Posted on 05/11/2015 7:05:51 AM PDT by BlatherNaut
Those who wish to apply a 'hermeneutic of continuity' to Vatican II, or who deny that there can be any opposition or rupture between the documents of that council and Catholic tradition, or who claim that the assertion that the authentic teachings of Vatican II formally contradict the tradition of the Church is false, might consider the following passage from the council's pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes:
Gaudium et Spes 24: 'Quapropter dilectio Dei et proximi primum et maximum mandatum est.'
For non-Latinists, this claim (it is a complete sentence in the conciliar document) can be translated as follows: 'For love of God and of neighbour is the first and greatest commandment'. No Latin is needed to realise that this is a flat contradiction of the teaching of Christ. There is a deliberate allusion in Gaudium et Spes 24 to the wording of the divine teaching it is contradicting, as can be seen from looking at the Vulgate text of that teaching:
Matthew 22:35-39: "Et interrogavit eum unus ex eis legis doctor, temptans eum; 'Magister, quod est mandatum magnum in lege? Ait illi Iesus: 'diliges Dominum Deum tuum ex toto corde tuo, et in tota anima tua, et in tota mente tua. Hoc est maximum et primum mandatum. Secundum autem simile est huic: diliges proximum tuum, sicut teipsum.'"
This text from Gaudium et Spes suffices to prove that the teachings of the Second Vatican Council are not without error, and that fidelity to Christ's teaching requires that parts of it be rejected. It is also a fruitful starting point for reflection and investigation into the ideology and motivations of the progressive leadership of that council, and into the degree to which the Council Fathers as a whole accepted their responsibility for preserving the divine deposit of faith. (This text was pointed out to me by a Catholic professor of theology who must remain anonymous.)
[The above is a personal assessment by the author and does not indicate any opinion of this blog or its contributors.]
"And one of them, a doctor of the law, asking him, tempting him: Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets".
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Gaudium et Spes #24: "God, Who has fatherly concern for everyone, has willed that all men should constitute one family and treat one another in a spirit of brotherhood. For having been created in the image of God, Who "from one man has created the whole human race and made them live all over the face of the earth" (Acts 17:26), all men are called to one and the same goal, namely God Himself.
For this reason, love for God and neighbor is the first and greatest commandment. Sacred Scripture, however, teaches us that the love of God cannot be separated from love of neighbor: "If there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.... Love therefore is the fulfillment of the Law" (Rom. 13:9-10; cf. 1 John 4:20). To men growing daily more dependent on one another, and to a world becoming more unified every day, this truth proves to be of paramount importance.
Indeed, the Lord Jesus, when He prayed to the Father, "that all may be one. . . as we are one" (John 17:21-22) opened up vistas closed to human reason, for He implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and the unity of God's sons in truth and charity. This likeness reveals that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself."
Sounds exactly like how a Modernist would render Christ’s words.
Isn’t that supposed to viewed in light of this:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+13%3A9-11
and:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+13:34-35
And what about GS 38:
38. For God’s Word, through Whom all things were made, was Himself made flesh and dwelt on the earth of men.(10) Thus He entered the world’s history as a perfect man, taking that history up into Himself and summarizing it.(11) He Himself revealed to us that “God is love” (1 John 4:8) and at the same time taught us that the new command of love was the basic law of human perfection and hence of the worlds transformation.
To those, therefore, who believe in divine love, He gives assurance that the way of love lies open to men and that the effort to establish a universal brotherhood is not a hopeless one. He cautions them at the same time that this charity is not something to be reserved for important matters, but must be pursued chiefly in the ordinary circumstances of life. Undergoing death itself for all of us sinners,(12) He taught us by example that we too must shoulder that cross which the world and the flesh inflict upon those who search after peace and justice. Appointed Lord by His resurrection and given plenary power in heaven and on earth,(13) Christ is now at work in the hearts of men through the energy of His Holy Spirit, arousing not only a desire for the age to come, but by that very fact animating, purifying and strengthening those noble longings too by which the human family makes its life more human and strives to render the whole earth submissive to this goal.
But anyway, Vatican II also made the proper distinction without hesitation:
“6. Let those who make profession of the evangelical counsels seek and love above all else God who has first loved us (cf. 1 John 4:10) and let them strive to foster in all circumstances a life hidden with Christ in God (cf. Col. 3:3). This love of God both excites and energizes that love of one’s neighbor which contributes to the salvation of the world and the building up of the Church. This love, in addition, quickens and directs the actual practice of the evangelical counsels.” Perfectae Caritatis, 6. October 28, 1965.
It’s kind of funny to see the author writing about this as if no one took notice of this before. I know it’s mentioned - and not as if it were controversial - in an article in the book, “The Great Oneness Under the Sky: International Symposium on Religious Culture and Ethics, 1998 Beijing, China” which was published in 2000.
Marie-Dominique Chenu, famed professor of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum was influential in the composition of Gaudium et spes.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s he became involved, as a friar-preacher, in the nascent worker-priest movement, and its attempts to evangelise the anti-clerical industrial suburbs of Paris. Eventually, in 1953, Chenu was among the French Dominicans disciplined by the Master of their Order, Suárez, supposedly to save them from worse treatment by the Vatican.[9] He was expelled from Paris and moved to Rouen, only being allowed to return to the Dominican convent of Saint-Jacques in Paris in June 1962.
Chenu was invited to be a peritus, or expert, at the Roman Catholic Second Vatican Council (1962–65) where he was influential in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et spes).
Influence
Chenu was a forerunner of the ressourcement in theology that preceded the reforms of Vatican II. Chenu played a large role in the reappropriation of historic theological sources that led to the nouvelle théologie. In particular he promoted the return to Thomas Aquinas as a source but rejecting 19th century “modern scholastic” theology.
Although his book Le Saulchoir: Une école de la théologie was put on the Index librorum prohibitorum in 1942 by Pope Pius XII and the Holy Office, because of its then progressive ideas about the role of historical studies in theology, he was later exonerated and his theology embraced by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council.
Liberation Theology
Father Chenu can be credited with being the grandfather of the liberation theology movement since Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez of Peru, who wrote the first book on Liberation Theology, studied with Chenu at the Institut Catholique de Paris, and cites him numerous times in his ground breaking book. Also now at the end of his life and having been hounded by the Opus Dei Cardinal of Peru, Gutiérrez chose to move to France and become a member of the same Dominican community that Chenu belonged to.
In addition, Pere Chenu was teacher to the American Dominican Matthew Fox, since expelled from the order by Cardinal Ratzinger and now an Episcopal priest, who is recognized as the launcher of the creation spirituality movement. It was Pere Chenu who introduced Fox to that tradition and who supported Fox for many years upon his return to America. Thus Chenu can also be called the grandfather of the creation spirituality movement. This movement puts Original Blessing ahead of original sin, is feminist, earth based, eco-based, works with and not in opposition to science and marries deep mysticism with prophetic action.
Gaudium et Spes: For this reason, love for God and neighbor is the first and greatest commandment.
But anyway, Vatican II also made the proper distinction without hesitation:
It's an enormous stretch to justify a recasting of our Lord's own words in "Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World" by invoking "The Adaptation and Renewal of Religous Life", a different document entirely . If references in Perfectae Caritatis are intended to provide clarification to Gaudium et Spes, such is not made clear to the reader.
It’s kind of funny to see the author writing about this as if no one took notice of this before. I know it’s mentioned - and not as if it were controversial
Clearly it is controversial. In fact, characterizing a distortion of Christ's own words in an official Council document as merely "controversial" is fairly mild. It is reasonable to wonder why Our Lord's words were recast in this document, particularly in light of Cardinal Kasper's recent statement. Cardinal Kasper said, in regard to the council documents: "In many respects, they had to find compromise formulas, where, often, the majority of the positions are located immediately next to those of the minority, designed to delimit them."
“It’s an enormous stretch to justify a recasting of our Lord’s own words...”
Show me where I did that. Why would you make a false claim like that? Hold whatever opinion you want, post those opinions freely, but DON’T SAY I SAID SOMETHING I NEVER SAID.
See post #5.
Post #3, taken in its entirety, is a weak apologia for the controversial language in Gaudium et Spes #24.
“See post #5.”
I did. That’s why there’s a post #6. Are you having difficulty following this?
“Post #3, taken in its entirety, is a weak apologia for the controversial language in Gaudium et Spes #24.”
I made no “apologia”. Again, I ask you point blank WHERE did I EVER make “an enormous stretch to justify a recasting of our Lord’s own words”? WHERE? The simple fact is I NEVER DID WHAT YOU ARE SAYING I DID. DON’T SAY I SAID SOMETHING I NEVER SAID. Do you understand?
Sure was.
Compounding the weakness of the apologia with angry denials in caps...
“Compounding the weakness of the apologia with angry denials in caps...”
In other words, you can’t show where I said it because I never did. That was obvious from the start.
See posts #3, #6, and #8.
“See posts #3, #6, and #8.”
In other words, you STILL can’t show where I said it because I never did. I never said what you FALSELY accused me of saying. That’s not going to change.
CCC 2464 The eighth commandment forbids misrepresenting the truth in our relations with others. This moral prescription flows from the vocation of the holy people to bear witness to their God who is the truth and wills the truth. Offenses against the truth express by word or deed a refusal to commit oneself to moral uprightness: they are fundamental infidelities to God and, in this sense, they undermine the foundations of the covenant.
Exactly. That applies to those who play word games to avoid owning their own arguments.
Again, see post #3.
“Exactly. That applies to those who play word games to avoid owning their own arguments.”
And that is not me here.
“Again, see post #3.”
Again, you failed to show where I ever did what you claimed. There is nothing in post #3 that says what you claimed I said. You can keep saying “see post #3” but no matter how many times anyone looks at it it will still never say what you claim I said.
For this reason, love for God and neighbor is the first and greatest commandment.
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