26 September 2016

On the Internet ... the limits of papal authority

(1) The latest Catholic Herald has a good piece by a Fr Mark Drew on the ongoing Amoris laetitia  crisis. (I cannot resist entering here a snide comment that visitors to this blog have already repeately read most of his points here ... Parrhesia and all.) Father refers to the intimidation experienced in this country as  'discreet' ... but then, we are English, aren't we? In some other places, it has been anything but discreet.

(2) Sandro Magister (Chiesa 21 September) quotes an Andrew Grillo, whom he calls a keen Bergoglian, as forecasting that the next Synod will, among other things, deal with
"The Collegial exercise of the episcopacy and the restitution to the Bishop of full authority over the diocesan liturgy".

I presume we all know by now that 'Collegiality' is well established as a code-word for giving improper competences to Episcopal Conferences ... a serious potential ecclesiological corruption (upon which Cardinal Mueller spoke well a year or two ago). But what I am particularly drawing your attention to this morning is the part of the sentence I have put into italics. It means that the bully-boys who hate Ratzinger and his legacy are beginning to set their sights on demolishing Summorum Pontificum and eliminating its admirable doctrinal emphases on Subsidiarity and the auctoritas of Tradition.

I am only surprised that it has taken the Wolves and their cubs so long to get round to this.

Both of these two superficially diverse items exemplify the same over-arching problem which this increasingly dysfunctional pontificate continually throws up: the limits of lawful papal power. Time to read again what Ratzinger so wisely said on this. And to revisit Pastor aeternus (together with Denzinger 3114 and 3117).

3 comments:

Lepanto said...

Some of the 'wolves' had this one sorted almost as soon as Summorum Pontificum was off the press. It is said that, in the archdiocese of Buenos Aires, an unadvertised Latin Mass was available on one weekday morning in a chapel in the crypt of the cathedral and was abandoned for 'lack of interest'. How on earth did Jesuits get their reputation for being 'slippery'?

Deacon Augustine said...

While on the subject of the limits of papal authority, Fr., I wondered if you had come across this document by the CDF which was issued in 1998:


http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19981031_primato-successore-pietro_en.html


A quote from it which I find quite relevant to our times is as follows:

"The Roman Pontiff - like all the faithful - is subject to the Word of God, to the Catholic faith, and is the guarantor of the Church's obedience; in this sense he is servus servorum Dei. He does not make arbitrary decisions, but is spokesman for the will of the Lord, who speaks to man in the Scriptures lived and interpreted by Tradition; in other words, the episkope of the primacy has limits set by divine law and by the Church's divine, inviolable constitution found in Revelation.33 The Successor of Peter is the rock which guarantees a rigorous fidelity to the Word of God against arbitrariness and conformism: hence the martyrological nature of his primacy."

Also of interest:

"This reminder is also useful for avoiding the continual possibility of relapsing into biased and one-sided positions already REJECTED by the Church in the past (FEBRONIANISM, Gallicanism, ULTRAMONTANISM, conciliarism, etc.)." (my emphasis in caps......)

Jacobi said...

Father, I believe you are taking comments again?

As for the Catholic Herald, I stopped taking it when it closed its comments, so no comment.

If indeed there is an attempt to suppress Summorum Pontificum then that is heretical. S.P. is in line with what Gregory the Great, St Pius V and of course St John XXIII decreed. Other Masses were and are allowed, as is the Ordinariate Mass, but as I observed recently, the Pauline New Mass has failed for whatever reason, and has no future in the Church.