Vatican II’s Key Document on the Nature of Church Authority – “The Second Vatican Council document articulates the proper relationship between papal authority and the authority of bishops, individually and collectively.” In the Era of Synodality, ‘Lumen Gentium’ Delivers a Key Message About Episcopal Authority (National Catholic Register)
Abortion Industry Lies – “Unlike miscarriage, abortion directly and intentionally kills an innocent child who is living, growing, and developing.” Democrat Activists Exploit Tragic Miscarriages Like Mine To Sell Abortions (The Federalist)
Assaulted by Trans Activists – ” Possibly letting any man who says ‘I’m a woman’ into the locker room with twelve-year-old girls could have a downside, after all?”J.K. Rowling’s Status (X)
Betrayal of the Vulnerable – “On Friday, 29 November 2024, MPs in the United Kingdom voted in favour of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill.” ‘One of the greatest betrayals of the vulnerable in society in recent history”: can the assisted suicide Bill be stopped? (Catholic Herald)
A Syrian Refugee Crisis – “Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, has been captured by a jihadist group as part of its offensive against the government of Bashar al-Assad.” Christians Under Threat After Syria’s Second City Falls Into Islamist Hands (The European Conservative)
Russia’s Imperialist Tradition – ” Whether under the Grand Duchy of Moscow, the Tsars, the Soviet Union, or the Russian Federation, Russian imperialism stems from three factors: the idea of Russia as the “third Rome,” the experience of Mongol occupation, and the country’s geography.”Byzantine Christianity, Mongol Autocracy, and Geography: How Imperialism Came to Define Russia (Providence)
Brave Enemy of the Chinese Government – “Lai’s testimony in court has highlighted the unswerving determination of this heroic Chinese Catholic to tell the truth — no matter the personal cost.” Jimmy Lai, Witness to Truth (National Catholic Register)
Hopeful Anticipation – “C.S. Lewis said about Christian hope, ‘It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next.'” Lectio Divina – First Sunday of Advent – Year C (Agapao)
Shallow Christian Exposure – “How do you teach Christian basics to those who think they know all about it?” Why We’re Failing to Pass on Christianity (Plough)
The Right-to-Life Plank – “The unfortunate revised stance of the GOP threatens the historical (but always tenuous) pro-life position of the Republican Party.” Safeguarding the Republican Right-to-Life Agenda (Catholic Culture)
(*The posting of any particular news item or essay is not an endorsement of the content and perspective of said news item or essay.)
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One of the main reasons we are failing in faith is inferiority complex. Another main reason is dullness of perception. A thrid main reason is straight ill-will and prejudice against faith. Speaking about the Shallow Christian Exposure phenomena.
The constant harping on “women” and “freeing women” and “elevating women” and “breaking the glass ceiling-height” originates not from apostolate but from secular forces with their own agendas. It also serves a purpose of implicitly contradicting Christianity in general and Scripture and Tradition when these become the target. The “women” issue then gets absorbed into Church considerations some clergy find useful to accept and prolong without distinction which is exceedingly disruptive among laity.
Re #3 Assaulted by trans activists – article over at National Catholic Register.
Kudos to J.K. Rowling.
@ Vatican II’s Key Document on the Nature of Church Authority
My comment about Chapp’s COLLEGIALITY keys off of Vigano’s very recent letter charging that the Church, even in Vatican II, is being replaced by Hegelianism.
Such that the agenda is to reduce the institutional Church (Lumen Gentium and Chapp’s collegiality) and even the Deposit of Faith to a thesis in tension with an antithesis, so as to resolve into an historically new synthesis pointing toward autonomous national bishops’ conferences. Not quite so Hegelian, but instead, the permanent Church and the Deposit of Faith are to continue to exist, but now ALONGSIDE as an abstract of virtual Church within a concrete and real Synod/church.
Other than Hegelianism, then, there are other versions of the so-called “principle” that “time is greater than space.”
Might we suspect that the tension is as actually stated—between the so-called “abstract” and the so-called “concrete,” such that ecclesial and especially moral decisions now can be made 51% pastorally? A DISPLACEMENT, then, of Veritatis Splendor (VS)—as the “thesis”. Not quite the same thing as Hegel with the “Spirit” as a product of broad historical evolution. Instead, with the “spirit” as a calculation within each collective individual (human “being”?). Note that prior to VS, even Gaudium et Spes still reaffirms the “permanent binding force of universal natural law” (n. 79).
Unlike Hegel, the Pope is not a systematic thinker. He takes each case individually by “looking him in the eye”—and then systematically (!) ignores his critics.
It’s never a denial of the Deposit of Faith (and morals), and more like a mutation from Pope John Paul II’s morally-contexted “The Acting Person.” Amnesia, as toward the “backwardist” interior memory of what it is to be CREATED originally by God rather than 51% by oneself and others “walking together” synodally within history. Never quite Vigano’s charge of heresy, but as Cardinal Muller concluded in a First Things article, even the intricate Fiducia Supplicans still only “enables” heresy.
In these globalized and nearly impossible times, TODAY’S CHALLENGE for the perennial Catholic Church is how to render the truth about both God and Man—really, the truth of the Incarnation as a singular and concrete (!) “event” within history—in terms that touch the ground in a post-Christian and polyglot world when no one even understands the Christian vocabulary.
SUMMARY: Adding to Chapp, then, VATICAN II at least set the stage by distinguishing Lumen Gentium from the “distinctive” role of the laity to leaven the world (Gaudium et Spes). In more recent years, then, the Catholic Social Teaching (CST) has been consolidated (the Compendium, 2004) as centered on the “transcendent [!] dignity of the human person”—each person with BOTH an historical role and an irreducibly personal and eternal destiny…
All of the CST is an unfolding of this “principle”—which is NOT “time is greater than space” and which is NOT abstract, but which is as concrete as the historical and historic event of the Incarnation itself, or Himself!.
Re: Lumen Gentium and the nature of Church authority:
Whatever the technical aspects of bishops’ authority may have been pre Vatican II, in my memory the bishops of the 1950’s exercised more independent authority than bishops do today.
We now have bishops being told what their parishes can put in their bulletins, many restrictions on the TLM in their dioceses, bishops removed with little or no legal process, a “bishops” synod where priests, nuns and laity have equal voting rights, and on and on. I don’t know if it is correct to say that the USCCB has taken some of the individual bishop’s authority, or that the individual bishops have surrendered some of their authority to the USCCB.
I think of it like our president and his relationship to congress. Congress may be an equal branch of government, but the president can do very much on his own through executive orders.
Overall, a good summary of the current situation.
@ Russia’s Imperialist Tradition
Author Simon Maas is a student of international relations at St Andrew’s and shows it by citing the Fall of Constantinople 1492 [Columbus and America] rather than its actual 1453 date. Although that error is frequented by historians who are interested in presenting an idea rather than facts.
Although basically he unfolds a well known account of the Third Rome [Rome, Constantinople, Moscow] idea and Russian vision of a Messianic destiny [Bulgarian clergy allegedly brought the idea to Moscow]. Maas covers the interesting process of presumed divine destiny of Russia relating it the the Soviets idea of world domination and its relation to the Mongol autocracy Russians experienced when conquered, and adapted when free.
Maas rightly poses the historical divine destiny mentality to Putin and Russia, as do many including our politicians, cultural theorists. Despite alleged evidence found in Putin’s writings. My contribution to the discussion is the imminent danger of self fulfilling prophecy on the part of the West. We should ask, Does Putin have a legitimate historical interest in Ukraine? Does Western involvement in the Maidan Revolution pose a legitimate concern as a threat to Russia? We defeat our own purpose of a just resolution to the conflict if we lock ourselves into the Rus expansionist idea rather than a sober fact based assessment.
Good questions to raise, Father Peter, esp. as we are now on the cusp of WW3.
There is a mystery about Russia, but one that, viewed in its current tendencies, is more a mystery of goodness than a mystery of iniquity. The latter is found more within the West and its idol the state of Israel.
@ Vatican II’s Key Document on Church Authority
“Bishops, to use a common metaphor, came to be viewed as little more than branch managers of ‘Catholic Inc,’ with the pope as an all-powerful CEO” (Chapp).
While it’s true Lumen Gentium accentuates the episcopal dimension of teaching and governing, the crux of the controversy of authority is to what extent does that prospective authority may veer from what a pontiff or pontiffs have declared on the matter? Freedom remains within the institution of hierarchical authority as given us by our Church founder, Christ.
Synod on Synodality appears to take an independent authority of the bishop to an extreme. Again, the question and correct answer is fundamental. Neither bishop nor pontiff is permitted to stray from Apostolic doctrine.