Communist Governments – “In a Vatican reception on Wednesday, Pope Francis encouraged a Marxist-Christian dialogue group, urging them to keep ‘dreaming of a better world’ and to have ‘the courage to step outside the box’ to create ‘new paths’ for humanity through collaboration.” Pope’s “Common Dreams” With Marxists Denies Persecution Nightmare (European Conservative)
American Views of the Pope – “Pope Francis continues to be viewed positively in the U.S., although his 58% favorable rating from Americans is among the lower scores he has received since 2013, and his unfavorable rating is at a new high of 30%.” 58% of Americans, 77% of U.S. Catholics View Pope Favorably (Gallup)
Be a Strongman – “Rather than put our hopes in a mighty champion like Cardinal Pell, it seems God wants us to realize our own strength as baptized Christians, and we can be Pell-ish ourselves.” Be a Pell (Crisis Magazine)
Scandalous Silence – “The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem will not name the terrorist organization whose pornographic savagery caused this war.” Fernandez & Pizzaballa: Soft Porn v. Hardcore (Maureen Mullarkey: Studio Matters)
Plagiarism – “Several years ago, the Church was rocked by the scandal that Fr. Thomas Roscia had extensively plagiarized material for articles and speeches. He had been a Vatican advisor and the head of Canada’s Catholic TV network before the fall. I think this story is Rosica 2.0.” Fr. Jim Sichko, Habitual Plagiarist (Updated) 9 (Fr. Matthew P. Schneider, LC)
Providing Clarity – “‘Important to note is that, in our society, the word ‘couple’ has come to be understood as two people who have entered a relationship that is either one of dating, engagement, or marriage,’ Byzantine Catholic Bishop Robert Pipta stated.” Byzantine Catholic bishop: The Church ‘can never’ bless same-sex relationships (Life Site News)
The Idea of Blessings – “Upon further reflection, I have concluded that the most troubling thing about the official implementation of Fiducia supplicans is not the insistence on a distinction between liturgical and personal blessings.” The most troubling aspect of Fiducia supplicans (Catholic Culture)
An Empty Signifier – “Everyone is talking about gender. But what, exactly, is being said? Is gender a synonym for sex? Is gender the culturally constructed norms and expressions of sex?” Is Gender Too Troubled? (Church Life Journal)
Losing Our Religion – “Drawing on his own disillusioning experience, [Russell] Moore [the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today] encourages his readers to put the gospel before the false pursuit of credibility, authority, identity, integrity, and stability.” War on the Cultural War (First Things)
German Spiritual Oases – “Catholicism in Germany is about so much more than the Synodal Way.” My Favorite Story: German Catholics’ Devotion (National Catholic Register)
Unaccountable Groups – “Last week, a leader for the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that COVID is ‘still a pandemic.’ This is even more radical than the WHO itself, which stopped talking about it as an international public health threat last May.” Say No To America’s Signing Of The WHO Pandemic Agreement (Amac)
Presidents’ Moral Positions – “[F]or Catholics, the presidential election is the occasion to revisit our commitment to the teachings of the Church as we consider preferred candidates and public-policy issues (something Catholics in the UK will also have to contend with come their own election time).” ‘Cafeteria Catholicism’ and navigating the moral dilemmas of US election campaigns in 2024 (Catholic Herald)
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I am mostly amused when secular polling agencies report on the opinions of Catholics. Just because someone says that they’re Catholic doesn’t mean that they live their religion. Polling of Catholics should differentiate between those Catholics who attend Mass on Sundays regularly, receive Holy Communion and make regular use of the Sacrament of Penance. If I’m a registered Republican but haven’t cast a ballot in 25 years, does it make sense to count me in a political opinion poll? Even pollsters know enough to indicate whether someone is a “likely voter.”
@ Communist Governments
Pope Francis seems to propose dialogue together with historical amnesia…As part of an omnivorous and “inside the box'(!) MINDSET, is it possible to “dialogue with Marxists without their Marxism…
…OR, is it possible to bless homosexual “couples” without their coupling; OR is it possible to enshrine one Pachamama within the St. Peter’s Basilica without sacrilege to the One in the tabernacle; OR is it possible to dialogue with youth by holding a wiccan stang without letting go the papal crozier; OR is it possible to affirm a pluralism of religions without erasing the distinctive fact of the Incarnation; Or, in basic morality, is it possible to replace doctrine with pastoral-ism without erasing the Truth?
“HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM”!
Benedict XVI offered sober maturity about this high-wire act, or even haywire obtuseness:
“I am urging people to realize that a war has indeed been declared on the West. I am not pushing for a rejection of dialogue, which we need more than ever with those Islamic countries that wish to live in peaceful coexistence with the West, to our mutual benefit. I am asking for something more fundamental: I am asking for people to realize that dialogue will be a waste of time IF one of the two partners to the dialogue states beforehand that one idea is as good as the other” (“Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam,” 2006, p. 45).
And, applying to more than interreligious dialogue, this the former CDF:
“Equality, which is a presupposition of interreligious dialogue [etcetera?], refers to the equal PERSONAL DIGNITY of the parties in dialogue, NOT to doctrinal content, nor even less to the position of Jesus Christ—who is God himself made man—in relation to the founders of the other religions” (CDF, “Dominus Iesus,” 2000, n. 22, caps added).
But, hey, why not a flat-earth roundtable, AS IF crucial distinctions and prudence, and the history of Truth, and even the truth of History no longer exist? As if everyone wins, all of the time?
Dialogue = the universal solvent?
Okay. I have to repost this so it shows up in the right place.
This is a compliment for Mr. Beaulieu.
Is there any way we can get your succinct commentary on the front page of VaticanNews so the Catholicism challenged minds at the Vatican might read it?
@ Presidents Moral Positions
Ken Cracraft makes his point, but also evades deeper layers to the onion when he first stereotypes the Catholic Right and then the Catholic Left, and then recommends that “cafeteria” Catholicism settle for some kind of combination plate, probably in the middle.
Might the perplexing question be more between direct and violent sins of COMMISSION (e.g., what Pope John Paul II termed the “unspeakable crime of abortion” and which he likened to “chemical warfare”); and indirect and more complicated sins of OMISSION? As in neglecting to prevent, say, the ravages of poverty on families, or the anthropogenic share in spaceship earth’s changing atmospheric/amniotic sac, or seeming not to comprehend the risks of sliding into nuclear Armaggedon?
Too bad Catholic academia ABDICATED from morally challenging our cultural trajectory when, instead, it chose the Land O’ Lakes Declaration of “autonomy” with its favorable peer reviews from journalistic and secularist America. Culture is upstream of politics…
So, now, there’s even the ADDED complication of a Vatican inner circle and a faction of the USCCB who seem disinterested in consistent fidelity and even in integrated thought. Why not dismiss the so-called Right as “rabbit hole, bigoted, rigid, fixistic, and backwardist’? And, why not finesse the issue of Eucharistic Coherence into a less consequential “revival,” more akin to the Protestant big-tent Great Awakenings mostly in the 18th-centurty America?
Fully understood, the Catholic Social Teaching (the “negation of all ideology,” because centered on the “transcendent dignity of the human person” rather than any other thing…”thing”?), promotes BOTH the “Theology of the Body” and the more problematic totality of the Common Good. And, moreover, without ideologically assuming (less Right than Left?) that the keystone species is the federal government.
Not “cafeteria Catholic,” and not a “middle way,” but concrete Subsidiarity and concrete Solidarity—both, fully together and inseparable—is/are the only meaningful question left? right?
I would like to think that CWR included the article “Cafeteria Catholicism” from the Catholic Herold as an example of a biased article that attempts to give the impression of balance.
After a somewhat mild description of Catholics on the Left we have the following paragraph:
“Having said that, however, US Catholics on the Right also have exclusively discriminatory palates that are no less vulnerable to similar criticism. They take a double helping of opposition to abortion, a large spoonful of disapproval of same-sex marriage, and a heaping slice of condemnation of contraception. But, like their brothers and sisters from the other end of the buffet, they decline to consume a balanced diet of the Catholic moral life, therefore stunting their moral and spiritual growth. They reduce “prudential” policy questions to “unimportant” ones, and thus ignore them.”
This is a false, and rather insulting description of Catholics who fight against abortion, same sex marriage, etc.
Those who fight for these issues are not one or two issue people, but they do recognize a hierarchy of issues, and can differentiate intrinsic immorality from issues of prudential judgement.
@ Presidents’ Moral Positions
Evident to many is the great chasm between the presidencies of Washington and Lincoln as compared to those of Obama and Biden. A gradual trend toward secularization ended with the separation of justice from natural law and common law, the former the inherent ability to separate good from evil, the latter the incorporation of Christian moral tradition.
Historically we tumbled over the precipice 1960 with FDA approval of the contraceptive pill. Reasons for this have been thoroughly studied, most of us know the results. The difference is how those results were interpreted for good or for evil. What is identifiable is a diminished religious observance, increase in unusual sexual interests parallel to a political emphasis on individual freedom to the detriment of ethical cohesion.
An example in the medical field is the changed concept of human life from its intrinsic value to the quality of a person’s life. Death and dying, the decisions now made on quality rather than value. Catholicism changed in kind not because of a change in doctrine rather in practice. Catholic politicians moved with the cultural needle toward personal conscience and individual freedom to form their decisions, certainly to gain votes, and also because many now believed it to be a liberty issue, the epochal legal turning point Justice A Kennedy’s majority Opinion in Planned Parenthood E PA v Casey 1992. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, an evangelical Lutheran in his dissenting Opinion said that there would not be a further encroachment on human life. An Opinion that would later be ignored beyond the bounds of reason and the very meaning of justice.