Sunday 15 March 2015

Following Christ or the World? A Tale of Two Gospels.

Lifesite news (here) brings us a report of two Cardinals who have been speaking recently in England.
Voiceof the Family relates Cardinal Burke observing that western cultures are profoundly confused and in error about the fundamental truth of marriage and the family, and that this confusion has entered the Church.

“In a world in which the integrity of marriage has been under attack for decades, the Church has remained a faithful herald of the truth about God’s plan for man and woman in the faithful, indissoluble and procreative union of marriage. In the present time, certainly under pressure from a totally secularized culture, a growing confusion and even error has entered into the Church, which would weaken seriously, if not totally compromise, the Church’s witness to the detriment of the whole of society.” (here)

The Telegraph reports on Cardinal Tagle:

 “Part of it is also the shifts in cultural and social sensibilities such that what constituted in the past an acceptable way of showing mercy...now, given our contemporary mindset, may not be any more viewed as that.”
He said that the past approach in Catholic schools and other institutions had often been to dictate rules and tell people that they were “for your own good”.
“Now with our growing sensibilities, growth in psychology, we realise that some of them were not as merciful,” he said.

Certainly social trends change, and our understanding of humanity develops, but the Gospel which must be applied in new trends and new understandings is always the same Gospel and always seeks to bring wayward sheep back to the Truth. It does not seek to accommodate the errors of the wayward sheep. Indeed, to seek to modify the living-out of the Gospel and its teaching in light of contemporary trends and understandings is to see the world as a source of on-going Revelation.

When Vatican II asked us to read the signs of the times (Gaudium at Spes 4) it did so in order that we respond “in language intelligible to each generation...”. It did not ask us to follow the times in which we live. This is what many of our shepherds, of both Episcopal and Presbyteral rank, are seeking to do. They seem to have lost sight of the fact that “the Church maintains that beneath all changes [in society -GD] there are many realities which do not change and which have their ultimate foundation in Christ, Who is the same yesterday and today, yes and forever.” (ibid. 10) Indeed, the new movements in human wisdom are to be moderated by the Gospel: man “must be penetrated by the spirit of the Gospel and protected against any kind of false autonomy. For we are tempted to think that our personal rights are fully ensured only when we are exempt from every requirement of divine law. But this way lies not the maintenance of the dignity of the human person, but its annihilation” (ibid, 41).

I think the core problem in the Church during the last fifty years is that of the Church’s shepherds allowing the world to teach the Church; an error by which they have sought to modify the living-out of the Gospel so that the Church is seen as modern; as ‘up-to-date’ as the social trends and psychologies of the day. This is an abandonment of the Gospel and Christ by following contemporary ideologies. It has been painted as a growth in mercy, but that is an erroneous and dangerous depiction: highlighting even the central focus of the Gospel (mercy) to the detriment of each of the Gospel’s intrinsic parts (repentance, conversion, justice) is to be unbalanced and make mercy meaningless; mercy becomes a jigsaw piece without the rest of the jigsaw. Mercy only makes sense after repentance and conversion, or it is simply ignoring the sin –and endangering the soul.

There is no other way of saying it: modification of the Gospel by contemporary philosophies and ideologies leads inexorably to the overthrowing of the Gospel. As has been stated by the Anglican Clergyman William Ralph Inge, “He who marries the spirit of the age is destined to become a widower in the next”.

Our shepherds are in danger of poisoning the sheep in their care (the Church herself will not fed us the poison but individual shepherds may mistaken;y do so) and need to remember that we have been given a Deposit of Faith that is unadulterated Truth and that their task is to hand it on, not sit in judgment over it. They may claim not to be doing any judging, but by refusing to pass judgment on the lifestyles of today in accord with Divine Revelation they are inevitably passing judgment on Christ, His Gospel and His Church as it has existed over the last 2000 years. They have stopped judging the world (to which we do not belong cf. Jn.15v18-20; Jn.17v14; Jas.4v4; 1.Jn.4v5; ) and taken to judging Christ in His Church and His teaching (Lk.10v16). To alter the lived Gospel according to human ‘wisdom’ of social trends and contemporary psychology is nothing less than to reject what God handed to us for safe keeping 2000 years ago. It is also, inherently, to seek to teach God: “Your Gospel is a little bit wrong; your Church has been a little bit wrong. Today, we can get it right”. There is no development here in the sense of deepening the Church’s teaching consistent with what has gone before, but a distortion of its teaching; a distortion which demonstrates a profound arrogance.

Sadly the modifying-approach is one favoured by many in the very highest echelons of the Church. Yet even if their approach were to be favoured by the majority (and even by a Pope), the reality is that Truth remains Truth and error remains error, and to contaminate Truth with error is to poison the Lord’s sheep (whom He feeds with Truth, Matt.4v4; Jn.21v17). As Archbishop Fulton Sheen said, “Error is error even if everyone believes it, and Truth is Truth even if no one believes it”. Simply stated, even a majority can be in error; deceived by the Father of Lies (Gal.1v6; 2Cor.11v4; 1Jn.2v18-20). If individual members of the Catholic hierarchy feed us what is not True we shall –even if without malicious intent on their part- be poisoned.

Claims that we can change discipline without changing doctrine are poisonous because they are wrong: doctrine forms practice and practice lives out the doctrine; they are two sides of the one coin. We cannot split the coin in two, re-shape one side and say it still fits with the other half; we simply cannot have a coin which is circular on one side and hexagonal on the other. Those who propose changing discipline but not doctrine (those who claim to be able to change one side of a coin but not the other) are either lacking in their Catholic Faith or in intelligence (or are simply deceitful) because no such coin can exist and they either do not see this or will not admit it. In either case, they cannot be given our confidence.

I understand the desire to have all men become aware of their dignity and value before God; and I agree that we should avoid heartlessly offending people in ‘irregular lifestyles’ (occasions of sin) but surely we want to inform them so that they are challenged by Truth, and turn to a lifestyle in harmony with the Truth? After all, Truth alone sets us free from the grasp of Satan and the self-rule he initiated in us at the time of the Fall (Gen.3v4-6).


Finally, I cannot see the supposed pastoral problem as set out in the question, ‘how do we help those in irregular situations (occasions of sin) feel welcome?’ We already welcome them: we encourage them to join us in our worship and trust themselves to the mercy of God; we encourage them to continue with acts of charity; to continue to join us in our social life, on our pilgrimages and in our devotional life. They are not excluded from the community. But let us be clear: they have knowingly and willingly chosen to live out a lifestyle or life situation they knew would exclude them from the Sacraments, and if we are really going to affirm them in their choices, then we must respect their choice to forgo the Sacraments, and encourage them to do the same. Those who seek to admit them to Holy Communion are not helping them but harming them and their chances of salvation by affirming them in their error and the abandoning of the Truth, which is Christ.

11 comments:

  1. That is very well said, indeed....could this be delivered to all participating Cardinals before the October Synod??

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    1. Thank you, E.M.,
      I think deep down the Cardinals and Bishops know it, but they are ignoring it in order to appear compassionate and modern to a faithless, confused world.
      God Bless.

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  2. Well said, Fr.

    "I understand the desire to have all men become aware of their dignity and value before God..."

    Yes indeed, but I wonder if those who propose these new "pastoral" solutions really stop and think what they are saying about human dignity? So often they come out with sentiments like: "Living by the commandments is too heroic for the average layman these days - we should not demand too much of them." "We should not expect people to choose good when everyone around them is choosing evil - its too hard to go against what the rest of society thinks." By trying to change the Church's discipline to accommodate those who live in sin, they excuse it by saying that these people have not freely chosen the state of life in which they live, and have had no choice about the moral decisions they make. They are treating them as slaves to their own passions, or slaves to the flesh, who deserve to be shielded from the consequence of their decisions because they didn't really have any free choice in the matter. The pastoral modernisers actually dehumanize the people they profess to serve, by treating them as mindless automatons who have no free will of their own to choose between good and evil. In contrast, the humane approach is to treat people with the dignity of rational, free and responsible human beings who are capable of accepting the consequences of the choices they make.

    By accommodating sin and affirming people in their sin, they are not only binding them to the chains of their sin for the rest of their earthly lives, but they are helping to destroy everything that we believe about the dignity of the human person made in the image and likeness of God. They are helping to dehumanize human nature itself - if that were possible. Wittingly or unwittingly, who is it that they really serve?

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    1. Thank you, Deacon Augustine,
      Indeed, the pastoral shepherds' are binding folk in the chains of their sin, and abandoning them to their passions. Anyone can fall into following their passions and sinning, but Confession and a determination to give up sin is always available, even if shepherds are not promoting it, which they ought to out of true compassion and care for souls.
      God Bless

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  3. Fr., Have you seen Edward Pentin's latest blog about the theological consultants who were appointed to the Synod on Saturday? Not a few worldly types it seems:

    http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/is-the-synod-secretariat-stacking-the-deck-again/

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  4. Another good one, Father...you elaborated the problem much better than my own recent post, but I think we hopefully charted a parallel course, nonetheless.

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    1. Thank you david,
      I would say we each present the problem in terms we think makes sense; none better, none worse.
      God Bless.

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  5. Father,

    You explain the current crisis in the Church so well. If only more priests did so, but I find still an embarrassed silence. As for saying anything about Truth and what it means in practise, nothing. The sermon I heard on Sunday was a investigation of obscure Old Testament texts, interesting, but given that the Catholic Church is collapsing around us, in my part of the world at any rate, hardly appropriate. Frankly I suspect it would have puzzled even a traditional Protestant congregation.

    The post-sixties changes in society can now be seen a a missed golden opportunity for the Catholic Church but we mucked it up and instead went along with the ”new” but actually very old ideas to a dangerous extent - and still are, if anything more so.

    I remain deeply suspicious of this new interpretation of “mercy”, and the desire to get everyone, yes everyone trooping up to receive the Eucharist, regardless

    I suspect the real target of so many who are behind this drive, is the Real Presence itself. Devalue it and it, make it just routine, and that's it!

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    1. Thank you, Jacobi.
      Mercy is indeed without limit, but the door by which it enters the soul is repentance, conversion and recompense. Unless that door is opened mercy cannot enter the soul, but the presentation of mercy today seems to be that the door does not need to be opened: It is a kind of mercy in which God forces salvation on souls not willing to repent.
      God Bless.

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  6. Father, this post demonstrate once again that you have a firm grasp of the spiritual crisis gripping the Church in the West. The heading should read "Follow me Jesus: A tale of two Churches." In an era when secular culture is increasingly hostile to traditional spirituality, and Catholic culture has all but collapsed, the Church's shepherds seems all confused about God, His truth, Grace, doctrine, and sin. No wonder Catholics have exited the pews. Some of these leaders, especially in Australia, for years now, have been administering their dioceses from a position of utter spiritual bankruptcy. Any lay person who tries to tell them this is labelled a lightening rod of division, fomenting discord and treated by them and their bureaucracy as the enemy.

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    1. Thank you, Greg.
      The crisis is in western culture, and the Church is wavering because she is trying to accommodate the changes that have put western culture into crisis. that crisis is, at its core, a crisis of the family, springing from the ideology of autonomy (relativism/subjectivism) and self-fulfilment.
      God Bless

      Delete

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