Every time the current regime has yet another doctrinal accident, 'developmemt' is invoked. The Graf von Schoenborn did it at the News Conference after Amoris laetitia when Diane Montagna asked whether that document contradicted Familiaris consortio. Leering down at her, he even had the condescending impertinence to mention Blessed John Henry Newman. During the Deathgate scandal, the same naughty little word has again been bobbing around in the troubled waters.
What few commentators appear to have pointed out is that Newman, when wrote his celebrated essay, had no intention of providing a blue-print to be cunningly used by future jesuitical pontiffs to disguise the reality of doctrinal change. He was describing what had happened in the past. And he was doing it as an Anglican to satisfy himself that the Catholic Church which he was on the point of joining had never changed its doctrine.
I do not recollect that during the Arian Controversy, or the Reformation disorders, either side ever justified the positions they tenaciously held by invoking Development. My impression is that each side simply bandied Scripture and Tradition cheerfully around so as to show that what they held was the truth "clearly" shown forth in Scripture and Tradition.
Bergoglianism has been encapsulated in an even more extreme form than this by the cynically blasphemous observation of the jesuit "General" that the Lord's Words were not captured on camera, and by Fr Rosica's boastfully candid admission that the Church is now entirely at the mercy of a pope to whom neither Scripture nor Tradition are prescriptive. Such exponents appear to offer a model of Christian teaching ministry unknown even to the heretics of earlier ages. Here we have not a heresy, but the supraheresy. Earlier heresiarchs may have monkeyed around with, and perverted the sense of, both Scripture and Tradition, but, I think, never before have we had the diabolical claim that a major heretical teacher is quite simply free from any control whatsoever within the Word of God whether written or orally transmitted. When I use the term 'diabolical', I mean it in the fullest possible sense. The fingerprints all over these preposterous claims are unmistakeable.
Some celebrated words in Pastor aeternus of Vatican I admirably taught that the Successor of S Peter was not promised the inspiration of the Spirit so that he could teach new doctrine, but so that by His help he could guard and faithfully set forth the Deposit of Faith handed down through the Apostles.
There is not, I think, any suggestion in this that he should energetically engage in "developing" it; still less, that he is totally free from its constraints.
Is it not just modernism - the synthesis of all heresies?
ReplyDeleteNot much to add here but that I agree.
ReplyDeleteWe live in grave times.
Yes, you’ve nailed it. The big difference with this heresy is that it is coming from the top, from someone who is twisting everything that went before to make it seem that this one man alone has the power of office to simply declare and impose it. We’re in serious trouble and I almost think that Bergoglio and his gang welcome the sexual abuse scandal because it is distracting us so that we look at the effects rather than the cause. Which, of course, is heresy and the loss of the Faith.
ReplyDeleteIf he were alive today, Cardinal Newman would have plenty of material for a second volume, to be called "An Essay on the Devleopment of Christian Heresy".
ReplyDeleteRosica's declaration seems to me to go well beyond heresy into apostasy--because it nullifies the ONLY two sources of revelation.
ReplyDeleteAnother way to put it is the Sin Against the Holy Spirit, in that it locates the revelatory activity of the Holy Spirit outside Scripture and Tradition.
May God bring a "merciful, welcoming, accompanying" end to this disaster of a Pontificate .
ReplyDeleteProbably off-topic but I am always trying to understand the thinking of clerics whom one suspects of modernism. To-day I was talking to a grandmother who mentioned that none of her children or grandchildren practised the faith. I said this was the common experience of most parents of our generation. She said she had mentioned this to her parish priest who replied to say she should not blame herself as that probably they they were all leading good lives. In her view they probably are. Perhaps people can lead good lives without practising the faith. However are there not moments in these lives where there is a clear choice to be made between good and evil? Would the Devil be content with leaving people to lead quiet undisturbed good lives?
ReplyDeleteIs the modernist cleric content to leave these people leading apparently good lives just to carry on? Are they happy with mediocrity? I increasingly find the modern church and its liturgy banal and mediocre. Sermons are just about niceness and being agreeable to one's neighbour - not that such is not important but any idea that there is anything more dramatic in the spiritual life just does not aired. There is no challenge. Clerics seem to be content to leave people where they are. I suppose it allows for a quiet life. So why bother to practice the faith if there is no challenge?
When I was a young man the highlight was a pastoral congress in Liverpool in 1980 but I doubt if the children or grandchildren or whatever of those there present attend Mass today.
DeleteWhen in a hole stop digging was the advice of a British politician all those years ago. In truth we are as a Church unwilling to lay down the shovel. Presumably the Cardinals recognised in Papa Bergoglio a man keen to continue digging. His latest missive on sex abuse is just more of the same and yet not one line to the Irish Church on abortion during the referendum campaign.
The hole was already massive in 1980 and the poor Holy Father's only response is to keep his head down and dig.
That is indifferentism really: all roads lead to heaven. No doubt, there are many good folks leading "good" lives by today's standards (hard to do).
DeleteBut that is very far from fighting the devil, the flesh, and the world. We are in an all out battle, now more than ever. The lines are clearer by day, and that battle has never been more hopeless, except that God's mercy is infinite and all things are possible with Him. We will soon have a rude awakening as the get-along-with-the-world life comes crashing down as it has recently in several other countries.
Well said!
ReplyDeletePeople who send me brusque two-liners ordering me just to say that PF is a heretic are wasting their time. Canon Law is not as simple as that.
ReplyDeleteIs Graf von Schoenborn still being touted as the Pope-To-Be waiting in the wings for the next act? He would seem a natural to explicate the "novelties" promulgated by the current Bishop of Rome, as well as more slickly introducing new ones.
ReplyDeleteOr will the graf's natural slipperiness be his undoing? Unfortunately probably not, judging by recent papal conclaves.
Dear Father, you have already on more than one occasion pointed out that PF and his cronies are not reliable guides to Catholic faith and morals. Caveat emptor! Just turn the liturgical and catechetical pages back to 1962 and rest secure. Everything after that is, at best, suspect. Any good in it was most likely already there, at least implicitly, in 1962.
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