Burn of the Day
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
The deliberate ambiguity in every area—liturgy, moral teaching, dogmatics—is the worst dragon’s teeth sown at Vatican II. Every teacher, priest, bishop can come up with their own “Church teaching.”
Another recent example of this was P. Leo’s confusing comments April 23rd in response to his refusal to explicitly correct Card. Reinhard Marx’s allowing “same sex blessings:”
“ We tend to think that when the church is talking about morality, that the only issue of morality is sexual,” said the pope during the in-flight press conference. “And in reality, I believe there are much greater, more important issues, such as justice, equality, freedom of men and women, freedom of religion, that would all take priority before that particular issue.”
So, not only permitting by silence and re-direction something that was once morally unthinkable, the Supreme Teacher of the Faith communicated ambiguity, that immoral sexual acts are only unimportant “peccadillos,” not mortally sinful and ultimate impediments to eternal life: The “big sins” are against “justice, equality and freedom” —certainly a fair conclusion permitted by his failure to explicitly distinguish teaching on these matters. And his silence on Card. Marx’s actions prove that.
Yet S. Maria Goretti replied vehemently to her attacker Alessandro Serenelli when he suggested they should commit a sexual act, “Oh, no, Alessandro! Then we would both go to hell!”
No moral ambiguity there.
Exactly! You can’t change everything from liturgy to the churches role in the world and Jesus Christ’s role in the church and expect all the sheep to mindlessly follow the wolf. Fool me once…
And considering the Pope’s April 23 message, it appears that red vestments no longer symbolize martyrdom but spirituality according to Chairman Mao.
Don’t doubt it. The Church is hanging on a Cross.
Pray for those Romans in vestments that strike the nails into her hands and feet. Sexual immorality as low priority?
I suppose so if degeneration is only a myth.
In less than 10 years our dead will out number our live births. Equality, Justice and Freedom?
We will soon find out what Muslims already know.
Big families produce big initiatives which majority rule can easily impose their brand of equality justice and freedom.
Abortion on demand, Homosexuality ….these two perversions of truth crippled the Roman empire.
Jesus Christ. The same yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Steve Phoenix wrote: “The deliberate ambiguity in every area—liturgy, moral teaching, dogmatics—is the worst dragon’s teeth sown at Vatican II.”
I think this is one of the reasons for which use of Latin has been abandoned and knowledge of Koine (or New Testament) Greek has declined into almost non-existence. All the great apologetics and theological works of the early Church when much of essential doctrine and dogma were established and explained were written in either Latin or Koine Greek, and in those languages doctrinal and dogmatic terms meant something unchangeable and unvariable over the ages. By de-Latinizing the Church, especially in her liturgy at Holy Mass, the doctrinal and dogmatic link with the past has been broken, and now modernist relativism can find a foothold in a Greorge Orwellian redefinition of key apologetics and theological terms.
No translation can possible convey the exact meaning of what has been written in those two languages – Latin and Koine Greek. Thus, certain key ideas and concepts have been lost in the shifting meanings of terms in modern languages like Italian, English, Spanish, etc. And that, my friends, was (I think) precisely the intent of the embrace of the vernacular by Vatican Council II: to allow a method whereby key Church doctrines and dogmas can be re-interpreted in a modernist liberal progressive way.
Now that said, there is nothing special in either Latin or Koine Greek being “better” than other languages, but what is special is the unchanging invariance in the meaning of words, and that is something with which today’s effeminate, environmentalist, liberal progressive clergy cannot possibly abide.
One last thing: everyone should try to learn Latin and Koine Greek so that the key documents of the first four centuries of the Church – including especially the New Testament – can be read and understood without the kind of horrible revisionism that exists in modern translations like the Catholic NABRE or the Protestant NIV. We’re not going to get back to orthodoxy and orthopraxy without us the laity re-learning our Catholic heritage and confronting these wayward priests with what sometimes constitute their blasphemy.
“But. Catholic teaching did not change. That is my point: people’s faith was grounded in the rite and not the Gospel.”
the idea that the old liturgy which has existed for 1500(?) years is against the Gospel is soooooo ludicrous, that one need not wonder what the impetus is for such a foolish suggestion.
David, he was saying that people were loyal to the rite rather than the gospel, not that the rite and the gospel are in conflict.
I agree with the sentiments expressed in the posts on this site (the first six explicitly)). The question is a perennial one. WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT IT!!!!
Pinky,
This “attempt” to disparage Latin Mass goers, then 1500 years, and now -as more attached to the Rite than the Gospel.. is not simply human error or sinfulness. It’s evil.
I don’t know the full X thread but the comment that Don posted doesn’t say what you’re claiming it does.
Isn’t “The teaching does not change” the same load of nonsense they used to claim the legitimacy of Fiducia Supplicans?
“But. Catholic teaching did not change. That is my point: people’s faith was grounded in the rite and not the Gospel. When the rites were modified, people thought the Faith itself had changed. It did not, yet
because of the shallowness of faith many fell away.”
The author has a point, but he misses the mark. Belief in the Real Presence has collapsed, because the new Rite with it’s non sacredness has destroyed many persons perception. When we kneel, at an Altar Rail, when the Priest guards the Eucharist, when Our Lord is not handed our like fortune cookie(!) by a team of busy-bodies… there is Faith!
A human soul is not separate from the body, it is integral. Our bodies and our actions tell the story.
Persons with any depth of Faith (not shallow) are peeved about all of this!
Exactly! Lex Credendi Lex Orandi. How you pray affects what you believe.
The teaching (doctrine) remains unchanged, it’s just ignored. The result is no one ends up believing what they should, and Joe Pewsitter isn’t digging through his copy of Denzinger to self-correct.
Religion is man’s personal relationship with God, through Jesus Christ and Mary, the Mother of God.