Posted on 07/07/2004 7:16:03 AM PDT by ultima ratio
I admit I could be wrong about her. And you cannot blame a person for the way that she is later used by others after her death. But first of all, dying in a concentration camp does not make you a Catholic saint. I was glad to learn more about St. Maximilian Kolbe, for example, because at first it seemed as though simply dying in a concentration camp was the cause of his canonization. But after learning more, I realized that was the least of his claims to sanctity.
Secondly, it is well admitted by all that JPII creates these canonizations in order to have saints for various ethnic groups and causes. Like Blessed Gianna (or is she now St. Gianna?) being the patron of the pro-life movement. Edith Stein seems to be the saint of Jewish converts and the personalist philosophical movement. That doesn't mean that she wasn't truly holy, but it makes me suspicious.
I admit that I should look into her situation more deeply before passing any judgements, but I turned against her after hearing a program on EWTN with Alice von Hildebrand in which she made Stein into the patron saint of feminism. Perhaps that was a misrepresentation, but von Hildebrand is even considered a traditionalist, so I'm not sure why she would have exaggerated these things.
So this is, in many ways, a matter of taste.
So it's us, not God; WE'RE supposed to lead the Church--this is the literal sense of the passage.
No it isn't.
when I read it I see the words "route" and "path" not "lead" or "leader".
Christ went to the poor, the sick, the lame, those who were in their sins.
He followed the path of fallen man, healing them, succouring them, calling them to repentance.
If the Church is to emulate Christ's deeds then it emphatically means searching out the route of suffering humanity, not withdrawal from man and the world.
Sometimes if I think about it. I don't know why exactly they didn't make themselves more accessible to the common persons. Some of it was due to the court protocols of the times. Part of me thinks that they may have thought they were too high and mighty to rub elbows with ordinary people. It just wasn't done for whatever reasons.
Perhaps it wasn't appropriate for their role and position?
That's a human construct. Fortunately Jesus seemed to think differently. Going to the people was the norm for him. Sometimes it got to be too much and he had to break away. Sometimes the people came to him. It seemed to be a two-way street.
Were the previous couple hundred pope all wrong, and did this pope finally figure out the right formula?
I don't know if there is a right formula. It's not written in stone anywhere how a pope should relate to the people.
And if so, then when are we going to see the fruits of this new discovery about the pope's primary responsibility?
I think there are good fruits when you see how eagerly the people prepare for and welcome the pope on one of his visits. It sends the message that he cared enough to go out of his way for them. Maybe the pope likes all that. If it were me, I'd love to go on those jaunts, but I'd want to be able to wander off incognito and see the sights. The pope didn't get to do too much of that.
In former times, the exigencies of travel weren't something anyone could readily undertake. Travel was rigorous and took a lot of time out from one's schedule. Not that sleeping on a plane is good for anyone. The pope never seemed to suffer from jet lag. I almost envy him for that.
Having said all that, I don't think there is necessarily a right or wrong about the pope's going and coming. People probably think it's wrong because it's different.
I'm more concerned with trying to comprehend what he is telling us, and I must say most of it is confusing and some of it just plain doesn't make sense. But then I guess Jesus taught the common people in parables, and those didn't make sense to anyone except those who "have ears to hear."
Since I went this far, I will say that I don't see anything wrong with making teaching statements about the environment so long as it doesn't displace the other important things that need to be dealt with. In other times, environmentalism meant broken pottery and unsanitary cesspools, I suppose. Today some of the issues like pesticides, nuclear/toxic waste, etc., are real threats. If they impact physical life, there is somewhat of a corresponding impact on spiritual life. Monasteries are traditionally pretty environmentally-friendly places as well as spiritually-friendly places, unlike chamber pots that used to be dumped on city streets and what horses left behind. I don't think there was ever much said about any of that in the past though because it was biodegradable and nature took care of it. Nature takes too long to take care of plastic bags. I doubt if the pope ever went shopping and carried anything back to the Vatican in a plastic bag. I would like to see him do something like that, too. That's the kind of humanism I'm into.
I do think God said something in scripture about the environment. He said he would destroy those who destroyed the earth. He ordered human waste to be buried outside the camps. Jesus said that a sparrow didn't fall but what the Father knew. He said not to muzzle the ox while it is treading the whatever that process was called. He said not to wound animals in the legs. That tells me he is concerned about the creation as well as the creatures.
I'm conflicted and confused about some of the things he does and says, too, and this is my way of trying to sort it out.
I'm looking forward to new heavens and a new earth, but I think it is important to take care of the one we have now because if we don't, people and animals will suffer more than need be.
The Church has always done this.
Do you think that a King of France just happened to be canonized in 1297, precisely at the time when the German Emperor was preparing to seize Burgundy and when Pope Boniface was trying to get the French to intervene in Italy?
Probably not a coincidence, but St. Louis was a saintly man just the same.
I posted a "ping" to the article which mentioned only the philosophical issues and the fact that young people like Mario Derksen were putting such an incredible amount of effort into investigating these subjects. Neither the article nor my ping mentions the topic of sedevacantism. My statement that about Derksen's position on Wojtyla was simply to clarify the facts for someone (was it you?) who launched right into the sedevacantist issue.
Of course, but I don't think anyone was arguing that the Pope was commanding Catholics to commit sins.
But that's not the point is it? The point was whether a soldier has to wait for some higher authority before withholding his obedience. Thank you for admitting that you were wrong on that point.
But as far as whether JPII actually is "commanding Catholics to commit sins," for me the rubber really meets the road with the marriage issues. Since nearly every Catholic eventually ends up getting married, and sins in this realm are by definition "grave matter," any mistakes in this area lead straight to the brink of hell for the vast majority of Catholics. And in this realm I believe that the phenomenological personalism of JPII (and others) has undermined all 3 of the foundations of marriage: fruitfulness, faithfulness and permanency.
1. He has taught "responsible parenthood" involving "family size regulation" through natural rather than artificial means, instead of the traditional Catholic teaching of generosity, fruitfulness and reliance on God's divine Providence.
2. He has undermined the "order of love" which provides the structure of marriage by denying the Catholic teaching on wives' submission to the authority of their husbands.
3. He has presided over an unprecedented explosion of annulments, which has resulted directly from his personalism, according to Msgr. Cormac Burke of the Roman Rota. Catholics are now divorcing in equal numbers with non-Catholics under the confident assumption that they are virtually guaranteed an annulment.
These are the sorts of things that originally made me come to the realization that I could not obey what he taught. God made the eternal salvation of the souls of my wife and children my responsibility, and I realized that following his new model of marriage would be fatal. I had to discover traditional Catholic marriage philosophy as articulated, for example, in Casti Connubii.
And lest you think that JPII's teachings on marriage are not contradictory to Casti Connubbi and other traditional Catholic teachings, just the other day on this forum Bai MacFarland was taking me to task for not changing my view on marriage to be consistent with the current pope. She said that wives' submission to their husbands used to be the teaching of the Church, but now the current pope has changed that doctrine and that all Catholics are required to change their view to coincide with his new understanding. She, by the way, is the wife of Bud MacFarland, the founder of Catholicity, and they are in the process of getting divorced.
No, I read what the Pope writes in the context of Church Tradition, rather than with an automatic hermeneutic of suspicion.
If the pope writes something that seems odd, I ask myself - "does this have an orthodox interpretation?" I don't think - "Hmm, this sounds odd, therefore the Pope is an apostate and not really the Pope."
The Pope is a legitimate object of charity as well.
"Or kiss the ring of the Archbishop of Canterbury who lacks any standing as a real cleric?"
You might add the picture of JPII kissing the Koran. Can you imagine what the response from the folks on this site would be if the pope had kissed Archbishop Lefebvre's ring?
In my own personal case it was the other way around. I was more than happy with JPII's "different" way of doing things for the first decade or two of his pontificate. I went to his Mass at Aqueduct racetrack in 1994. That experience was a big disappointment, but I didn't blame him at the time. It was only when I finally realized that something was fundamentally wrong that I started to re-consider all these various aspects of his pontificate like his globe-trotting visits around the world.
Sorry -- where does GS say that man's the measure of all things, etc? I'd really like to know. As a matter of fact, I took the VII documents to bed with me last night on a quest to become better acquainted with them.
I won't give you any argument about the disastrous practical consequences of the Council, but I'm interested in exploring charges against the Council itself -- the documents.
This is true up to a point. If a pope who is clearly an orthodox Catholic writes something that is ambiguous, then one is required to give him the benefit of the doubt and interpret it in the most charitable possible way. But after 40 years of the "post-conciliar Church," and after 40 years of the "new springtime of the Faith," and after 40 years of deconstructing Catholicism and replacing it with an ersatz substitute, then one has to come to the conclusion that this or that statement is not merely less than clear, it is part of an overall program.
The pope has been eminently clear that he does give 100% support to the new model of the Vatican II Church. When he was invited by his hand-picked interviewer to offer even the tiniest reservation or criticism of Vatican II, he resolutely declined. So one must interpret his statements within that context, the context he himself has established.
This is too big a topic to take up on this thread, but I come down firmly on the side that the fault lies in the documents themselves, not in their implementation. As you take these documents to bed and read them, tell yourself, "I am a member of the Consilium like Rembert Weakland [shudder], or I am a member of the ICEL like Fr. Stephen Somerville, and I am committed to a process of "creative destruction" on the model of the Hegelian dialectic. What do these documents tell me? Do they give me permission to undertake a full-scale 'auto-demolition' of the Catholic faith?"
Viewed from that perspective, which is the perspective of the people whose first action at the council was to throw out the schema prepared by the curia and substitute their own agenda and their own documents, it soon becomes clear that the documents of Vatican II gave them carte blanche to replace Catholicism with a new religion.
"She said that wives' submission to their husbands used to be the teaching of the Church, but now the current pope has changed that doctrine and that all Catholics are required to change their view to coincide with his new understanding."
Max,
can you give an citations to support her assertion. Thanks.
I hear you. Even apart from the scandals, there is something else that just doesn't seem like the way things should be going. I'm all for a kindler, gentler church, but not at the expense of compromising the gospel.
I applaud the church for holding the line on certain issues, unpopular though they may be in some quarters; however they seem to look the other way when it comes time to do anything in the way of discipline that will make people sit up and take notice and understand that this is not merely church gobbledygook as some political figure put it re his annulment. I think it was some Kennedy.
Most of what gets said goes in one ear and out the other and the people are starving, but to the point that they are anorexic and in denial.
Sometimes ultima ratio hits the nail on the head, so I cannot dismiss his post as mere rantings of a schismatic.
On another thread there is another discussion about something the church has been too permissive about imo, and in trying to come to terms with it, what do I find but a book I would like to read. I think the author is one of those wayward traditionalists, Vennari. Can I find anything about the subject by a respected novus ordo priest? Nyet. Zero. Zip. Nada. Or affirmation. Nothing about the potential dangers and to the effect that maybe they ought not to be allowing it. Like a novus ordo nun once told me, "Just because the church allows it doesn't necessarily mean it is a good thing." She also told me to throw Father Gobbi's book away which was good advice and I got rid of it. But what to replace it with?
Back to the trad book. Traditionalists to the rescue about some issues that happen to matter very much for me. The official church? Mostly silence and permissiveness. Draws the crowds. That's not the way things ought to be. There are some of us who yearn for purity in our religion if it can be had.
When the anser comes back as no, then what?
The winner in the first race that day was Montini who was ridden by Annibale Bugnini and trained by Angelo G. Roncalli. Unfortunatley after a stewards inquiry, Montini was disqualified for interference.
Regarding what she meant when she said that the current pope has changed the teaching on submission in marriage, you might want to read this article by Robert Sungenis:
Does St. Paul Teach “Mutual Submission” of Spouses? A Critical Analysis of Mulieris Dignitatem
Is this what you are referring to?
Most likely. So you disagree with Alice von Hildebrand's take on Stein, at least as I understood it (i.e. she should be the patron saint of feminism)?
If I couldn't construe it in an orthodox sense (and this is a hypothetical), I'd have to remember that I'm neither a theologian nor a pastor, and that I should study more and be humbler rather than condemn the Pope out of turn.
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