Three Temptations to Resist During the Synod [Catholic Caucus]

During the next three weeks many of us will encounter the paradoxical mystery of the Church, in all Her strength and weakness — the paradox, as Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI expressed it, of the holiness of Christ that radiates from the midst of our sin. And we must be clear here, over the next three weeks we will not only witness the sin of those who seek to overturn our Lord's sacred doctrine on marriage and sexuality, we will also experience our own weakness to sin. Confronted with the egotism, pride and vanity of those who seek to compromise, and even corrupt, the splendor and saving goodness of divine truth, we must guard ourselves against our own temptations to sin. I don't write from some detached perspective but as someone who struggles against the same temptations.

There is a lot of rage out there about the Synod in the blogosphere and social media among Catholics who clearly love the Church and take seriously the obedience of faith. I've even read comments wishing ill towards other "liberal" Catholics, including physical harm. The most shocking example I've come across was a Catholic tweeting their hope that Pope Francis' refusal of security would result in a successful attack on him! One of the dangers of social media is that anonymity encourages some individuals to gravely sinful thoughts and expressions.

I understand why faithful Catholics feel anger and even hatred suddenly flare up in their hearts on hearing yet more examples of bishops, priests and lay activists betraying the Faith and leading souls into moral danger. Moral theology tells us that anger and hatred are passions which are natural movements of the psyche in reaction to injustice and evil. It is good to hate our own sins and natural to feel anger at the murder of unborn babies through abortion. The Catechism states:

In the rage I see expressed in some Catholic blogs there is not a spontaneous or passing passion. Instead, given the constant expressions of anger and hate the activity of the deadly sin of wrath must be considered. The seven deadly, or capital, sins are vices that impair conscience, corrupt judgment and entrap the person in a vicious cycle of sin. Wrath, like lust or envy, is rightly called deadly because it eats a person up so that rage comes to dominate their response to life. How can we tell the difference between rightful anger and deadly rage? Apart from duration, there is a spitefulness and vindictiveness in wrath, as if the person took gleeful delight in expressing anger. The antidote to wrath is the virtue of mercy and forgiveness, which should not be confused with laxity or indifference in the face of sin and betrayal of the Faith.

I feel I must make one qualification about the question of anger and Catholic blogs, based on my personal experience of running Protect the Pope.com. Dissenters, and those who don't want to face reality in the Church, often make accusations of anger, ad hominem attacks and "lack of charity" against faithful Catholic bloggers when their dissenting and erroneous arguments and dubious decisions are critiqued from the perspective of faith and reason. By so doing they seek to portray robust argument and rational challenge as "sinful" in order to avoid answering just criticisms. Criticism that is fair and reasoned should not be mistaken for rage or disingenuously undermined by suggesting it is an ad hominem because the truth it contains feels unpalatable.

During the pontificates of Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, it was common to read and hear dissenting Catholics express disdain and crude disrespect towards these two great popes. Signs of disrespect included omitting the titles "Pope" and "Holy Father" or their chosen name as Pontiff by referring to them as "Wojtyła" and "Ratzinger." In this way dissenting Catholics signaled a number of attitudes and decisions, including their refusal to acknowledge Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI's authority or role as successor to St. Peter, and their dissent from the doctrine and discipline of the Church proclaimed and defended by them. But more than this, I think these expressions of disrespect towards Pope St. John Paul and Pope Benedict manifested the dissenters' rejection of authority in the Church in favor of autonomous freedom and their rejection of the "obedience of faith" in favor of so-called "pick and mix" or "à la carte" Catholicism.

It is incredible to see the same spiteful expressions of disrespect being written and spoken by some "faithful" Catholics against Pope Francis. It is common to read on Catholic blogs Pope Francis referred to as "Bergoglio," "Frank" or "Frankie." And like the dissenting opponents of Pope Francis’ predecessors such Catholics are signalling that they reject Pope Francis’ authority and role in the Church as the successor of St Peter.

This is a totally bizarre attitude for Catholics who seek to be faithful to Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium to adopt towards the 266th Pontiff of the Catholic Church and successor to St. Peter. The basic attitude expected of faithful Catholics towards Pope Francis is first and foremost one of respect and reverence. The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, explains this fundamental disposition:

It is clear from the Catholic understanding of the Primacy of the successor of St. Peter that it is contrary to the Faith handed down to us from the Apostles to express disrespect towards the Pope. Having said this, showing respect and reverence towards the office of the Roman Pontiff does not exclude critical engagement with Pope Francis' teachings and judgments. In fact, Pope Francis has gone out of his way to signal that much of his teaching, such as his daily meditations during Mass at St. Martha's and even some of his apostolic documents, are not to be treated as magisterial.

The latest eruption of heresy among some bishops attending the Synod, such as proposals to allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion and unqualified affirmations of homosexuality and fornication, is breaking the hearts of faithful Catholics. But instead of taking our concerns seriously, we're often dismissed as "fundamentalists," "rigorists" and "hardliners" because we think the Church should proclaim the revealed truths entrusted to us by Our Lord to save us from sin and attain eternal life.

I get a sense that some faithful Catholics, worn out after decades of enduring either dissenting bishops and priests or ineffectual bishops and priests, long for freedom from the cruelty of heresy and the indifference of some of our shepherds. I've noticed that sometimes this longing for freedom expresses itself in talk of schism as a solution. It seems to me that some faithful Catholics are discussing the possibility of schism for two reasons:

First, on a general level, talk of schism is an articulation of the hope that if only we could be free of all the dissenting and heretical Catholics we could live in the Church as God intended. Often schism is the desperate action of Christians who seek to purify the Church because they've lost hope that things can be different. We can see the consequence of this type of thinking in the hundreds of thousands of Protestant ecclesial communities that have fractured from the heresy and schism of the Reformation.

Secondly, on a specific level, some faithful Catholics are talking about the possibility of schism as a "what if" scenario: What if the Synod of Bishops in October recommends to Pope Francis, and the Holy Father accepts, some formula of words that allows divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion after observing some form of Cdl. Walter Kasper's "penitential way"? Such a decision on the part of the Holy Father and Synod of Fathers would represent an unprecedented, many would say unimaginable, action — the betrayal of the categorical doctrines of Our Lord and Apostles on the indissolubility of marriage, the immorality of adultery, abandonment of children, and offenses against the sanctity of the Blessed Sacrament. Concerns about schism are heightened by the fact that the Instrumentum Laboris — the working paper for the 2015 Synod — includes Cdl. Kasper's proposal (paragraphs 122–123) even though it failed to gain the necessary two-thirds majority vote during the 2014 Extraordinary Synod.

But to contemplate schism as an acceptable "option" is to forget that it is a grave sin against the Faith that deserves the severest penalty of excommunication. The prospect of inflicting "a wound to the unity of the Body of Christ" (CCC 817) should fill us all with a sense of horror. It's painful enough knowing that our personal sins inflict the wounds on Our Lord's crucified body, but to even contemplate the hypothetical scenario of another wound to the Mystical Body of Christ is heartbreaking.

As faithful Catholics, we are living through difficult times during which the Faith is not only under constant attack from secularism but also the Faith is under direct attack from certain cardinals, bishops and priests within the Church. The challenge for faithful Catholics is how to challenge these attacks without losing our souls, or those of others. If we succumb to habits of thought and expression that are sinful, then we do more harm than good, not only to ourselves and others but to the Church we love.

At times like this it is important to recollect that — according to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI — the holiness of the Church is not the holiness of individuals, but is the unmerited, divine gift of holiness in the midst of human unholiness. The Church is not called "holy" in the Creed because we are holy or sinless, but because God exerts His holiness in Her in spite of our sinfulness (Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity). We don't deserve it, we've done nothing to merit it, but because He loves us so much God chooses again and again as the vessels of His holiness "the dirty hands of men." The holiness of Christ radiates from the midst of our sin. We must hold onto the hope expressed by the late Cdl. Avery Dulles, "even a deficient Church, if it humbly acknowledges its own unfaithfulness and its need for penance and reform, can continue to bear witness to the Lord."

The Roman Catholic Church is marching down the same path to ruin as the mainline Protestant churches. It is being brought down by the evil from within that has wormed its way into positions of leadership and influence over many decades. The pace of destruction is increasing; the RC Church will be unrecognizable in the 22nd Century.

"...Temptation to Disrespect Towards Pope Francis..."

He has shown himself, in my opinion, to prefer to adopt the characteristics of a politician, rather than those of a Pope.

3 posted on 10/04/2015 9:01:53 PM PDT by rlmorel ("National success by the Democratic Party equals irretrievable ruin." Ulysses S. Grant)

Temptation to Schism

The deacon, and his sponsor, Michael Voris, have it backwards. It is Francis, Baldiserri, Bruno, Marx, Maradiaga, Wuerl, O'Malley, etc., who are facilitating a schism.

Good riddens to all of them.

Such a decision on the part of the Holy Father and Synod of Fathers would represent an unprecedented, many would say unimaginable, action — the betrayal of the categorical doctrines of Our Lord and Apostles on the indissolubility of marriage, the immorality of adultery, abandonment of children, and offenses against the sanctity of the Blessed Sacrament.

"Such a decision on the part of the Holy Father" would mean that HE himself had chosen schism -- NOT those of us who remain faithful to the teachings of Christ, to the Deposit of Faith and Morals, and to the teachings of ALL previous popes in regard to the sanctity of marriage.

"Such a decision on the part of the Holy Father" would indicate that HE had chosen schism -- NOT those Catholics who remain faithful to the teachings of Jesus Christ, to His Deposit of Faith and Morals, and to the teachings of ALL previous popes.

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