At last, the hunger of the waiting multitudes will be assuaged! A Consistory for the creation of new Cardinals is promised!
How your hearts have been warmed by that news!
I bet Uncle Arthur's career will really now start motoring!
I wonder if, this time, PF will allow the Empurpled Fathers to get to know each other by actually conversing ... at least ... please, Holy Father ... in sign language. So far, he has talked a lot about Parrhesia, but what that seems to mean is "If you agree with me, say so much more loudly". The previous facility given to Cardinals at Consistories, to exchange views with each other in a synodical sort of way, has been prevented in the more recent Consistories. Loss of complete control, doncha know, is dangerous. Viva Peron! Even viva Eva!
Of course, a safe and simple dodge would be to make the imminent consistory Virtual for 'health reasons'. Then they wouldn't even be able to give each other a subversive nudge.
Personally, I think that the Sacred College has significantly lost functionality. I've forgotten how many they are currently and how many of those will be qualified to enter a Conclave (128?), but it stands to reason that the group dynamics cannot be the way they were when the numbers in the College stood at around twenty. When everybody knew the colour of everybody else's snuff.
I find it gets a bit boring that so many chappies are "Your Eminence". Surely there could be some alternative formulae of honorific address.
How about "Your Abysmal Sublimity"?
I rather think that when C S Lewis coined that phrase he very prophetically had Cupich in mind.
Making Sumdood from San Diego a Cardinal... Well, it makes no sense in terms of city size, and it doesn't seem to be a nod to Navy Catholics, or border crossing difficulties of pastorality.
ReplyDeleteBut it is noticeable that he thinks abortion is no big deal and politicians should always get Communion. Which even most liberal bishops will not say outright.
I hope I am wrong about that.
Father, you made a bull's-eye with the Abysmal Sublimity and Cupich! Thank you!
ReplyDeleteI keep thinking of a phrase from Milton: "By merit rais'd/ To that bad Eminence."
ReplyDelete(Paradise Lost, Book 2, lines 5-6.)
"His Bad Eminence" suits egregious cases like McCarrick. For more worthy Cardinals, I don't know what form of address I would recommend.
Bull's eye! It is with Papa Bergoglio, as it is with all crass politicians, all about control. But this particular kind of egomania is especially pronounced with the present Pontiff and the sour mediocrities he allows to surround him: practitioners of Stalinist/Peronist total control---all in the name of "accompaniment, listening, walking" (they have an infantile obsession with the trope of "walking," but perhaps it is not so infantile as it seems to reinforce their relativistic, evolutionary conception of the world and of the Faith itself, when nothing is settled or stable, always in flux---as when you walk [aimlessly!]). Undiluted Modernism and crafty strategy. I, for one, do not see a way out of this nightmare, the horror engendered by the last council. Perhaps my faith in Divine Providence is weak. Kyrie Eleison.
ReplyDeleteWell said.
ReplyDeleteA comment from a thread om Rod Dreher's blog:
ReplyDelete"Bergoglio is a mafia boss, not a pope. He rewards his friends and punishes his enemies. Remember when we saw ultra-progressive Cardinal Danneels on the loggia by him the night he was elected? The same Cardinal who had been put out to pasture after he was caught on tape bullying a man into silence after the man told him of being abused as a boy by the bishop of Bruges, one of the Cardinal’s friends?
Remember how he appointed Cardinal Maradiaga as his right hand man in the curia, the same Maradiaga who blamed the Catholic sex abuse scandal on Jews in the media?
Remember how he rehabilitated Ted McCarrick, and how he has been filling the College of Cardinals with members of McCarrick’s lavender mafia (Farrell, ‘Nighty-night Baby’ Tobin, Cupich, now McElroy)?
The fix is in. These are enemies of Christ and his Church. And I despair, save for radical divine intervention or near-total institutional collapse.
standing around with the authority to respond effectively to crisis, but too afraid and bound by bureaucratic procedure to do a damn thing.
Pope Francis is not afraid. He does what he likes. He brought the hammer fiercely down on traditional Catholics. He did this without hesitation. He is now rewarding his chief henchman in this persecution with a cardinal’s hat.
He does not care about bureaucracy or canon law. He runs roughshod through it when he wants, again without hesitation.
He believes himself to have unlimited power, to do what he likes, when he likes, and nobody will stop him.
No. This is what Pope Francis wants. And it’s time we stopped pretending.
Taking an holistic approach to things, and developing the theology of the Magisterium being "in suspense" until better times come round, we should take heart. Maybe these new cardinals aren'r really cardinals at all.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised that lay cardinals haven't made a resurgence in recent years, 'in pectore' or published.
Imagine what fresh hell could be unleashed with the appointment of Her Eminence Nancy, Cardinal Pelosi, etc...!
Question:
Were cardinals who were not in Holy Orders given churches in Rome?
There is a lot of theological and ecclesiological mileage in this, which could go in all sorts of directions depending on Yes or No.
All the 'Your Eminence' stuff is indeed tedious.
ReplyDeletePF, in addition to his Peronist leanings, probably also has a certain authoritarian tendency from his Jesuit background. Think of Ignatius on blind obedience or black being white if the pope says so - which is very different from the Thomistic understanding.
ReplyDeleteAquinas (a product of that eminently synodal body, the Order of Preachers) says that if one's lawful superiors make a prudential decision that you think is a bad one then, as long as it does not affect the integrity of the Faith, you should accept it as a penance. That is not the same as trying to pretend to yourself that it is the best if all possible decisions in the best of all possible worlds.
I like that title for Cardinal which you mentioned, thank you Father.
ReplyDeleteI have another : "His Inestimable Worthlessness".
"I'm surprised that lay cardinals haven't made a resurgence in recent years, 'in pectore' or published. Imagine what fresh hell could be unleashed with the appointment of Her Eminence Nancy, Cardinal Pelosi, etc...!"
ReplyDeleteGive it time. I have the horrible feeling that Francis II will see to it. At least she's past the voting age.
The response by Prof. Tighe is a wonder to behold. I imagine it would have been impossible for him at the age of 20 to imagine he would one day write something like this about a Pope.
ReplyDeleteBut this Pope is unlike any other Pope in history which makes one fearful because it is of tradition (see any old Missal for Good Friday which has prayers for the Pope) that God choses our Pope - page 482 in "The New Roman Missal" of Father Lasance
It appears we deserve him, and, no doubt, someone even worse; his successor?
In 4 Kings, in the first two Chapters we read about Elias twice calling down fire from heaven to consume God'e enemies and we learn that God sent two bears to tear apart forty two boys for mocking/opposing the son of Elias, Eliseus,.
Like those who lived under the various Kings, whose lives were blessed or cursed owing to the virtues or vices of their Kings, can we assume we are in a not dissimilar situation under the reign of this Monarch?
Well, us laymen can not control what the Prelates do and they do not seem too keen to confess they may have erred ever since the 60s Synod was assembled and blowed-up everything in the Catholic Church from the Mass, to the Sacraments to the Religious Orders, to the prayers, to the refusal to actualise the coercetive power of the Church and to the now habitual praxis of placing - physically and rhetorically - the One True Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church on the same level as all of the false religions.
There has only ever been one religion- The religion of Jesus Christ because only only Jesus Christ could expiate sin, reconcile man to God and to re-establish the supernatural ti which united them.
This one true religion goes back to when Jesus offered Himself to God to redeem man and while it was not always taught in its fullness - the ancients believed in the Messias, Jesus Christ, to come whereas we believe in Jesus already come.
All us laymen can do is strive to become Saints and wait on The Lord.
There were never really lay cardinals - they mau have been appointed as laymen, but they were all, at the very least, tonsured.
ReplyDeleteAvB
My father has frontotemporal dementia. We first noticed it when he, always impatient and bull headed at the best of time, started shouting, "I want what I want when I want it". Sound familiar?
ReplyDelete"There were never really lay cardinals - they mau have been appointed as laymen, but they were all, at the very least, tonsured."
ReplyDeleteGood point, but I don't see that being an obstacle to cardinalesses. Minor orders have been replaced by lay ministries, that have recently been opened up to women. Then there's the new ministry of Catechist. What could be more (in)appropriate than Her Eminence Nancy Cardinal Pelosi, Cardinal Catechist of the Church of the Holy Innocents?
If it weren't a mortal sin, I'd say, Shoot me now now, right in the temple.
. the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. OMNIA INSTAURARE IN CHRISTO….
ReplyDelete…But Catholic doctrine tells us that the primary duty of charity does not lie in the toleration of false ideas, however sincere they may be, nor in the theoretical or practical indifference towards the errors and vices in which we see our brethren plunged,...
Here we have, founded by Catholics, an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact.
What are we to think of an association in which all religions and even Free-Thought may express themselves openly and in complete freedom? ...
... the words Liberty, Justice, Fraternity, Love, Equality, and human exultation, all resting upon an ill-understood human dignity. It will be a tumultuous agitation, sterile for the end proposed...brings Socialism in its train.
We fear that worse is to come: the end result of this developing promiscuousness, the beneficiary of this cosmopolitan social action, can only be a Democracy which will be neither Catholic, nor Protestant, nor Jewish. It will be a religion (for Sillonism, so the leaders have said, is a religion) more universal than the Catholic Church, uniting all men become brothers and comrades at last in the “Kingdom of God”. – “We do not work for the Church, we work for mankind.”
And now, overwhelmed with the deepest sadness, We ask Ourselves, Venerable Brethren, what has become of the Catholicism…
Alas! this organization which formerly afforded such promising expectations, this limpid and impetuous stream, has been harnessed in its course by the modern enemies of the Church, and is now no more than a miserable affluent of the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer.
..True, Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness. But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue,... Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray. He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them.
…He was as strong as he was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body…
Given at St. Peter’s, Rome, on the 25th August 1910, the eighth year of Our Pontificate.
Pius X, Pope
(It appears we have become what Pius Xth condemned>
I suspect that she has as little time left as Francis.
ReplyDeleteAvB.
O Mary, Mother of Mercy and Refuge of sinners, we beseech thee, be pleased to look with pitiful eyes upon poor heretics and schismatics. Thou who art the Seat of Wisdom, enlighten the minds that are miserably enfolded in the darkness of ignorance and sin, that they may clearly know that the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church is the one true Church of Jesus Christ, outside of which neither holiness nor salvation can be found. Finish the work of their conversion by obtaining for them the grace to accept all the truths of our Holy Faith, and to submit themselves to the Supreme Roman Pontiff, the Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth; that so, being united with us in the sweet chains of Divine charity, there may soon be one only fold under the same one Shepherd; and may we all, O Glorious Virgin, sing forever with exultation: Rejoice, O Virgin Mary, thou only hast destroyed all heresies in the whole world. Amen.
ReplyDeletePrayer for the Conversion of America
Pope Pius IX, the Raccolta, No. 626, p. 499, 1957 Edition
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++=
Every Pope prior to Pius IX would agree with the substance of this prayer.
What subsequent Popes woud have these same beliefs?
Leo XIII - Yes
Pius Xth - Yes
Benedict XV - Yes
Pius XI - Yes
Pius XII - Dunno
John 23rd - No
Paul Vi - No
JP I - No
JP II - No
Benedict XVI - No
Francis - No
Professor Herman NuDix of Continuity College in Rome, asked about this change in Catholic Belief/Faith, assured me , Everything is different, nothing has changed and we'd still prolly be praying this great prayer if Paul VI hadn't ordered it blowed-up.
Modern Popes appear to have been playing politics with the selection of members of the Prelature.
ReplyDeleteIs that contrary to the wise advice and warnings of Trent?
Sure but Trent is so yesterday..
https://tinyurl.com/2p9556zt