Posted on 05/13/2002 6:27:38 PM PDT by Siobhan
Money is only money. Councils are called for reasons of doctrine such as the Council of Trent (known as the Counterreformation Council) called almost 150 years after Luther tacked his theses to the cathedral door at Wittenberg when immediate enthusiasms had passed and a due period of deliberation had been afforded. The First Vatican Council of the mid-19th Century defined the long-held internal Church belief in the doctrine of infallibility.
When Vatican II was improvidently called by the overly optimistic John XXIII (who would not, at his age, have to live with the consequences as have many of us), he proclaimed a desire to open the windows of the Church to allow the fresh air to enter in a "spirit of aggiornamento". This was basically a way of saying that 1960s liberals and worse, Catholic style, had a lot of itches that wanted scratching after orthodox pontificates such as those of Pope Pius IX (1846-1878), Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903), Pope St. Pius X (1903-1914), Pope Pius XI (1923-1939) and Pope Pius XII (1939-1958). The only relief that the liberal termites had was the pontificate of Pope Benedict XV (1914-1923) who cancelled improvidently the anti-modernist loyalty and purge requirements of Pope St. Pius X. Even Benedict codified Canon Law although his legacy is that he gave the modernist heretics the little hidey hole that allowed them to survive.
Well, John XXIII opened the windows and the aroma of sanctity wafted out the windows to be replaced by the stench of multiplying incestuous heresies festering just beneath the surface (which had been too fearful of Pope Pius XII to show their ugly heads in public within the Church) and the licentious Gramscian obsessions polluting the modern world outside the Church.
In the early part of his pontificate, Pope Paul VI observed publicly as to the result: "The smoke of Satan surrounds our altars." Let it be observed that Paul VI, while sound enough on birth control to reject an initiative by a committee appointed by his predecessor and to issue the encyclical Humanae Vitae to rule out artificial birth control once and for all (largely written by a then obscure Polish Archbishop Karol Wojtlywa who is now John Paul II), was nonetheless a raging liberal in Church terms.
It was only with the election of Albino Cardinal Luciani, Patriarch of Venice, as Pope John Paul I and his very short but orthodox pontificate and the election of John Paul II and his long pontificate that orthodoxy began to be restored. The next pope's prime challenge is the complete restoration of orthodoxy. When the Church is orthodox, money and vocations flourish. No one wants to fund or make lifetime commitments with real sacrifices to a Church whose leaders grovel before the trend of the week.
Pope John Paul II has appointed a College of Cardinals who will see to it that his papacy will be followed by one which will enthusiastically take up the task of purging the clergy of the net results of the Woodstock moral mud bath that was the legacy of "the spirit of Vatican II", including so many sexually disordered people who have infested the seminaries and the rectories and even many chanceries here since.
In short, a Church council is an extraordinary event which ought not to be called any more often than absolutely necessary (marked in centuries normally, not years) and then only to confirm aggressively some long-held doctrine of strictly orthodox purpose not yet formally defined and then promulgated only with the specific approval of the pope.
The bishops are not some sort of board of directors or some sort of legislature. They are more like executives who are successors of the apostles (who did not make moral decisions by democratic vote) who usually have diocesan responsibilities to govern. As the performance of some of them remind us, Judas too was an apostle. Fortunately, as with the original 12, predominantly we have John the Evangelist or James the Greater or James the Less or Andrew. We always have at least one Peter emulating his good behavior and very rarely his human weaknesses, but always Peter.
As to mere lawyers in a feeding frenzy, we need not fear them any more than we needed to fear Stalin, Hitler, Nero, Caligula, Diocletian or others far more capable and dangerous than mere lawyers or judges or their transitory nations, for that matter. We can see both the forest and the trees.
The two columns were the Eucharist and the Blessed Virgin. St. John Bosco said of the two columns: 'the two columns of salvation seem to be devotion to Mary Most Holy and to the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist' & "The most serious trials for the Church are near at hand. That which has been so far is almost nothing in the face of that which must befall. Her enemies are represented by the ships that tried to sink the principal ship if they could. Only two means are left to save her amidst so much confusion: DEVOTION TO MARY MOST HOLY and FREQUENT COMMUNION, making use of every means and doing our best to practice them and having them practiced everywhere and by everybody."
Mary, Queen of all saints, pray for us.
I'm not sure that what passes for the Church in America SHOULD survive in its present form. It would perhaps be a mercy should it be put out of its misery. It can't be resurrected if it doesn't die.
Please do not misunderstand the above statement. Many good and faithful Catholics attend Mass in beautiful traditional churches and have wonderful pastors who teach and preach from the pulpit and live out their lives in holiness and sacrifice. These, in my opinion, are NOT AMERICAN Catholic churches. They are Roman.
Mary, Queen of All Saints, pray for us.
FYI, here are their texts:
We covered almost all these topics in our Catholics Can Come Home series of six classes that is ending next week.
We have people dealing with the marriage and annulment issues and returing to the church. The book Catholics Can Come Home Again is by Carrie Kemp.
It's what I would call a caricature.
That, too.
It's amazing what some think passes as "reverent," ecclesial "art."
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