I have read in what I think is Bobbie Mickens's organ that "Most progressives, reformers, and Vatican II types ... are deeply disappointed [by the Amazon Exhortation]".
He goes on to say that the "women are hurt and angry".
I don't think, however, that all women are Hurt and Angry. I looked carefully at my Wife and a visiting Daughter today, and they didn't look at all H&A. I think I can usually tell when they are. It requires a form of discernment which starts off when a chap is a toddler and needs to spot if and when Mummy is H&A. One hones these skills throughout one's life, aided, eventually and if it is still necessary, by one's granddaughters or great granddaughters. Perhaps Mickens hasn't spent long enough with women.
Or perhaps mine are not the right sort of women. Frankly, I would have to admit that they show no signs of thinking at all about Vatican II. They seem more interested in Life. But far be it from me to hint that "Vatican II women" are likely to be humourless crones. Mickens probably knows best after all those long years spent working for The Tablet.
I, HOWEVER, AM HURT AND ANGRY.
Last Wednesday evening, I penned a post about the Post-Synodal Exhortation. I drew particular attention to the passage in which PF explicitly declared that the Eucharistic President needs to be male. Since the 'Ordination' of Women is unmistakeably the ultimate ambition of "progressives and Reformers", these words appeared to me to be a confirmation of the teaching of S Paul VI (Inter insigniores) and, particularly, of S John Paul II in his Ordinatio sacerdotalis, which Rome declared to be an expression of the Infallible Ordinary Universal Magisterium.
This may seem to some readers a matter of slight importance compared with the agonies of all these married viri probati we keep hearing about, and the exact nature of 'diaconal' women.
I think it is important, and so will the rest of you, believe me, in a decade or two as the campaign for Women 'Priests' continues and accelerates. And becomes even more viciously shrill. Shrill? You don't yet know what that word means.
In particular, on Wednesday I asked for information about the meaning of the terms used for "man" in the various languages in which the Exhortation is available ... particularly Arabic, Polish, and Chinese (Paragraph 101). Apart from a kind hispanophone: I got zilch.
Anthropos or aner? Homo or Vir?
Nobody seems to want to help me. Can it be that many fellow-traditionalists are only interested in the words of PF when those words confirm their opinion that he is a hopeless heretic? Do some people in fact suffer disappointment when he actually behaves as a pope should ... as a remora or obstacle against innovation and error?
The campaign for women 'priests' will be relentless. Is it nothing to many Traditionalists that PF has struck a blow for Tradition? That he has placed a marker in his 'Magisterium' which it will that bit more difficult for Francis II to circumvent?
In Polish it is vir (mężczyzna) in the first sentence, and then homo where "divine Son made man".
ReplyDeleteIts not that simple - buried in the no women priests bit of the amazon synod exhortation are these para 104 and 105 (pasted below) which means that PF's preparing to allow the progressives to engineer a hegelian sublation (tech. term) on the whole church structure and functions, to go caterpillar-to-moth transformation. Your material on the Porvoo agreement is an analogue: where a church realises it has been wrong about its own identity, roles and functions for centuries, and its opponents {more} correct. I find it really very hard to understand paragraphs like these; see how you go.
ReplyDeleteStraight after the material from ~101-103 rejecting women priests - pasted:
Expanding horizons beyond conflicts
104. It often happens that in particular places pastoral workers envisage very different solutions to the problems they face, and consequently propose apparently opposed forms of ecclesial organization. When this occurs, it is probable that the real response to the challenges of evangelization lies in transcending the two approaches and finding other, better ways, perhaps not yet even imagined. Conflict is overcome at a higher level, where each group can join the other in a new reality, while remaining faithful to itself. Everything is resolved “on a higher plane and preserves what is valid and useful on both sides”.[142] Otherwise, conflict traps us; “we lose our perspective, our horizons shrink and reality itself begins to fall apart”.[143]
105. In no way does this mean relativizing problems, fleeing from them or letting things stay as they are. Authentic solutions are never found by dampening boldness, shirking concrete demands or assigning blame to others. On the contrary, solutions are found by “overflow”, that is, by transcending the contraposition that limits our vision and recognizing a greater gift that God is offering. From that new gift, accepted with boldness and generosity, from that unexpected gift which awakens a new and greater creativity, there will pour forth as from an overflowing fountain the answers that contraposition did not allow us to see. In its earliest days, the Christian faith spread remarkably in accordance with this way of thinking, which enabled it, from its Jewish roots, to take shape in the Greco-Roman cultures, and in time to acquire distinctive forms. Similarly, in this historical moment, the Amazon region challenges us to transcend limited perspectives and “pragmatic” solutions mired in partial approaches, in order to seek paths of inculturation that are broader and bolder.
Dear Father, I,for one, offer you a heartfelt apology: I must publicly confess that yesterday I was remiss as to my daily persual of your learned musings. Nor is it any kind of excuse that I was occupied in dragging the young 'uns of our parish through the motions of a healthy all-day excursion; although it is an activity which requires constant attention, since modern-day parents are oddly insistent that they should be presented in the evening with the exact same number of their progeny that they left off in the morning.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I hasten to submit that the Arabic رجل (as opposed to the sex-neutral إنسان) and the Polish mężczyzna (as opposed to człowiek) both unequivocally and unambiguously refer to male individuals. I could not find a link on the Vatican website to a Chinese translation of the document, whereby I must conclude that our newfound friends of the CPC are so naturally imbued with the principles of our religion that they need no wearisome repetition of a doctrine they are already such splendid witnesses to.
Father, I suspect that many of your readers, I for one, lack the skill to tease out anything from the different versions of this. Little wonder that in this Orwellian world room 101 is treated with fear.
ReplyDeleteExcellent post Fr H. - particularly your penultimate paragraph about some very odd, and disappointing, attitudes to the Supreme Pontiff.
ReplyDeleteFr Bob Hayes
Dear Father. Hmmmm
ReplyDeleteWell, in any event, hasn't The Bishop of Rome already approved of the double off the right filed wall that are female deacons which will precede the single ordained woman to left field which will complete the ecclesiastical game of getting a woman to the priest's home plate?
Presentation by Bishop Wilmar Santin, O.CARM., of Itaituba, Brazil
Bishop Wilmar Santin spoke of his personal experience ministering in an area that covers 175 thousand square km. His prelature was established in 1988, he said, but the Church’s work with the indigenous peoples dates back to 1910 or 1911. It was the Franciscans who began working there. They were followed by the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, the same Congregation as Sister Dulce Lopes Pontes who will be canonized this Sunday.
Bishop Wilmar told the story of how the indigenous people did not want to approach the missionaries at first, until a Franciscan missionary won them over by playing his flute. Most of the people in the area where Bishop Santin ministers are baptized in the Catholic Church, he said. A Baptist mission headed by a Swiss couple is also there. The relationship between the Catholic missionaries and pastors of the Baptist Church has always been good, he added. They have been collaborating under a banner of dialogue since 1963.
The Bishop’s said his experience and intention has been to intensify the indigenous pastoral ministry. He spoke of how the local Church is putting into practice “what the Pope is calling us to do”: namely, that it should be the indigenous peoples themselves who shape the Church in the Amazon. An important aspect, said Bishop Wilmar, is that the people he works with should have their own leaders. Until now, these have always been foreigners. Pope Francis, said the Bishop, told someone how he dreamed of seeing an indigenous priest in every village. When Bishop Wilmar asked how to fulfil that dream, the Pope said he should start with what the Church already allows: the permanent diaconate. Which is what they decided to do. They developed a plan with an Italian priest who had worked in the indigenous missions in Amazonia all his life. The first step involved creating Ministers of the Eucharist, then ministries that Deacons perform in order to move toward being ordained as Deacons. They chose to begin with the Ministry of the Word, as the Eucharist cannot be preserved in these territories for very long. Formation for Ministers of the Word began in November 2017. 20 men and 4 women were appointed and began preaching the word of God in their own language.
This past March, Bishop Santin said he returned to that village and found another 24 Ministers of the Word, making a total of 48, who preach in their local language. The Bishop said it filled him with joy as he thought of the day of Pentecost when so many heard about the wonders of God, in their own language. This type of formation is advancing toward forming Ministers to baptize, and later to witness marriages, he said. The local people give great importance to the Sacrament of Baptism, he added, and they want to be married in Church. They desire God’s blessings. Which is why there have to be ministers to perform baptisms and marriages in every village. This will help the people very much, concluded Bishop Santin and in the future, hopefully, the ordination of deacons will be possible.
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2019-10/amazon-synod-briefing-ministers-of-the-word-face-of-indigenous.html
What is really going on here, to steal a phrase, is that The Rhine flows into the Amazon.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that an end to the German "church tax" would quickly wither the constituency for all this nonsense.
Women priests are about feminist power, and the lust for power divorced from some need for that power is satanic.
Take away the money, and there would be little interest, and less ability, for German meddling in what happens in some remote jungle region.
Well, Father,
ReplyDeleteIt's just that this traditionalist does not know those languages. Be at peace. There are other traddies similarly limited.
Of the languages in which the exhortation is available, the only one with regard to which I can be of any help is Polish (apart from English and my German mother tongue, where you need no help); although I speak Polish not nearly as good as Russian, my abilities suffice to detect that the word used to describe a man in paragraph 101 is mężczyzna. Just as the German Mann, this refers unmistakably to the male of the human species.
ReplyDeleteDear Father, genuinely pleased with PF's decision, I had left it up to more authoritative observers to make statements about what was actually said in the exhortation, most appropriately native speakers of the featured languages, yet as nobody seems to have appeared, as a fluent speaker of some of these languages and a tinker with some other, I hereby can confirm that equivalents of ἀνήρ were used, apart from Portuguese, as you correctly noted (varão), also in German (Mann), Polish (mężczyzna) and Arabic (الرجل).
ReplyDelete