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'The Drunkenness of Noah', Bellini, 1551. His sons cover up his nakedness to save him from embarrassment.
I'm glad someone picked up on a story from L'Osservatore Romano a few days back which was headlined by one of the news aggregators to the effect that "Vatican sees priests as main obstacle to pope's teaching", which if accurate, would imply that the article does indeed acknowledge this pope's 'teaching' is not being picked up and disseminated as it should be within the Church herself by those who have the duty to do so. Meaning priests and bishops. It's worthy of a big AHA! moment, and one wonders what kind of evidence the writers had to make such an acknowledgment, even if it was simply anecdotal as it would have to be since no one has brought up any scientifically sampled surveys on the issue...
But it does puzzle me that Fr. Pilon's title for this essay is "A New – and Encouraging – Form of Collegiality?" when he is talking about what he seems to think is the 'silent majority' of the world's priests who do not agree with many things this pope teaches but who simply choose not to speak up. But it is not 'collegiality' when majority of priests and bishops independently decide not to speak up against the pope when they disagree with him - because the notion of 'collegiality' as defined by Vatican II and as evoked here by Fr. Pilon means 'an agreement or consensus among bishops and priests together with the pope", not just among themselves.
In everyday terms, one might simply call such an agreement or consensus against the pope a 'silent mutiny'. Which does not mean anything, of course, unless the mutinous priests and bishops demonstrate their fidelity to the faith by continuing continue to preach and practice the deposit of faith as orthodox Catholics have recognized it to be until March 13, 2013 - and the depredations into that deposit by a man elected to lead the Church of Christ, but instead has been wreckovating it into the church of Bergoglio.
Is there a new - and encouraging -
consensus among priests against
the dicta of this pope?
by Fr. Mark A. Pilon
THE CATHOLIC THING
THURSDAY, JULY 27, 2017
A recent article in L’Osservatore Romano by an Italian priest who teaches biblical theology is yet another example of the way the present papacy seems to look at priests and bishops who do not join in lockstep with the pope. I’ve never heard of this priest, Giulio Cirignano, but, evidently, he has some standing with the present regime.
The good father is clearly echoing an attitude that is prominent among the closest members of the papal entourage when he says: “The clergy is holding the people back, who instead should be accompanied in this extraordinary moment. . . .The main obstacle . . . is constituted . . . by the attitude of a good part of the clergy, at levels high and low . . . an attitude, at times, of closure if not hostility.”
This has become a frequent refrain in the pope’s own comments, i.e., that many clergy are rigid, closed, and hostile when it comes to his innovative teaching and practice. In my lifetime, I’ve never witnessed this kind of hostility coming from the papal office toward those who are meant to be co-workers in the vineyard of the Lord.
I try to imagine how such badgering of the clergy would have been looked at if it were a so-called “conservative” pope doing this. Suppose Pope John Paul II had been using this kind of language toward priests who were resisting his teaching. That great pope was anything but naïve, and he understood well that many clergy, including some bishops and cardinals, were resistant to the constant teaching of the church on matters like contraception, women priests, and divorce and remarriage. Yet never – to my knowledge – did he demean clergy who disagreed with him.
Or I try to imagine what would have been the response of the world’s press, secular and Catholic, if it had become known, say, that John Paul II had refused an audience to a group of cardinals who rejected his teaching on communion for the divorced and remarried in Familiaris Consortio. Imagine how outraged the secular and liberal Catholic world would have been had that pope treated his own privileged counselors in such a manner.
And yet Pope Francis seems to be the “Teflon” pope. No matter what he says or does in relation to the clergy and cardinals of the world, it doesn’t seem to affect his image as the compassionate, merciful, open pope. [As John Allen would say, the image is the narrative, and the narrative is still of a pluperfect pope who could possibly do no wrong, in the eyes of secular and liberal anti-Catholics.]
Maybe this is all we can expect in a world where truth matters little compared with images. But there is something interesting in this article that I haven’t seen commented on. This particular article confirmed for me, in a backhanded sort of way, some things about the reception of the more controversial aspects of Amoris Laetitia, and how it all relates to the notion of collegiality laid down in Vatican II.
This Italian priest and the editors of the pope’s own newspaper obviously felt it quite necessary, or at least opportune, to browbeat clergy and bishops once again for their failure to get in line with the pope. And why? Perhaps it seemed urgent because this resistance was in fact not minor, but it involved a “good part of the clergy, at levels high and low.”
Evidently, the urgency had to do with the fact that this resistance was quite widespread, and someone, somewhere hoped that a clever analysis by a theologian might reverse that trend.
The fact that this resistance is the real story struck me some time ago. [Depends how real and widespread such 'resistance' is.] Sure, you can count on the usual suspects like the German hierarchy, or the bishops from the pope’s own country, or from a tiny island diocese.
But the fact remains that the vast, vast majority of local Church hierarchies around the world are remaining silent, and a good number of individual bishops are openly confirming their flock in the traditional practice of the Church regarding communion for the divorced and remarried. [I hope this is at least 50 percent right in reality. Isn't it rather rash of Fr. Pilon to state this as a fact absent any real worldwide survey???]
This silence is itself the big story. It bespeaks the urgency of the matter. The Pope Francis contingent in the Church universal expected that the national hierarchies would fall in line quite easily. Yet this expectation is itself somewhat surprising, given the open resistance at the two synods to any such innovative practices as Communion for the divorced and remarried who had not received annulments.
Only the manipulations of the Synod and its results made it possible for these innovations to make their way into the pope’s exhortation. But the manipulators obviously thought that blind obedience would follow once the pope had spoken.
It didn’t. And what this grand silence really bespeaks, therefore, is collegiality in the true sense of that term. It seems the bishops of the world have great respect for the papal office and are hesitant to make any public display of disagreement that might embarrass the pope and undermine his office. A friend told me it was sort of like the sons of Noah covering the nakedness of their drunken father so that he would not be embarrassed. [But that's not true collegiality - when they actually disagree but only choose not to say so publicly, even when it has to do with one of Christ's most explicit teachings (when he directly confronted the problems of marriage, divorce and adultery - which were no different in Palestinian society 2000 years ago than they are today in the permissive era of a presumptuous Christ-substituting pope!)][/DIM]
Nonetheless, it’s simply a fact that the vast majority of bishops have not signed on to the interpretation of the Germans, the Argentineans, or the Maltese bishops. Nor have they given a rousing support to the “official” interpretation of Vienna’s Cardinal Schönborn. [True, insofar as there has not been a universal rush by priests and bishops to proclaim to the world through the media exactly where they stand on AL! In which the 'saving Noah from embarrassment' hypothesis would appear to be determinative!]
One of the ecclesiological purposes for calling Vatican II was to establish a certain re-balancing of the teaching on papal primacy in Vatican I. This balancing was, in fact, the teaching on collegiality, the close official relationship of all the bishops of the world to the pope, and the importance of collegiality in the exercise of the papal prerogatives.
The way this collegiality is exercised is complex. For instance, synods are a certain exercise of collegiality, but they do not exhaust the ways in which collegiality can take place.
We’ve now learned that one exercise of collegiality, perhaps not anticipated at that Council, may well occur through silence in the face of a possible case of papal overreach. [OK, Fr. Mark, what we have then is 'a collegiality of silence to save this pope from embarrassment' but cui bono???]
Fr. Pilon is a priest of the Diocese of Arlington, VA, with a Doctorate in Sacred Theology from Santa Croce University in Rome. He is a former Chair of Systematic Theology at Mount St. Mary's Seminary, and a retired and visiting professor at the Notre Dame Graduate School of Christendom College.
P.S. It turns out Jeff Mirus at Catholic Culture had an earlier reaction...
L’Osservatore Romano’s latest gambit:
Preferring culture to truth?
[Is this not SOP for preogressivist 'Catholics'?]
By Jeff Mirus
catholic culture.org
July 24, 2017
To avoid choking, one can only smile at the latest essay in L’Osservatore Romano which claims that Pope Francis’s plan for renewal is accepted by the “people” but resisted by “priests and bishops”.
Typical of Vatican periodicals during this pontificate, the article is long on cultural rhetoric and short on moral and doctrinal distinctions. Once again we see the Holy Spirit portrayed as the spirit of renewal at the expense of ceasing to be the spirit of truth.
The reader can hardly be surprised that the most recent example, an article by the Florentine theologian Giulio Cirignano, fails to identify particular issues on which anyone has advanced either a right or a wrong position. Instead, his approach is all smoke and mirrors.
Entitled “The Conversion Asked by Pope Francis: Habit is not Fidelity”, the article rests on two claims offered without the slightest evidence:
“Most of the faithful have understood, despite everything, the favorable moment, the kairos, which the Lord is giving to his community. For the most part, they’re celebrating.”
“The clergy is holding the people back, who instead should be accompanied in this extraordinary moment…. The main obstacle…is constituted…by the attitude of a good part of the clergy, at levels high and low…an attitude, at times, of closure if not hostility.”
In other words, Cirignano asserts that such pastors seek to hold the people back “behind an old horizon, the horizon of habitual practices, of language out of fashion, of repetitive thinking without vitality.”
Why smile, then? Only because such statements will be affirmed only by partisans; they can never pass for clarity of thought. The author says absolutely nothing substantive. He praises and denounces entirely without evidence. We have listened to such drivel for years, always coming from those who desire status in a culture that has first abandoned the faith and then driven it away. Their sycophantic mantra amounts to nothing more than this: “Get with it! The future is now! The answer is blowing in the wind! It’s 2017! Oh, and by the way, resistance is futile.”
[Mirus makes me realize I am not skeptical enough! Far from setting forth claims of implied widespread hostility to the Bergoglian Novus Ordo or New Order (generic, not referring to the Montinian liturgy) that is seemingly in command today, the writer (and OR) are instead simply magnifying and multiplying the literal 'straw men' Bergoglio sets up in his daily homilettes and other pontifications and trying to knock them down - or even burn them up! These strawmen constitute the permanent enemy (or legion of devils) that every ideological front must have to justify itself. Except, of course, that strawmen are always obviously strawmen, as fundamentally fictitious, but tactically and strategically crucial to those who set them up because they are 'easy to knock down'. It's all a game to them!]
Whenever people speak or write in this way it is because they wish to justify some position or course of action which is likely to meet greater resistance if it is clearly articulated.
For Catholics, it is always at least potentially dangerous to say flatly: “The Church is wrong in teaching that behavior X is always immoral or that doctrine Y is always true.” Instead, Catholics who sell their souls to the dominant culture undermine Catholic beliefs by accusing those who wish to clarify them of “repetitive thinking without vitality.”
Their rule is simple: Never directly contradict what the Church teaches. Instead, insist on openness while attacking the character of those who seek clarity.
As a prime example, consider the Cardinals who asked to speak with Pope Francis about several serious questions which seemed to be blurred in the text of Amoris Laetitia. The Pope refused even to grant them an audience.
Instead, in various interviews he denounced persons who raise such issues as “rigid”, as incapable of understanding the good he is trying to do — as being so stupid, apparently, that they have missed the whole point.
Unsurprisingly, those who seek preferment, including the most prominent contributors to Vatican publications today, take exactly the same line.
Note that such material is always published not as a rigorous argument but as a kind of celebration of the new order — a recognition, perhaps, of “the favorable moment…the Lord is giving to his community.” ['Favorable moment' for them, not for the one true Church of Christ.]
For this reason, the point of contention is never clearly identified with Church teaching. Instead, it is identified with the cramped and backward mentalities of those who, by defending the Faith, somehow prove that they do not want it to flourish. What, after all, is the first reason given for the sad failure of so many priests and bishops to appreciate the vision of Pope Francis? They have attained, wrote Cirignano, only a “modest cultural level”.
Truly, we should not be smiling after all. We should be laughing out loud.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 28/07/2017 18:33] |