Posted on 03/19/2015 10:10:13 AM PDT by BlatherNaut
…….and I must say, he does so perfectly. Via Vox Cantoris, the highly influential Fr. Tom Rosica, whose career has really taken off since March 2013, had this to say about how doctrine can evolve. It is as good an encapsulation of the modernist mindset as I have seen:
Will this Pope re-write controversial Church doctrines? No. But that isn’t how doctrine changes. Doctrine changes when pastoral contexts shift and new insights emerge such that particularly doctrinal formulations no longer mediate the saving message of God’s transforming love. Doctrine changes when the Church has leaders and teachers who are not afraid to take note of new contexts and emerging insights. It changes when the Church has pastors who do what Francis has been insisting: leave the securities of your chanceries, of your rectories, of your safe places, of your episcopal residences go set aside the small-minded rules that often keep you locked up and shielded from the world.
If I had the time, I would fisk this sentence by sentence. What makes a Church Doctrine controversial? Who says a particular 2000 year belief is “controversial?” Fr. Rosica? Simply because Catholics in great numbers reject it, does that make it controversial?
As for the rest, the “pastoral contexts” shifting and “new insights” emerging……he is describing the text of Pascendi perfectly, but taking the opposite viewpoint, that such shifts in belief are wonderful. He also shows us the modernist game plan quite clearly: use pretended changes to “mere discipline” to advance changes in understanding of the Doctrine, and then over time bend the watered-down meaningless doctrine to the new pastoral approach. See the Episcopal Church USA, Presbyterian Church USA, and Evangelical Lutheran Church of America to see how that works out over time. Doctrine comes to mean nothing – so long as the offending doctrine is obnoxious to progressives. If it is favorable to them, such as the grave evil of defrauding the workman of his wages or evils of rapacious forms of capitalism, then that will remain as carved in stone, if not more so.
Doctrine, then, becomes just another tool in the service of progressive politics. Yes that’s a harsh assessment, but one of the prime reasons modernism developed in the first place – probably the prime reason – was to try to reconcile the Catholic Faith with the progressive political outlook, but as always with the left, with the progressivism ascendant. Modernism was simply one of the early attempts at this reconciliation. The neo-modernism we are plagued with today is its direct descendant. And the revolution which struck the Church in the 60s, long simmering under cover, can be viewed (if not entirely accurately) as simply a another leftist political revolution. One reason why so many people fall into the error today of viewing the Church through a political lens is because so many elements within the Church have become profoundly politicized in the past 50 years. That’s a major reason I oppose the hulking lay bureaucracy that has grown up over the past 50 years: not only is it incredibly expensive, unnecessary, and actually counterproductive in so many instances (bureaucracies being always first and foremost concerned with their own survival and aggrandizement), but it is also represents a huge political base within the Church Herself.
I’m getting a bit far afield, but all these matters are tied together. No I should not unduly stress the political angle but I think it also a mistake to ignore it. That political angle explains the hypocrisy in this dithering with sacred Dogmas – some remain sacred and inviolable, because they are favorable to the leftist viewpoint, while others must be undermined, changed, or obliterated. Reducing Church belief to the service of sordid worldly politics has always been a grave danger to the Church, and it has been a key player in many heresies: Arianism, Nestorianism, and others. We should not be surprised that it would be deeply involved in this the great modernist revaunchist heresy of the 20th and 21st centuries.
This comment is powerful and exactly spot on the mark. I and many others fought many battles in the Episcopal Church to try to stem the tide of modernist revisionism. We lost most all of those battles but Our Blessed Lord has already won the war for us. The apostates in the Episcopal Church don’t yet know it though.
I see the same process now taking place in the RCC. I pray for them as we all should (knowing full well I’ll be savaged by some here on FR for saying so) for if Rome goes the way of TEC and other Prot. mainline bodies, the lot of the Christian will become much, much more difficult in this world.
The early heretics were bishops, what does that tell you about today?
Good Post, Thanks
Note the adjective in the very first sentence; "controversial". Get the message here? "Controversy" demands action. Some Church doctrines are just counterproductive. They anger people and get in the way of true evangelization. They're just too outdated and don't talk to modern man. We need to address this "controversy"; we gotta do something. There's a word for this mindset; it's called compromise. Jesus becomes no longer a sign of contradiction (Luke 2: 34) but a sign of compromise.
Aren't essentially all Church doctrines "controversial" to somebody, starting with the very existence of God Himself? The Trinity, eternal damnation, miracles, the need for repentance......it's all "controversial", isn't it? And increasingly so with every passing day.
When one starts to address "controversial" doctrine and attempts to adapt it to "different pastoral contexts", where does one begin? With which controversial doctrine does one start and even more importantly, where does it all end?
It doesn't, does it?
Ultimately it ends in spiritual destruction.
"This is Antichrist, who denieth the Father, and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father. He that confesseth the Son, hath the Father also. As for you, let that which you have heard from the beginning, abide in you. If that abide in you, which you have heard from the beginning, you also shall abide in the Son, and in the Father."
I'm not sure if this is what he was referring to, but I notice that the two main topics are political: abortion and gay marriage. It's as if most Catholics only see these two topics as the moral issues of the Church. Similarly, when criticizing Church hierarchy Catholics mostly focus on their words and actions with respect to these two issues.
In reality, the issues are much more than that and they don't recognize that.
Father Rosica says non serviam.
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