In his preface to Fr. Reid's book on liturgy, Cardinal Ratzinger had occasion to point out the limits to a Pope's authority. Probably another thing that distinguishes Joseph Ratzinger from other Popes if the modern era is that, as a scholar on ecclesiology, he thought and wrote extensively about the Papacy from long before anyone ever even thought of him as a possible Pope. So in that sense, what he wrote was completely disinterested... In recent days, Fr. Hunwicke has had occasion to quote him about the limits of papal authority... Now, another orthodox priest, writing for Rorate caeli with the pseudonym Padre Pio Pace, riffs on the same subject by quoting from recent statements made by Cardinals Burke, Mueller and Sarah, respectively.
Cardinal Müller: On laying the foundations
for a return to the Magisterium
by Don Pio Pace
March 11, 2015
God only allows evil so as greater good may be accomplished. The immense disorder of the assemblies of the Synod on the Family prompts beautiful professions of faith by high-placed prelates of the Church, who are signs of hope for the future of the Church.
The extreme-progressive French magazine
Golias moreover notes with disquiet the "danger" that men such as Cañizares, Burke, Müller, Ranjith, Ouellet, Sarah, and other "young" Cardinals (around 65 years old) represent to their viewpoint, that is, in the perspective of a further liberalization of the Church's constitution, adding to them some over seventy-year-olds, such as Scola, Caffarra, Pell, among others.
[Not sure if Ouellet belongs to this group. He has been resoundingly silent on the battlehorse issues of the Bergoglian family synods, and his early effusions about Pope Francis were almost embarrassing for their seeming sycophancy.]
Gerhard Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, one of the Cardinals who took part in the authorship of the book
Remaining in the Truth of Christ, along with his brothers Brandmüller, Burke, Caffara and De Paolis, has, for example, just made public a lecture that he presented on the past January 13, in Esztergom, Hungary, on the "Theological nature of the Doctrinal Commissions [of the Episcopal Conferences] and the role of Bishops as Doctors of the Faith".
In a very Ratzingerian way (reference is made to the motu proprio
Apostolos Suos of John Paul II), he puts each thing in its place:
one thing is the supplementary power of the Conferences of Bishops and their organs, such as Doctrinal Commissions, charged with the harmonization of pastoral orientations; one very different thing is the power of Divine Right of the Successors of the Apostles, Doctors of the Faith and guardians of their Particular Churches, at the same time in which they take part at the solicitude for the whole Church, in communion with the Supreme Shepherd.
The following passage, concerning the Magisterium of the Supreme Pontiff, was particularly noticed in Rome:
In his 1998 "Considerations" on the primacy of the Successor of Peter, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith affirms that the primacy of the Successor of Peter is — as all the faithful — submitted to the Word of God, to the Catholic Faith, and is the guarantor of the obedience of the Church and is, in this sense, servus servorum (servant of the servants of God).
He [the Pope] does not decide according to his own will (arbitrio], but voices the will of the Lord, who speaks to man in Scripture as lived and interpreted by Tradition; in other words, the episkopè of the Primacy has limits that proceed from Divine Law and the inviolable Divine Constitution of the Church contained in Revelation.
The Successor of Peter is the rock that, against arbitrariness and conformism, guarantees rigorous faithfulness to the Word of God.
[And what if, as it appears to be the case today, one does observe, without having to try at all, 'arbitrariness' and 'conformism' in the pontifications emanating from the current Successor of Peter? He would not enjoy the phenomenal and unprecedented popularity he has if he were not 'conforming' in many ways to worldly mentality, or, at the very least, to the world's expectations of him? ]
At the same time, Cardinal Robert Sarah, new Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, plays from a similar score in his interview book that has come out in France in the past few days,
Dieu ou rien (God or nothing) (Fayard). The work has the subtitle "Conversation on the Faith", which is by itself a whole program...
The organization of the Cardinal's words on the liturgy, done under the care of a writer called Nicolas Diat, is absolutely remarkable: Robert Sarah presents a very detailed and very moving account of his life, displays his (solid) theology and his high spiritual aspirations for the priesthood and for the pastors of the Church.
The tone of the African bishop, who risked his own life more than once, reaches a solemn level when he speaks of the relativistic Western ideology upon which some wish to sacrifice the message of Christ, especially concerning marriage and family. All of it, according to current usage, sprinkled with beautiful quotes by Pope Francis.
On February 8, Cardinal Müller published an article in
L'Osservatore Romano entitled "Cleansing the Temple" (on the Vatican website: "Theological Criteria for a Reform of the Church and of the Roman Curia").
In it, he shows that the traditional reforms of the Church are spiritual, and not political. The reform of the Curia must be exemplary in this regard: its organizational structure and its functioning must be understood to be subject to the specific mission of the Successor of Peter, "the perpetual and visible principle and foundation of unity"
(Lumen Gentium, 23).
The Curia is not, "an intermediate level between Pope and bishops," but it is intimately linked to his mission of universal pastoral government of flocks and lambs. Based on this, the Cardinal dismisses as something opposed to its essence the integration into the Curia of the Synod of Bishops:
"The Synod of Bishops, the Conferences of Bishops, and the various aggregations of particular Churches belong to a different theological category of that of the Roman Curia."
Which is a head-on criticism of the idea, within the cardinalatial Commission in charge of propositions to reform the Curia, that considers the integration into the traditional dicasteries of a sort of permanent delegation of the Synod of Bishops.
In definitive words, Cardinals Müller and Sarah express their distinctness from, let us say, the Baldisseris, the Marxes, the Tagles, the Kaspers...
This is rather off-topic, but I feel I must make it clear that my reservations are growing rather than diminishing about my compatriot, Cardinal Luis Tagle, Archbishop of Manila. Not that what I think and feel matter in any way. Right now, he is riding the crest of his build-up by the media as 'the Francis of Asia' (even if, to his credit, he was known for his simple living and 'pressing the flesh' outreach to his flock years before Jorge Mario Bergoglio's lifestyle and 'odor of the sheep' pastorality got worldwide headlines when he was elected Pope) and being touted as a 'likely successor to Francis' who would be the first Asian ever to become Pope.
If he were not the Vatican II progressivist that he is, and less sycophantic (almost embarassingly so) to the Pope even if he does not have to be, I would be beyond happy that a Filipino was being considered so highly in the MSM - obviously, in this case, for what I consider to be the wrong reasons... As subjective and utterly 'irrational' as it is, my gut feeling about Tagle from the very beginning was the same mistrust I felt about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the first occasion I can remember ever reading anything about them. That gut feeling has not proven wrong so far...
P.S. 3/12/15
What do you know - there's an appositely appropriate news item about Cardinal Tagle that reinforces my bias...Just as the report itself reinforces the MSM meme about Tagle as 'a future Pope'... His riff on Bergoglian mercy is, of course, sheer sycophancy and opportunism.
Cardinal says Church’s ‘severe’ stance towards gay
or divorced Catholics left people ‘branded’
Church has to relearn its own teaching on ‘mercy’, he insists
By John Bingham
Religious Affairs Editor
May 9, 2015
The “harsh” and “severe” stance adopted by the Catholic clerics towards gay people, divorcees and single mothers has done lasting harm, one of the most prominent members of the Church’s new generation of Cardinals has acknowledged.
Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Archbishop of Manila in the Philippines, said the Church had to learn lessons from changing social attitudes and a greater understanding of psychology and recognise the “wounds” its judgmental approach had caused in the past.
He was speaking after addressing thousands of young British catholics at the “Flame II” rally in Wembley Arena in London where he gave an impassioned call for Christians to learn again the meaning of the word “mercy”.
The 57-year-old cleric who is widely considered to be a possible future Pope, was given an ecstatic reception from the crowd as he told them that “only mercy can save humanity”.
Speaking afterwards, he said
it was clear that the tone taken towards gay people, divorcees who remarried against Catholic teaching and unmarried mothers had left many feeling “branded” and socially ostracised. [How strange for Tagle to say this when the Philippines has always been one of the most 'gay'-friendly countries in the world!
When I was growing up in the 1950s-1960s, the most prominent couturiers and hairdressers in the country and quite a few film directors and painters were known to be gay but that didn't affect their social prestige or standing in any way. Nor was there any discrimination at large about 'gay' people' who at that time, before homosexuality became a buzzword, we Filipinos merely considered 'effeminate' without making any judgment about their sexual orientation.
From the 1970s onward, the number of known 'gays' in the arts, entertainment, fashion and media world, and eventually, in politics, expanded almost exponentially, and the persons concerned had no problems acknowledging their lifestyle, which was never relevant to their social status. Nor, as far as I know, did anyone ever complain that he/she was being ostracized, much less that he/she had been 'branded' by the Church.
In fact, I don't think any Filipino priest ever preached against the gay lifestyle at all - just as I don't think any priest has ever done elsewhere in the Western world. Since there is no divorce in the Philippines, the question of RCDs does not apply to our society. But unmarried cohabiting couples and unmarried mothers have never ostracized either (although perhaps in the rural areas, unmarried mothers were a topic for lively gossip).
And most certainly, unless Cardinal Tagle has documented facts to prove it, I was not aware (and I worked in the media from 1967-1987) that any Catholic priest or bishop had ever said anything that 'branded' homosexuals or unwed couples or single mothers in any way. We Filipinos (whose schizophrenic history includes "300 years in a convent and 50 years in Hollywood" - referring to our Spanish colonial past and our history as a US colony until we became independent in 1946) do not exercise social or religious ostracism against anyone for any reason. Culturally, over the past five-six decades, at least - and not that it is an entirely positive thing - the Philippines has been very much a 'laissez-faire' society.
So Cardinal Tagle is doing us a disservice by projecting onto Filipino society what he perceives to be the problem elsewhere. His countrymen do not need his pontificating on this subject, and to make general statements of the sort he made in Wembley seems to me an instrumentalistic media shtick on his part.
He added that improved understanding of child psychology had exposed the scale of harm done to children by the disciplinarian stance taken in schools.
The word “mercy” has been the central theme of Pope Francis’s pontificate but has exposed sharp divisions over possible moves to relax the ban on remarried divorcees receiving communion.
Cardinal Tagle told The Telegraph: “We have to admit that this whole spirituality, this growth in mercy and the implementation of the virtue of mercy is something that we need to learn over and over again.
“Part of it is also the shifts in cultural and social sensibilities such that what constituted in the past an acceptable way of showing mercy, ... now, given our contemporary mindset, may not be any more viewed as that.”
He said that the past approach in Catholic schools and other institutions had often been to dictate rules and tell people that they were “for your own good”.
“Now with our growing sensibilities, growth in psychology, we realise that some of them were not as merciful,” he said. “Now with the growth of insights in child psychology we see some of the wounds inflicted with that – and so we learn.”
Asked whether clerics must find new ways of dealing with people once treated as outsiders, he said:
“Yes, I think even the language has changed already, the harsh words that were used in the past to refer to gays and divorced and separated people, the unwed mothers etc, in the past they were quite severe.
“Many people who belonged to those groups were branded and that led to their isolation from the wider society.
“I don’t know whether this is true but I heard that in some circles, Christian circles, the suffering that these people underwent was even considered as a rightful consequence of their mistakes, so spiritualised in that sense. But we are glad to see and hear shifts in that.” [None of the above applies generally to the Philippine situation at all!]
He insisted that the Catholic Church could not abandon its traditional teaching on sexual ethics but added: “Here, at least for the Catholic Church, there is a pastoral approach which happens in counselling, in the sacrament of reconciliation where individual persons and individual cases are taken uniquely or individually so that a help, a pastoral response, could be given adequately to the person.”
[But hasn't that been always the recommended way for priests to deal with problematic cases? Assuming that the confessee would even confess a homosexual lifestyle or unmarried cohabitation as a sin.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/03/2015 17:24]