That happy circumstances including, I suppose, the fact that half the world was enslaved by communism at the time.
In the daily exercise of our pastoral office, we sometimes have to listen, much to our regret, to voices of persons who, though burning with zeal, are not endowed with too much sense of discretion or measure. In these modern times they can see nothing but prevarication and ruin.
Those lousy pessimists. They'd probably talk about disconcerting facts, like how upwards of 50 million people had been murdered by communists, or how the Church was being persecuted in communist nations. They'd probably even go around calling the 20th the "bloodiest of centuries." Whatta buncha nay-sayers!
They say that our era, in comparison with past eras, is getting worse,
Indeed! you don't say!
and they behave as though they had learned nothing from history, which is, none the less, the teacher of life.
Every day, in every way, things are getting better and better.
They behave as though at the time of former Councils everything was a full triumph for the Christian idea and life and for proper religious liberty.
They'd probably bring up how every previous Council had some DOGMATIC issue that needed to be settled, unlike this purely "pastoral" Council.
We feel we must disagree with those prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand.
Oh, those doomsayers! They'd probably predict that after the Council, Mass attendance would plummet, vocations would dry up, thousands would leave the priesthood and religious life, the culture would become flooded with drug usage, divorce, homosexuality, etc. They'd probably even imagine that abortion would become legalized in practically every corner of the globe, with 1.5 million dying each year in the US alone. Not to mention the universal acceptance of contraception. I wonder if any of those Gloomy Gusses prophecied that soon Islamic Terrorism might become a major threat?
Lucky for us how Pope John XXIII paid them no heed, having been illuminated by that Flash of Light!
When the fruits of our faith are missing, or are bad, whether collectively or in our own lives, we can be certain we are not following the teachings of the Holy Father and the living magisterium. When we do our own thing, follow our own private judgment, or confect personal theologies, we must stagger from the Way and become prodigals.
Today the media, and not a few of those interested parties who make a veritable living looking for dirt in the Church, would give the impression that the Church is altogether rotten; and there is clearly little or no effort on their part to make distinctions. The propagandists and professional dirt diggers---whether secular or “Catholic“--- find nothing good in her. Conspiracy theorists and Church haters bend and assimilate all facts, whether good or bad, into the press of their sad dark intentions. If it is not their way, it is the highway. All is yellow to the jaundiced eye.
Forgotten are the “7,000 who have not bended their knee to Baal.’ In the case of the Church it is not merely 7,000, of course, but countless numbers of the faithful. These are often the quiet ones, the ones who draw their inspiration from the teachings of the Holy Father and from the Holy Eucharist. The ones---priests, religious and so many laypersons--- who stand on the abortion lines, give bread to the homeless in city shelters, the ones who nurse the physically and mentally ill, and those who work for peace and justice beyond stereotypical party lines and in accordance with papal social teachings.
When the Church---and that means us---goes astray it is hardly because we have implemented the teachings of the Holy Father. Rather, the proof is in the pudding; and it does not take close scrutiny to see that rebellion against Christ’s Vicar or ignorance is at work; most often rebellion, I am sorry to say.
When liturgy is bad, you can be certain that the directives of the Holy See have been flouted, often with contempt. When morality collapses in our lives you can bet our prayer life, confession, and the determination to fan the flame of grace within us collapsed first. When Neo-modernists or Integrists end up in de facto or canonical schism you can bet the farm that they have rejected Catholic dogmatics for their own private judgment. Bizarre shades of Luther live in such circles aplenty today whatever their garb.
But the answer suggests itself; there is a cure for what ails us so profoundly today: loving obedience to the teachings of the Holy Father and living magisterium. If we keep our feet on the Way mapped out by Jesus, we may stumble but we will arrive at our destination, blaming only ourselves and not the Truth for our weaknesses and failures. The Truth is there to guide us, a lamp for our feet in a time of dark clouds and Night. Our Lord said “Hear the Church,” (Lk 10:16).
The so-called progressives rebel because their notion of the Church’s God is one of a tyrant. They think the Church proclaims a God who looks more like the old KGB than the God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ Who is Mercy itself, our heavenly Father. So they scruple and then take out the scissors and paste via the devices of so-called historical criticism and vainly seek to refashion a Christ and faith according to their own fallen image, until they have “another Christ,” and “another Gospel” (2 Cor 11: 4).
Their cure must be found not in evasions but in acknowledging divine Truth and especially the truth of mercy which is the very “Good News,” the Gospel.
God is not a tyrant who seeks to ambush or squash us. He understands the stages in human development and psychology (a sin at 14 is probably not as culpable as a sin at 34; weakness is not necessarily wickedness; all other possibly mitigating circumstances too) and he runs out to meet us with liberal forgiveness when we get up, acknowledging the Truth and our own weakness or rebellion---"Against thee only have I sinned," said David after he sinned.
Sin is a part of the existential human drama toward salvation. St. Therese of Lisieux even thanked God for her faults, for they taught her wisdom toward salvation. All have sinned and fallen short of God's glory, the scripture tells us.
Only despair or contempt for the Truth can destroy us. God is not an unreasonable tyrant careless of human frailty, and even if our sins are as scarlet, the Lord desires to erase them and make us “whiter than snow,” wash us clean, and set us on the Way again.
Integrists, on the other hand, rebel because today is not yesterday. They cannot understand why everyone doesn’t prefer the Tridentine era Mass, and in a fit of angst and anger they begin confusing the accidents of liturgy for the Substance, and begin to usurp authority, finally taking shots at the Eucharist itself, and at the Pope, the magisterium, and Second Vatican Council, rather than at the real abuses which are in essence, as Cardinal Ratzinger has said so often, anti-conciliar, anti-papal in nature. Thus they end bizarrely like Luther in Catholic costume, playing pope, pitting popes against popes, magisterium against magisterium, until they inevitably split off even from each other in endless ripple-schisms as in Protestantism, having fallen off the only Rock and principle of Catholic unity.
Or they form the most bizarre and incongruous unions against their critics in violation of the law of contradiction, combining SSPX’ers, TFP’ers, Feeneyites, John Birchers, Sedevacantists, Old Catholics and so many others sects which agitate against the Church.
The cure for these is to see how absurd it is to blame the Holy Father and living Magisterial for the consequences of the failure to heed the teaching of each. Their cure is to trust in the promises of Christ (Mt 28;20), in the divine “whatsoever” (Mt 16:18) which Christ bequeathed to the Petrine Church alone. For no error or abuse or storms can checkmate the Holy Spirit!
Bad fruits, then, are the the consequence of rebellion against divinely constituted authority. That is the sad truth and spectacle of our time. But it also suggests the way out, the way to bring good out of our evils: Judgment is intended to be atonement and purification. Purification cannot come without pain. But it will come for the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church. And we are safe, despite all storms and despite our human fallenness, only in her bosom. In her, even in the midst of grievous storms we swim; part from her we must sink of our own doing. And that is more tragic even than sins.
24 Jesus told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 26When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
27 "The owner's servants came to him and said, 'Sir, didn't you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?'
28 " 'An enemy did this,' he replied. "The servants asked him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up?'
29 " 'No,' he answered, 'because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.' "
The Parable of the Weeds Explained
36Then he left the crowd and went into the house. His disciples came to him and said, "Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field."
37 He answered, "The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. 38The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, 39and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.
40 "As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.
Moral for this time: I think JPII looks at matters from the supernatural perspective. He knows what confusion would have been sown among "the least of these," in the pews had he provoked the "progressives" by removing notorious leaders years ago. The media---dissident and secular--- would, for example, have made Archbishop Weakland an instant martyr. As it is, look what they must consider now---despite attempts at damage control. The tragic consequences are revealed and JPII seems more and more configured to the crucified Christ who told them so. One priest was surprised not too long ago to hear a seminarian ask incredulously, "Who is Hans Kung?" Had JPII excommunicated Kung instead of merely removing his credentials to teach Catholic theology as a Catholic theologian, the young man may surely have known who Kung was. Popes St. Pius X and Pius XII excommunicated very few and both were criticized by the Integrists of their time as weak for merely requiring oaths, writing encyclicals, changing appointments, etc. The Church acts very cautiously in this respect.
After writing the above, I found this thoughtful analysis which underscores the above better:
"SO, IF THE SITUATION in the Society of Jesus is really as McDonough and Bianchi describe it in "Passionate Uncertainty," why doesn't the pope intervene and make radical changes? Two reasons suggest themselves. On the one hand, the attitude of Pope John Paul II towards religious congregations, female as well as male, is somewhat Darwinian. He is content to let the healthy groups prosper--Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity are a parade example--while letting the unhealthy ones die out of their own accord, like sick caribou amid the permafrost. On the other hand, recent popes have judged the political cost of intervening to reform failing congregations as excessive in view of the likely benefits to be gained. A close analogy can be drawn with the moles that surfaced in the British Secret Service in the 1950s. Their treachery was known long before action was taken against them; bit by bit they were denied access to sensitive material, simply so that they'd have less to betray. In the same way, and for the same reasons, the popes have declined a dramatic showdown with the new Jesuits, preferring instead, without calling attention to the fact, to give the really important business to more dependable agents." ---- Are the Jesuits Catholic? A review of "Passionate Uncertainty" by Paul Shaughnessy, Weekly Standard