Vatican II and Americans – “It is often claimed that Americans have rejected either some of the teachings of Vatican II or the Council whole cloth.” Have American Catholics Rejected Vatican II? (What We Need Now – Substack)
Sober about Synodality – “The goal has been to inform, not titillate. So, over the next four weeks, Letters from the Synod-2023 will explore the deeper issues involved in the Catholic Church’s current experiment in ‘synodality.'” Letters From the Synod-2023: #1 (First Things)
Cover Up – “As the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, we express our deep sorrow and unwavering solidarity first and foremost to the victims and survivors of so many despicable crimes committed in the Church.” Solidarity with Those Who Hunger and Thirst for Justice (Tutela Minorum)
Striking Similarity – Three Dallas police officers are liable for the death of Tony Timpa, a white man who died after officers pinned him to the ground for more than 14 minutes in 2016 . . . “Jury Finds Three Dallas Officers Liable for George Floyd–Like Death of Tony Timpa (National Review)
A Novel Group – “They don’t have a vote, but the group of 62 could influence proceedings through regulating discussion and amplifying preferred viewpoints.” Synod on Synodality: ‘Experts and Facilitators’ Include Controversial Figures — Who Could Play Major Role? (National Catholic Register)
Religious Roots – “[W]hen the law reckons with the matter of life, it inevitably reckons with its own foundation and its own essence.” Defining Life, Defining Law (Humanum)
Black and Scarlet – “In and around the Vatican, Hugh O’Flaherty organized a daring network to hide Jews and escaping prisoners of war.” The Monsignor versus the Fascists (Plough)
Openness or Ambiguity? – Any pope is subject to the cold eye of historical evaluation. Critics of Pope Francis have not been shy to point out what they see as his excesses and abuses. The specific mess that may well define Francis’s legacy, though, concerns the deposit of faith itself. Cleaning up the Pope’s Mess (First Things)
Classical Music – “In contemporary Britain, it is popular music that has “cultural capital”, that’s revered in mainstream broadcasting and education, and whose performers are paid astronomical sums.” Against pop culture populism (The Critic)
Classicist Architecture – “Cayalá should encourage both our traditionalist and voluntarist instincts. Its prosperity is a testament to traditional design principles, while the speed with which it was built shows us what is possible.” Re-Building the Future: The Case of Cayalá (The European Conservative)
(*The posting of any particular news item or essay is not an endorsement of the content and perspective of said news item or essay.)
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
@ Sober about Synodality:
First Things writer George Weigel explains that “‘Letters’ will provide a forum in which Catholics from different states of life in the Church an opportunity to address those gathered here in Rome under the rubric, ‘What I Would Say to the Synod’.”
Yours truly would connect the dots between the misunderstood “Syllabus of Errors” (1864), the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), and now the disjointed meeting-about-meetings—the Synod of 2023…
The SYLLABUS merely assembled and compiled a laundry list of very localized, concrete and yet modernist assertions meriting a caution from Rome;
The SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL convened more positively to engage with the modern world (aggiornamento), but first by first digging into its own historical and substantive sources, and very nature as the sacramental and Mystical Body of Christ (ressourcement);
The task of the SYNOD is to “assemble, compile and synthesize” a Syllabus of Terrors proposed for discernment and action by a polyhedral or even inverted-pyramid (c)hurch. Certainly “not a parliament,” but a way of “coming to terms with modernity”…
THAT IS, to apparently reverse the former rejection of the overall item #80 in the 1864 Syllabus:
“The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile [accommodate?] himself, and come to terms with progress [?], liberalism and modern civilization [?].” Do the aggiornamento thing, but detached from [!] “backwardist” ressourcement…What about Lumen Gentium on the “hierarchical communion,” and Dei Verbum about both Scripture (“the gospel” in synodaleze) and Tradition, and even Gaudium et Spes on the “permanent binding force of universal natural law and its all-embracing principles” (n. 79)?
A MEMO for Cardinal Fernandez & Co. about so-called “polarizations”:
“…the commandment of love of God and neighbor does not have in its dynamic any higher limit, but it does have a lower limit, beneath which the commandment is broken” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 52).
@ Classical Music
Alexander Wilson in Britain’s new mag The Critic, exalts in the death of classical music. Pop music the new soul of once great Britain. Indicating a cultural sea change that swept across Planet Earth, ever since Harlem NY and Detroit’s rhythm and blues was heard. Although the culture changing music was more the gateway for what already existed in the collective psyche.
What made Britain great and Europe the seat of classical music and art, features of a refined culture was a living tradition of beliefs and responsibilities, determination to carry on as expected. Later, wealth to excess, leisure time, euphoria following two great world wars changed all that, a counter reaction to a mindset. Classical music began to be looked upon as intellectually ornate, even sinister [films depicting the intellectual madman listening to Beethoven string quartets]. What Wilson ignores, with the advent of rap music, is the transference of strategic national warfare to the deadly violence overtaking our streets. Violence unlike the former that has no rationale, nor God given reason for ending.
some one might ask the members of the synod how may of you believe kin the doctrine and reality of originial sin and the doctrine and reality of purgatory and possibility hell for sexual sin. Do they think Blessed Mother was wrong in telling 3 young children that most people go to hell for the sins of the flesh. I we really loved someone we might tell them than living sexually morally lives they are on the road to destruction.
@ Openness or Ambiguity?
Cardinal Hollerich cites obedience to Pope Francis on female ordination, rather than the deposit of faith. Cardinal Schönborn refers to Holy Communion for those in an irregular union as an ‘organic development of doctrine’. Hollerich’s identification of Francis as the final arbiter on perennial doctrine may be surpassed in impropriety [initially thought of devilry but reconsidered it too harsh] by Schönborn’s organic development of doctrine.
Organic means a live substance. A chicken is the organic development of an egg. Are they the same? Card Schönborn’s use of the term organic implying essential similarity rather than change, is similar to a waiter bringing a chicken to a customer who asked for an egg omelet. Acrobatics in theology by intelligent men is the result of the persuasive Francis effect, Pope Francis, who lauds collegiality and listening, is a man who makes sure his understanding of things is followed to the letter. Ask Cardinal Raymond Burke, who when prefect of the Apostolic Signatura was exiled to Malta. Pope Francis responded to a reporter’s query saying, He likes to travel.
@ Openness or Ambiguity
We read (for example): “The pope has also spoken of a development in the Church’s just war theory, stating that there is no such thing as a just war and thereby contradicting two millennia of magisterial teaching.”
A far cry, this, from Pope John Paul II’s more vertebrate assessment of the futile self-defense of Poland after the invasion of September 1, 1939. At the front end of the Second World War an isolated Poland accepted the solitary burden of going to war against Hitler, “despite the clear inferiority of her military and technological forces. At that moment the Polish authorities judged that this was the only way to defend the future of Europe and the European spirit” (“Memory and Identity,” 2005).
No emoji theology in that! And, the European spirit, what’s that?