Dignitas Infinita – “The large number of citations indicates the Vatican’s desire to buttress its teaching with insights from thinkers both within and without the Church.” Vatican II and Dignitas Infinita (First Things)
The Conservative Movement – “The Trump-led Conservative Movement won’t save the nation, but it will at least keep the State from coming after practicing Catholics.” A Pragmatic Alliance (Crisis Magazine)
Archbishop Viganò – “Whatever the results of his canonical trial, the controversies Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has stirred up and the polemical climate that he epitomizes will persist for the foreseeable future as major challenges to Catholic unity.” Archbishop Viganò’s Astonishing Transformation from Vatican Insider to Alleged Schismatic (National Catholic Register)
Instability at Home – “Yes, homeschooling, voting for good people, running for school board, and going to church matters, but so does what happens inside every family’s front door.” The Hidden Hurt behind Pride Month and Sexual Rebellion (Washington Stand)
Child-Welfare Agents – “A baby boy was about to be born to a homeless drug addict. The state needed a foster family to care for the child, who would likely be placed up for adoption.” Blue States Are Barring Americans with Traditional Views on Gender from Adopting. This Christian Couple Is Fighting Back (National Review)
Traditionalists and Church Authorities – “It’s not just that he hates the Latin Mass with a passion that is tough to decipher. He views the shrinking of the Church as something to be celebrated, not bemoaned, as a necessary transition to purity.” About That Interview… (New Liturgical Movement)
One of the Greatest Preachers – “Two hundred years ago, on Wednesday 23 June 1824, John Henry Newman preached his first sermon.” Bicentenary of Newman’s First Sermon (Newman Review)
A Modern Literary Friendship – “Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene may have been unlike as possible, but they remained the closest of friends for four decades.” The odd couple (The Critic)
Opposing the World – “In a recent address to the Bishops of Cameroon, I minced no words about the threat of practical atheism in our age.” The Catholic Church’s Enduring Answer to the Practical Atheism of Our Age (What We Need Now – Substack)
Vatican News and Rupnik – “Why is Vatican News still using Rupnik images? Set aside the question, for the moment, of the continued use and existence of his mosaics. Discontinuing the use of his images on digital platforms is a very, very simple matter.” Thoughts and Prayers from Paolo (Charlotte Was Both)
Brink of Schism – “Trouble is brewing in the very regions that cradled the 16th-century Protestant Reformation.” Pope Francis has lost control of his liberal revolution (Politico)
Spying on Americans – “President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) brainstormed about infiltrating local communities to spy on Americans, and suggested being ‘religious’ or ‘in the military’ was an ‘indicator of extremists and terrorism … ‘” Report: DHS Group Called Being ‘Religious’ An ‘Indicator’ Of Domestic Terrorism (The Federalist)
Scientists of Faith – “The Society for Catholic Scientists has gathered for its seventh conference, drawing more than 100 Catholics in the field of science from around the world.” Catholic scientists promote harmony of faith and science (Aleteia)
(*The posting of any particular news item or essay is not an endorsement of the content and perspective of said news item or essay.)
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@ Archbishop Viganò
Francis X Rocca EWTN paints a convenient picture of truths modified for acceptance by faithful Catholics – and notably the Vatican. His portrayal of Viganò as a loudmouthed gadfly, slipshod and divisive contradicts the high praises many bishops and cardinals had of him during his tenure. That includes Secretary of State Cardinal Parolin.
What the Archbishop achieved, besides his own possible excommunication, is the reality of what the Church is suffering during this pontificate. Whether it may be justifiably argued that he deserves canonical retribution Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò uncovered the solicitude of His Holiness toward homosexuals embedded within the Church. A tragic reality that has corrupted and continues to corrupt our Church, and which few have the love of Church or moral courage to address. They prefer to remain in good stead with the Vatican for their own comfort and security.
Insofar as fomenting a state of perpetual schism as Rocca alleges the Archbishop has confirmed what many of us are acutely aware of, and has set an example for the required refusal to comply with the errors disseminated during this pontificate, as well as the requirement for clergy to openly repudiate those errors that jeopardize the salvation of countless Christians. And to stem the tide of apostasy accelerated by the errors, errors attested to by many credentialed clergy.
The slanted article at NCR inspired mostly hostile reaction against Vigano for “offending” Francis and unforgivably criticizing Vatican II, not to mention some sort of “sin against unity,” whatever that is. My attempts to point out that numerous figures, including Josef Ratzinger, have had problems with the final literal form of several VII documents where multiple sentences express a spirit of humanist confidence in unaided humanity engineering their own better future. And to claim that Vigano is unique among prelates in identifying serious personal character flaws in the many episodes of petulance and evil decision making by Francis is flat out untrue. I also asked where in the Gospels Jesus commanded us to be “unified” at the expense of truth? I made dozens of attempts to make these points in the NCR comments section. They were all censored.
The National Catholic Register was published by the Legionaries of Christ until the Marcial Maciel scandal made it impossible to continue. It was then purchased by EWTN.
@Dignitas Infinita (DI)
We read: “DI argues that, at the most foundational level, the dignity of human beings is derived from the indelible image of God imprinted on every human being.”
Yes, of course, and so far, so good; but what does it mean when we assert that the image has “infinite dignity?”
Former documents spoke of “dignity” and “the image and likeness,” and Pope John Paul II even worded the “transcendent dignity of the human person.” But infinite dignity? Does “image and likeness” now mean our created dignity IS the dignity of the infinite and uncreated God?
Instead, the whole drift of the Old Testament is “I am God, and you are not.”
And the New Testament is about human nature gifted into deification (!), but still limited as a participation, and not quite so boundless as to assume the infiniteness of the divine nature. So, not Teilhard’s fused Omega Point, especially not here and now. Infinite human dignity would explode contingency; and even render absolute (for example) the total rejection of capital punishment—as a no-brainer.
Brain, what brain? Instead, “infinite”! And conversion, what conversion?
About the conversion of finite criminals, in the real world of real victims, what is to become of such personal tipping points (that is, human, and not as found only in a conflated “integral ecology”!): “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully” (Samuel Johnson).
@ Dignitas Infinita
What fails in translation of the permanence of human dignity in the image of God is the converse effect of the indignity of sinful behavior that mars God’s image in a man. Furthermore, while it’s true that human freedom defines that dignity, freedom to sin and the decision to sin rather than pursuit of the good diminishes a person’s humanness, since our humanness in anthropological terms is centered on the humanness revealed by Christ [thus the lacuna in Dignitatis Humanae which does not address a man’s responsibility to imitate Christ by following his commandments].
For Catholics, and as such for all men that realization of our humanness in Christ is lost with repetitive sin. Human dignity retains its character insofar as its potential to be like Christ is realized, Christ the ontological model of our humanness, since in Christ his human nature is completed in the divinity of his person.
Finally author Msgr Guarino argues “The assertion that human dignity entailed the objective right to religious liberty had not been championed by popes in the nineteenth century. But there was also clear continuity. For example, Vatican II strongly defended Christian and Catholic exceptionalism”. That response, exceptionalism nevertheless doesn’t quite address the exclusivity of Catholic Christianity as was later evident at Abu Dhabi.
@ Dignitas Infinita
As to employing DI as justification for Fiducia Supplicans, we cannot under any circumstances, except manifest conversion, bless a person or persons who have distorted the image of God by their disordered sexual actions.
Cardinal Sarah delivers a wise reflection on the prevalence of atheistic thought, without conscious awareness, but he provides one oversight. His failure to observe this tendency in the troubled mind of Francis for whatever reasons it exists in Francis, whose embrace of many of the conclusions of leftism without considering the amoral neophilia and materialism at its root, while enthusiastically expressing his rejection of unchanging truth, distorts and shapes a mind to bouts of the practical atheism that Sarah is describing.
How else to insinuate polyhedral moral flexibility at the pastoral level without ever committing formal heresy against “unchanging truth”?
A cut-and-paste strategy anticipated and refuted in the encyclical Veritatis Splendor, which also explicitly incorporated the natural law into the Magisterium:
“A separation, or even an opposition [!], is thus established in some cases between the teaching of the precept, which is valid and general, and the norm of the individual conscience, which would in fact make the final decision [‘decisions,’ no longer ‘moral judgments’!] about what is good and what is evil. On this basis, an attempt is made to legitimize so-called ‘pastoral’ solutions [!] contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium, and to justify a ‘creative’ hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept [thou shalt not!]” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 56).
And, “This is the first time [!], in fact, that the MAGISTERIUM of the Church [caps added] has set forth in detail the fundamental elements of this [‘moral’] teaching, and presented the principles for the pastoral discernment necessary in practical and cultural situations which are complex and even crucial” (n. 115).