One of the things I have learned in my 65 years of being a Catholic is that the meaning of the term “Church reform” in the post-Vatican II era is almost always a cognate for “liberalization”. Why this is so and how it came to be this way is a story too complex to rehearse here. But it is sufficient to simply note this fact with an eye toward its ongoing significance for our “new way of being Church” in our brave new era of “synodal listening”.
Nor do we need to spend time here analyzing the typical laundry list of issues that the so-called reformers wish to address. From women’s ordination to contraception to LGBTQ everything, the central intellectual impulses are all the same: what the Church has taught for centuries has been wrong, or at least wrong now for our “times”, and needs to be changed in deeply constitutive ways to fit into our “new cultural paradigm”.
Left unarticulated and largely ignored in this avalanche of Newspeak verbiage is just how expressive the Catholic iteration of liberal modernity is to the central thesis that animates all of the variegated versions of modernity. This is what I call the “teleology of transgression,” wherein all that came before via the pathways of culture and tradition are recast as oppressive restrictions on our freedom from which we now need to liberate ourselves. Thus, all that came before, especially in the moral, spiritual and religious domain, must be erased entirely if one is a pure secularist, or must be simply redefined and reshaped, if one wishes to retain some religious identity, in order to conform to the new ordo of liberative transgression.
The late Italian philosopher Augusto del Noce (1910-1989) recognized this aspect of liberal modernity long ago and noted that the central dogma of this new regime of corrosion can be encapsulated in the phrase, so often heard in the halls of the liberal academy, “Today one can no longer believe … (fill in the blank with whatever is to be erased)”. What is being expressed by modernity in such forms of thinking is not so much a well thought out program for the future so much as a mere assertion that we must never “go back” to a society rooted in the sense of the sacred. In this sense we are all, once again, Marxists—insofar as culture and reason are now viewed as subsets of politics, and not as things given to us by God and are thus metaphysically prior to the State and thus have an independent status from the State.
And for del Noce, this is, once again, the very essence of the Totalitarian spirit. The universality and normativity of reason are lost in such a view since everything is viewed through the lens of this narrative of liberation from everything that came before … including the normativity of nature itself as the modern world rebels against the last constraint of all… the form of our own biology.
And del Noce further notes that this spirit of transgression is linked at the hip to the idolatry of science and materialistic reductionism. He observes there is a direct connection between our culture’s subservience to scientism and the gods of a false eroticism devoid of the binding connections of love. It is not without reason that ours is now a pornified culture that really is much more than a moral weakness that indulges the vice of lust. It also bespeaks an entire anthropology and philosophy about the spiritual significance of all of our bodily desires. But more than that even, since we are a unity of body and spirit, the pornification of our culture is also expressive of a deep deficit of meaning in absolutely everything that we do. In other words, pornography isn’t really about “dirty pictures” but stands instead as the chief sacrament in our enchanted world of Matter and Mammon. Therefore, as del Noce concludes in The Crisis of Modernity, the entire sexual revolution is really an expression of the deep philosophical principles that govern modernity and that “an enormous cultural revision will be necessary in order to really leave behind the philosophical processes that have found expression in today’s sexual revolution.”
It is no accident that the Catholic modernizers are obsessed with the erotic realm. One implication of all of this is that for those who swim in such waters, the psychological coin of the realm is a state of perpetual grievance and moral outrage. Everything is now read through the filtering lens of a fractious kind of perpetual grievance toward a vague sense of “what has been”, and which is therefore really rather undifferentiated in its focus and stands instead as a kind of existential “posture” that is simply constantly angry at everything. And, in most cases, anger toward anything that stands in the way of erotic fulfillment.
We saw this entire transgressive dynamic once again on display this past week when one of the extra-synodal committees established by Pope Francis to look at various hot-button issues in the Church issued a preliminary report on its proceedings just as the Synod on synodality was beginning. Once again, the reporting of Jonathan Liedl at The National Catholic Register, has brought this to our attention and helped us to connect the dots. As Liedl notes, the committee reports that going forward moral theology must be reformed in a manner that moves away from concepts of moral absolutes and the objective truths of certain moral laws, and toward a “new paradigm” that focuses instead on subjective dispositions and the vagaries of “experience” and individuated “circumstances”.
Liedl quotes the press release as follows: “Ethically speaking, it is not a matter of applying pre-packaged objective truth to the different subjective situations, as if they were mere particular cases of an immutable and universal law,” … “The criteria of discernment arise from listening to the [living] self-gift of Revelation in Jesus in the today of the Spirit.”
Even beyond the cringe inducing use of the phrase “in the today of the Spirit”, this is paradigmatic expression of the moral theory known as proportionalism. And it stands in a direct line of opposition to the teaching of Pope John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor (see pars 71-75), not to mention the entirety of the Catholic natural law moral tradition, both of which do indeed speak of moral absolutes and of the binding nature of moral truth on our consciences. And as an expression of opposition to what has come before in the Tradition–a “before” it clearly seeks to erase and transgress–it is a foundationally uncatholic stance vis-à-vis the normativity of Revelation as expressed in Scripture and Tradition. Revelation itself now becomes part of the oppressive past insofar as it gives us a “pre-set pattern of answers that illegitimately imposes itself on our idiosyncratic freedom” and must be recast instead as part of the plasticity of historicity and subjectivity.
And, of course, if one opposes such proposals, one is accused of “opposing needed reforms” as if reform can only go in the direction of liberal modernity. We see this posture as well in the various reactions to the report from the committee devoted to the issue of ordaining women to the diaconate. Cardinal Fernandez, in issuing the report, made it clear that the stance of Pope Francis is that ordaining women to the sacramental diaconate is not going to happen. But, on cue, this elicited the usual condemnations that it represents yet another insult to women, and that it will perpetuate the ongoing disenfranchisement of women, as well as their marginalization in the Church as second-class citizens.
Leaving aside the particulars of that debate, the salient feature here is that in both instances–moral theology and the ordination of women–the expectation of so many synodal enthusiasts is one of transgressive change. The overall tonality is one of perpetual grievance at an institution whose very identity resides in the preservation and transmission of God’s Revelation in Christ, for precisely doing just that. And please do not tell me that I am begging the question here since the very issue is whether such “reforms” are in fact out of sync with Revelation. Because if the putative reformers are correct then what they are really saying is that “today it is no longer possible to believe…” in a manner that makes it clear that the entire edifice of Catholic teaching is not up for grabs.
In other words, this is not really a focus on this or that particular “issue” considered in the light of Scripture and Tradition, but is instead a focus on radically reconfiguring what Scripture and Tradition mean in the first place. This reconfiguring is to be done from within the spirit of grievance from the perspective of those who are allegedly aggrieved.
Too many synodal enthusiasts are proceeding with a concept of the Church as a joyless landscape of oppressive structures and teachings that must be deconstructed and replaced with something more in keeping with the liberative praxis of secular liberalism. The goal is negation via transgression and the chosen pathway to this goal is the manicured and curated pristination of nonsense.
By way of contrast, I attended a diaconal ordination here in Rome the other day at St. Peter’s Basilica. Only men were being ordained, of course, and they were being ordained by a man of dreaded and oppressive hierarchical status in a building representative of the patriarchal hegemony of the Church down through the ages. The liturgical trappings, from the music to the vestments, were Roman/medieval and contained not a single hint of the rainbow religion of sexual inversion. Oh, the horror of it all!
And yet, somehow, despite such egregious affronts to the decorous rubrics of modernity, the prevailing ethos throughout was not transgressive grievance, but unalloyed joy. The joy of being Catholic. The joy of participating in things ancient yet somehow, and for that very reason, new in an evergreen way. The joy of friends, relatives and teachers who saw in these young men examples of heroic Christian idealism and sacrifice. The joy of seeing the true liberation caused by the eschatological in-breaking of eternity, for however brief a moment, through the ancient practice of the laying on of hands. The joy of fellowship in Christ the Lord who comes to us in word and sacrament in a manner that liberates our freedom precisely by binding it to the Truth of God.
Only adolescents live in a world of perpetual grievance where all “rules” are viewed as impositions on a freedom construed as the ability to do whatever one damn well pleases. Only adolescents rebel against all that came before in the mistaken notion that the world is now to be reinvented for the sake of their personal fulfillment. Only adolescents kick against the goad of the past in order to open up a future that, strangely, still ends up eventually looking like the past.
Joy. Joy is what the Church needs more of these days. And less grievance. Less transgression. Less adolescent petulance and more adult sobriety.
In the diaconal ordination, there is a point where the archbishop hands the newly ordained a copy of the Gospels and says to each:
Believe what you read.
Teach what you believe
Live what you teach.
Amen. Perhaps someday we can have a Synod devoted to those ideas. Perhaps this is all true reform actually means or has ever meant. And perhaps it is the only real source of true Christian joy. Perhaps.
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“Joy. Joy is what the Church needs more of these days. And less grievance. Less transgression. Less adolescent petulance and more adult sobriety.”
Two thoughts come to mind.
1) If, as I believe, that a large minority of the clergy is in fact homosexual, they probably aren’t really able to achieve “adult sobriety” due to deep wounds in their psyche/soul.
2) Joy cannot coexist with fear, and I think much of the older clergy and laity is in fact governed by fear (of being imperfect and going to Hell) as opposed to thankful and joyful there sins are forgiven, etc.
Case in point on that last: at Church some months back some older ladies were discussing a friend who was sick and dying in a nursing home, desperate for them to come and pray the Divine Mercy lest she fall into Hell.
And all I could think of was “What could she possibly have to repent of that she has not already repented of at this point in her life?” Perhaps she was in fact a truly vile, evil woman, but I think that is unlikely.
I don’t know that I have ever been to a joyful parish or Mass. I do remember our pastor berating us for not being a joyful congregation.
Mrs. Hess: You can bet that very few of the older clergy live in fear of hell.
If they do not fear the pains of Hell, why stay with a religion that they don’t believe in and want to change?
This was why I wasn’t upset a family member choose a non-Catholic wedding (it was also during Covid when the Church forbade wedding ceremonies): they had no intention of “living as Catholics.” So why would they have a Catholic wedding?
It is very damaging to the Church (and hurtful to those who do believe) to have folks within it that don’t believe what she teaches and who try to change it to suit their own guilty consciences.
Mrs Hess
Men enter and remain in the priesthood for all sorts of reasons. Deacon Toner describes a fictional example of a long established priest in an unnamed US city. The guy has no alternative well paid employment – he has been a priest for thirty years. What is he going to do? Stack shelves at Walmart? So he lingers on indefinitely in a pleasant lifestyle as a faithless fraud. I suspect various priests I have met are in a similar real life fix.
https://onepeterfive.com/how-many-priests-lost-faith/
Richard Barton describes his real life loss of faith journey in beautiful rural West of England, around 100 to 150 miles west of London. He had the courage to leave. Given his age, I suspect that he might have received one or two legacies and was thus able to survive without a job.
https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/5119/leaving-the-priesthood-a-personal-story
Both illustrate different aspects of loss of faith. Barton’s life and faith was plainly massively affected by his homosexuality.
Mrs. Hess: I agree wholeheartedly. Catholics who don’t subscribe to what the Church teaches in its entirety should find some other religion. When I was heading up RCIA in my parish, I remember that candidates would have to agree to the statement that they believed and affirmed ALL that the Catholic Church teaches.
“What you deny,”, Jorge Bergoglio, “The Church has always believed”, in Time and in Space, The Deposit Of Faith remains True to The Word Of Perfect Love Incarnate, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost .
“For The Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter that by His revelation they might make known new doctrine, but that by His assistance they might inviolably keep and faithfully expound the Revelation, the Deposit of Faith, delivered through the Apostles.”
Prayers that The Faithful , who desire not to accommodate an occasion of sin, which is a sin against Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture and The Teaching of The Magisterium, grounded in Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, The Deposit Of Faith that Christ Himself Has Entrusted to His One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church for The Salvation of Souls , call for the anathema of the counterfeit church, with its counterfeit pope , which denies its Baptism promises, and our Call to Holiness in The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, to remain One In Christ.
“What you deny, the Church has always believed.”
https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2023/03/23/on-unity-in-the-church/
A Different Kind of Catholicism? – The Catholic Thing
“I don’t know that I have ever been to a joyful parish or Mass“.
I have been to a large number, several in South America, several in Spain and Italy, and several in Colorado, and a few other places. The same joy Larry Chapp describes here.Sadly, most of those Masses were under priests associated with some of the groups that the Vatican regime most despises and is doing everything possible to undermine, from false accusations (which reasonable Catholics would not believe for a moment but which still, once someone is accused, bring to mind, “But maybe…..he must have done SOMETHING”) to outright destruction.
No, I am emphatically NOT talking about those groups with molesters….rather, think Cardinal Pell, a innocent man. The regime is banking on the horror Catholics felt for those predators to malign the most innocent, joyful, faithful, and orthodox of people because they well know those Catholics have been taught that where there is smoke there is fire, only this time the smoke is coming from the Vatican.
I would guess that joy does not come easily to you.
Joy seems appropriate after your sins are forgiven, but if you’re living/existing in a state of serious sin why would you be joyful?
You should show at least some joy by participating in the mass, if none other than a resound “Amen!” at Communion.
No need to question the prayers of the faithful over those near death; remember no one knows what is in the heart except the Father. “Ask and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find.” “I come not for the righteous but for the sinner.” etc…. (They are not wasted by any means) 🙂
The vibrancy of parishes is missing, with the young not attending or participating.
I cannot help but think that the suppression of the Latin Mass and its adherents is an attempt to pave the way for their planned heterodoxy.
Marvelous diagnosis of the Synodal dis-ease, Dr. Chapp.
Just as Jesus makes all things new, Satan’s leftism makes all things old.
We are in the Closing Ceremonies of this Boomer pontificate. All are welcome to repent and return to the Sacred Scripture and Tradition of St. Peter:
“Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” Acts 2:40
As Larry Chapp describes contemporary modernism, it can be simply formulated as relinquishing tradition because it doesn’t concatenate with present reality. What is now defines what is true. Although the present state of affairs finds its existence in the minds of men.
Lost in translation borrowing from Sofia Coppola is permanence. We’re dealing with the inability to transcribe the relevant value of the true and beautiful that’s not created in the minds of men. What is missed is joy. I would add if I may peace and the fire of charity. These are the indicators of what is always true and good, realities that do not fad into the past. Rather they remain, if only in the hearts of the few.
As Larry Chapp describes contemporary modernism, it can be simply formulated as relinquishing tradition because it doesn’t concatenate with present reality. What is true is what defines how things are.
Lost in translation borrowing Sofia Coppola’s line is permanence. We’re dealing with the inability to transcribe its relevant value. What is missed is joy. I would add if I may both peace and fire. These are the indicators of what is true and good, realities that do not fad into the past. Rather they remain, if only in the hearts of the few.
We read: “And it [proportionalism] stands in a direct line of opposition to the teaching of Pope John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor (see pars 71-75), not to mention the entirety of the Catholic natural law moral tradition…”
In their selective “listening,” perhaps the synodalers have failed to notice that Pope John Paul II explicitly incorporates the natural law and moral absolutes into the Magisterium: “This is the first time, in fact, that the Magisterium of the Church 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” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 115).
Instead, we sense the ghost of Hans Kung, and the Kantian Karl Rahner such that our ideas (!) about truth or even morality are as close as we can get to the reality of things.
We also might be reminded of another Polish writer, Joseph Conrad, and his relevant masterpiece, the novel “Heart of Darkness.” Limited to a transitory overlay of post-Enlightenment rationality, the colonialist Mr. Kurtz enters the Congo ivory and slave trade, only to be worshiped by the natives. And, at the same time, he goes mad in the pre-European forest primeval. Absent the universally inborn natural law, much like the jungle of post-Christian secularism and pre-Christian Pachamama today!
Therefore, synodal modernists might note well the last line of Conrad’s novel: “Mistah Kurtz [Mistah Kung, or Rahner?]—he dead.”
Imagine the arched roof over the Synod floor as being a canopy of unblinking stars on a cold night in the North Atlantic. Suddenly the round tables look almost like life boats dropped into the sea from the deck of the sinking Titanic. But we know this is not the case, because there were only 20 lifeboats and here we see probably 30 sewing circles.
Thank you, Dr Chapp. Always look forward to and appreciate your perceptive and insightful analyses. Completely agree with your views.
If the synodalers were able to prevail in substituting subjective individual judgments for timeless moral truths, the institutional church would become a meaningless entity. Thanks be to God the true Church, the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today and forever, will continue until the end of time.
Yes Tom, that was almost word for word the position of Saintly Archbishop Marcel Lefevbre.
He added that “more the scandals come from on high, the more they provoke disasters.it is certain that the Church in herself keeps all her holiness and sources of sanctification, but the occupation of her institutions by unfaithful popes, and by apostate bishops, ruins the faith of the clergy and faithful, sterilises the instruments of grace, favorises assaults of all the powers of hell which appear to trumph.”
Mgr Marcel Lefevbre “Itinerare Spirituel”, 1989.
I can’t recall who said it, nor the exact words, but the idea goes that the church that weds the spirit of the age is soon left a widow. Apparently, the purveyors of “the spirit of Vatican II” never learned the lesson. I can’t help but believe that this entire synod is a last-ditch effort of those purveyors, now aging and with little time left in this world, to complete the dismantling they started some 60 years ago. As with so many issues regarding the current papacy, I hope I’m wrong.
I think it was Lutheran sociologist Peter Berger in “A Rumour of Angels” (1969), a rejoinder to a wholly secular and relativist reading of his and co-author Thomas Luckmann’s influential “The Social Construction of Reality”(1966).
Paranoid nonsense! What evidence do you have for any of this? We just heard “No” to the female diaconate, we’re hanging on to celibacy, and you think “yes” to contraception and same sex marriage is just around the corner? You sound like Alex Jones. God help us.
“What evidence do you have for any of this?”
Good grief. All of the Synods under Pope Francis, for starters.
You sound like you have no clue what’s been going for many years now.
Carl, In reference to your response to Thomas James: “None are so blind as those who will not see..”
That’s not evidence. If the Church is going to open herself to serious dialogue, you have to expect that opposing viewpoints are going to be put forth. That does not mean the Church is going to buckle under the pressure and suddenly bring in same sex marriage and overhaul her teaching on sexuality and marriage. But there is more to this synod than hot-button issues. There are matters that the media is just not interested in, because they are not “hot-button”. Dialogue and discussion opens up avenues that certain individuals would otherwise miss, and there are all sorts of possibilities and solutions to difficulties that usually come to the surface, when there is genuine dialogue and openness. The idea that celibate clerics have all the answers is utterly ridiculous. The fortress mentality on this forum is mind-boggling.
There was a book written at the time of the Second Vatican Council entitled La Chiesa dopo Giovanni–The Church After Pope John. On the cover was a flaming yellow banner which read, in black: “Communists in the Vatican under Pope John XXIIII”. As Michael Novak writes: “The book is based on two beliefs: that the world is seething with confusions and trembling on the brink of moral disintegration; and that the Communists are supremely acute in taking advantage of Pope John and the Council. The author hates the free, open Council; the closed, hidden power of the Curia has long been the pillar of his social-political ambitions. Lo Svizzero calls the reign of Pope John the “winter of pessimism”; in Pope Paul he sees “the buds of hope for a new spring”.
Nothing has changed, it seems. Most people here operate out of much the same paranoid framework that undergirds conspiratorial thinking, which consists of a series of rapid inferences on the basis of precarious assumptions. If you believe that the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit, why are you afraid? Stop worrying and write something useful for a change.
Fiducia Supplicans decreed same sex couples could be blessed. That is not conspiracy, it is a scandalous, Anti-Catholic Truth fact.
It is as scandalous as James Martin’s spreading of blasphemous images mocking the Blessed Virgin Mary.
After a decade of this pontificate, it does fell like I’m in a fortress or monastery with Pope Benedict XVI. We are called to go within our Interior Castle. Here we are free to hold out for the objective Truth of God. The Interior Castle is the place of God’s peace; the only fear is fear of offending God and being dragged outside by my sins.
“We are assured that novel methods will be adopted, and when we see the originality of malice, the ingenuity of aggression, which our enemy displays, we may certainly prepare ourselves for every kind of novel stratagem and every kind of brutal and treacherous maneuver. I think that no idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered and viewed with a searching, but at the same time, I hope, with a steady eye… We shall go on to the end, we shall fight… we shall never surrender.” Winston Churchill
+JMJ. With all due respect, your entire premise is false. The Church is not the Phil Donahue Show open “for serious dialogue” through which a handpicked few can vote on absolute Truth to their subjective liking. The Truth is not open to “dialogue” and therefore change. The spiritual battle we face is not about the flavor of the day and what people want to change through dialogue. The spiritual battle is about bringing souls to heaven by following the commands of Christ our King. What evidence exists that He has anything to do with the synod on synodality? Synodality is a petulant and woke rebellion against the commands of Jesus Christ. Unless it is rooted in Jesus Christ the King, it will fail. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. Heb.13:8
He helps those who help themselves is another saying.
The Vat II has not produced the results hoped/planned for – the leadership should not shun those of us who want to bring back the Church; the Vatican obviously does not have a corner on good ideas.
Unless we blame ourselves for failing VATICAN II. And consider ourselves not free to justify failing it and not free to justify ourselves failing it.
Considering that we are not free to fail VATICAN II – how long would the failing have to go on for – and would the constant refrain about “reversing VATICAN II” ever bring the right answer?
It seems that Modernism in the clergy is due to the fantasies of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin the pseudo scientist Jesuit heretic.
Read “Theistic Evolution” 2023 version by Wolfgang Smith (RIP, MIT professor of Math, devout Catholic) and all the inanities of PF become very clear.
Satan launched a Trinity of scienterrific frauds in the mid 1800s to disembowel the Church; Darwin to remove God from Creation; Marx to remove God from Governance and Society at large; Freud to remove God from procreation.
Then Satan displaced St Paul the Evangelizer with Teilhard the apostate who deformed Christianity into an evolutionary format which in fact denies the Christ and demotes sin to inevitable statistical variances along the evolutionary path.
It seems only a very few people realize what is happening.
With Larry’s help, we have finally reached a working definition of Synodaling:
Synodaling is the erotic discernment of adolescents.
At a minimum, this explains the non-peripheral appointments of Cardinals and Curial officials.💋
Witness Cardinal-elect Radcliffe, the antithesis of St. John Henry Cardinal Newman.
The end of the essay, by quoting the instructions to deacons, begins to point toward “the problem which must not be named.”
It is an undeniable and yet largely unspoken fact that our Church, under the explicit direction of Pope John XIII, in announcing his “vision” for the Second Vatican Council, has impulsively (and wrongly) abdicated its responsibility to confront and condemn apostasy (and h-h-heresy). And much further in grave injustice to the truth owed to our young people, our Church authorities not only refused to confront and censure apostasy, our Church authorities (Poped and Cardinals and Bishops) while explicitly assenting that they would no longer confront and censure apostasy etc, they silently implemented a policy of promoting apostate priests and Bishops, such as Walter Kasper, who was a published apostate priest in the 1960s, and was rewarded and promoted to teaching authority under I believe both Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II.
The single notorious example of Walter Kasper is undeniably representative of the mode of operation of the contemporary Church establishment, which believes itself virtuous by granting teaching authority to apostates, or to put it in more stark and non-theological terms, men who deny the authority of Jesus and his witnesses in New Testament.
So our Church has changed itself from “the barque of Peter,” to a mere “ship of fools.”
This is the stone the contemporary has offered: apostasy etc, in episcopal costume.
Very good. Exellent. Thank you. Time will tell in God’s time. Even if out of the ruins of ashes and dust. Keep the Faith.
It’s interesting to read this article and all the comments and realize that, one and all, they sound as though they were written 50 years ago by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and Michael Davies. Is it any wonder that Lefebvre is being called a modern Doctor of the Church?
Paul: So, perhaps, Lefebre was correct all along!
Paul, so true!
Marcel Lefevbre’s words are current affaires commentary on the Apostasy still unfolding.
Every man and woman outraged by this final stage in the rupture of Novos Ordo with Catholicism should seek and read Lefevbre as a priority. His argumentation and reasoning is sound. His courage, unbelievable. His devout holiness an evidence. His accessibility unparalleled. Every sentence is uncompromised Truth.
Get serious. Lefebvre was an evil clown who tried to start his own church, became a functional protestant, and died outside the Catholic church after having been rightly excommunicated for trying to act as pope. Nothing worse than the creepy cult of Lefebvre.
Saintly Marcel Lefevbre was one of the holy érudite men chosen to write the previsional council texts, who denounced the rescripts in detail during the council pointing out everything that would tragically come to pass. He changed nothing, but continued to teach the Catholic Truth.
Clown? No. One of the most courageous Archbishops in Church History. Thanks to him alone, Sacred Tradition was conserved for future generations. The Catholic Church – when Catholics regain control of their eclipsed institution from the infiltrates – will one day honour him.
According to Archbishop Lefevbre, he was following St Thomas of Acquinas who said that “obedience does not apply if The Faith is in question.” For Marcel Lefevbre, under a pope who was two faced with a Traditional comment in the morning and a Modernist comment in the afternoon, The Faith was truly in danger. I challenge you to read “They have uncrowned Him” then reconsider your comment, for this great man was no clown.
Thank you for your reports from the belly of the beast. Today we got a homily on Mark 10 that started by asserting that marriage and divorce are “two sides to the same coin” and that what Jesus was really doing was making divorce “equitable“ by saying a woman could divorce her husband. If somebody wants to believe divorce is just fine (as are homosexuality, abortion, transgenderism, etc.) they’re free to do that, but why call yourself Catholic (much less a priest, bishop, etc) while espousing things the Church has universally condemned as sinful for 2,000 years? Even heretics (as far as I know) never condoned homosexuality or abortion. Henry VIII’s schism was over divorce though. If he were alive today, there’d be no need to leave the Church.
The church in America is in decline, and elsewhere in the world. Just following blindly Vat II may be a vacuum, not an advance.
If the “real” Vatican II of the Documents (not the “virtual” media-council under Kung & Co.) had been followed, theology would be clearly centered on the historical event of the Incarnation and Resurrection, not gradualism (Constitution on Divine Revelation);
If the real Vatican II had been followed, the “hierarchical communion” of the Church would be enriched, and not synodally obscured;
If the real Vatican II had been followed, the binding force of natural law would upheld, and not rendered ambivalent, and to help the laity in the world, Catholic academia would not have coupled itself to the Land O’ Lakes Declaration of adolescent autonomy (Constitution on the Church in the Modern World); and
If the real Vatican II had been followed, the liturgy of the Mass would elevate, and would not have been flattened into the 1970s-kumbaya (Constitution on the Liturgy).
As the young child chanted to St. Augustine (noted in his Confessions), and as the 1985 pulse-check Extraordinary Synod of Bishops reclaimed of Vatican II and the actual Documents: take ye and read.
In our local church the priest recently delivered a homily on the need to “play down” the use of “sexist” language like “Father” and “Lord” in the liturgy.
In the spirit of synodalism are Catholics expected to remain silent and “listen” to this listen to this manipulative, Marxian, conflict-based rot?
Epic Beaulieu!
“Perhaps this is all true reform actually means or has ever meant. And perhaps it is the only real source of true Christian joy. Perhaps.”
One thing that the Synodal embrace of “addressing grievances” has reminded me of is the now decades-long transition where a decrease of faith in the centrality of Jesus Christ and the Gospel has been accompanied by an increase of faith in the promises of continually pursuing “progress.” This transition has been most visible in the liberal/progressive wing of the Church, and is its best-known attribute. Vatican II and its immediate aftermath was before my time, but when I read about that period, I can’t help but notice how little has changed in terms of basic interests and behavior, as Mr. Chapp emphasizes: presenting the wish to accommodate the interests of the secular world as a bold, original, transformative solution to what ails the Church. When in actuality, they are jumping aboard whatever cultural bandwagon that is currently getting attention and adding it to the existing pile of issues and grievances. (That list is becoming unwieldy, as evidenced by the list of new “sins” for collective repentence in the Synod’s penitential service. But it’s unlikely to get pruned and will probably keep growing.)
However, other Catholics who would not be considered “liberal” or “progressive” should not pat themselves on the back too much, because they are also in danger of allowing their faith in Jesus Christ to become obscured by falling into what Mr. Chapp characterizes as a “state of perpetual grievance and moral outrage.” At one point, I recognized that I was susceptible to that state, because of how I was responding to the sexual abuse crisis, followed by a string of other crises and disappointments related to the Church, particular bishops and leaders, etc. So the dangers may come from other directions, yet cultivating intense anger for whatever reason is a risk. Now there are plenty of reasons to feel disappointed and angry about what is going on in the Church. Some righteous anger is natural, and a thing about grievances is that, well, some grievances are justified. But focusing too much attention to the things in the Church that you are angry and frustrated about, can indeed damage your faith, especially if you reach the point that you are spending more time dwelling on those things than on praising God, reading the Bible, devotional and spiritual works, praying and meditating, practicing works of mercy, and so on (and easy to slip into when spending much time online). One surefire way to kill your capacity to feel joy is to focus much of your attention on the problems, grievances and gripes that are bedeviling you.
So what is this joy, specifically Christian joy, that is an antidote? In thinking about all of this, I reread St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians, where he says the most about Christian joy, and repeatedly encourages his readers to rejoice. Only his notion of joy seems counterintuitive when measured against the common understanding of “joyfulness” that is based on having good things that make you feel happy and satisfied. Paul rejoices over things that, in the world’s eyes, he should lament: being imprisoned, being criticized by purported supporters, being unable to preach the Gospel directly to the world. How can that be?
One possible answer is that Paul’s vision of joy is not rooted in worldly circumstances but in the individual believer’s faith and trust in God; he personally rejoices in any evidence that his mission of bringing Jesus Christ and the Gospel to the world is succeeding. It’s an actively maintained form of joy that has nothing to do with being in favorable circumstances. Paul chooses to focus on how his service to God is being advanced despite whatever circumstances he is in. Talking about some “brothers … [who] proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition,” Paul makes the incredible statement that “Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.” That is a head-scratcher, because why should he rejoice when some have dubious motivations for proclaiming Christ? Yet he does.
“God’s Provision
10 I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me. You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity. 11 Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. 12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. 13 I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”
Given the state of the world, carrying the crosses Jesus requires of us does not leave a lot of time for joy. Regardless, joy cannot coexist with false caricatures. There is and probably never has been all that much “fear” of going to hell. There should be, but there likely is not very much. And I know few elderly people who have not retained as much mean-spirited attitudes towards life as they had when they were young. They have just learned better strategies to pretend they haven’t.
How does the author relate the concept of “teleology of transgression” to modern liberal ideologies within the Church?
Regard Prtal Berita
Thank you, Dr. Chapp.
I note these phrases (and others similar) in your treatment, and comment from my experience of dealing with Marxists for over half a century – including (since 1971) advocates of “Liberation Theology” , with which Pope Francis grew up.
1. existential “posture” that is simply constantly angry at everything.
This “posture” is merely Marx’s revolutionary spirit.
2. “must be reformed in a manner that moves away from concepts of moral absolutes and the objective truths of certain moral laws, and toward a “new paradigm”
– this constitutes the (required) rebellion against reality itself – which in its entirety must be destroyed (Hegel’s Aufhebung, viz Marx Thesis on Feuerbach N. XI)
3. “as if they were mere particular cases of an immutable and universal law,”
– which is exactly what they are, thus they must be destroyed and replaced with the permanent revolution (and happiness thereafter? Only on earth, and faintly: See Marx’s “German Ideology.”
4. “pre-set pattern of answers that illegitimately imposes itself on our idiosyncratic freedom”
– they refer to reality. Reality has frustrated the Left since Satan rebelled against God. Big words can’t change that.
5. “The overall tonality is one of perpetual grievance at an institution whose very identity resides in the preservation and transmission of God’s Revelation in Christ”
Liberation Theology’s requirement of perpetual grievance drove some 50 million Catholics from the pews: they decided to grow up, work hard, save, and escape “oppression, ” “class identity” and its required envy, resentment, and the rest of the required obstacles to
genuine liberty in Christ.
Liberation Theology and its North American version, “Social Justice,” follow Lenin’s 1917 demand that those beloved symbols of the old order cannot be destroyed must be hijacked, emptied of their content, and refilled with the revolutionary ideology. “Christ was the first Communist,” insisted several contemporaries of Marx and, later, Lenin.
–
Bottom line: you are too kind, Dr. Chapp. Reality, definition, the proper meaning of words, logic, and rational argument are all “alpha centauri” to this crowd. No matter what their status or station, whatever beloved and hallowed institutions the might have infiltrated, their revolutionary spirit is impenetrable.
In the spirit of Confucius, “in order to reconstruct a society (or a Church) that has fallen into disrepair, the first order of business is to restore the proper meaning of words.”
If they refuse that invitation, shake the dust from your sandals and move on.
How ironic that self-styled Catholic progressives revert to the language of ancient skepticism and sophistry to advance their deconstruction of the Church.
“The Blessed Virgin assures us that at the end of this struggle, “My Immaculate Heart will triumph”. Our Lady will be victorious. She will triumph over the great apostasy, the fruit of liberalism. All the more reason not to twiddle our thumbs! We must fight more than ever for the social reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Mgr Marcel Lefebvre