In my youth I attended a very conservative seminary for my undergraduate formation. I was fine with that since I was a very conservative young man theologically, filled with the usual zeal that comes with youthful idealism. It was the season of the post-conciliar, antinomian insanity, and it seemed as if the Church had become the preferred refuge for clerical miscreants of every dissenting theological persuasion. But Pope John Paul II had just been elected, so there also seemed to be hope that a young. conservative Catholic such as myself could actually find a home and a safe haven in the Church.
But I was wrong.
During my last year in the seminary (1980-81) the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky, where the seminary resided, got a new and much more liberal, “That 70’s Church” type of bishop. What followed was an immediate purge at the seminary, with many fine priests and professors getting the boot out the door—without, of course, any due process or “dialogue”. They were all replaced with very liberal priests of the “Father skippy-toes sings Broadway show tunes” variety who immediately instituted a new formation program. That program was characterized by the then popular fetishization of “openness” and “big tent dialogue”, which in turn soon led to a reign of terror in which vocations were annihilated and the personal character of many seminarians assassinated.
The only way to survive was to play dead and to act as if you believed in nothing. Nothing, that is, going beyond the ultimacy of the new capo regime of gangster genitalism in which, with a wink and a nod, one could find in the “new seminary” any number of cirque du soleil practitioners of theatrical sexual antics. You were not allowed to openly express a love for high liturgy, which was viewed as a sign of a retrograde troglodytic “rigidity”. But you were encouraged to express a love for getting high as a sign of your non-rigid openness to the world.
It was, therefore, abundantly clear that not all rigidities were equal.
But what struck me the most, even at that young age, was the manipulation of language for the furtherance of this new genital Gnosticism as a legitimate “development of doctrine”. We were told in a pounding, percussive succession of re-education lectures (“Days of Recollection”!) that God was “doing a new thing” that apparently contradicted all of the “old things” that God used to say and do—but now regrets—and that we could not be “fundamentalists” anymore since fundamentalism is one of the things God once liked—but no longer does.
There was also a strange and ironic ecclesiolatry going on. All of the emphasis was upon the Church as the generator of truth and, in this case, new truths, but not on the Church as the preserver of truths that had been gifted to her by God in divine revelation. And to the extent they did emphasize that God alone was the source of the truth of divine revelation, it was only to reinforce some bizarre voluntarist concept of a God who could just make stuff up as he went along and as it suited him/her/they/them/it. Of course they did not really believe in any of that and it was really all just a mere cipher for dismissing the normativity of divine revelation as anything binding.
The more intellectual revisionists appealed to a concept of God wherein God was portrayed as a vague Hegelian gas or plasma field that permeated historical processes and only came to itself in the Heraclitan flux of a historically mediated “Being as subjectivity”. Thus, divine revelation reduced from a source of actual conceptual content, no matter how rooted in mystery and poetic categories of symbolization, to a mere process or pedagogy that set in motion a dynamical movement “forward” in ever new historical permutations.
Therefore, what was true yesterday could be false today since God’s pedagogy in revelation is characterized by a historical unfolding, whereby we move from infancy to adulthood with many missteps along the way. And those missteps could include errors in the Bible and Church dogmas—errors which were the product of a more naïve and pre-scientific adolescent stage of our development and which we alone now have the vantage point from which to set them right. Because we are now, in our own minds, in the “adult” phase of the pedagogy.
This is what C.S. Lewis meant by “chronological snobbery”, which is a peculiar, yet defining, feature of the specifically modern mind, which views itself as enjoying a rational and scientific vantage point unavailable to previous generations. In other words, history as a rolling party bus of bar-hopping, dynamical flux does eventually have a terminal point—and that point is us. The theological guild set up camp in Francis Fukuyama’s cul de sac in order to engage in an endless block party of celebratory cultural exceptionalism. The flux stops here and so does all real dialogue. There is a curve to history and it has curved straight into modern Liberalism’s garage. And now the garage door is shut.
The error in all of this is that although divine revelation is indeed historically grounded and does involve a slow pedagogical unfolding of God’s gradual self-revelation, the terminal point of that revelation is not modern liberalism, but the rather more shocking particularity of the absolute singularity of a first century, Galilean Jew. And this means that the Church is not a generator of truth via the path of a curated reconnoitering of liberalism’s thought-hoard, but via a gradual coming to grips with the full depth of that Galilean Jew’s life as the very embodiment of God himself and the very self-exegesis of God’s logic as an infinite, internal processio, in a unity of persons.
Which is why there is, in all modern liberal Catholic theologies, a not-so-latent anti-Judaic Marcionism that plays in the sandbox of a vulgarized Law/Gospel dialectic. Because, in order to justify a Catholic iteration of modernity’s scorched-earth destruction of all pre-modern traditions (which are viewed as primitive stages of maturation), one has to disengage the Christ-image from its Judaic context and present it in Docetic terms as a mere avatar of God “for those pre-scientific and ignorant Jews.” Which can now be redeployed holographically as an avatar/icon of libertine liberation from all sexual and gender restrictions. We are therefore presented with a clear choice for or against the absolute theological normativity and priority of the historically concrete Christ, over and against the malleable and fungible Docetic Christ of a thousand faces. Christ as savior from sin and a provocation to repentance becomes Christ the liberator from oppressive religious structures and moral taboos.
These revisionist Catholic genital Gnostics continued to use words like “revelation” but invested them with subtle new meanings. Rahner’s epigones appealed to “anonymous Christianity” and “the transcendental structure of unthematized spiritual experience” as the new privileged location for discerning God’s divine revelation—a “revelation” that apparently could now only be teased out and understood by the Germans! And there was constant reference to some vague and essentialized notion of “modern man” and what this construct could not “believe in any longer”.
But all it really meant was what the secularized, bourgeois Eurocrats of the late 20th-century found to be culturally and politically unpalatable.
I do think that we are seeing a resurgence of a new version of this old dynamic, especially in all of the current gyrations and agitations surrounding “synodality”. In reality, the post-conciliar Docetic and Marcionite Gnosticism never went away, as it continued to live on almost everywhere in the Catholic academic guild. And despite the rise of significant countervailing theological voices against this hegemony, it remains true that the ecclesial theological needle is now moving once again leftward and in ways that are tellingly similar to the old genital Gnosticism that never really died out, but simply went underground during the previous two pontificates.
Therefore, my claim is a simple one. Namely, that even though there are new elements in the neo-progressivism of today, that it is a recurrence of the older narrative but now decked-out in the verbiage of “discernment”, “accompaniment”, “inclusion”, “listening” and “sensitivity to complex situations”. But what they really want is precisely to reignite the fires of that post-conciliar revolution and to reopen the debates over women’s ordination, contraception, intercommunion with Protestants, communion for the divorced and remarried, cohabitation, and a green-lighting of the whole LGBTQ+IA++ world of endless sexual identity acronyms.
This can be easily discerned by reading what has been written by folks such as Cardinals McElroy and Hollerich, as well as many other lesser ecclesiastics associated with the planning of the synodal path toward synodal understandings of synodal people in their synodal circumstances while looking to the synodal Jesus. The sheer emptiness of the term “synodal” as it is tossed around in the Instrumentum Laboris like an incantation and a mantra is a clear clue that it is a cipher for something else. The “thing” that the term “synodal” denotes is not the thing they say it is. Therefore, the synodal way looks, for all intents and purposes, like a set of a priori theological conclusions in search of a legitimating process. And that “process” which will bring us to the desired conclusions is called “synodality”, no matter what that process eventually turns out to be.
Their interest does not reside in a true reform of the juridical structures of the Church and a de-emphasis on the hyper-papalism of the past 200 years. If I thought that is what they were after, I would support them. But that is not what they are truly after. And the actions of Pope Francis and his episcopal allies prove this since there is very little collaborative synodality at play in the governing style of this pope. If they had respect for their own rhetoric concerning a more synodal Church then they would respect the synodal process, which they do not.
For example, many German bishops, Cardinal Marx included, as well as the head of the German episcopal conference, have stated that even though their own synodal process failed to reach the necessary two-thirds super majority in support of the revolution, they are still going to go ahead and implement it in their dioceses. So why did they not just do that in the first place? Because they really thought that the faux democracy of the synodal way would produce the desired results, which would give them the pretext to do what they were going to do, but now with the fig leaf of juridical respectability covering their apostate loins. The Belgians are moving ahead with rituals for blessing same-sex “unions” despite its rejection by the previous DDF and not a peep emanates from the Vatican in protest. Perhaps if the new ritual was in Latin the Pope might intervene against such “backwardism”, but his “no enemies to the Left of me” mentality has so far kept him silent.
It seems, then, that the freight train of dialogue travels along tracks that move in only one direction—a secular liberal one—and the decision has been made that the synod will privilege only those voices in order to reach the already determined conclusions. “Synodality” thus emerges as a cynical game and a strategic ruse to bring in through the backdoor what you cannot simply bring directly in through the front door. It is the destruction of the very concept of “truth” in theology and its replacement with a purely sociologistic and political calculus. Thus, you are either a political “enemy” or a “friend” of Pope Francis, and this is the only important category.
Once again, this is not new. We have seen it all before. There will be calls for dialogue, inclusion, diversity, openness, parrhesia, and debate, until the desired results are reached and at that point all conversation will cease. The garage door will be closed and anyone who dissents from the neo-Montanist assertion that “God is doing a new thing” will be dismissed as bigots, reactionaries, rigid backwardists, and anti-magisterial dissenters. Theological careers will be ruined, successful pastors will be reassigned to Our Lady of Moonshine parish in Dog Breath USA, or put in charge of the diocesan cemeteries, and seminaries will be instructed to weed out the recalcitrant obstructionists.
So, please be attentive. Please pay attention, for example, to the style of the art associated with the Synod. They all look like the cartoonish ecclesiastical art of the 1970s and I do not think that is an accident. It is just further evidence of the thought world these folks inhabit. It is the thought world of rotary phones, eight-track tape players, and Hans Küng. It is “Muskrat Love” and Charlie Curran all over again.
The more conservative defenders of Pope Francis (such as the folks over at “Where Peter Is”), who are desperate to maintain an ultramontanist narrative of total obedience to the Pope no matter what, inevitably emerge at this point to make it clear that Pope Francis has said many wonderful things about the aims of the Synod and that he has cautioned against this kind of neo-modernist theologizing. But his closest friends and allies, in their various writings on the upcoming Synod, and his many episcopal appointments—e.g. Archbishop Fernandez as head of the DDF—argue otherwise. Constantly and consistently, Pope Francis’s actions undermine his words and in no way instill confidence that his governing of the Church will avoid turning the keys to the palace over to the theological Vandals who have been camping outside the gates for sixty years.
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We read of: “…a recurrence of the older narrative but now decked-out in the verbiage of ‘discernment’, ‘accompaniment’, ‘inclusion’, ‘listening’ and ‘sensitivity to complex situations’.” Hey, Chapp, lighten up! It’s all about the redefinition of words.
Butt, beneath the words, it occurs to me that the fatal flaw at the CORE of the Instrumentum Laboris is exposed in ONE SENTENCE in the opening paragraph: ” “How does this ‘journeying together,’ which takes place today on different levels (from the local level to the universal one) [….]”
TO WHAT EXTENT HAS SOCIOLOGY DISPLACED THE EUCHARISTIC CHURCH? The Eucharist, instead, as being the SINGULAR (!) self-immolation of the Second Person of Almighty God on Calvary, only once (!) and now renewed and extended (not replicated) in an unbloody manner. Eternity doesn’t fit well into time except as the Incarnation—the graced Truth to be only discovered, not constructed. So, the Mass not reduced to even a half-way house “memorial.” And of course not as a symbol—-but perhaps in some other un-backward, vague, historicist, ambulatory and synodal way…
Because the One Eucharistic Christ is not fully and faithfully believed in His startling singularity and reality across time and space, only then the “levels” of the Church and all the myriad and breathless ways of promoting the more sociological “structures, institutions and procedures”—a refrain throughout the 27,000 words. A refrain featuring: “…dialogue, characterize, polarize, realize, (de)marginalize, emphasize, tensions, discernment, welcoming all, concretize, protagonism, contextual and contextualization, globalized, harmonized, ecclesial ministeriality (!), actualization, graduality…” YES, to focus group encounter, bridges, and a fabric of team action…but FIRSTLY the concrete reality (!) of raising the dead, rather than the facsimiles of communal, participatory, and missionary consciousness raising…
Take a bow, Emile Durkheim, “walking together” with Auguste Comte, Karl Marx and Max Weber as the founders of modern sociology…AND especially Durkheim himself as the author of the post-Christian and relentlessly organizational “Bureaucracy” and “The Division of Labor”–and new word of “anomie,” and “Suicide.”
A closer look at the Instrumentum Laboris (IL) discloses anchoring citations from Lumen Gentium, but then seems (to beady-eyed readers like myself) to also imply/insinuate a questioning discernment whether even the Real Presence and even the Incarnation are mostly cultural and metaphorical expressions–now to be augmented or even eclipsed by a “phased” local-to-global and bottoms-up (sometimes literally) and more sociological construction of the formerly apostolic—apostello, that is “sent”—and Eucharistic Church.
“[from IL, n. 12]…This focus on local Churches requires taking into account their variety and diversity of cultures, languages and modes of expression. In particular, the same words — think, for example, of authority [see below] and leadership — can have very different resonances and connotations in different linguistic and cultural areas, especially when in some contexts a term is associated with precise theoretical or ideological approaches…” (“theological or ideological” as in, say, doctrinal?).
While welcoming a wide margin for cultural richness…
…what then, still, of the ALREADY universality of the Church, not constructed geographically by “facilitators” nor even synthesized by “experts,” but firstly assembled by the mystery of the perennial Eucharist? Such that at each “local” (meaning particular) celebration of the Mass ALL of the universal Church is ALREADY together and unified, including the entire Communion of Saints throughout time—as if the Holy Spirit and the words of the Mass actually mean something. And, as if the ostensibly only Western or even Latinish notion of “meaning” actually means something. (Not only what the meaning of is, is; but now what the meaning of meaning is!)
The seeming subordination and abdication of “authority”—and divine Authorship?—what does THIS mean?
In 1985 and after twenty years, in its pulse-check on the mixed and divergent reception of the real Vatican Council, the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops said it this way in a most concise synthesis (!) of only 22 words, not 27,000: “We cannot replace a false unilateral vision of the Church as purely hierarchical with a new sociological conception which is also unilateral” (n. 3). Amen.
First principles matter; one can only have a Great Apostasy from The True Church Of Christ, which Through, With, And In Christ, Is One, Holy, Catholic And Apostolic, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque).
“If there is a union of a private nature, there is neither a third party, nor is society affected. Now, if the union is given the category of marriage, there could be children affected.”
Sin done in private is no longer sin to those who desire to render onto Caesar or themselves that which Belongs To God, The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, Through The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, The Author Of Love, Of Life, And Of Marriage.
A synod that serves to deny The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque) , is a synod that denies The Divinity Of The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, and would be, in essence, a synod Of Apostasy, an assault against The Holy Eucharist and Christ’s Eucharist Prayer:
https://drbo.org/chapter/50017.htm
See 17:21
The Sacrifice Of The Cross, Is The Sacrifice Of The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity.
https://drbo.org/chapter/50001.htm
I don’t read every document the Vatican cranks out. I have enough gastric problems. But have any of them in the last ten, ok, I’ll even give them twenty, years come close to mentioning such thing as vanity and the sin of pride any more and how human thought can be dishonest and deceived?
Hey Larry you must get paid by the number of words you write.
While I tend to agree with you that the current pontificate is definitely progressive and liberal putting it mildly.
Your writings are too long and boring, try keeping it cleae, concise, simple.
Simple solution: just don’t read them. But it’s poor taste to criticize what you don’t understand. But that’s not Larry’s problem.
I agree. I look forward to Mr. Chapp’s contributions all the time and never find them obscure. On the topic of this essay, I’ll share my own angst about the Orwellian Catholicism that kept me away when, after overcoming my atheistic youth and contemplating Catholicism, for a period of time I only encountered the wacko theologians in my reading for a long time. Eventually I found the good guys, but the wackos kept me away needlessly. Although maybe making me angry about it was part of God’s plan.
I just recommended this article to my Brother Knights of Columbus and really enjoyed it! Thanks!
For those of us without a PhD in Theology, is there any way to translate this into English?
They claim to want a democracy in the church where everyone votes, but what they really want is to ignore the theology of the past (like God revealing to us what’s true and how we ought to live) even if people don’t vote for it
It’s a bit over my head, too. More than a bit actually.
🙂
I think it can be said in a simpler and clear fashion. There are two understandings of reality in the western world. An understanding of reality that is grounded in Holy Scripture and Tradition from Genesis to Revelation, centered on Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, with two natures unmingled and unconfused. Or an understanding of reality grounded in the errors of the so called 18th century Enlightenment, and the errors of the 16th century Protestant Revolution, leading to the godless radical secularism, and the Satanic inspired ideology embedded in the modern social sciences. The key factor has been undermining confidence in the Gospels as eyewitness testimony to Jesus Christ. The secular understanding permeates all aspects of culture and society in the western nations, especially in all levels of public education. Unfortunately, the values, ideas, and beliefs of radical secularism have found there way into the life of the Church since the end of Vatican II, but this is beginning to change. I have no doubt God is working His plans and purposes in of the this, even if I do not understand it.
I would add that Marsaudon was writing just after the Luciferian Enthronement of 29 June 1963. This desecration of the subsequently ordered closed chapel of the Holy Eucharist in the heart of the Vatican is detailed by Don Luigi Villa, who also published a photo of ppBXVI reopening and reconsecrating it? Perhaps a prelate in the know could comment?
For my part Larry, in 1989 I arrived in the seminary situation of your last year but in Europe. I was informed to keep clear of the pedophile rector by a priest “And if he tries anything, tell me immediately, and tread carefully with the Director of Studies. They say he is a Freemason.” For the sake of my wife and kids, I remain Mr Cracked Nut. God bless. One day the Truth will set Sacred Tradition Free of the Infiltrates and Apostates.
Okay. I’ll give it a shot: The author appears to be upset. He uses lots of big words. He name-drops and names different movements with which the reader may or may not be familiar (Docetism, Marcionism, Gnosticism, etc.). There appears to be an understanding of history, because there are allusions to it throughout the essay. The subject matter is, well, “known” to those who’ve followed recent news “coming out” of the Vatican. The pope is mentioned.
But since Christ has overcome the world, his BLESSING is all that we need (Matthew 5:3-12). Those who talk endlessly about and those who want to bless sodomy are not on the list.
I’ll give it a shot also. There are only two philosophies. Everything else is derivative. Either God is a fool or we are. Were it the first, truth would always be meaningless and always in flux. Since it actually is the latter, it is for this reason that we fail to see that God did not abandon us to a capricious understanding of how we ought to order our lives together. There are innate and benevolent principles of right and wrong transcendent to human culture. They are true not based on whether they are able to receive the social sanctions of popular acceptance, intellectual movements, or whether they receive enshrinement in statutory law, but are true because they are inherent to the nature of being a decent human being. To this and more out Church has always given witness.
lol
Sadly, any viable points the author makes are drowned by constant creative name calling. I’m surprised the Report published the piece in its present form.
I thought it was just me.
For the second time in history, almost the entire world is seeking to cancel Christ.
The first crisis tried to cancel Who God Is. This was a doctrinal problem. Thank God when reciting the Creed on Sunday.
The current crisis tries to cancel How God Saves. This is a pastoral problem. Follow God, the Good Shepherd: “If you love Me, obey my Commandments.” John 14:15
Fine piece, Larry…prophetic.
The Synodally-compromised hierarchs and their associates eschew mention of Jesus Christ deliberately. They know that in associating Christ’s name to their agenda would be to open them up to charges of heresy. Instead, they pretend to keep Christological doctrine in place while they whittle away at the Magisterium in all other places. But eventually they will attack Christ Himself because Satan’s ultimate aim is to dethrone Christ. Satan hates the idea that God became man and that fallen angel has never gotten over that fact.
For a break from the constant, everyday madness- PLEASE go to Crisis Magazine and read the piece ‘Brendan Had Three Babies’ by Austin Ruse.
Yes! I just shared that piece with others.
Super grateful for the recommendation Terence. The story brought tears to my eyes. Powerful. Thank you.
To all other readers; take the 5 minutes to read this beautiful summary. And then take the challenge to see how this applies to each of our own lives. Let the grace of God with the intercession of Brendan work in our lives
Thank you so much for recommending that article Terence.
Simple folk with simple faith will save the Church.
The faithless church will be unattended eventually as our mainline Proddy sects have already shown us.
The young priests are good…. Like heroes running into a burning building to rescue souls. We must endure the chastisement, this cross, that the Modernist era of sex, drugs and rock’n roll has plagued us with. The old hippy flower power clerics of the PF genre will be dying away soon enough. The exorcist Fr Carlos Martin notes how good these young priests are today. Must one not have a true vocation to cast your life into the maelstrom of our Modern day Church in the service of Almighty God? I have met 6 young priests is the last few years. They are orthodox, devout, devoted, sincere. The Holy Spirit is at work in the Church and although it looks like the devils are happy dancing around the cross at Calvary, help is on the Way.
I agree wholeheartedly! But there is a strange devotion to Francis by many. Why are these newly ordained stepping in line, when we who have been steeped in the faith for decades can decipher his words and dialogue as something other than what has been revealed…the Gospel message?
Thank you for that hope.
Its quite frightening really. No doubt God is still in charge and will bring good out of the evil, but that won’t make it fun to go through it all.
A photocopy of my seminary experience that almost cost my vocation. Except by happy chance I was transferred to Rome’s Beda Pontifical. Established for Anglican converts, a refuge from the moral insanity of the American Church.
Germans have a penchant for superiority, particularly intellectual, and it is there that Chapp hits on the Orwellian dynamic driving the Church off the edge. Marx, Bätzing and the German Synod are Robert Royals’ suspected template for the grander Synod on Synodality. Years of Pope Francis German hierarchy Kabuki theatre the prelude. Excellent show managed by Francis, the greatest of impresarios. Clever to the point of magical leaving many flummoxed [we still hardly hear a peep from American bishops the USCCB dutifully trashing those who do Fr Weinandy among them. Card DiNardo’s assassinated by Francis for daring to address the real issue. Adult clerical homosexuality, homosexual networks within the Church.
Pope Francis’ actions undermine his words (Chapp). Francis covers iniquity with pious affirmations of traditional doctrine. Very clever no longer disconcerting for the truly Woke among us. Proclaim the truth of the Gospels.
Almost all American Bishops say nothing. Not a thing. They are very much cowards on a grand scale.
Either cowards or unbelievers.
Father Morello: I said a prayer of retroactive prayer of thanksgiving that your calling was preserved despite the early discouragements.
The slow relentless march of sociologists disguised as priests.
This useless synod’s kindergarten propaganda art is particularly repulsive.
Personnel are policy and the pope is the responsible officer.
I lived in the Diocese of Covington during the time that you mention, in fact during the entire sixteen years of that bishop’s “reign.” I remember that he eventually closed the seminary and had the seminarians attend the local collage. Definitely not the glory days of our diocese.
You say, “Once again, this is not new. We have seen it all before.” Which reminds me of something that C. S. Lewis said – “For every new book that you read you should read an old book. Not that an old book is necessarily better, but that often what is presented as new is actually old, and disproven.”
All the more reason to reject the so-called teachings (non-ex cathedra) of Bergoglio and his minions. Bishops, priests, and laity as well need to show some backbone and “resist” (in the way liberals have always done within the Church) and simply ignore “directives from Rome”, including Traditiones Custodes, Amoris Laetitia, Fratelli Tutti, and the “outcomes and directives” from the whole Synod on Synodality!
If you pour high intellect, modernism, a big pinch of Protestantism, a questionable number of atheists (such as we’re invited to participate in Vatican II), a Pope who gives the appearance of having lost his way in the faith and the German bishops into a blender, how could come up with anything but the synodal way?
The sad fact is that Bishop’s conferences around the world are, for the most part, no better than the German lot – in my experience anyway.
And as for Dr Larry Chapp, who paid for his doctorate? Was it out of his own pocket entirely, or did the seminary cough as happens so often these days.
I’m no theologian, but I know this much, any theologian who doesn’t virtually live on bread and water and sleeps less than 5 hours a day – with most of this spent on his knees and living in poverty, isn’t worth listening to.
Theologians don’t come out of ‘high intellect’ or ‘scholarship’, but rather they are hewn out of hardship, self-denial, celibacy and dedication to The Gospels and the Catechism of the Catholic Church!
Those bishops and priests (at all levels in the Church) who are attempting to carve out some sort of new ‘vision’ for the Church which serves to embrace and accept their own tastes for sexual perversion and depravity are on their way to hell. It is up to those who truly care for the Church to halt the march of these legions of satanic lunatics and take back control of shambles to which they have reduced the Church. Action not words from here on in!
If we don’t do it God will, and that’s not something to be relished – though it may be unavoidable at this stage, God help us.
“And as for Dr. Larry Chapp, who paid for his doctorate? Was it out of his own pocket entirely, or did the seminary cough as happens so often these days?”
Dr. Chapp states in this article that his last year in seminary was 1980-1981. His bio states that he received his doctorate in 1994. Your question is entirely meaningless and inappropriate.
“I’m no theologian, but I know this much, any theologian who doesn’t virtually live on bread and water and sleeps less than 5 hours a day – with most of this spent on his knees and living in poverty, isn’t worth listening to.” Then I guess we shouldn’t have listened to Joseph Ratzinger who enjoyed a good glass of beer.
Since one doesn’t have to be a theologian to “live on bread and water and sleeps less than 5 hours a day” can we assume that you are at least thinking about practicing this ascetic?
Dr. Chapp owns and manages The Dorothy Day Catholic Worker Farm which grows food for the poor. At the farm’s chapel, they pray the Morning, Daytime, and Evening Prayer.
Thank you per usual Larry. When I saw the synodaling artwork and read the IL, I tried to rend my sackcloth but couldn’t manage it. Worse, it made the ashes go everywhere.
Speaking of genital Gnostics, I keep having a dystopian dream of a monkey dressed like a Pope. He is wielding a wand of weapon ambiguity while reading from the Encyclical of the Synod on Synodaling. It is called: Victor Splendor.
Funny, about your sackcloth and ashes. I don’t remember 8th grade science, but perhaps you do. Are ashes similar to dust? Did your sackcloth bite the dust? Remember what was once said on Ash Wednesday: “Thou art dust {Sackcloth}. To dust thou shalt return.”
Thank you for writing this, Larry!
Larry writes as a criticism, “…..God was “doing a new thing” that apparently contradicted all of the “old things” that God used to say and do…”.
Has he read both the Old Testament and the New Testament? He might notice a difference in God’s actions.
No, Jesus did not change the OT teaching of God the Father. He did not improve, update, or discern that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, spilling of Onan’s seed, and other OT/Ten Commandment sins (e.g., in Leviticus 20:10-16) were now approved for implementation.
Jesus fulfilled the Words of God (found in the ‘old’ words of the OT’s Law and the prophets) since HE IS/WAS AND ALWAYS WILL BE THE WORD OF GOD. Call him version 1, or version infinity. He IS, remember. Putting Him to death does not lead to His death. He was from the beginning and shall be in the end.
May I mail you a Catechism? [If you are still married to Barney, my stone tablet has your address.]
Jesus’ Paschal mystery should teach men that lives of sacrifice are lives of truth, and beauty, leading to eternal blessedness. For a Church to sanction yakayaka-yakkety yak about how Jesus today could, would, should bless the likes of sin is anti-climactic. It will also harm the planet.
Now I like this summation, it is concise and readable! And I have a degree in Theology, but studied in the 1981-1987 period during the time the Magisterium had been rejected at most seminaries, especially where I was in Ottawa. I love hanging around with the men who studied in the period that Saint John Paul II the Great began to redirect us to the Magisterium, I learned what I went to the seminary to learn but did not find. I do not like the looks of the Synod on Synodality, it seems to want to undo all the good that Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedist XVI accomplished in their time of restoring the Magisterium to the teachin of the Church.
The Soviet Union was organized as a series of Synods. Synod is exactly the same as the word “Soviet”. A Soviet was supposedly “a council of the people, meeting together to determine policy. Soviets were formed all over the Soviet union, supposedly to represent the people. But of course the exact opposite happened. The Soviets were taken over by the elites, the radical activsts, and they steadfastly refused to represent the people in any way.
We see the same process in the Synod. Supposedly the voice of the people, they are in really a mechanism for taking over the church and subjecting it to the rule of a small minority of radical activists, primarily homosexual activists. They despise the average Catholic, and make sure he does not have any power in this process.
The Church Soviets now have a new slogan (As soviets always do, they are big on slogans) Now they scream the blasphemous “The Holy Spirit is inside us, telling us to overthrow previous church teaching!” These nuts claim that God is speaking to them, telling them to wreck the church and ignore the Bible. Presumably, these nuts think they are authorized to write new sacred texts.
This is the greatest crisis in the church for many centuries.
A sign on many liberal Protestant churches read “God is still talking!”
The sad fact is most of them do not realizing God is still saying no to the same sins He said no to for all of salvation history!
Bingo!
Yes, the whole project of the Synod(s) is an attempt to change the pastoral approach of the Catholic Church to a liberal Protestant model of enabling objectively evil sinful acts. Again, the great struggle of our age is pastoral or How God Saves us from our sins. We have a choice: the Way to Heaven of God to love Him back by repenting of our sins or the way to Hell of Baal to stay in our sins. Life or death.
St. Teresa of Avila said that the “way to Heaven is Heaven.” Therefore, the way to Hell is Hell. Think of the hate filled lives of human traffickers, abortionists, drug cartels, etc. Or witness the Hell of “liberal” Protestant Ministers with such synodaling signs on their Churches in my city. Often they have tried to synodal with me during my sidewalk counseling outside Planned Parenthood, as they escort women inside to choose death for their children! No fooling. Is that what our hierarchy wants? Trust me, it is not what the Minister of the Baptist Church wants who leads our sidewalk counseling efforts.
Pope Francis has repeatedly said that taking decisions is not within the competency of his synods. I understand that is also the Jesuit way – the boss has open discussion and then takes the decision. It is like Lincoln summing up a Cabinet discussion on whether he should sign the Emancipation Act “Well gentlemen, eight Noes and one Aye, the Ayes have it”.
Synodality and my Parish
In my parish, St. Anne – St. Augustin Parish in Manchester, N.H.– we do not have a parish council.
The pastor seems to be so overwhelmed with the attempt to provide liturgical services that he does not have the time or energy to help organize a parish council. I wrote a letter to my Bishop, Peter Libasci, suggesting that synodality implies that we must have a parish council or unify our resources with another parish so that we will be able to do so.
Pope Francis is correct in his attempt to help us see the need for fraternal dialogue.
Our Finance Council also helps out in this regard but we do have a separate school board. Depending on your parish demographics, it’s more and more difficult to find people who have the time and experience needed, let alone the understanding of the Faith. Our parish has a lot of people who go south for 5 or 6 months
I’m not usually the first to notice spelling or grammar errors but whoever did the artwork here seems to have slipped up on their spelling. Unless perhaps that was intentional.
You know I think it’s reassuring to imagine that this may be the last gasp of the 1970’s. Younger clergy tend to be more conservative & time is ultimately on our side. Time heals all wounds. Or as Groucho Marx noted: “Time wounds all heels.”
I love that quip from the zany planet of MarZ according to Groucho. [In the artwork, I saw the ’60s hip in hypocrisy. Is that what you saw?]
Groucho was brilliant.
Yes, that’s what I saw also. I wonder if hipstocracy is a word?
🙂
If it’s not, it ought to be, right? Blessings.
I hope it’s that simple but the current model is not working – I say this because the youth are not largely in the Church once they graduate. We don’t even have many altar servers and we support a K-8 school. One parent said their kid should not serve a funeral mass during school hours because it takes away from the kid’s education.
A species of neo protestant paganism dancing around a syncretic, diverse notion of «god». Lasciate ogni speranza.
“Their interest does not reside in a true reform of the juridical structures of the Church and a de-emphasis on the hyper-papalism of the past 200 years. If I thought that is what they were after, I would support them“
I’d like to read an article on this. That would be useful. Give us the details. Unpack this idea for us. These cynical diatribes like this one above are unimpressive and tired. Yuk.
The attraction of all this to the guiding lights of this movement is easy to decipher. You already have a worldwide institution (platform) with massive resources on which to establish your power, privilege, and priorities. If your crowd can commandeer this institution and its resources, the possibilities are limitless. See other mainstream “Christian” churches for how this model works. A deeply rooted, sacrificial faith has little or nothing to do with the endgame of the guiding lights of this movement.
I am grateful for CWR’s commitment to the truth, and ipen discussion of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and likewise, I appreciate Larry Chapp’s candid essay, and the comments here, especially the affirming comment by Fr. Morello.
Having lived in the AD of Washington from 1992-2005, witnessing what I call “the systematic episcopal defrauding of the Body of Christ,” at the hands of the sinister Theodore McCarrick, and having lived in several other dioceses like NY and Chicago and Baltimore, my impression of the Church establishment (meaning the network of those holding power levers including Cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and the lawyers and bureaucrats of diocesan chanceries, along with the presidents and staff of the 190-or-so former “Catholic” colleges and universities who are apostate), my conclusion is that the vast majority of the establishment of the Catholic Church is apostate, as reluctantly admitted by Fr. Robert Imbelli (in his 2020 essay “No Decapitated Body,” in the Journal Nova et Vetera).
Indeed, the 7th paragraph of Larry Chapp’s essay paints the same basic picture that Fr. Imbelli conveyed: that this apostate establishment exists to “decapitate the Bidy of Christ,” by removing Jesus The Lord as its head, and substituting themselves (the Church establishment) as the “god-head,” in what I observe is nothing other than msking the Church into a monster with a gruesome “head transplant,” with themselves as “new head of the new body.”
Thus, what CWR’s faithful contributor from Germany Birgit Kelle, calls “the dirty schism,” is not simply the path of Germany, but the path of the vast majority of the Church establishment, with Germany simply as prototype or protagonist, paving the way for “formalization” and “normalization” of outright apostasy by the Church leadership.
It’s all utterly ugly and repulsive, snd poison for the young who hope for some foothold in Christ, the only source and hope for Truth, Goodness and Beauty.
When Christ was born into the world, the King was Herod, and the High Priest was Caiaphas (of the apostate Saducees, who denied the life of the soul after natural death).
We seem now to be in a situation much like the one Jesus was born into, some 2000 years ago.
Is this a sign of the times, a second coming blowing in the winds?
May all who so desire be conformed to the Beauty of Christ.
The faithless in the Church are trafficking the Bride of Christ trying to turn her into into a worldly Whore of Babylon.
Of course the difference between the past 10 years and the 50-60 preceding them is that the Pope is in their side. I cannot emphasize strongly enough that the Church is in incredible peril. If Pope Francis and his minions are determined to have the Church to falsify herself I wish they would just get on with it and get it over with so we can all just move on from this whole Christianity thing.
Well, moving on from Christianity would be concluding mistakenly, as you advise, that Jesus is false, simply because of frauds and sex abuse coverup artists in Church leadership.
Bad reasoning, if one loves and worships Jesus…
Or perhaps stated otherwise, why are you trolling here, if as you serm to indicte, you di not yourself confess Christ?
About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they’re just one thing. St. Joan of Arc. If the Church is fake then Christ is fake. I pray that the Church does not falsify herself but if she does there is no more Christianity.
We Lurv that synodality.
https://rainbowcatholics.org/.
Why would that be?
“We are therefore presented with a clear choice for or against the absolute theological normativity and priority of the historically concrete Christ, over and against the malleable and fungible Docetic Christ of a thousand faces. Christ as savior from sin and a provocation to repentance becomes Christ the liberator from oppressive religious structures and moral taboos.”
Never better phrased! The choice is not only clear, it is also a necessity for all who accept thee timeless truths of the Catholic Faith to make that choice in the current synodal chaos.
A “fungible Docetic Christ:” the unintended meaning of a misplaced comma?
Recalling and even correcting my own comments a few days back, yes, the name of “Jesus Christ” does show up twice in the Instrumentum Laboris. In the Foreword, and in B 1.4 (f).
But, in addition, there are eight other namings which also should be noted: “Christ Jesus” (the Foreword, and n. 25), “model of Jesus” (n. 21), “Jesus” (n. 34), “crucified and risen Jesus” (n. 51), “Jesus’ prayer” (Questions), and “the disciples of Jesus, yesterday, today and forever” (B 3.1b); followed by “missionary conversion which ‘aims to renew her [the Church] as a mirror of Christ’s own mission of love’” (quoting Pope Francis). Here, again, an unfortunate tilt into disclaimed “polarization,” with this editorial separation of the union of two natures (human and divine) in the one person of not Jesus, but Jesus Christ?
About the wording in B.3.1b, too, insertion of the comma after “Jesus” actually relocates the antecedent from “Jesus” to the “disciples,” and in this way obscures the needed clarity to the historical and transcendent fact, both, of the unified and concrete person of “Jesus Christ [Himself], the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb 13.8). Rather than referencing only a pious rolling through history by the disciples Jesus to whom is added a projected Christ idea.
The unintended meaning of an editorially misplaced comma!
You may well know, Dr. Chapp, that the northern reaches of the Covington Diocese was virtually a Catholic enclave in the generations and decades leading up to Vatican II. A parish could be reached within a five minute drive from any point in the northern counties. My own childhood parish featured a house of Benedictine nuns in residence, while St. Anne’s Convent and the Sister’s of Notre Dame Convent were vibrant and a mere half hour’s drive apart, not to mention the Sister’s of Our Lady of LaSalette, the Ursulines and Passionists. Well I remember priest’s in Biretta and Cassock (four in residence at my one parish), nuns in habit and women in veils at Mass.
I also well recall in the year after Vatican II, one of our Parish priests left the priesthood and married the fifth grade teacher and one became an Episcopalian. The priests took to grey clericals or none at all. Benedictines and Sisters of Notre Dame tossed their Habits. St. Anne’s Convnet closed and LaSalette closed. The Ursulines left. While the geographic location of the Churches remained, many were stripped and white washed.
Then came the horrible pederasty by priests. My priest psychology teacher was revealed to be a prolific pederast and died in prison. My priest physics teacher took his own life. My headmaster left the priesthood while under accusation. There were more and then more. The seminary and eventually all Marydale went in the ensuing lawsuits, scandals and settlements. The diocese was halved. Our retired bishop had been able to avoid wholesale parish closures, all have a priest, and attempts have been made to restore some of the Catholic identity of our churches.
If what you wrote of your experience here was a prelude to anything, it was a prelude to this disaster from which we had only begun rebuilding and into which it seems we must be plunged again. Will we blithely be taken there?
Considering all that you mention having happened in the wake of Vatican II, one can only wonder how healthy the situation actually was *before* Vatican II. The Council might have given these people the green light, but the engines must have been revving up since long before. I too am old enough to remember the pre-Conciliar Church, and my recollections do not paint it as the Golden Age that many, usually born well after the Council, seem to assume it was.
I read my way into the Church over a period of 20 years and finally joined in 1984. I went through RICA 2 times before “ tying the knot “ The process was so watered down and feel goody that it is a wonder that I joined. I had painted myself in a corner and had no other place to go. The Orthodox Church was an option, but not congregation near and no ethnic background. I joined and felt completely out of place, but at the same time I knew I was in the right place. Now,after 39 years I am more at home and worship in a very dignified NO liturgy with many very devout brethren. I am now used to the violent pitching of the Barque, but I know it will not sink even if if the present a”Peter” should let go of the wheel. I know Christ is on board as he was long ago and stilled the waves. Praise God for the refuge of our imperfect Church which WILL endure till the end and the evil one will not prevail against it!
Amen.
Blessed be Jesus Christ True God and True Man.
What if they gave a church and nobody came?
That’s what happened where we used to live. Empty rural Methodist chapels along the roadsides. People are aging out.
Even 25-30 years ago a little country church asked if they could borrow my children for their Christmas program. There wasn’t a single child left in their congregation.
Fr. Gerald Murray made the case that the synodality synod can not be a synod of bishops anymore, given the way it is structured. See in the YOUTUBE video of Arroyo’s TV program July 13 2023, minute 30:32 to 32:24. Also that it does not relfect the true life of the Church.
The World Over July 13, 2023 | NEW CARDINALS & SYNOD DELEGATES: The Papal Posse with Raymond Arroyo | EWTN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FapbozISTfc
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/fr-murray-pope-francis-pro-homosexual-synod-is-going-to-be-a-moment-of-crisis-for-the-church/
Some of this is linguistically and theologically dense, but if you can sift through that, it hits the nail on the head with regard to recent Church history, the ongoing farce of “synodality,” and the hard reality of Francis the Merciful and his Merciful Minions now presiding over a spiritual and moral implosion that seems biblical in dimension. Thank you, Larry Chapp!
Agree with you, Jerry, in every respect. While some of this piece is indeed above my linguistic and theological pay grade, I understand the essential points and, as usual, Larry Chapp has knocked the cover off the ball.
“it remains true that the ecclesial theological needle is now moving once again leftward and in ways that are tellingly similar to the old genital Gnosticism that never really died out, but simply went underground during the previous two pontificates.” This sums it up in essence. The Church is facing a Final Trial. Our Lady of Akita said back in 1973 that the Church will be “full of those who accept compromises.” She warned of the devil entering the Church, and that was at the height of the liberal explosion explained in Chapp’s article. The San Gallen Mafia did not want Ratzinger to be pope. They wanted Bergoglio. With the resignation of Benedict, they got their man, the Destroyer.
I think I am a few years ahead of you, Dr. Chapp. I love your clarity and astute observations. During my theological studies and priestly formation the big push was “demythologizing.” Rudolph Bultmann reigned supreme. The miracles of Jesus were nothing more than post-Easter editing that had no bearing in reality, all in pursuit of a hegemonic male dominated leadership, led by the likes of a power-hungry and sexually conflicted Saul of Tarsus. Sacraments were mostly ritual nostalgia and selective remembering that were syncretically derived from pagan cults. Except for confession, that was a gift from the Irish monks who were already heaping guilt and suffering on the laity. Scripture was what remained of generally fabricated narratives, with no basis in history, that served to support the powerful who sought to vanquish the oppressed opposition, those poor and cruelly labeled “heretics.” Quite literally we learned no moral theology from a “moral theologian” who left the priesthood the day after the semester ended to get married. Canon Law consisted of tactics to side-step canon law. Oh yeah, and Rahner was everything and everywhere. It was a travesty. Sadly, I fell for it all. Thousands of men were ordained with this kind of theological formation. Can we really be surprised by today’s chaos?
In reading the article it appears that it is the progressive modernists who are trying to invent their own human traditions to thwart the commandment of God that the Pharisees were accused of doing in Mark 7. Christ brings up Corban. Maybe we need to call the Synod the Corban Synod.
Thanks for this: brilliantly expressed, perceptive. He calls it as it is.
Genital Gnostics, Theological vandals. I hope you are wrong Larry. But damn you are hilarious! Keep up the good stuff. I need some entertainment to assuage the depression!
The Orwellian Synod and Word Press Diversity Statement both have one thing in common, when you sensor God’s Truth, you will always end with error which will separate you from The Truth Of Love Incarnate, and His One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church, which exists Through, With, And In Christ, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque).
The “Right To Privacy”, does not include a right to sin, as all sin is “an offense against God”, and any offense against God, is an offense against man.
The good news is that no matter what happens, Dr. Chapp believes everybody goes to Heaven so….who cares?
Mr. Chapp, if you read this. I’ve made several comments here, but allow me to say, I’ve read a couple of shelves of books and a few hundred essays about the crisis in the Church over the last 30 years. I don’t believe I’ve read any that encapsulate the matter more astutely than your piece here.
To be brief I strongly felt like applauding after reading and mulling over each paragraph. I was alone so I refrained, but my shoulders shook with a frisson of delight and thankfulness. It is tempting to dissect each paragraph to illustrate how writing should be done on such a grave topic, but don’t worry, I won’t. This is truly one for the ages – especially ours. Print it out, pass it to others, read it again and again.
Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you.
Perhaps this coming overwhelmingly rigid unilogue of a synod will make martyrs out of those bright Bishops such as Robert Baron et.al.? The Church is built on the blood of Christ and His martyrs. Let us pray for all those third-world Bishops attending.
I suspect that the upcoming synod isn’t about putting through any agenda except synodality. St. Ignatius of Loyola thought that in order to properly discern, a group should first come up with all the good reasons they can think of for doing something. No sooner than the next day they should come up with all the good reasons for not doing it. All this within a framework of much prayer. And then the leader decides. The Pope is just acting like a Jesuit.
Sue Korlan- that may be a good way to conduct a Jesuit retreat , but I don’t think it is panning out as a mode for a global church synod