Princeton University law professor Robert P. George
Posted on 11/20/2014 2:42:16 PM PST by Mrs. Don-o
ROME — So far, Pope Francis’ most significant internal opposition has come from conservative Catholics alarmed over what they see as playing fast-and-loose with Catholic doctrine. This week, however, an all-star lineup of conservatives gathered in Rome has come to the pope’s defense.
“I am a conservative politically,” said Princeton University law professor Robert P. George, considered one of America’s most prominent Catholic commentators. “But I’m a Pope Francis Catholic, which is simply to say that I’m a Catholic.”
Harvard law professor and former US Ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon echoed the point.
Saying she dislikes ideological labels, Glendon nonetheless acknowledged that she fits the spectrum of “conservative,” yet said she’s never doubted for a minute Pope Francis and where he’s leading the Church.
“He’s said from the beginning, ‘I’m a son of the Church’. I believe he’s a very honest man who speaks from the heart,” Glendon said. “And his heart is in the right place. What you see is what you get.”
Glendon was named to a supervisory board for the Vatican bank by Pope Francis.
George and Glendon were in Rome this week for an interreligious colloquium called “Humanus,” reflecting on the idea of “complementarity” between men and women from the perspective of 14 different religions.
Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput, usually recognized as a strong conservative leader who also attended the Rome conference, told Crux that the problem isn’t the pope, but those interpreting him.
“It’s misinterpretation, but there’s also baiting by people on the other side,” he said.
According to Chaput, who will host the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia next September with Pope Francis in attendance, one side of the ideological spectrum is accusing the other of not loving the pope enough.
“They want to make it a problem,” he said.
Chaput said the only political perspective that ought to matter is “the ideology Pope Francis has spoken about, the ideology of the Gospel.”
As for the pontiff’s visit to the United States next year, Chaput said it will be an extraordinary moment of grace.
“We [in the States] always say that we desire to live in the shadow or shade of St. Peter, and the pope is the successor of Peter,” he said. “When he comes, he brings that grace with him.”
The key idea of the three-day colloquium at the Vatican’s Synod Hall was “complementarity,” meaning the distinct roles that men and women have, which complement one another in the family, married life, and the Church.
The term comes up frequently in Catholic circles as part of the intellectual basis for opposing same-sex marriage, on the grounds that the natural differences between men and women reflect the divine plan for marriage as a union between the two sexes.
As a result, the colloquium has been labeled a conservative meeting.
When asked about that label, Glendon called it ridiculous. “This has been a meeting about how marriages and child-raising families are indeed the remedy for the spiritual and moral and material devastation that has afflicted the poor, women, and children,” she said.
Picking up on the pontiffs’ address to the conference on Monday, George said that family isn’t a conservative or liberal problem.
“It’s a force in itself, and it’s something we should come together for,” he said.
For the Princeton scholar, marriage shouldn’t be oriented simply for the satisfaction of the adults, but for the welfare of the children.
“They are the ones who are suffering from the fragmentation of families,” he said.
Paraphrasing Francis, George referred to the crisis of the family and its relationship with the culture of disposability, one of the pontiffs’ recurrent expressions. He believes marriages are being tossed aside as though they were old clothes or tissues.
“The pope is a profound witness of treating marriage as disposable,” George said. “Why? Not because he has an abstract belief in marriage, but because he has a concrete experience as a pastor of what happens to men, women, and especially children, but really the whole of society when marriage is treated as disposable.”
George also underlined the interreligious aspect of the conference, with people of faith coming together “across the historic line of religious divisions to bear witness to the common belief that marriage is the union of man and woman open to life.”
It was a running joke during the gathering that the non-Catholic speakers were the most powerful ones, with speeches from former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, Lord Jonathan Sacks, and the Rev. Richard Warren, senior pastor of Saddleback Church.
Both received standing ovations.
Anthony Fisher, the newly appointed bishop of Sydney, Australia, who attended the gathering and described it as the best Vatican-organized conference he has attended in the past 15 years, saw truth in the joke.
“The Jews and the Evangelicals were the best, they spoke very inspiringly, but that’s good for us, it’s like an injection of hope,” he said.
“I’d really like for those Jews and Evangelicals to be at the next synod [on the family, scheduled for October 2015],” Fisher said.
switch latter with former
That is of course not to say that Pius XII thought that a Protestant geneticist has some kind of Magisterial moral authority. The point is, Pius XII was intelligent enough to consider the experience, training, and insights of an intelligent man of good will who happened to be Protestant.
Back to the topic at hand: Bravo to the Humanum pro-Marriage group, Catholics and non-Catholics alike. They can make their positive contribution wherever intelligence/good will can get the respect it deserves.
And still no response from you regarding Mortalium Animos.
Not surprised at this point.
Pius XI flatly forbade any Catholic participation in interchurch or inter-religious meetings and activities motivated by the desire for restoring Christian unity (give-and-take in terms of doctrines.) The Humanum conference, on the other hand, positively encourages Catholics to spread (without weakening or modification) the Catholic understanding of Marriage, as a key to restoring the health of our society: that is, culture and policy.
The "star" Catholic participants are neither theologians nor clerics. Robert George is a philosopher, Mary Ann Glendon a law professor. They are emphatically NOT trying to steer the Church into Protestant theological compromises.
Pius XI strongly emphasized the risks and dangers of indifferentism and confusion about the faith occasioned by interfaith activities based on hashing out a unified doctrinal platform. That’s not what Humanum was about. It was about finding allies in the intellectual and social struggle to restore the unique status of Male-Female complementarity as the basis for natural (Male-Female) marriage. Which is in fact the only kind of real marriage there is as revealed in Natural Law even before it was revealed in Canon Law!!
This was a direct challenge to the "gay" "marriage" ideology.
What Pius XI condemned is by no means the same thing that conferences like Humanum affirm. What, exactly, did Pope Pius condemn as false doctrine?
(1) A "lowest common denominator" approach to achieve one "world religion.”
(2) A denial of the very principle of revealed truth, which presupposes that all approaches are just varying (and fallible) human expressions of a natural religious impulse, and ultimately devalues Divine revelation.
(3) A false ecclesiology: a theological understanding of the Church as "nothing more than a federation of the various Christian communities, even though these may hold different and mutually exclusive doctrines" (MA 6).
(4) The false idea that the unity which Christ prayed for— "Ut unum sint" - —"merely expressed a desire or a prayer which as yet has not been granted. The liberal Protestant ecumenists of the 20th century (and their mistaken Catholic allies) held that the one true Church of Christ has up to their time hardly ever existed and did not exist except as a mere ideal" (MA 7).
To say Humanum conference diverged from the doctrine of Mortalium Animos is to make a category mistake. The Humanum conference was not an ecclesiastical parlay with an aim to getting to a one-world church or a one-church world. It was about strengthen our allies in the truth in order to fight the LGBT agenda.
I'm guessing you use a similar Novus Ordo defense for the numerous interreligious prayers, etc that one would never find or be approved of before Vatican II.
Ask yourself this: Has the Church ever felt the need to meet with false religions to combat a dangerous moral agenda (prior to VII of course)? This meeting with false religions absolutely gives credence to them and absolutely gives the false impression of unity. To think otherwise is to remain ignorant of what has transpired since the 1960's.
I think you and I are done here. We will never see eye to eye.
Please pray for me.
Mrs. Don-o....despite are clear differences I certainly don’t dislike you and I absolutely will pray for you. All Catholics need to pray for one another during this Crisis. It’s just horrible. Please pray for me.
Thnank you. I will certainly pray for you, piusv.
The Church was in crisis during the Roman persecution. She was in crisis during the reign of Popes like Alexander IV. I suppose she could be in crisis now too but if the worst we have to endure are remarks like “Who am I to judge?” from the Vicar of Christ or ecumenical meetings striving to find common grounds among other religious against the gay agenda, I’d say we aren’t doing too bad. And maybe should even thank God for how blessed we are.
Your response shows that you don’t even see the problems.
I never said there aren’t any problems facing the Church today.
So what are those problems that you see?
The imprecise language that Pope Francis uses. Personally I can see that he is at least inspired by, if not directly guided by movements like Communion and Liberation, but that's because I'm involved in that movement. For others in the Church, much less outside, who aren't his choice of words and emphasis on pastoral concerns, seemingly (note the word seemingly) devoid of orthodoxy can be and are a source of scandal. In CL there are certain unspoken "givens" regarding orthodoxy, so, for example when we speak of the need for an "encounter with Christ" and a rejection of "moralistic" practices we don't speak of the rejection of the Rosary, or the veneration of saints, or any rejection of anything uniquely Catholic, as has been ascribed (falsely) to Pope Francis when he has allegedly "condemned" those who have a special devotion to such practices. However His Holiness needs to realize the entire Church doesn't participate in CL, and thus doesn't understand where he comes from when he speaks in such a manner. He needs to respect the office he holds more by either being more careful with the words he uses in public or shutting up.
The ongoing sex abuse scandal. This is a problem not because the Church isn't addressing it, but because new allegations keep surfacing. "New" in the sense that they are just coming to light, even though most still occurred decades ago. This presents a problem because of the financial drain it presents as well as another ongoing source of scandal. Unfortunately I don't know what more can be done at this point than pray for the Church and continue to compensate those who were indeed harmed by this evil. It's an ongoing problem.
The "liberal" interpretation of Vatican II. Unfortunately the confusion that resulted from the council (or really the confused interpretation of it) has caused many to leave the Church, much less not caused a new influx as was the hope. Re-education of everyone in the Church about what the council did (and did not do) is necessary at this point. But the feel-good false ecumenical leadership in the US particularly (although around the world too) prevents this return to orthodoxy for the most part because they were swept up in the media generated furvor over the council in the 60's. They bought into the notions of "priests will be able to marry in 10 years" and "psychology will cure all the problems of the church" as well as similar media driven expectations of today such as "birth control is coming to Catholics too" or "women can be priests soon". The same people caught up in that hype are in charge now. But all hope isn't lost, as the new generation of priests coming in are far more orthodox. The old hippie priests and nuns are literally dying out. However still remain a problem today. Which brings me to my last problem.
The continued, scandalous permission of priests and bishops allowing their parishioners, the sheep they are responsible for, to continue to receive the Eucharist when they know they either support abortion, gay "marriage" and contraception legistlatively or through their vote, or through their political affiliation. This is a scandal, and it is an evil not only on the Ordinary involved, but for those who are so deceived. Again, my hope is that the current class of priests coming in will put a stop to this in the future, for the sake of all souls involved.
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