“We do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything––even to social justice. The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy [God] demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist’s shop. Fortunately it is quite easy to coax humans round this little corner. Only today I have found a passage in a Christian writer where he recommends his own version of Christianity on the ground that ‘only such a faith can outlast the death of old cultures and the birth of new civilisations.’ You see the little rift? ‘Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.’ That’s the game.”
CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Few things change quicker than fads in politics. Pope Francis has pledged his allegiance to what is currently popular among the chattering classes of the West and he seeks to alter the Faith to reflect his political predilections. This has bupkis to do with Catholicism, and no Catholic has any duty to render any obedience to the rot he is spouting.
Aww, I wanted to go full Ghengis Kahn 😂
… what’s the point of a document producing magisterium…
Bingo
Ghengis Kahn?
Oy! 🙂
Perhaps the continued issuance of drek from the geniuses at the Vatican will make people wonder what is True. A return to that essential question is… essential!
The problem is, Vatican II round-filed great swaths of the papal magisterium of the three generations which preceded it. Near as I can tell, after Pius XII, Pascendi was cited exactly once, in Fides et Ratio. Functionally, Paul VI gutted it by ending the Oath Against Modernism. Quas Primas? Also dead after Pius XII.
Mortalium Animos? Ignored and functionally deleted by Dignitatus Humanae. John XXIII’s encyclical on Latin was about as DOA as an encyclical could be. If you’re going to object to the current Roman pontiff’s actions–and you should–just remember that he is acting in an established, if not intellectually-honest, tradition.
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