pause.] I thought I had abolished that title.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 26/07/2018 02:17]