14 November 2017

Double standards (2), (3), and (4)

It is difficult always to be certain what PF has said, because throughout his pontificate there has been a persistent risk that he has been misreported or misunderstood. I prefix that very important caveat as I continue to list amusing examples of Double Standards.

(2) PF told Cardinal Mueller that he had decided not to reappoint curial officials after the expiry of their five-year term. Mueller was to consider himself to be but the first victim of the new convention.

There seem to be uncertainties about whether PF has been applying this norm uniformly ... or, indeed, at all.

(3) PF talked loudly about Parrhesia in the distant days when he hoped it would encourage Synodal Fathers to say what he wanted to hear them saying. It is rumoured that he has more recently been much more reticent about uttering the pi word.

(4) PF is described as favouring Subsidiarity especially in the new exciting sense of allowing Germanophone hierarchs do do whatever they like. But ...
    (a) a few months ago, a Roman Instruction stripped diocesan bishops of the right to authorise new religious communities within their jurisdictions without the prior inspection and sanction of the Congregation for Religious.
   (b) a draft document did the rounds in Rome, according to which young clergy in the Roman Colleges, whoever are the ordinaries of the home dioceses that pay for their education, would be required to concelebrate rather than being allowed to get into the disgusting habit of saying a daily private EF Mass. [Does anyone know what became of this proposal?]

4 a & b are very understandable. The great renaissance of Catholicism which began in the last decades of the 25-year Wojtyla-Ratzinger dyarchy disproportionately influenced the young of both sexes. Hence, the demise of old communities now reduced to impotent senility was accompanied by a mushrooming of young religious orders which either prefer the Old Mass or, with a broader menu, elevate the Old Mass to optable equality with the New. Hence also the growth of vocations to the Sacred Priesthood in the Ecclesia Dei communities but, much more strikingly still, also in the Church at large. This has led to a new phenomenon: young priests who for pastoral reasons do willingly say the New Mass (although not necessarily always with the ritual options most fashionable in the 1970s), but who derive their ars celebrandi from the Old Mass which is their personal gold Standard; and who will, if pastoral needs do not demand otherwise, instinctively say their daily private Masses according to the Old Missal.

It is not surprising that there are those for whom these new cultural manifestations are less than unambiguously welcome. Now an older generation, but still luxuriating on the emotional highs of the late 'sixties, they peer from under their dear drooping eyelids into the faces of the young. Is it remarkable that they discern in those faces the sure prognostics of their own transience?

10 comments:

  1. That final sentence is (as well as being true) one of the most beautiful combinations of words I've ever read in a blog post.

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  2. You may not be interested in the CDR but the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution is interested in you; where you live, with whom you interact; what Mass you say, what officially unapproved meetings you attend...

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  3. Like the hobbits listening to Frodo's speech at his eleventy first birthday party at the beginning of "The Lord of the Rings" I am puzzled.
    Does the adverbial qualifier "less than unambiguously" confirm or negate the "welcome"? The meaning of the sentence eludes me and so the thrust of the whole paragraph is wasted on me.
    I beg your indulgence of my slowness.

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  4. More sour grapes from yet another convert! Didn't you ever hear, before coming "Home to Auntie" that you'd no longer be troubled with having to think for yourself? Look at all of the trouble you left behind - perchance you stirred-up a wee bit of it yourself - only possible because the CofE had no pope!

    Without such a wise and benevolent creature you were left with self-interpreting Scripture, fallible tradition, and nuanced precedents... chaos ensued! At the risk of sounding a bit smug, we Romans have always told you that our system was superior: the pope calls the tune and we provide the harmony! We look admiringly to the august Vicar in Rome as our perpetual sign of unity, locus of clarity, and guarantor of orthodoxy! We never had all of these problems before all of these converts started sowing cockles of doubt in the verdant pastures of our heretofore unquestioning faith.

    So, welcome aboard Ye Olde Barque but do us a favor: enough with the criticisms already, cool your heels (a la the Tentmaker of Tarsus) until you've had a chance to become fully assimilated, eh? Once your faith has matured such that, like Cardinal Spadaro or Rex Mottram, you accept that 2+2 CAN equal five if the pope says so, well we will be happy to hear more of your opinions.

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  5. Re: B flat

    Separate "less than" and "unambiguously," then apply each severally to "welcome:"

    "less than ... welcome"
    "...unambiguously welcome"
    "less than unambiguously welcome"

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  6. B flat: Read “unwelcome” and you will not be far wrong.

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  7. Pedants of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your friends!

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  8. Fr Hunwicke hits the nail on the head; remember stories of old doctors who bled a patient. He did not get better so the solution was to bleed some more. Eventually the patient dies and medical opinion decided that they had delayed bleeding too long
    The V2 fan club are of the same mind set-the chaos in the Church is caused by not enough V2
    a humble convert

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  9. It is fittingly ironic that this title of this post should be called 'Double Standards" ...

    While Fr Hunwicke is happy to launch naked into the Tiber as a man dashing to save a drowning girl, there remain those who, even having taken the trouble to post a comment, continue to fiddle imperially upon the periphery of the City walls.

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  10. LOL.... You don't need to hear more about that Roman document on seminaries, because they are going to collapse all the roman seminaries into about 5-10 of them. Then they will simply implement it.

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