Posted on 04/28/2005 2:00:04 PM PDT by franky
Infallibility has its limits
By MARIO CUOMO
Many of us who cling desperately to our Catholic Church for instruction, inspiration and support prayed that a new Pope would help heal the church's serious wounds and reconnect it more surely to modern realities.
Instead, the cardinals have chosen a good and holy man who, we are told, rather than reform the status quo will reaffirm it more insistently than before. The current challenge of the church is twofold. First, it must continue proclaiming the unalterable and unchallengeable truths of Christ, instructing us to love one another as we love ourselves and to collaborate in improving the world that God created but did not complete. That includes the obligation to be generous to those in need, and to avoid unjust and unnecessary wars that kill innocent people.
To deny these eternal and unchangeable truths of Christ is to renounce the Catholic Church. The second challenge is to reassess the alterable rules made for us by the male descendants of Peter who were and are humanly frail, as he was, and to readjust those rules to better serve the purpose of helping modern Catholics to live fuller and holier lives in this ever-changing world.
This would include, among other things, reconsidering celibacy, women's role in the church and other contentious man-made church policies. The church can do this without abandoning its fundamental commitment to the Gospel of Jesus, and has in fact done it in the past in changing its position on slavery, usury, salvation outside the church and divorce. The church is extremely hesitant about using or even defining the idea that it is "infallible" in its teaching. None of the currently contentious issues has been so designated. In fact, the church asserts its infallibility only under strictly defined limits, and it has happened very few times in church history. The only formal exercise of papal infallibility in modern times was by Pope Pius XII and dealt with Mary, the mother of Christ.
Despite this history, our new Pope's record and the opinion among Vatican watchers offer little hope for meaningful changes or even for a clear admission that its man-made rules are indeed alterable by the church that made and enforces them. But then, ours is a church that continues to entertain the possibility of miracles, big and small and is capable of startling and invigorating changes of course like the ascendance of John XXIII, who gave us the Second Vatican Council that brought Catholicism a bright new enlightenment in the 1960s. Hope springs eternal.
Cuomo, former governor of New York,practices law with Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP.
April 27, 2005
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/col/story/304330p-260394c.html
New York Daily News
Where he learned this stuff is beyond me. It is these views that has the Church realing. "...bright new enlightenment in the 1960s." To him, maybe?
Oh brother. Big Fat phony!
Huh?!...Is Mario articulating his own theology?
And how about avoiding abortions that kill innocent and "unnecessary" people?
I don't trust anything that man says. I haven't for a long long time.
Mario Cuomo is as Catholic as an eggplant is!
Yes and his reference to the Blessed Mother comes off very flat. "Mary, the mother of Christ" as if she was someone selected from a contest.
I noticed he avoided abortion and gays.
And another thing... sorry this struck a nerve. American Catholics think it's all about THEM. But the Church has many many more adherents, in Latin America, and Asia, and Africa. And the Church must remain faihtful to those followers as well as to the teachings of the past. Mario Cuomo and his ilk must realize the Catholic Church is bigger than their concerns for gays and abortion and women priests.
Looks like you answered your own question.
Mario "the Mouth", you have identified exactly why you are NOT a Catholic. The Church IS instructing you and you have rejected it. You should be ashamed. Time for you and your kind to either submit to the authority of the Church or leave and join the rest of the Protestants. You have a gazillion different denominations to pick and choose from if you decide to do that. Don't let the door hit ya in the a$$ on the way out!
If Cafeteria Catholics could choose their own Pope, Mario I would be a contender.
Sorry, abortion-boy, but the Church has never altered its teaching on slavery, usury, salvation outside the Church or divorce.
Keep dreaming, Mario.
Evidently these are somebody's (or some group's) talking points because I have heard the same stuff--in the same order--from the "progressive" crowd at various Catholic gatherings. Is this McBrien's work?
They are indeed talking points, and they all come from a single book: Rome Has Spoken - an anti-Catholic book by Maureen Fiedler and Linda Rabben.
Fiedler is a lesbian nun who is a longtime activist for the Women's Ordination Conference.
Linda Rabben is a non-Catholic lesbian Marxist sociologist who writes porn on the side.
They are both involved with an ongoing "Bible project" to provide a gay-friendly dynamic "translation" of the Bible.
The book is crammed with fabrications and embarrassing errors.
I'm sure Governor Cuomo, who owes his governorship to his own campaign workers' electioneering on Edward Koch's supposed homosexuality, has a signed copy of this farcical book in his personal library.
I'm pretty sure Jesus said, 'Go ye and conform yourselves to an ever-changing world.' It's in there somewhere, isn't it? Live according to the wisdom of the world. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I remember that one. The Gospel according to Mario.
You said:
Mario Cuomo and his ilk must realize the Catholic Church is bigger than their concerns for gays and abortion and women priests.
Yes. It's even bigger than they themselves!
Mario spent that whole two days of the conclave
waiting by the phone and is still miffed.
Yes. The theology of me. (btw, love your screen name :)
V's wife.
I love the way some people just make up their theology as they go. They deny the traditional teachings of the church, and then have the audacity to stand in judgment of what the church does.
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