Posted on 12/06/2024 4:33:16 PM PST by ebb tide
As discussed in previous articles, Benedict XVI condemned the “Council of the media” in his final address to the clergy of Rome on February 14, 2013. In that address, he directed almost all of his attention to discussing Vatican II and its implementation, differentiating between the bad “Council of the media” — that had “created so many disasters, so many problems, so much suffering” — and the “real Council,” which was finally emerging to bring forth “true renewal of the Church.”
Among the many intriguing aspects of Benedict XVI’s address was his discussion of how the evil “Council of the media” had promoted the ideas of those who sought “decentralization of the Church”:
“It was a political hermeneutic: for the media, the Council was a political struggle, a power struggle between different trends in the Church. It was obvious that the media would take the side of those who seemed to them more closely allied with their world. There were those who sought the decentralization of the Church, power for the bishops and then, through the expression ‘People of God,’ power for the people, the laity. There was this threefold question: the power of the Pope, which was then transferred to the power of the bishops and the power of all – popular sovereignty.”
When he spoke of the “power struggle between different trends in the Church,” it is evident that he was talking about the tension between those seeking to conserve some semblance of Catholic tradition and the innovators who were pushing for the more revolutionary developments that we have seen from Francis. For those who have followed the developments of Francis’s Synod on Synodality, a few concepts from Benedict XVI’s words likely sound familiar:
These are some of the most crucial characteristics of Francis’s new Synodal Church, in which truth is discerned through a process of listening to the “People of God.” The Synodal process is the ultimate possible decentralization of authority.
Francis’s discussion of the “Magisterial” aspect of the Final Document adds another element to the decentralizing process in the Synodal Church.
Francis’s November 25, 2024 “Note to accompany the Final Document of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops” describes how this process of decentralization will look in practice:
“The Final Document also contains indications that, in the light of its basic orientations, can already now be implemented in the local Churches and groupings of Churches, taking into account the different contexts, what has already been done and what remains to be done to learn and develop ever better the style proper to the missionary synodal Church. In many cases, it is a matter of effectively implementing what is already provided for by existing law, both Latin and Eastern. In other cases, it will be possible to proceed, through a synodal discernment and within the framework of the possibilities indicated by the Final Document, to the creative activation of new forms of ministeriality and missionary action, experimenting and subjecting experiences to verification. In the report envisaged for the ad limina visit, each bishop shall take care to report what choices have been made in the local Church entrusted to him in relation to what is indicated in the Final Document, what difficulties have been encountered, and what the results have been.”
Thus, the “local Churches and groupings of Churches” are free to interpret and implement the contents of the Synod’s Final Document at their own speed, or not at all. Ultimately, the “Bishop of Rome” and his Synodal hierarchy have merely provided some ideas for consideration and will leave it to the local laity, priests, and bishops to discern how to respond.
Francis’s discussion of the “Magisterial” aspect of the Final Document adds another element to the decentralizing process in the Synodal Church:
“The Final Document will form part of the ordinary Magisterium of the Successor of Peter (cf. EC 18 § 1; CCC 892), and as such I ask that it be accepted. It represents a form of exercise of the authentic teaching of the Bishop of Rome, with some novel features but which in fact corresponds to what I had the opportunity to point out on 17 October 2015, when I stated that synodality is the appropriate interpretative framework for understanding the hierarchical ministry.”
So Francis states that the Final Document is authentic teaching of the Bishop of Rome and then “asks” that it be accepted, with the obvious meaning that members of his Synodal Church may choose to not accept it. This is the new norm in the Synodal Church (which is an inversion of the Catholic Church): the pope offers his opinions and ideas and lets the actual decision-making process flow down to the People of God.
Ironically, Benedict XVI helped give these revolutionaries one of their key weapons, as Peter Seewald noted in Volume I of his biography of Benedict XVI: “. . . Ratzinger’s dissertation on the term ‘people of God’, would be echoed strongly in the documents of the Second Vatican Council.”
Benedict XVI clearly understood that certain forces were trying to exploit Vatican II’s ambiguities to advance the features that we now see with the Synodal Church, which is why he identified the “decentralization” objective as a goal of the evil “Council of the media." Ironically, Benedict XVI helped give these revolutionaries one of their key weapons, as Peter Seewald noted in Volume I of his biography of Benedict XVI:
“. . . Ratzinger’s dissertation on the term ‘people of God’, would be echoed strongly in the documents of the Second Vatican Council.”
The concept of the “People of God” has been indispensable in building the new Synodal Church. In the Final Document, for example, we read the following:
So all the baptized are members of the “People of God,” which is the “Synodal Church.” As such, all validly baptized people are members of the Synodal Church.
On the most basic level, we can understand Benedict XVI’s criticism of the movement to “decentralize” as a condemnation of the essential framework of the Synod on Synodality.
We can readily notice how different this understanding is from Benedict XVI’s discussion of the same term in his final address to the clergy of Rome:
“These, let us say, were the two basic elements – and in the meantime, in the quest for a complete theological vision of ecclesiology, a certain amount of criticism arose after the 1940’s, in the 1950’s, concerning the concept of the Body of Christ: the word ‘mystical’ was thought to be too spiritual, too exclusive; the concept ‘People of God’ then began to come into play. The Council rightly accepted this element, which in the Fathers is regarded as an expression of the continuity between the Old and the New Testaments. In the text of the New Testament, the phrase Laos tou Theou, corresponding to the Old Testament texts, means – with only two exceptions, I believe – the ancient People of God, the Jews, who among the world’s peoples, goim, are ‘the’ People of God. The others, we pagans, are not per se God’s People: we become sons of Abraham and thus the People of God by entering into communion with Christ, the one seed of Abraham. By entering into communion with him, by being one with him, we too become God’s People. In a word: the concept of ‘the People of God’ implies the continuity of the Testaments, continuity in God’s history with the world, with mankind, but it also implies the Christological element. Only through Christology do we become the People of God, and thus the two concepts are combined. The Council chose to elaborate a Trinitarian ecclesiology: People of God the Father, Body of Christ, Temple of the Holy Spirit.”
One can sense that Benedict XVI had a great intellectual passion for this notion of the “People of God,” and would have gone to great lengths to promote it. Unfortunately, the Council’s revolutionaries appear to have valued the concept solely as a means to get away from the “too spiritual, too exclusive” teaching about the Mystical Body of Christ, whose members are limited to actual Catholics.
On the most basic level, we can understand Benedict XVI’s criticism of the movement to “decentralize” as a condemnation of the essential framework of the Synod on Synodality. On a more complex level, though, we can see how the revolutionaries might have manipulated Ratzinger in certain ways to allow his intellectual authority — and, eventually, hierarchical authority — to give credence to the building blocks of the Synodal Church. In any case, Benedict XVI’s final address to the clergy of Rome gives us yet another reason to condemn Francis’s unholy Synodal Church. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!
Ping
Francis seems to want the Church to aline itself to become a Presbyterian type religious organization. Francis seems to want the new Church to associate itself with the New World Order/One World Gov’t by picking and choosing what teachings of Christ that would support this dogma.
Kinda weird that the current pope is a protestant. I recently checked out after my priest’s homily mentioned climate change and a pro-illegal-immigration stance. I go to Church to escape “the world” not to hear leftist propaganda
He is not a protestant...he is just a communist.
Oh but he is fully rcc, he has been baptized, catechized, and picked by the unholy cardinal leadership to be the very best you romans have to offer, and yes by you very catechism he is fully roman catholic as much as you are.
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