Sermon for Christ the King Sunday:
Catholic paralysis following Vatican II
threatens the very foundation of the Church
by Fr. Richard Cipolla
St. Mary's Church
Norwalk, Connecticut
Oct. 29, 2017
Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.”
(John 18:37-38)
The Feast of Christ the King was added to the Roman Calendar in Pope Pius XI’s Encyclical
Quas Primas on December 11, 1925. This was the time of a most troubling interlude between the two World Wars that devastated two generations. It was also a troubled time for the Catholic Church. This time was the beginning of the rise of the understanding of an ideal government as purely secular.
This was also the time when the so called Roman question had not been resolved, the question being the dispute regarding the temporal power of the popes as rulers of a civil territory in the context of the Italian Risorgimento. It ended with the Lateran Pacts between King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and Pope Pius XI in 1929.
The Pope was quite explicit in why he thought it necessary and salutary to institute this feast for the whole Church.
The date, the last Sunday in October, was chosen because it was the Sunday before All Saints Day, when the manifestation of the kingdom of Christ is seen in the glorious holiness of the saints in heaven; also because it was near the end of the liturgical year, and finally, because that Sunday had been traditionally observed as Reformation Sunday by Protestants.
I want to read to you the Pope’s own words that enable us to understand his conception of this feast from his Encyclical that promulgated the feast of Christ the King. He quotes St. Cyril of Alexandria.
“Christ has dominion over all creatures, a dominion not seized by violence or usurped, but his essence and nature”. Then the Pope goes on:
“His kingship is founded upon the ineffable hypostatic union From this it follows not only that Christ is to be adored by angels and men but that to him as man angels and men are subject, and must recognize his empire; by reason of the hypostatic union Christ has power over all creatures. But a thought that must give us even greater joy and consolation is this: that Christ is our King by acquired, as well as by natural right, for he is our Redeemer.”
He then goes on to explain how Christ’s kingdom is spiritual and not at all concerned with worldly power. But it is at this point he adds:
“It would be a grave error, however, to say that Christ has no authority whatever in civil affairs, since by virtue of absolute empire over all creatures committed to him by the Father, all things are in his power….Thus the empire of our Redeemer embraces all men. To use the words of Our immortal predecessor Pope Leo XIII: “ ‘His empire includes not only Catholic nations, not only baptized persons who, though of right belonging to the Church, have been led astray by error, or have been cut off from her by schism, but also all those who are outside the Christian faith; so that truly the whole of mankind is subject to the power of Jesus Christ.’”
How do we react to those words, to this insistence that the kingship of Christ extends to all men and women living on this earth and that as a conclusion every government must understand their obligation to govern in a way that is consonant with the teaching of Christ the King?
To those of us who have grown up with the dictum of separation of Church and State, to those of us who have grown up since World War II and the secularization of society, to those who are young who have grown up with the assumption that Catholicism and Christianity are just one religion among many, for those who have grown up with pluralism as the ultimate gift of the gods, what can the kingship of Christ mean?
We could take refuge in trying to spiritualize the whole thing, but that would be dishonest with respect to what Pope Pius XI was saying. Or we can transfer the feast to another day and thereby change its meaning. That is what the reformers of the calendar did in 1970. In the Novus Ordo calendar this feast was transferred to the last Sunday of the Year, immediately before the First Sunday in Advent.
The readings for that Sunday are always about the end times: stars falling out of the sky, earthquakes, terrible tribulations. There is a validity in associating this feast with the end time when the Kingship of Christ will be made totally manifest. But to associate this feast with only the future — even the ultimate future — makes it much easier to dismiss the reality of the Kingship of Christ as just part of the End Times, which for many Catholics and for most people in general has no meaning right now in their lives in this world.
It is much easier to deal with Christ the King who will come again in some vague way in the future than to deal with Christ the King right now.
Imagine someone — lay man or woman, deacon, priest, bishop or Pope - going to the UN and speaking about the kingship of Christ and the implications of his kingship for every member of the United Nations using the words of Pius XI. The representatives of the UN would be polite and not say out loud what they are thinking — this guy is crazy. And there would be polite applause after the speech, and then they would go to a fancy dinner in New York and talk about the crazy Catholic who spoke of the kingship of Christ in practical terms for each of their countries. They would laugh and order cocktails before dinner. At least Pilate had the sardonic intelligence to ask the King: what is truth?
The paralysis that has beset the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council threatens the very foundation of the Church, for it makes evangelization as defined by Christ himself before the Ascension impossible. [I disagree that 'paralysis' in the Church has been operative after Vatican-II, certainly not in the Church leadership under John Paul II and Benedict XVI.]
- Playing footsie with the world is not the same as being wise as a serpent and gentle as a dove.
- Denying the objectivity of sin in the name of mercy is not consonant with Jesus's words at the beginning of his ministry: “Repent and believe the Gospel!”
- Making mercy a principle that trumps the justice of God is worse than phariseeism.
But the current situation in the Church would be impossible without the rise of a hyper-papalism, that reduces the Church and her teaching to the person of the Pope. This irrational reduction of the teaching of the Church and the authentic development of doctrine to the preferential musings of a Pope is destructive to the Church of Jesus Christ.
“You are Peter”. The Pope is the Successor of Peter. And his job, and it is a job, a job that has certain perks handed down by Tradition, his job is to pass on the Catholic faith totally and unalloyed and to give his assent to those developments of doctrine that are the fruit of centuries of thought and prayer and then to define them as credenda, those things that are to be believed by Catholics because they are true.
What is missing? Why are we Catholics in the situation in which we find ourselves, emasculated and irrelevant with respect to the world?
Because we no longer hear those words that are the antidote to the poison of secular contemporary secularism, the world of tweets and texts. Catholics no longer hear and understand those words: Hoc est enim corpus meum - those words that are the antidote to the frivolous and empty culture in which we live. Not “This is my body” or “Este es mi cuerpo”, or “Questo é il mio corpo, or “To jest moje ciałot”.
But
Hoc est enim corpus meum. Those words that transcend the particularity of the cacophony of language and that are uttered in a language that is no longer a spoken language and therefore transcends particularity: they are the words that make real the presence of Christ the King in a world that despises him or does not know him or is bored with him or cannot turn off their text messages to pay attention to him or cannot stop tweeting to express their own banality — there it is. The words of Christ the King. The Truth. What is truth?
Hoc est enim corpus meum.
My comment above to Fr. Cipolla's sweeping description of "the paralysis that has beset the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council" is, in fact, addressed in an earlier article which uses the more appropriate term 'soft discipline' instead of 'paralysis'...
The fruits of soft discipline
by Fr. Mark A. Pilon
October 26, 2017
When I was in the seminary in the early 1960s, we were indoctrinated in the notion that
the harsh discipline of the Church over the centuries would be a thing of the past following Vatican II. Supposedly, none of this harshness had ever really worked to safeguard the teaching of the Church, so a new softer approach was needed.
A half-century later, the results are in – and it’s indisputable that the softer approach didn’t work. In addition to the exodus of priests, nuns, and religious, there’s been a massive loss of knowledge among ordinary lay people about what the Church teaches. And no wonder, since there’s been little effort to make Church teachings clear in the flight from the bad old days of “harsh discipline.”
The bad example most often cited back then was the effort by Pope St. Pius X to root out modernism by removing dissident professors and then, in 1910, instituting
the Anti-modernist Oath “to be sworn to by all clergy, pastors, confessors, preachers, religious superiors, and professors in philosophical-theological seminaries.”
This oath began by embracing and accepting “each and every definition that has been set forth and declared by the unerring teaching authority of the Church, especially those principal truths which are directly opposed to the errors of this day.”
Those errors were then briefly explicated, followed by this submission:
“I submit and adhere with my whole heart to the condemnations, declarations, and all the prescripts contained in the encyclical Pascendi and in the decree Lamentabili, especially those concerning what is known as the history of dogmas.”
Now the “enlightened” critics of this oath were many and prominent during the Second Vatican Council, and they won just two years after it closed.
In 1967, the CDF under Paul VI issued a much-shortened Profession of Faith in “substitution of the Tridentine formula and the oath against modernism.”
It is a brief restatement of the Creed with a closing qualifier:
“I also firmly accept and retain each and every truth regarding the doctrine of faith and morals, whether solemnly defined by the Church or asserted and declared with the ordinary Magisterium, as well as those doctrines proposed by the same Magisterium.”
Fine, so far as it goes, but
it names no specific errors, even when they contradict the Church’s “ordinary Magisterium.” By that point, the errors may have become so numerous that it was necessary to abbreviate the oath or profession.
But I’m not sure that’s the only reason.
The change also reflected a desire on the part of powerful elements at the Council to present a new, softer face of the Church to the world.
Pius X was too smart to think that an oath was going to cleanse the Church of heretical dissidents. But it did set down markers for bishops who were obliged by their own office to discipline and remove not only those who refused to take the oath but also those who supported heretical doctrines.
Vatican II had affirmed the authority and responsibility of individual bishops as true successors of the apostles. So, you could argue, if the bishops fulfill their grave obligation to safeguard the faith, no such oath – or at least no such detailed oath – would be necessary.
Unfortunately, after the Council, discipline mostly collapsed, at least when it came to safeguarding the faith. Witness the open and massive dissent from Humanae Vitae – certainly an exercise of the pope’s ordinary Magisterium, but also a formal reaffirmation of a constant teaching of the Universal Ordinary Magisterium, which was defined as infallible by both Vatican I and Vatican II.
Yet it’s hard to think of anyone among the “clergy, pastors, confessors, preachers, religious superiors, and professors in philosophical-theological seminaries” openly disciplined by his bishop for dissenting from this teaching.
Indeed, it took twenty-five years to remove one of the ringleaders of dissent, Charles Curran, from a Pontifical University (The Catholic University of America). Many others continued at Catholic institutions until they retired.
St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI tried to change things, but with modest success.
Part of the problem was that several bishops were, themselves, dissenters, though secretly out of fear for repercussions. I had a certain respect for the honesty, at least, of one or two bishops who openly opposed Humanae Vitae. But you would have to be very naïve to think that there were only one or two bishop-dissenters. That’s become abundantly clearer in recent years.
Inevitably, the soft church became even softer when it came to the growing problem of Catholic laity and Catholic politicians openly supporting crimes against humanity such as abortion.
How could the bishops discipline them when they failed to discipline even their own clergy and teachers in Catholic universities?
The double standard would have been obvious. So
today we have a Church leadership that talks endlessly, but does virtually nothing to protect the faith of the little ones who were always the object of our Lord’s special love – and of the great popes of history. Often this soft discipline is justified in terms of charity. But what about charity toward the little ones who are easily – and gravely – misled?
Ordinary Catholics know well that words are cheap unless they are backed up by action. They know that no successful institution could operate the way the Catholic Church exercises discipline. If a person in authority contradicts the mission or disputes the principles that guide that mission, he will soon find himself out.
When bishops fail to discipline those who are in positions of grave responsibility, the ordinary person will no longer take a bishop’s words seriously. Perhaps that is why so many ordinary Catholics have come to side with the secular world on abortion, divorce, homosexual “marriage,” you name it.
But the ultimate victim of a failure to maintain discipline is truth. If you are not willing to defend the truth, then truth itself becomes a matter of opinion. That is, sadly, where we stand today.
Meanwhile, one of Marco Tosatti's Vatican sources comes out with a cri du coeur over what he sees as an acceleration of Bergoglio-initiated and/or -induced events that makes him think as though we were in the 'end times'. The Latin expression ‘motus in fine velocior’ refers to how time appears to speed up in the midst of a crisis, or in the case of the post-conciliar age, towards the end of an epoch.
‘Motus in fine velocior’?
My correspondent ‘Pezzo Grosso’ is terrorized
by what he is seeing in the Church…
Translated from
Oct. 30, 2017
Dear friends and even enemies who nonetheless read me,
I thought that I would have a day off today, but I got a message from ‘Pezzo Grosso’
[‘Big cheese’, one of Tosatti’s well-placed correspondents], which I must confess struck me hard: because of the tone of the message, and because I know he is someone who has seen quite a lot and is not an easily impressionable fellow. But read what he says:
Dear Tosatti, what I am writing you today is not intended to make you laugh. Not only am I quite dumbstruck since I am no longer surprised by anything in this pontificate – this time I am frightened. The acceleration of events in these past several days is surprising, as if we were facing an urgent deadline and no one wants to waste time by resorting to diplomatic ‘glycerin suppositories’ [makes the terrible medicine glide in easily directly to your gut, instead of having to take it by mouth!]
After preliminary sallies with ambiguous interpretation, we have passed on to something which no longer needs interpretation because they are declarations of war against the Catholic faith, Jesus Christ and the Immacolata.
First, the statements of esteem and praise for Martin Luther (the most recent was a lecture by Mons. Brune Forte on October 30), then those by a theologian very much in favor with this pope (Andrea Grillo) who has said on Facebook and other media (without any denial from the Vatican) that ‘Trans-substantiation is not a dogma’. And then again, the surprising and disquieting public ‘correction’ of Cardinal Sarah by this pope.
The formal title of the conference is "The Church and feemasonry: So close and yet so far apart".
And now, there is this conference on the rapprochement between the Church and Freemasonry which will take place on November 12 in Syracuse, with interventions by Grand Masters of the Grand Orient of Italy* (the sponsoring organization), the Bishop of Noto and another Catholic prelate from the Archdiocese of Syracuse. The flyer for the conference features Christ with the masonic compass in hand.
Of course, after his enthusiastic advocacy last year of rapprochement with the Freemasons by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, we should not be surprised. But Ravasi is Ravasi, and even when he is not speaking Aramaic or ancient Greek, one can hear him without understanding a word.
But now I am frightened above all by all these events following each other closely – as if we were fast approaching a deadline or an ultimatum. (Could it have to do with the visions of Leo XIII? The prophesies of La Sallette? Of St. Bridget? Of Our Lady of Akita? Of St. Vincent Ferrer?...)
What could we possibly expect to be the next move? Will the next rapprochement be with the tempter-serpent of Genesis who sought to justify his ‘good intentions’ to bring knowledge to Adam and Eve? Shall we then reproach St Michael Archangel for kicking him out? Perhaps we should even ask the Virgin Mary to apologize for having crushed his head beneath her foot! And even Jesus himself for not allowing himself to be tempted in the desert! Thus we would open up a multi-cultural pluralistic dialog with Satan.
Dear Tosatti, you will not believe me, but I am starting to be truly afraid. I have started to take up the prayer-exorcism to St. Michael the Archangel written by Leo XIII (which had always been said after Mass till 1964 when it was ‘inexplicably’ dropped) [That would have been under the pontificate of the Papa Buono, St. John XXIII. Why indeed was it dropped? I must remember to ask my parish priest at Holy Innocents if he would like to restore it after the traditional Mass.]
I ask myself if I shall have the strength to act against all this without the assistance of my Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church whose leadership I feel to be working against the Gospels and the Truth in which I was raised. The cardinals and bishops who still believe in the Truth of Christ must do something now! I fear as if we are in the ‘end times’, dear Tosatti.
From a terrorized Pezzo Grosso
*
From Wikipedia: The Grand Orient of Italy is an Italian masonic grand lodge founded in 1805 by the stepson of Napoleon Bonaparte. As of March 2012 the grand lodge had 21,400 adherents divided in 757 lodges. Although once a significant player within international freemasonry, since 1993 it has not been recognised by the United Grand Lodge of England (due to accusations of corruption and Mafia involvement), and it is not recognised by the Grand Orient of France, the oldest Masonic lodge in Europe (most American Grand Lodges continue to recognise it, however).
In 1925, Freemasonry was suppressed in Italy by Mussolini, but the Masons resumed activities after the Second World War. Propaganda-2, the lodge that investigative journalists identified as being implicated in the 1982 murder of banker Roberto Calvi [chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, whose major stockholder was the Vatican, and which was used by the Mafia for money-laundering; the bank crashed in 1982 and the Vatican had to pay out about $250 million to clients victimized by the crash], was originally chartered by the Grand Orient which revoked its charter in 1974. The Grand Orient revoked its charter in 1974.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 31/10/2017 06:12]